Lying spread-eagled, his arms and legs drawn tight in the four directions of the compass, was the blood drinker that had been the object of all their collective efforts this night.
Instead of a single stake driven through the thing's chest, there were four iron pipes jutting up from each of its forearms and from its legs just below the knees. The effect being that while the creature struggled weakly, it was fixed to the ground just as surely as an insect in a meticulous giant's collection.
Flair barely remarked his own metamorphosis from wolf to man as he stood in amazed silence while the alpha wolf, Brazier Abraxis, came to them.
Before he had time to say anything more, Agate snarled.
"You lied to us," she said.
"You knew where he wuss all along," continued Opal.
Braze shook his head, his expression grim.
"Your accusations are unfounded and unworthy of you both. Your skill is nothing less than remarkable and in honor of that alone I speak the truth."
He looked from one to the other, his eyes demanding that they believe him. For their part, the Twins did not flinch from his solemn gaze. Rather, their eyes blazed in anger and defiance.
"I posed this wager in good faith and was unaware as to the vampire's whereabouts. I swear this to you in the name of the sire of all wolves, Galgallin, himself."
Agate shook her head slowly.
"And yet here you are," she said.
"I am," replied Braze, "And that constitutes failure upon both your parts. Therefore, I am under no obligation whatsoever to cede to your corporal appetites."
Both women growled low and deeply from the back of their throats. With alarm, Flair saw in a flash what they meant to do, so he cleared his throat more loudly than necessary and gestured with his chin toward the four hunting wolf males that had come in silently behind the two females.
Agate glanced over her shoulder back at them, then put a hand on Opal's arm.
"We didn't fail and we owe you nothing."
Opal took up where Agate left off.
"You's the one done the tricking here," she said.
Then the two sultry women turned around, apparently abandoning any idea of attacking Braze, and pushed their way through the hunters behind them.
"A pity," Braze said, "They could be such an asset to our efforts, Flair. Instead, those two women leave us embittered with thoughts of revenge their sole unguent in answer to the sting of a task left undone."
Flair did not know how to respond to the alpha wolf. To his mind, something smelled like cheating despite what Braze had to say.
Instead, he changed the subject.
"So, did the vamp actually know what he said he did?"
Braze shrugged his broad shoulders.
"It would seem so, yes. Once he discovered I had no wooden stake to drive through his heart and end his worthless existence at once, he pled for mercy and I do believe he told me all that there is to tell.
"Apparently, he sought to sell his information to vampires ranked more highly than he, but he was met with rejection and dismissal. And that was most fortunate for our organization because he has, indeed, learned the names of far more of our infiltrators than I would have believed possible."
Braze cocked his head slightly to one side as if listening for the blood drinker to contradict what had been said.
"In any case, once I began staking him into place with the first things I found at hand, he understood that his doom draws nigh and all that he knew spilled out in a flood of information among which one thing is of vital importance."
Flair waited for him to continue, then when he could stand it no longer he asked, "And what thing is that?"
Braze held his silence a moment longer before looking Flair straight in his eyes and said with an uncharacteristic grin, "The vampire did not find anyone to take him seriously...except us."
In sudden good cheer, the alpha wolf held his arms wide and said, "Let us be off before the spectacle of the new day comes to wipe this vermin and his secrets from the earth. I so detest the stench of them when they burn."
Without a second look back, Flair and the other wolves followed after their leader and not one of them paid attention to the whimpering creature about to perish in that courtyard.
Disaster averted, this night's work was done.
~~~
All was calm and the dim glow beyond the courtyard's walls had begun to change at last. The night's edges frayed like a worn banner in the wind, its time almost run out as the sun made its inexorable journey westward while sweeping shadow back as it came.
The creature upon the ground whimpered despite himself. All his best laid plans had come to naught. His own existence with them.
It was unfair.
Then he thought of the young woman from earlier that night, of her and her tiny child. What he had done to them was also unfair. And it would seem that his just reward would not tarry before the rapidly diminishing cloak of night no longer sheltered him from bright destruction.
Some remnants of his victim's blood remained as he had supped greedily, without restraint. Most of it had burned away as he raced before his pursuers, then sped away from them when they lost his trail.
It had felt like victory. For that, however, he had been mistaken and now what little remained of a child and her mother's lives leaked from his eyes in red tears.
A small sound escaped his parched throat.
The vampire would have liked to face his doom headlong with grim determination. Instead, he lay there cringing from the flames to come like a child might from the imagined monster beneath the bed. Or, perhaps, the monster one might meet in the very streets of the city on a fine evening stroll.
He did not want to die.
"It does seem inevitable, though, doesn't it?"
A smooth, elegant voice spoke from behind him. It had come from the direction of the corridor that led most directly from the entrails of the mansion to the courtyard.
More importantly, it was a voice he recognized.
"Murilo...come quickly," he gasped, wishing he could turn his head to see the unhoped for approach of his fellow vampire.
"I have done, dear friend. Now before the last of the sands drain away and night turns over into day, tell me these precious secrets of yours."
The bloody tears dripping from the blood drinker's eyes stopped as he narrowed them in sudden anger.
"So you've come not in aid, but in search of what the Journeyman himself deemed valueless?
"Tsk tsk...there is value and there is value. It depends on so many things, the complication and multiplication that it implies nigh boggles the mind. Suffice it to say that rather than see what you know disappear in a puff of smoke, I would prefer to preserve it as a measure against future and unpredictable difficulties. After all, one never knows."
The vampire named Murilo Jago stepped into view and cocked his head at the creature spiked to the ground before him. He spread his hands then smiled widely while winking an eye.
It would have seemed debonair, charming even, in any other circumstances, but all the doomed creature felt was a rancor that made his next words come upon choked breath.
"No matter what I reveal or no, you cannot leave me to this fate. For if you do, Murilo, I say you are as damned as any vampire has ever been and I will refuse to tell you the least thing about the wolves in our midsts."
"The wolves in our midsts? This much I knew already and while you fret and foam at the mouth you try to bait me to the very last in an effort to escape your doom.
"I can't say that I blame you. I suppose, even, I would do the same. Lucky for me that I'm the one standing while unlucky you lie there, helpless."
The vampire standing over him frowned. His eyes were a rich brown color and he stood taller than the other remembered.
"You know, just now I recall something I haven't thought of in years. Perhaps it's something you yourself have not considered in some time and if ever there was a moment ripe for reflection, I think it's now."
Murilo clasped his pale hands behind his back and paced with graceful steps before his fellow vampire while he spoke.
"I remember the moment when I awakened forever more into the nightlands and understood that I had been made a creature of darkness. And when I ceased to revel in the visions I saw of a world illuminated in shadow by my vampiric eyes, I had time to think of one thing and rejoice in it.
"I realized that I would never die."
The vampire lying on the ground at Murilo's feet sighed heavily and tried to turn his head away from words that continued to fall like an unwanted, unholy rain.
"Of course, later, I realized that I was not proof against everything. Stakes through the heart, the inferno that mundane sunlight represents for all of us...these things I learned were to be avoided. But if I could manage it, then there was no reason that I would ever meet the great and unknowable darkness that swallows up all other living things.
"I had become immortal.
"I remember that realization and how deeply it affected me, and I daresay, it is an effect that has ruled all that I have done since."
The tall figure stopped pacing and pointed a rigid finger down at his hapless fellow on the ground.
"He who would rule us as if he has any right to is a misguided fool. This idea that vampires should organize themselves in order to combat an imaginary war with other supernatural beings...purest folly. Our sole and true objective is to continue our existence, to stay alive...not these useless efforts that finish badly and all on the behalf of a madman.
"His supposed wisdom brushes away treasure such as you attempted to lay at his crooked feet and look where it has ended you. That is to say, you...at the end of you, if you follow me."