Chapter 23 : The Blood Clan
The black light struck the shadow and it lurched, producing a sharp, eerie cry — then burst apart into a mass of bats that scattered in every direction.
Evan frowned. Soul Drain wasn't Grand Disintegration. The expected result was a body collapsing, drained of its blood and life force. What he'd gotten instead was dispersal.
The bats swirled and converged again. Black smoke rose and thickened around the mass, and a figure solidified: a young man with gold hair and blue eyes, a face that would have been genuinely handsome under ordinary circumstances, except for the pair of membranous wings folded at his back. Evan exhaled quietly. One pair of wings, blood-red runic patterns across the membrane — a Vampire Baron. Not a title in the noble sense, but a designation within the Blood Clan hierarchy, indicating a genuine and fully developed member of the species.
The vampire had taken a hit. He came down and the flowers on the slope around him opened at once, and vines began moving toward him, wrapping his legs and climbing his body with obvious speed, then withering away as quickly as they had come. When they fell, his aura had steadied. The runes on his wings brightened. Above them, a cloud that had been drifting over the moon broke apart, and the moonlight that reached him was visibly stronger than what fell on the surrounding ground. He was feeding.
Evan watched this with interest. Blood Clan were nominally dark-element practitioners — every framework he'd encountered said so. But what he was observing looked like absorption of moonlight, which should have been light element, or at minimum a reflection of solar energy. The Creationist Church classified sunlight as pure light element. So either the Church's nine-element taxonomy had gaps, or the elements weren't quite what everyone assumed they were.
"We are the Blood Clan," the vampire said, his tone sharp. "Not vampires."
"It's just a word. Does the distinction matter this much?"
His expression tightened. "You know what you came to know. Leave."
"Why would I leave? This area was empty a few years ago. You've established yourselves here recently. Something brought you to this specific location, and I'd like to know what."
He had a theory — the philosopher's stone rumors had been circulating, and if the Blood Clan had heard the same rumors, their presence in Borbert Castle made sense. He kept that particular thought to himself.
The vampire's eyes brightened to a red glow in the darkness, and his jaw was set, but he didn't move. He was a longevity species and had just lost an exchange. He wasn't in a hurry to repeat the experience.
After a moment: "You're clearly a mage of some ability. Not an unknown. Identify yourself."
"Evan. Evan Wang." He said it comfortably. "And you?"
"Robert. If you value your life, go. I have nothing more to say." He spread his wings and flew back toward the castle without waiting for an answer.
Evan watched him disappear into the dark stonework, then turned and walked toward the front gate.
The gate was draped in climbing plants — something like ivy, thick across the old wood. Evan was still a few steps away when a sound stopped him. From the gatehouse arch came a low double growl. A creature emerged — two-headed, one head venting black smoke, the other a slow pulse of toxic fire, a tail like a dragon's, tapering to a triangle. Four eyes, all fixed on him. A hell-hound of a kind he hadn't encountered, though the lineage was obvious.
He stepped back. The creature crouched and prepared to spring. His hand tightened on the bone staff and Bone Shield was already forming in his mind — then the gate opened. Quietly, without drama. The ivy across it retreated at speed, which Evan no longer found surprising.
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The two-headed creature went still. Its heads lowered as though the previous moment had been something it had imagined. It settled at the feet of the figure who had come to the gate.
A young woman. Coffee-brown hair in loose waves. Pale skin, a figure that would have drawn attention in any room. At first glance she seemed fragile — and then you looked at her eyes, which were completely cold.
A girl, and a hell-hound lying docile at her ankle. Evan raised his guard rather than lowering it.
"A necromancer." She studied him. "No — more like a lich. But not quite right for a lich either. Did you drain someone's blood and life force? Is that why you look like a living person?"
Evan felt the impact of that. He had been moving through the world for weeks without his identity being questioned once. A vampire girl had seen through him in under a minute.
"No," he said. "I haven't drained anyone. Who are you?"
"Sophia, daughter of Duke Windsor." Her gaze hadn't moved from him. "You're unusual. You look like one of the Blood Clan, but not quite. What are you?" Then, before he could answer: "You ignored Robert's warning. You're relying on your magic. This castle is mine now. If you want to enter, you'll need to prove you belong here."
She was curious about his nature. Evan was curious about hers.
"Then we fight," he said simply. He had come alone, at night, with a bone staff, using death magic openly. The reasons didn't need to be spoken.
Something moved across Sophia's face — a trace of amusement that didn't reach her eyes, brief and slightly girlish against the coldness of everything else. The hell-hound swelled. In a moment it had grown to several times its previous size, still without making a sound, and both heads discharged simultaneously — flame from one, yellow smoke from the other, both arcing toward Evan.
He stepped back and opened his throat.
Lich's Howl.
The sound was low and resonant and wrong in a way that made the air behave badly. Invisible pressure waves pushed through the flame and smoke, disrupting them, and then continued outward toward Sophia like invisible blades.
He had gone past the creature immediately, treating it as a secondary threat and focusing on Sophia. He had no instinct to hold back because she looked young and female — a lich's body had left that kind of consideration somewhere behind him, and more practically, he could feel that Sophia was not what her appearance suggested.
Her expression changed. "Lich's Howl — you are a lich." Her wings came open behind her — white, almost luminous, like polished bone, but the runic patterns across them were red-gold, covering half the surface. Vampire Viscount markings. Both hands came up in a reversed cross against her chest and pushed outward; a dome of blood-light formed in front of her, egg-shaped, the membrane covered in intricate runic patterns that activated as they appeared. Blood Ward — the standard defensive magic of the Blood Clan.
The blood-light pulsed against the Howl's pressure waves, the two forces interfering with each other like ripples meeting on water. Evan turned the bone staff toward the hell-hound and chanted quickly: "Bone Cage!" Bones erupted from the soil and stone beneath the creature's feet and closed around it. The hound was contained. He returned his attention to Sophia.
He still wasn't sure. She had displayed the abilities of the Blood Clan, but something didn't add up. She, in turn, was looking at him with the same calculation — she had seen liches before, and a genuine lich was skin on bone, barely more than an animated skeleton. He wasn't that. If he had stolen blood and vitality from someone, she would have seen the signs. She hadn't. She had hesitated, and her hound was now caged, but the cage hadn't damaged it. She noticed that. He had pulled the spell's force rather than drive it to destruction.
She needed to know, and she had a way to find out. If he was a lich, the Church had no hold on him, and the situation could be discussed. If he was something else, that was different information.
Her eyes went strange. She pointed at him and began an incantation — the words came in a low register with a cadence like something very old, nothing Evan had heard before. He raised his alertness sharply. The incantation ended with two words he understood:
"Ravages of Time."
There was no visible light, no impact he could feel directly. But in the space around him, within a few cubits in every direction, things aged. A flower nearby withered from bloom to dry husk to brown powder in the time it took him to draw a breath. The stem went with it. A crack spread across a nearby stone.
Evan felt something, but not much.
A lich occupied a space between death and life that didn't respond normally to time-manipulation. He had experienced this in the same way a stone experiences weather — something had touched him, but the architecture of what he was had resisted it.
He blinked away, appearing thirty paces off in an instant. He looked at Sophia from the new distance. She hadn't moved, but the effort of the spell was written in her posture — Ravages of Time was not a spell you cast without cost. He understood what she had been testing for.
He spoke more reasonably than he had before.
"I came because I heard there were philosopher's stones in this location. I wanted to see for myself."