The Pale Princess stepped out of the shadow of a boulder jutting out to one side of a trail leading to a partially ruined monastery. Though she wasn’t powerful enough to open a proper portal to Astaroth’s hell, shadow walking allowed her to travel quickly over more limited distances. Using them too often would leave her weary and her magic weak, so she had to be careful.
She would very much have liked to see someone gaping in horror at the arrival of her and her servants. Or better yet dying in agony at her feet. Instead, she had an empty pile of stones and no followers of the Reaper, dead or alive. The vampires she dispatched were young, but even so, they should have killed one or two of the ninjas.
Very disappointing.
She strode up the path for a closer look. The first thing she found was a black circle of ash where one of her slaves had met its end.
Pathetic.
If the vampire had still lived she’d have killed it herself as a lesson to the others.
Well, maybe she wouldn’t have. There weren’t that many vampires after all. She closed her eyes and concentrated. Less than one hundred if she wasn’t mistaken. Still, a single vampire was more than a match for a hundred normal humans. The Daughters of the Reaper, it seemed, were far from normal.
She paused in the monastery courtyard and sniffed, wrinkling her nose. It stank of the Reaper’s hell. Someone had opened a gate here. That explained how Talon and his followers escaped. They went to the one place she didn’t dare follow.
How had the elder vampire evaded her control anyway? Astaroth claimed she’d have the power to control any undead.
Perhaps if your will was stronger.
She shivered at her master’s cold voice in the back of her mind. “Apologies, Master. I meant no insult. I only wished to understand the limits of my…I mean, the power you’ve given me.”
I know exactly what you meant. Given time you might gain sufficient skill to overwhelm Talon’s psyche and enslave him. But that would take centuries, centuries our enemies certainly will not give you. You did notice he couldn’t attack you.
“Yes, Master.”
Then let that satisfy you for now and use what you do have to complete the task I’ve given you.
Astaroth’s presence vanished and she let out a sigh. The Lord of the Undead had an overwhelming will and when it pressed down on her, it took all she had not to fall to her knees and beg for forgiveness even when she’d done nothing wrong.
She sensed one of her slaves a moment before he solidified beside her. “We found no sign of any humans remaining in the area.”
No surprise there. No one would be stupid enough to linger where her vampires might find them.
“Mistress,” her slave said. “May we hunt? Midnight approaches and we need to feed.”
She turned the full weight of her regard on him. Pale and handsome, dressed in black trousers and a white shirt, the man hadn’t been a vampire for much over a century. She picked that straight out of his mind. They were all, including Talon and the eldest, an open book to her. Not that their thoughts interested her overmuch. Only their obedience and power mattered to her mission.
“Hear me well. No more will you be reduced to hunting beasts. The proper prey for a vampire is humans and you will feed on nothing else.”
“Yes, Mistress.” The youth had no choice but to agree with her. Her thoughts controlled his actions more than his own did. “Only, there are no humans in the Land of the Night Princes.”
“Then we shall have to go where the humans live. East, to the former Dragon Empire. There are villages close to the border. If you hurry, you can reach them before sunrise.”
Her suggestion had the full weight of a command and the instant after she gave it, the vampires were racing east. She smiled and let her mind ride along with her slaves. She let their hunger pass through her and with a modest effort of will turned them from simply hungry to ravenous. Nothing would slow them until they had killed and fully slaked their thirst. Since most of them had never drunk human blood before, that would be a great thirst indeed.
An hour before sunrise the horde of vampires crossed the border and five minutes after that reached a small farming village.
The humans never knew what hit them.
The Pale Princess emerged from a handy shadow and into the midst of the carnage. Vampires leapt and slashed at the pale, weak humans that called this rundown collection of shacks home. Some swung farm implements, like that would do any good.
The crack of a gunshot rang out and more soon followed. Clearly these humans had never fought vampires before. Not that farmers would have any place in the czar’s mighty army.
One of the humans, a woman about forty, somehow evaded the vampires long enough to run right at the Pale Princess. A casual gesture bound the woman from head to toe in a black tentacle and soon enough one of her slaves appeared to rip her throat open. Most efficient, were her new pet killers.
The sun had just begun coloring the sky orange when she felt the last human die. She commanded the vampires to dig themselves into the dirt to wait out the day.
Claws that rent flesh like tissue paper made quick work of digging a number of shallow graves. Such a simple thing: keep them out of the sun and feed them blood and you had a nearly unstoppable force.
Now for some reinforcements. She raised both hands and sent streams of dark magic out into the village. One by one she touched every body. The vampire’s curse had already begun coursing through the dead. But she didn’t want more vampires; she needed monsters capable of operating during the day.
Happily, Astaroth’s menagerie included numerous types of undead. One of the most common and easy to create being the lesser ghoul, a semi-intelligent humanoid that enjoyed nothing so much as devouring the flesh of the dead. They were only a little harder to kill than a zombie and of no real use to her.
Their cousins, the greater ghouls, on the other hand, were exactly what she needed. Even better, altering the vampire’s curse to raise the dead as ghouls instead of vampires was simplicity itself for a priestess of the Lord of the Undead.
In less than an hour she’d altered every body. By noon, they should be up and about, ready to join in the killing when they attacked the next village.
The Pale Princess reached into a magically protected pocket of her dress and pulled out her most precious gift from Astaroth, a red crystal the size of a grown man’s fist that pulsed with corrupt energy. While the vampires consumed blood and the ghouls flesh, the crystal consumed life force. Everyone that died contributed whatever life they had remaining in their puny bodies.
When the crystal could hold no more, she would use its power to bring back the only person suitable to lead Astaroth’s army, her former lord and soon-to-be undying slave, the Dragon Czar.