too, remembered Wratha's words. Why waste his energies now in the cold comfort of the streets, when he'd be using all these women later in whichever way he chose and to his heart's content? -those of them who made it, anyway. His brand would be unmistakable when he saw it: they would be limping where he'd savaged their legs to bring them down, and chewed a little in the junction of neck and shoulder.
"Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers"
Gorvi the Guile crouched in the arch of a mist-wreathed doorway, from where he called out softly, urgently to people rushing by: 'Quickly, there's safety within!' Upon entering, they stumbled over the sprawled heap formed of previous victims, saw the smoking blobs of sulphur which were his sunken eyes, and at the last felt the needles of his gleaming teeth.
Vasagi the Suck waited around a corner, grabbed up any who passed too close, and stabbed them deep in their ears - even to their brains - with his darting, spurting proboscis. For Vasagi, all was accomplished in this one, simple, flowing action; if he desired it, his toll might be huge. But he did not. And his message to the undead was likewise simple: It was Vasagi the Suck who tasted your brains and bent them to his will. Report to me on Starside. You will know me by my face, which is unique.
So the six and their shadowing lieutenants advanced into the town, leaving death and undeath in their wake. And each of them was like a plague in his own right, except Wratha.
She wore her gauntlet, but only for protection. And killing no one, her method was the simplest of all. Stepping close on the heels of the others where they went, flitting from one to the next as they advanced, she would go to certain of their male victims and touch them, saying: I am Wratha. He who killed you is to me what you were to him: nothing! Where lore you are mine. When you come into Starside, be sure you come unto me.
So she recruited her thralls, all of them men or youths. But still she did not see herself as a thief. No, for as the leader of the pack, in order to ensure that all went well for the rest of them, she needed her wits about her. Personally, she could not afford the additional distraction of the kill. Thus Wratha excused herself.
And indeed all went very well, for a while ...
... Until the six and their lieutenants came together in an open space where the fires burned in the town's centre. And face to face, with the warrior stench fading and only their own mist draping them, victory shone from their redly luminous eyes. It had been almost too easy. It had been too easy!
For suddenly, a voice from behind snarled: 'Murdering - bastard - things!' And human, Szgany, the voice itself was a threat. Whirling as one, falling to defensive half-crouches, the twelve turned outwards. Behind them in a ring, a dozen or more men of the village hemmed them in. But these were mature, experienced men: men of the old days. Their faces were filled with horror, hatred, and resolution; they carried crossbows, loaded and aimed.
Wratha had half-expected it. Szgany herself upon a time, she knew there were always some who retaliated, who could not be crushed utterly: these people, for instance. In the old days this band - these wanderers, always on the move from place to place in their avoidance of Wamphyri raids - had not been supplicant; they'd not surrendered easily to Wamphyri oppression but fought back. And these men ... they remembered how! Their bolts would be silver-tipped, steeped in kneblasch, deadly. There were long knives in their belts, and wooden stakes!
And: Come! Wratha called to her warrior. But in that same moment, the men began firing.
Wratha's lieutenant, a young man and very bloody, with a gauntlet which was clogged with red flesh (her restrictions had not applied to thrall watchdogs such as him), hurled himself in front of her - and took a bolt in his throat! He gagged, threw up his arms, was hurled back against her - to be grasped and held there by Wratha, as a shield.
The other lieutenants had acted in a like fashion, three covering their masters, the others leaping head-on to confront the threat. Bolts took one of them in mid-flight, skewered him and stretched him out, but the other got