The Clan (11 page)

I kept glancing at Hummungus' life bar and hit the unsummon button just in time. He folded into his artifact and was now regenerating at triple speed. Very soon I'd be able to summon him again
—no buffs this time and maybe for the better as there may be no one left to cast them for him.

Ouch! It felt as if I'd been lashed with a bunch of stinging nettles. A jetstream of prickles ran through my body as the vampire broke through the shields and tucked into my life bar.

I had plenty of hits, about four thousand, but even that would have lasted me a minute at the most—less, considering my breastplate's nature. I activated Jangur's Shield, allowing me an extra five seconds of uninterrupted casting time. Come on now, control him! Yess! The root spell had got him. The deadman's hands broke through the ground, clenching the vampire's feet. He jerked, hissing, his tiny scarlet eyes glaring at me. I ran a few paces back and cast Life Absorption, then began summoning my new pet: the zombie gator which reappeared almost simultaneously with Hummungus' comeback. Without interrupting the spell, I surveyed the battle field. Not good. I couldn't see Bomba at all under the five or six vampires that swarmed over her. Whizz was struggling to fight off two more, her health in the orange zone. Zena was gulping an elixir, ignoring another vampire's teeth which were already sinking into her as she hurriedly selected her team members as targets and sent them the precious few hits she had left—working against time, unable to heal everyone at once.

Two more enemies were hanging off our wizard and it looked as if she'd be the first one to croak. She looked as if she knew it, too. Scowling, she cast a quick spell, sending a wall of ice to swallow and freeze all enemies within a dozen paces. She shouted something long and unintelligible, causing a similar wall of fire to scorch everything around her. Immediately, my vampire's health dropped 25% and two more enemies fell from Whizz and Bomba. Before I knew it, she cast another wall of fire. I sighed with relief. Another couple of those would have solved the vampire problem. But apparently, murderous blanket attacks like those generated an indecent amount of aggro. The released vampires
—including some of those that had clung to Bomba—all jumped onto Freckles burying her under a heap of their bodies. The group interface icon went gray, indicating we'd just lost one of our own. But it didn't help the enemy much. Freckles had already done her job. The remaining dozen were rather worse for wear, allowing Bomba's club to strike fear and desolation into the die-hard enemy.

A heart-wrenching howl came from atop the cliff where a couple of mobs stood frozen, forgotten in the heat of the battle. To the sounds of retreat, the remaining vampires scattered in all directions like roaches in a dark room when you turn the light on.

We stood there, panting and looking all around us, but there were no enemies left. Their lookouts had promptly stealthed so now nothing reminded of what had just happened there, apart from a good dozen bodies and our spent frames.

"Bandages, elixirs, buff foods! You'll have to heal yourselves for the moment, I'm all empty. I'll meditate and raise Freckles first, then I can heal and rebuff the rest of you. Laith, go check the bodies. Customers get all the loot."

Did she need to tell me? Every single one of the vampires made me a few gold richer. One of them dropped a small ruby—just some jewelry, no added stats. What did attract my attention, though, were three tiny vials dubbed as Vials of Blood and numbered as 91, 83 and 89. All the drop was automatically reported to the group chat.

Seeing the Vial messages, Zena perked up. "Blood, sweet blood! Let me check the charts. They could be rare numbers... No, no such luck. Twenty to thirty gold each."

"What's that, a lottery or something?" I asked.

"Don't you know? No, of course you don't. It's a top level game for the elite. Basically, sometimes vampires drop these vials, each with a different blood group. Should be a hundred in total, in theory. The smaller the number, the cooler its owner was."

"Why in theory?"

"Because no one has come across the first five numbers yet. Even when we farmed Nosferatu Castle
—and we were a hundred-strong raid and by the way, that's where we got those two blades for our Whizz—the Lord himself only dropped number 7. That's the way the cookie crumbles."

That got me interested. I used to collect all that stamp-and-coin stuff myself when I was a kid. "So what's gonna happen when someone gets the whole hundred?"

Zena cracked up laughing. "No one knows, that's the whole thing! The fullest collection I know of contains ninety-one vials. The fucking thing is addictive—and it's hot at the moment, probably one out of three collects them. Here, I'll forward you the chart. You never know, you might need it."

My Inbox dinged. I opened the file. Wow. It wasn't just a price list, but a complete guidebook answering everything about
what
,
where
,
how often
and
how much
. Indeed, the first five numbers sported nothing but question marks. I liked it. I wouldn't mind collecting the full hundred myself. There could be a nice mega goodie at the end of it.

"So by themselves they're useless, aren't they?"

"No, they're not," Zena protested. "If you drink them, they'll give you a temporary Vampirism ability and part of the dealt damage will come back to you as hits. The number defines its strength and duration. No need to cringe. It tastes of grenadine juice—no innocent babies were harmed in its making."

"I see. So what now? Are we all clear?"

Zena made a face. "I wouldn't be so sure. In case you didn't notice, these were the youngsters, not a single Elder in sight. It could be they're leveling their young in which case they're off to lick their wounds. Alternatively, these were only skirmishers before letting out the big guns, the Nest masters. In which case we're toast."

"So what did they try to achieve? We've chopped up a nice pile of vampires. Now you'll resuscitate Freckles, then we'll be ready for round two. They should have attacked us all at once."

"Not really. Freckles will have a debuff now. They've burned out our long-term abilities and sussed out our potential and tactics. The Elders won't risk their necks, they get their XP anyway getting stronger every day, growing a new level every week. And the youngsters will respawn in twenty-four hours. They don't have much to lose and they won't drop below level 100. So it's fifty-fifty, really: either they're going to attack us now, all of them, or they'll let us go. Preferably, the latter. That's it, my mana's at fifty, I'll be resuscitating Freckles before she screws my PM up completely."

We spent the next fifteen minutes cleaning ourselves up, buff
ing and restoring mana. Finally Zena shrugged, "It looks like they won't be coming."

The next moment the bloodsuckers attacked us again. Talk about speaking too soon. Next time I should duct-tape her evil mouth shut!

The Junior vampires unstealthed first. There weren't many of them left, seven at the most. We accepted the fight, distributed the targets and began casting. Then about a dozen Elders appeared on the scene, followed by the Patriarch on top of the already-familiar cliff with his entourage of three high-level warriors.

Zena glanced at them and swore through her teeth, shaking her head. "Kill whoever we can and retreat. We can't fight through them. Team up and try to kill at least a few, we have thirty secs at most!"

I chose an Elder busy fighting with Whizz. The rogue chick was desperately spending all of her abilities and combos trying to destroy an opponent of equal strength. I set both my pets on him and began siphoning off his life hoping that the spell lived up to its promise of ignoring all types of magic resists.

"We're leaving! Freckles, pull us out!" I barely recognized Zena's voice. Targeted by three ancient vampires, she was busy fighting them, sending sparks, blood and f-words flying as the four were swirling around.

My target wasn't going to last long: the others had already forced the vampire's hits into the orange zone. Gritting my teeth with disappointment, I activated Destructive Touch.
Bang!
The Elder lost six-something hundred hits and collapsed onto the rocks. The evacuator popped open. Freckles pulled us out a few hundred feet away from the scene. Trust my luck to land in a crevice in the cliff twenty feet deep, losing half the hits in the process.

I heard her cast a portal spell
—a classic group one this time. With a pop, we found ourselves about three miles from the battlefield, just next to the Manticore's Lair. Good job we'd noted its location—well done, Freckles. Saved us the trouble of retracing all the way back. The girls hissed and cussed under their breath and still some sounds were missing. Too quiet. Almost knowing what I was about to see, I checked the group's status. Minus Zena and Charmsy. Oh.

I checked the group chat. Zena was there spitting orders as she changed into a spare kit meting out instructions to the rest of us. I got my share, too:

Relax, dude, this is business as usual. Charmsy and I have respawned at the Guild's, I just need five sec to discuss something with someone, then Freckles will bring us back. Just wait up a bit.

The five seconds lasted a good quarter of an hour. Add to it the teleports followed by buffs and meditation time
—the clock kept ticking. I had barely two hours of paid time left and we had covered barely five miles.

Zena came
over and crouched next to me. "Keeping an eye on the time, eh?"

I nodded.

"You understand, don't you, that we're not going to make it?"

I nodded again.

"Actually, time isn't the only problem. We won't be able to make it past the vampires. We've got to either hire more people, at least the same again, or take another road past the nearest city, but that's 150 miles with no guarantee of success."

I shook my head, "Two teams for another twenty-four hours, that's fifteen grand. Too much. I'm not some oligarch picking dosh from money trees."

Zena lay her minute green hand on my chainmail gauntlet. "I understand. We've been getting the measure of you. You're all right. You're not bossing anyone around. You're not tight with money. And you're not an idiot. Summing it all up, we've got a counter proposal for you."

I looked up at her with interest. All sarcasm was gone from her intelligent eyes.

"We'll switch to an hourly rate. Strictly as a private offer: the guild doesn't list this kind of service. This way, you're happy and we can skip the 20% guild tax. Just do keep your mouth shut about it, okay? I've already had my first warning. Four hundred an hour, will that be okay with you?"

That was a good offer. In fact, it was perfect. My freshly-gained authority was starting to bring in its first dividends. I needed to tell my inner greedy pig to take a leaf out of my book. Not everything is measured in money. Good contacts and healthy relationships can often do more than any amount of gold.

"Agreed," I said. "But that's not all. You've just said we can't get through."

"I did. But I haven't finished talking yet. Now, I have a friend. She collects those numbered vials. She has seventy-one of them already. Whenever she hears about a new vampire spot
—especially a fresh nest like this where they may drop rare numbers—you can't stop her. I've had a word with her. She can bring her team to join us if they get the loot and you don't claim the nest and promise to keep the information under wraps for a week. What do you say to that?"

"I say, awesome! Thanks, Zena! You're the best!" unexpectedly for myself, I leaned over and pecked her snub little nose. Then I drew back blushing as I realized what I'd just done.

Zena burst out laughing. The girls' faces blossomed with unsure smiles. It wasn't often their leader laughed so wholeheartedly, especially without a good reason. On the contrary, this was some serious brow-wrinkling time.

Zena looked up at me, her eyes moist with cheerful tears. "I bet you thought I'd drop my frog skin and turn into a princess?"

Taking in my embarrassed face, she laughed some more, a happy laughter as she blotted the corners of her eyes with a promptly-materialized hanky.

We spent another hour waiting for the other team. I relaxed, trying to enjoy the fact that my money was flowing away, direction unknown. I had a funny feeling everything was going right. Everything was as it had to be. So I dozed off on the grass under the gentle sun.

I awoke as Zena gently shook my shoulder. "Get up, commander. The reinforcements are here. Time to clip the vampires' fangs."

Astra's team was a cut above my own. Although her ladies belonged to the same Sullen squad, all of them were a good thirty or forty levels above Zena's team. Plus vampire-tailored gear. Much to their disappointment (and to my quiet joy) we crossed the vampires' territory without a glitch. The bloodsuckers just didn't dare attack a group twice as big. Astra kept looking this way and that, indignant, as her two rogues branched out a few hundred feet, trying to encourage the cautious vampires, but they'd apparently thought better of it. The tough chick pursed her thin lips, promising to sieve the area and dig it all up as long as she found the wretched nest. At least she stuck to her part of the deal, taking our team all the way to the Bone Fortress. There, she shook our hands reminding us about her exclusive rights to the farm. Impatience glinted in her eyes as she shifted from one foot to the other, impatient to bolt off and add to her vial collection. True collectors are all like that. I remember reading about some rare stamp or other leaving a blood
ied trail of collectors' bodies, too weak to fight their obsession.