Once, he would have played with his victim until fear permeated the air. He loved that sweet, musky smell—or was it the beast within who savored it more?
He bit deeper, gulping like a glutton. Salt warmth flowed into his mouth, and the beast inside grew wild with joy. He drank so fast that the man went into convulsions. The would-be gambler's blood slowed to a trickle before his heart could even stop.
Death was a blink away.
Chane wrenched his head back and released his grip on the man's jaw. He stepped away and watched the body slide down the alley wall, until the corpse sat propped up with throat torn and eyes still wide.
It was over so quickly—too quickly. Even the rush of life making Chane's head swim and his cold flesh tingle with heat brought no pleasure. And the beast inside him whimpered like a dog pulled back before finishing its meal.
Chane had seen his own maker, Toret, and then Welstiel, raise new minions from selected victims. Not all rose from death, which was why careful selection was necessary. But there was still a slim chance that a victim taken too quickly might rise the following night. Toret had believed that for a Noble Dead to make one of its own, it had to feed a victim its own fluids. That was another superstition.
All it took was devouring a life—suddenly, quickly, all at once—and the close contact of a Noble Dead in the instant between life's end and death's coming. Chane had been lucky in the past not to have any of his prey rise.
Or had they? In recollection, aside from his time in Bela with Toret, he had always been on the move with Welstiel. He had never stayed long enough in one place to be certain.
Chane wanted no minions. And certainly not this side of beef sitting limp in the alley. The last trickles of blood ran down the corpse's neck, staining his filthy shirt like black ink in the alley's darkness.
Chane closed his eyes and saw Wynn's pained face staring back at him in accusation.
He opened his eyes, pulled out a fish knife stolen off the docks, and cut the man's throat deeply. When the corpse was found, his death would seem a common murder by some desperate cutpurse. Kneeling down, he searched the man and took every coin he found for his own needs.
Chane stepped from the alley and retrieved his own pouch, adding new coins to old. He began walking «home» toward the inn and never looked back.
Wynn spent the next day in the catacombs with two terms stuck in her head—
She searched deep through the archives, even trying to find possible variations on the term “vampire.” But her continent's earliest peoples had no such words in any language. The varied ones she'd learned in the Farlands wouldn't be found in this branch of the guild. Several times she got lost in the maze of stone chambers and rooms. All she could do was follow the elemental symbols upon the edges of bookshelves.
Spirit, Fire, Air, Water, and Earth.
Circle, triangle, square, hexagon, and octagon.
The fewer the symbols in a column, the closer she was to the catacomb's front below the keep's rear wall. The most primary and general texts for each field of knowledge, indicated by one lone geometric shape, were closest to Domin Tärpodious's main chamber. Soon enough she found her way back and headed into other reaches of the archives.
Whenever she found a tome, sheaf, book, or scroll of interest, she backtracked to the nearest alcove. There she settled to read, never certain of how long she sat alone in the light of her cold lamp. Again, Wynn gained little more than a headache and tired eyes—until sometime close to supper.
That one word—“warth”—wasn't familiar to Wynn, but she quickly turned the page of the old ghost tale.
