Chapter 48 Ven
Ven
Bloodreach
“Why do we have to wear water plants on our heads?” Chiyo asked, holding a foul-smelling clump of them as though it might bite. Rain dotted her lashes, her face woeful.
Eyrun tossed a paddle into the canoe. “Camouflage on the water. We’ll grab the next two clumps for ourselves.” She tipped the bow toward the Scarlet Shallows.
“Clouds hide the moon. No one will see us, right?” Chiyo nibbled her wet lip with a small vulpine fang.
Ven yanked her gaze from that tempting mouth. I don’t like distractions. So why do I like this one? “The moon can break through while we’re paddling,” she said. “You wanted to come as we investigate? Then do as we ask or go home.” She and Eyrun climbed into the canoe.
“Fine.” Chiyo crossed to the bank to join them. Her movements when sword fighting were precise and economical, yet her gait was an ass-swishing, hip-swinging miracle. She carried herself as if she always sported the bushy tail of her shifter form.
Ven rolled her eyes—at herself—and admitted: I’m a fan.
She’d thought Chiyo might share her interest, yet after seeing Ven do her job in Grimrock, she’d cooled. But removing demon testicles is just a part of the grind, shifter. See me, love me.
Or don’t.
Chiyo climbed in behind them, then took the sodden, rotting mess and plopped it on her head like a coronation gone wrong.
Ven and Eyrun guffawed with laughter so hard they rocked the canoe.
Eyrun cried, “Great Freya, she did it. I never thought she’d do it!” She dug her paddle in and sent them speeding across the Shallows.
“Tch! If this is your best, I misjudged you both.” Chiyo snatched the plant off her soaked hair and flung it away.
Splash! A nearby sea serpent gobbled it down, thinking it food.
“We don’t do camouflage,” Ven said. “If anyone spots us spying on Bloodreach, so be it. Few warriors remain, and what would the nobles do? Perfumed-handkerchief us to death?”
Eyrun pointed out, “They could use harsh language to put us in our places.”
“I’m all a’tremble.” Spying here was easy enough to do. At night, the vampires left their curtains open, figuring the sea monsters would keep any observers from the waters.
Those creatures should, and the Shallows were home to an infinite number of them: massive krakens nearly as large as the castle…sea hydra with a thousand arms to match their appetite for flesh…serpents with their fins breaching, the warning before a strike…
But Valkyries considered themselves the alpha monsters in any situation.
As they neared the castle, its tower rose like a torchlit city. Nobles occupied the middle floors in a haze of incense, their laughter echoing through open archways. Silken limbs intertwined on couches while jeweled goblets spilled blood across marble floors.
Ven’s gaze drifted upward, past the revelers, to the tier of royal apartments where princes and princesses toyed with lovers or fed from trembling donors.
Above them all, on the highest floor, a guard ushered Prince Co?tin into King Neculain’s study, a vaulted chamber heavy with old-world opulence. Dark wood shone beneath the light of chandeliers.
Aside from blood-thieving, this kingdom was also known for weaving, and tapestries lined one wall. Red dominated, the thread dyed in blood.
A large balcony perched over the Shallows. Stained-glass windows flanked its doors, which had been left open to the misty air.
The king awaited Co?tin inside, his face lined with anger and pallor, his woven robes fluttering like a pennant. Chained at his feet, a half-naked Berserker female gazed at nothing with vacant eyes. Crimson tracks descended from pierce points all over her bared breasts.
Why the hells hasn’t Queen Yrsa rescued her own?
Once the guard left, Neculain appeared to lay into his son, fangs bared, his hands flying like confused birds. The tapestries closest to him riffled as if afraid. His irises were the color of freshly spilled blood, and insanity bled off him.
Co?tin stood with his head unbowed, a defiant smile threatening.
Though the rain dwindled, Ven couldn’t pick up the conversation over the activity of nearby sea monsters, who fought and copulated all around them. An energetic mating ball coiled not twenty feet away.
She heard only fragments from Neculain: Emilia…failure…ashes…no son.
And Co?tin’s own: Underestimated…glory…secret…crypt.
“Look at those two.” Eyrun sounded fascinated. “Talk about crazy. Like two halves cut from the same wrecked tapestry. Is Neculain disinheriting him?”
Chiyo swiped wet hair from her cheek. “That would be my guess.”
With a dismissive gesture, Neculain turned to refill his goblet from a blood mead service. A sconce lit his face—ancient, terrible, done.
From behind him, Co?tin drew his golden sword.
And he struck.
Neculain’s head rolled from his shoulders and tumbled to the carpet. His body collapsed beside it.
Chiyo breathed something in Japanese. “He just…he just assassinated the king.”
“Great Freya,” Ven said. “What was he thinking?”
Co?tin calmly wiped his sword on his father’s robes, then sheathed the blade. He collected Neculain’s head and hurled it through the balcony doors. It sailed over the canoe and hit the water.
Splash! Neculain’s head bobbed, eyes blinking in shock, mouth still working—until a creature closed its gaping jaws around it. Gulp.
Then Co?tin easily hefted up the body and tossed it out into the Shallows.
Thud!
King Neculain’s corpse had just landed. In their boat. Would Co?tin have heard the wooden boom?
Blood from the severed neck slicked the water around them, chumming it. The current heaved; the canoe steadied, then lurched.
“Let’s get out of here,” Ven said. “If we smuggle this trophy out, we’ll never have to buy drinks again.” Not that they drank.
She and Eyrun paddled, yet they didn’t move.
“Uh, what’s happening?” Eyrun said.
Below them, something rolled, and they rose—up and up—on the back of a breaching kraken. They were trapped aboard the giant creature.
“Is it sleeping?” Chiyo whispered.
“It’s twitching like it is,” Eyrun whispered back. Muscles rippled along its spine, jostling the canoe.
Co?tin crossed to the balcony railing to gaze out with narrowed eyes. At that moment, clouds parted and the moon detonated white above them.
There sat Ven, Eyrun, and Chiyo with the body of Neculain in their boat and no way to escape without getting eaten.
Eyrun’s lightning flared across the moon.
But Ven kept a cooler head. “The three of us can handle whatever Bloodreach can muster.”
Co?tin traced away, demonstrating a new skill the Valkyries hadn’t suspected. A split second later, an alarm blared over the castle.
Suddenly, teleporting vampires appeared on forgotten ramparts with weapons drawn and intent gazes. More and more appeared. The castle was like an ant mound disturbed by a stray leaf, now boiling up with defenders.
Co?tin returned to his spot on Neculain’s balcony, peering down at them with a triumphant sneer.
Eyrun gaped. “Where are the soldiers coming from?” Contingents of swordsmen and archers continued to populate every old battlement, all wearing crimson and black, the ancient colors of Bloodreach. “And why do they look like they know what they’re doing? We would have seen vampires training!”
“You weren’t meant to. No one was,” Chiyo said gravely. “Co?tin is like a fox who buries a treat for later.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The crypt. He must have been stockpiling an army down there, always planning to usurp Neculain.”
Ven’s lips parted. “Then the Horde of long ago has returned.” In the past, teleporting vampires had given even Valkyries pause. Much less an army of them.
Eyrun frowned. “They’ll never follow Co?tin now though. The Horde revered bloodlines. Plotting an overthrow is one thing, but even the leeches frown on regicide.”
“Kill the Valkyries!” Co?tin bellowed to his troops. “They have my father! Murdered!”
Eyrun murmured, “Fuckity-ugh. He just pinned the assassination on us, didn’t he?”
Arrows rained down, blotting out the moon.
Chiyo cried, “I think we’re in a pinch.”
“Dive!” Ven yelled. She snatched Chiyo and Eyrun as she sprang off the waking kraken into a whirlpool of blood and fangs…