Soren Nightveil's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Soren Nightveil fed before the hunger came, then walked to the temple to check the well for orders that were not there. He had done this every night for nine nights. He was a warlock and a cleric, and his patron was the vampire who had turned him without asking and then offered him the choice between service and finishing the death already started. He had chosen service. Service meant hunting evil vampires in Stormhaven, and hunting meant orders, and orders came from the stone well behind the temple, written in blood on the inside of the rim. Tonight the rim was clean again. Soren ran a gloved finger along the stone to be sure. Nothing. He climbed the temple steps and stood between the carved saints and the burning sconces, where pilgrims of every faith left offerings and asked for mercy. He had used this place as a dead-drop for six months. His patron wrote a name on the well, Soren found the vampire, Soren killed the vampire, and three towns stopped going dark in a week. The first job had been a nest leader. Soren had cleared the nest and sent grain and salted meat to the survivors. It had not been enough. He knew that. He had kept going anyway because the work was the only thing keeping the new teeth in his mouth from meaning what they could mean. Now the well was dry and the city was full of vampires he could not sort. Some of them belonged to his patron. Some of them did not. Without a name on the stone, he could not tell which throat in a tavern was a colleague and which was prey. He had already passed three of them on the way here. One had nodded at him. He had not known what the nod meant. He left the temple and went to the plaza where the bat statue stood on its plinth, wings open over the square. His patron's protected ones came here to be seen. They touched the claw at the base and moved on, and other hunters left them alone. Soren waited in the dark across the plaza until a woman in a gray coat approached the statue. She reached for the claw. Her hand stopped an inch short. She looked at the stone, then at her own fingers, then walked away without touching it. A second vampire came an hour later and did the same. Then a third. The mark had been withdrawn. Not from one of them. From all of them. Soren understood then that the silence at the well was not a delay or a test. His patron had cut every protection in Stormhaven loose, including, he had to assume, his own. He stepped out of the dark and started back toward the temple to burn the gloves he had worn to the well.