Thralls are extremely rare. They have to start out as born vampires—either as legacies or the offspring of a vampyr and a human. To create a thrall that will obey their every command, a vampyr must find a born vampire, kill them, and turn them the same way they would turn a mortal—by injecting their vampyrish blood into the vampire's newly-dead body.
If the vampire is lucky and survives the transition, they come back even stronger, but as a thrall.
Unluckily for them, they can't act or even speak for themselves until their vampyr master is murdered—something thralls are literally incapable of thinking about, let alone carrying out.
Which means that somewhere in this house, there's a Nether vampyr lying in wait.
Yippee for me.
As quietly and efficiently as I can, I use common magic to remove the tops of the other crates, taking pictures to give the RLHNA a head start identifying the thralls. It's not my business how the new government body will handle these vamps if they turn out to be missing persons. Depending on how long they've been enslaved, thralls can be tough as hell to deprogram, once their master is dead.
I get to the last box, remove the lid, and blink down at the unconscious thrall inside.
I've seen this face before, when Everett Frost sent me out on several failed tracking missions during the Upheaval. Never could find this guy, but getting enslaved as a thrall definitely explains why the poor fuck disappeared without a trace for over a year.
"Ian," I whisper, to see if it will rouse him. "Ian Boone, right?"
This good-looking vamp was well-groomed and grinning confidently in all the pictures Frost gave me for reference a year ago, but now he's a fucking mess. He's in a simple gray T-shirt and jeans, but they're badly ripped and stained with old blood. His dirt-streaked face is gaunt, there are dark circles under his eyes, and he looks as lifeless as the other decrepit vampires in this creepy-ass cellar.
I should probably text Everett to let him know his friend's still alive.
But on the other hand… Boone's a thrall now. Only the gods know what he's been forced to do under the command of his master and how that's changed him as a person. If the RLHNA decides they can't deprogram him, maybe it's better to spare Frost that bit of pain.
I take a step away from the crate but then startle in surprise when Ian's bloodshot eyes open, and he looks right at me. Hedoesn't move or speak or even blink, but he's the only vamp down here to show any sign of consciousness, so there's that.
It sounds like there's a thud from somewhere upstairs. Tipping my head, I try to listen better with my left ear—the only one that works now. When I hear nothing else, I pat the side of Boone's crate.
"Hang in there, Champ. Your master's neck has a date with my knife."
Slinking to the stairs that will take me up into the mansion, I take a deep breath, pop my neck, and charge up the stairs.
The second I reach the ornate first floor, I counter a startled defensive magic spell someone flings at me. The caster starts to shout, but I take him down in a tackle, smacking his head hard enough on the tile floor that he's out cold.
An incubus falls out of Limbo and wraps his arm around my neck, clearly about to try snapping it. Slamming my head back, I feel the satisfying crunch of his nose breaking and hear his squeal of pain.
My head rings from the impact, but godsdamn. The rush of combat still feels so fucking great after the stale months I spent recovering and rebuilding my body.
I fling the pained incubus off of me, sending his body toppling down the nearby stairs. Swerving the attack of another caster in the closest corner of this hallway connected to the stairs, I spot the blur of a vampyr toward me just in time.
Dropping, I just barely avoid getting my throat ripped out by its fangs
The vampyr hisses and lunges again. I throw an incantation of slowed motion at it before smashing my elbow back into the face of the second caster, who was trying to creep up behind me. Side-stepping the slowed vampyr, I capitalize on its delay, pull the knife from my pocket, and bury the blade into the back of the vampyr's neck.
It screams, gurgling around the protrusion in the front of its throat. When the felled caster throws a dismemberment malediction up at me, all I have to do is drop again and let the vampyr take the full force of the spell.
The vampyr falls in pieces to the blood-soaked hallway floor, its blood spraying through the air. Straightening, I send a brutal kick into the side of the remaining caster's head. His skull cracks against the wall behind him, and he slumps. Before I can catch my breath or pull the serrated knife out of what's left of the dead vampyr's neck, acrid magic floods the air, making my eyes glow just as I hear the quiet muttering of an incantation.
Wiping the vampyr's blood off my cheek and ignoring the pounding in my head, I turn to face my target: the necromancer.
There's some kind of ugly-ass tattoo all over the necromancer's head, illuminated by the spell he's already leveling at me. I summon a powerful protective charm just as the death magic slams into me several times in a row.
"How truly arrogant you are, coming here alone," the necromancer snarls.
"Yep. So, what's the deal, Ugly?" I ask, sparing the quickest glance at the room connected to this hallway. I don't see any other opponents in there, but I do see a well-decorated sitting room with a check on the coffee table. I bet there's a lot of zeroes on it. "What kind of fucked-up magic snake oil are you selling?"
"Snake oil? Please! What I offer is real and precious. I am blessing the worthy with youth, offering them beauty in a bottle. Can you imagine? A new lifetime, forever free of aging! I grasp their precious, fleeting lives within my hand, reversing their biological clockwork to—" he begins.
I talk over him, not interested in listening to his whole self-aggrandizing zombie-raiser sales pitch since I'm pretty sure the throbbing in my head is trying to develop into a migraine.
