Scholar of Magic (Art of the Adept #3) - Michael G. Manning Page 0,177

door. If things go badly for some reason and I yell for help, open the doors. The sunlight should solve whatever problem I’m having.” He began arranging jars on one side of the room, then put a large metal pan in the center of the floor to catch the blood.

Blake evacuated.

Chapter 40

Will tried a sleep spell, which worked, but as soon as he began cutting, the pig woke again. He was forced to use a source-link to paralyze the poor animal, and he watched its eyes rolling wildly as he bled it from the main carotid arteries. It was pretty much the same thing that would have happened at the slaughterhouse, but Will still felt a strong sense of guilt.

He did his best to catch as much of the vital red fluid as possible, though some splashed out from the force of its panicked heartbeat. The animal’s consciousness faded away, and Will released the source-link. He almost lost his blood as well, when the pig fell sideways and almost knocked his catch pan into the dirt. He was forced to hug the three-hundred-pound gilt against himself as he dragged her back in the other direction.

Once again, he was liberally smeared with blood and dirt. Why do I even bother cleaning myself off? he wondered. Clearly, this is meant to be my natural state.

Another thought came to him then, and Will carefully moved the blood pan off to one side so he wouldn’t knock it over. Then he went up the stairs to where Blake waited. “Can you get Tiny for me?”

“You need his help?”

“We can’t waste the meat, but I’m going to be too busy with the rest of this to butcher it.”

“This is what you get for rushing. You should have planned for this,” Blake remonstrated.

Will frowned. “Too bad. It isn’t as though I’ve had a lot of time to plan things.”

Blake left and returned a few minutes later. Together the two men dragged the heavy pig’s body out of the cellar and up aboveground where they could cut her up. Will went back down below. He made sure he had Ethelgren’s Illumination prepared before he poured the pig’s blood into the jar.

Nothing happened at first, so he moved back and locked the cage door. He’d been afraid the vampire might instantly spring to life and rush at him, but that wasn’t the case. Several minutes passed, and then a wet, slurping sound found his ears, and he could see the jar moving slightly as the thing inside shifted from side to side.

I’ll never get used to this, thought Will. Then again, he couldn’t decide whether he wanted to get used to it. Was it better to be inured to such horror, or to remain unspoiled, happy, and innocent? He had a feeling it was the latter, but life hadn’t given him much choice in the matter.

The jar exploded as the vampire finally emerged with an unholy howl of pain and outrage. It glared at him hatefully as the chains arrested its movement close to the center of the cage. “You will die for this, human!” it hissed. As he had suspected, the chains were inside the creature’s body, where the flesh had grown over them.

Will stared at it coldly, trying to give no sign of the extreme unease he felt. “I sincerely doubt that, spawn of the grave.” With a thought he sent a force-lance through the bars, removing the vampire’s head. Its body fell sideways, and he rushed forward with a shallow bowl, trying to catch as much as he could of the black blood leaking from the stump of its neck. The head lay off to one side, staring at him and gnashing its teeth. Without lungs, it couldn’t make its curses audible.

Unlike the pig, the vampire’s blood emerged sluggishly, without a living heart to pump it. His first bowl filled, and he grabbed a second. When that was full, the neck had stopped bleeding and had begun to heal over, while the arms still scrabbled aimlessly about, searching for the head. He removed his two bowls, poured them in to a jar that he could tightly stopper against light, then stored it in the limnthal.

With his prize