Tristan stared at the back of the retreating vampire, ignoring the approaching people.
Victor Verner. He’d said he was over a hundred years old. And he was powerful. Tristan was certain the vampire had been holding back in that shed, most likely because he’d enjoyed toying with Tristan. Like a cat with a mouse. And now Tristan was angry with himself for having indulged him. For having talked to him more than he should have. For having made those… sounds while being fed on.
When the vampire disappeared from sight, Tristan raised a hand to his neck, feeling the puncture wounds. They didn’t hurt, and he was still alive and mostly all right. But if he’d allowed the vampire to keep going, he would be dead now. The vampire had intended to kill him in the end. Tristan had seen it in his—its—eyes.
He reloaded the gun and removed a speck of dirt from the barrel.
The gun was useful for weakening vampires and killing werewolves, and Tristan liked using it, but he began to think that a crossbow would be better against more powerful vampires. A thick crossbow bolt would be like a silver bullet and a wooden stake combined, and he didn’t know of any rule that said the very tip of the stake had to be wood. He was going to build a crossbow and test it as soon as possible. There was no reason tradition should hold him back.
“Sir!” a man shouted. “Inquisitor! Are you hurt?”
Tristan put the gun in the holster, adjusted the collar of his coat to hide the bite mark, and turned around. The two men who had approached him were dressed in military uniforms adorned with the king’s crest.
“I’m all right, but thank you for rushing to my aid.” He looked them over. “Soldiers from the capital?”
“We’re new army recruits, sir. We were just passing through,” the taller and broader of the two men said, “and saw this woman and her daughter by the road. The woman told us a knight of the Inquisition was fighting a monster in their shed. Our friends took them to the city, and we came here to help, but it seems we’re late?”
Tristan nodded. “The vampire has escaped. Is my horse still waiting by the road?”
“Yes. Do you need help with anything, Inquisitor?”
“Please inform the lady about her husband’s demise and tell her that someone from the Inquisition will come to inspect the body before it can be cremated.”
It was a small comfort that he didn’t have to talk to the victim’s family himself.
***
The grand inquisitor hummed, examining the bite mark closely, while Tristan fought the instinctual urge to move away. After a long moment, the grand inquisitor stepped back and said, “It’s not scabbing, but it’s not bleeding either. If the puncture wounds take this long to scab over, it means the vampire is particularly powerful and releases a stronger venom. But a stronger venom should have made it impossible for you to pull out your sword mid-feeding. Did it affect you at all?”
Tristan’s face grew warm. “Yes, Your Eminence.”
“You feel ashamed of that?”
“I do.”
“It’s not your fault that your body reacted to a vampire’s venom. You should be proud that you managed to stab it despite that. But you’ll need to be more careful from now on. If the vampire informs other vampires about your encounter, you might become a target. And you’re not exactly inconspicuous.”
“If I become a target, Your Eminence,” Tristan said, “monsters will come to me to be eliminated. I wouldn’t mind that.”
The grand inquisitor sighed. “I would. What you do is dangerous enough already. I wouldn’t feel comfortable knowing that you’re being actively hunted by vampires, especially ones as powerful as the one you fought today. We’re… not supposed to develop attachments, but being human makes it difficult, and I have, despite myself, grown to see you as my son, Tristan.”
“Oh.” Tristan felt a tightness in his throat. “I—I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t need to say anything. But can I hug you? Just this once?”
Tristan nodded, his heart beating faster with eager anticipation or trepidation or both, and he found himself in the grand inquisitor’s tight embrace. His body tensed involuntarily, unused to this kind of touch, but he willed himself to relax, and as he hesitantly returned the hug, he felt an unfamiliar wave of warmth and comfort wash over him. This wasn’t something he should expect to ever be repeated, though, which was probably for the best. He couldn’t allow himself to be vulnerable.
When the embrace ended, he was relieved to have kept his composure.
The grand inquisitor searched his face. “I hope the gods will forgive me for bringing you into the Inquisition instead of finding you a proper home. I keep telling myself that your talents mean I made the right decision, but the assurances feel hollow.”
“But I chose this for myself.”
“Because you felt obligated to do it, out of gratitude for my saving you. But did I truly save you if you can’t even have a normal life?”
“I am satisfied with my life, Your Eminence. And I can’t imagine doing anything else. I don’t want to do anything else.”
“That’s because you don’t know anything else.” His Eminence gave Tristan a sad smile. “But it doesn’t matter at this point, does it? You’ve taken your vows, and you are bound to the Holy Inquisition. I can only find solace in the fact that you do not resent what I’ve turned your life into.” He tentatively patted Tristan’s arm. “I’ll look into this Victor Verner. If that’s his real name, he must be rather careless.”
Tristan frowned. “Your Eminence, you called the vampire a ‘he.’ Why?”
“Because of the name, I suppose. Don’t tell anyone I said that, but this thing they taught you about having to always refer to a monster as an ‘it’ is a waste of effort. As long as you do your job, it doesn’t matter what pronouns you use in your mind to refer to monsters. Don’t waste mental energy trying to correct yourself inside your head.”
“Your Eminence disagrees with the Church’s teachings?” Tristan asked, confused.
“The rules are made by people who know nothing about monsters or how to hunt them. I have little respect for most bishops and their ideas. And while I must enforce the will of the Church, I’ve already transgressed by hugging you, therefore I can allow myself some smaller transgressions before I return to my role. So I’m telling you to think, Tristan. Don’t follow the Church’s teachings blindly and please don’t get yourself killed because you got distracted by pronouns mid-fight.”
It took Tristan a moment to find his voice. “Of course, Your Eminence. I shall heed your advice.”
“See that you do. Now off you go. I’ve already done and said too much.”
Tristan inclined his head. “Yes, Your Eminence. And thank you.”
While he was walking to his room, pondering the grand inquisitor’s words, Arthur blocked him in the corridor.
“Starling, you son of a—” Arthur took a deep breath. “You’ve murdered my informant!”
“Informant? What was their name?”
“James Ashford, you bastard. He was a human. You didn’t need to kill him.”
“He was a danger to others,” Tristan stated, “and so I eliminated him. He had most likely fed you nothing but lies, anyway.”
“Look, I know he was a shithead, but informants usually are! And he often did have valuable information. Recently, he told me about this blood ritual that was going to happen tonight in a warehouse at the docks in Arkala. Sometime between nine and ten. I wanted to ask him today if he’d learned in which bloody warehouse and how best to approach it without being detected, but he’s bloody dead!”
“There are only two warehouses there and they’re not far apart. Take someone with you as backup and you’ll be fine. Although I doubt there actually will be any ritual there.”
“Oh, I do intend to take someone with me. You! You fucked with my mission, and you’ll help me complete it.” Arthur stared up at Tristan expectantly, his blue eyes narrowed.
“You should watch your language, Arthur. They will punish you again if you keep this up.”
Arthur rolled his eyes. “How sweet of you to care. Will you help me or not?”
Tristan had intended to start working on his crossbow tonight, but he was not one to decline a request for assistance from a fellow inquisitor, regardless of how it had been worded.
“I will help. Let’s meet outside in half an hour.”
“Um, okay.” Arthur stepped aside to let Tristan pass. “Take many bullets with you.”
“I always do.”
Half an hour later, Tristan was waiting near the stables, dressed in fresh clothes that the still open wounds on his neck fortunately weren’t bleeding onto. He resisted running his fingers over the bite mark and wondered how long it would take for it to disappear. He’d refrained from using a bandage so that he could easily assess the healing progress, but so far, there were no signs of healing.
Arthur was approaching, so Tristan adjusted his collar. Arthur really was expecting something big to happen—he was carrying two revolvers and had a rifle on his back—but Tristan was prepared for disappointment. Although if there was no ritual, Tristan could stay at the docks and look for some monsters to kill. He wouldn’t want to come back home without having accomplished anything.
Arthur brought a horse out of the stable and after mounting it, said, “A vamp bit you?”
Tristan swallowed. “Excuse me?”
“You always wear your coat open, even when it’s really fucking cold, so it’s not hard to guess something’s off when you’re wearing it closed. Also, you keep touching the collar. Can I see it up close?”
“What for?”
Arthur scoffed. “Curiosity?”
“I… don’t like people getting too close.”
Arthur shrugged and urged his horse to move. “That’s okay. I figured you wouldn’t agree, but it didn’t hurt to ask. How did it feel?”
“Like people say it feels.”
“Orgasmic? Did you get hard?”
“I—No. I stabbed him—it—in the side before things got too far.” Even if it was okay not to worry about pronouns in his thoughts, he had to be careful when talking to other inquisitors or people of the Church.
“How lucky. Did it die?”
“No,” Tristan said. “It ran away.”
“Then it will probably want to finish what it started.”
“Probably.” But so did Tristan.
When they reached Arkala’s docks, Tristan checked his pocket watch. It was almost nine.
“Let’s try the smaller one first,” he said.
He felt warm moisture on his neck and collarbone. He touched his neck, but he knew it was blood even before he saw it coating his fingers.
Comments (6)
See all