Saints Of Satan Chapter Five

Weeks on end passed without leaving behind even the slightest whim we were nearing the guardians. The forest was lost in the depths of the earth’s surface, separate from modern day society and dating back uncountable millennia.
I began to grow accustomed to my companions, we traded tales of blood and war and love and heartbreak. It was nice for a while, sometimes I even managed to forget the dreaded place we were headed, and simply walk along with Maria and talk. Even Jeremiah began to look brighter at some points, and I managed some short conversations with him, but I knew it was all for nothing.
The second we entered that forest, the lives of each of the vampires I then walked with would be held only by a thread, the threat of the guardians would hang over us with every step.
I could only hope that the beasts lurking within the gloom of that dreaded place had forgotten my face and would allow us to beg their help.
It was unlikely. What choice did we have?

The sky as drawn with a red hue, and to the east the tip of the blazing orb that cursed our lives began to crest the horizon.
We ground to a halt, stopping in the middle of the field we had been soaring across. Our journey would have to end for that day, for there was no tree cover in sight in any direction, and even in our haste we daren’t travel in direct sunlight.
Fortunately, a lone barn sat in the shade of a large oak tree to our left, and with a quick nod from Jeremiah, who liked to think of himself as our leader, we bounded across to it, reaching its faded red wooden walls in less than a minute.
It was abandoned, we could all tell that easily simply by the lack of smells of living creatures. Casually walking in, we set out our bedding randomly across the dried mud that was the floor.
I sat across from everyone else, and after a moment’s pause Maria came to join me.
“Jeremiah believes we are nearing the forest,” Maria said, looking me hard in the eye, “are you still sure you are willing to enter it again?”
“Enough of this talk of that bloody forest!” I snapped, then immediately regretted the outburst as Maria recoiled. I bowed my head.
“I’m sorry, I understand you care for my well being but, it’s just-”
“I understand,” she murmured, squeezing my hand and smiling her brilliant smile, “I won’t speak of it again,”
I relaxed, exhaling slowly and looking down at my fingers interlocked around hers.
It would be a lie to say I didn’t have feelings for Maria. She was perfect, her hair was perfect, her face, features, her personality, her smile, it all fitted together just, perfectly. I smiled, then blushed when I realised she’d noticed me staring at her. Looking away, I stifled a gentle cough with my hand and suddenly seemed to find the rolled up blanket to my left very interesting.
“So,” she said, inclining her head.
“So?” I replied, raising my eyebrows.
“So, what made you change your mind?” she asked. Women really knew how to make it awkward for you.
“Well, as a friend, I would have thought you would understand that I, couldn’t erm,” I paused feigning a scratch, “let you carry on such a dangerous journey on your own. You mean a lot to me, I have few left I can call friends,”
She smiled, then lay back, resting her head against an old wooden pillar. As I looked down at her, I found myself pondering how old she acted for one so young. She had been twenty seven years old when blooded, and had lived for only forty years as a vampiress.
I shook my head, not willing to lose myself in my memories, ever afraid I’d go too far back into my past and begin to remember-
No, I instantly forced myself to forget what I’d been unintentionally searching for in my memories. It was easy now, after so many years of practice, burying my past.
“Come,” I stood, gently helping her to her feet.
“What? Where are we going?” she asked, furrowing her brows and inclining her head.
“It has been far too long since we have last fed, and its starting to show,” I nodded at her and she paused, looking down at herself and apparently realising for the first time she was starving. She nodded then strode forward, leaving me to follow.
“We passed a settlement not five miles back,” she murmured, looking to me. I gestured for her to lead, and we set off.
As we drew nearer we began to get faster, and faster, the scent of blood reaching our nostrils from a mile away. It began to dawn on me just how hungry for my supplement I really was, and I found myself bounding ahead of Maria, quickly losing a deal of my level headedness as the thought of a feast burst into my mind.
Stealth was not a problem this time, we would be miles away before any human law enforcement even caught the scent of a decaying corpse.
The first house we came to was the most unfortunate. We needed to be quick, not only hunger our enemy now but weariness too. There were only so many hours in a day, and the fact we were out in direct sunlight meant we only had around fifteen minutes to stay.
Crushing the handle in my adrenaline fuelled grasp, I forced the lock from its hinges and burst open the front door.
A stifled scream and an instant death later, I stood before the corpse of a middle aged woman who had been unlucky enough to be sitting in her house on the edge of the village. It had disturbed me in the first years, slaughtering innocent human beings for my own nourishment, but now it was routine, and I felt nothing but relief as I drained the corpse of every last drop.
Maria left the house opposite as I left mine, and without a word we began running back to the barn, nourished and full of energy, but still in need of rest.

We reached the barn in under half an hour of leaving. I was about ready to collapse, despite the feed. Having been pushed hard almost to the brink of our limits to traverse the land we did in the amount of time we had, I was in dire need of rest.
It seemed I would have to prolong it ever more however, as the second we arrived we realised something was wrong.
A newcomer was inside the barn.
Drawing my knife, I gently opened the door whilst Maria headed round the back, aiming to enter through the window if anything happened.
I saw Jeremiah sound asleep in a hay stack. It would be unwise to call for him, so in one fluid movement I leapt onto the rafters and back down beside him. Clamping a hand over his mouth, I squeezed his nose until his eyes shot open in alarm. I raised a finger to my lips.
He immediately drew the short-sword strapped to his waist, and we both crept to the edge of the hay to look at what was going on.
I sighed in relief. Michael was knelt beside a motionless form, a vampiress. The woman lay deathly still, clearly dead. Michael looked up at us, tears strewn down his face.
“She, she came bearing this,” he sputtered, holding out an envelope. I frowned, looking at the letter, then down at her corpse.
“Gabriella,” Maria’s voice sounded from behind me, gentle and sad. She knelt by Michael and embraced him, soothing him as his tears stained the floor.
After a moment she looked at me and mouthed ‘his lover’. I sighed, as it became apparent why she had died. Jeremiah beat me to it.
“They pushed her too hard,” he growled, which I suppose was his idea of sympathetic for Michaels cause, “must have been important, for her to have to run herself out like that,”
It was true. I remember only a few cases in some extremely dire times, but it was possible. In times of great urgency, vampires are chosen to give up their lives to deliver messages of upmost importance.
A vampire can travel at extraordinary speeds, but if we wish we can travel almost twice as fast as the speed of sound. The problem is not the energy or strength required for this, it’s the human body’s actual ability to cope with such intense force. When pushed too hard, the once human limbs simply stop working.
It was lucky Gabriella had lasted so long, for it is near impossible to keep going at such a speed for long. The poor woman, Michael’s lover, had literally run herself out, pushing herself until her body had collapsed.
I noticed for the first time Jonathon stood to one side, as he began explaining how he had heard her half a mile outside the barn, and found her corpse a minute later.
I looked at Jeremiah gestured him over. Gently taking the letter from Michael’s hand, I stood to one side and opened it with Jeremiah peering over my shoulder.

Jeremiah,
It is of the upmost urgency you and your team return to the Lords immediately. A terrible crisis is at hand, I cannot speak much of it, in case this message is discovered by the wrong hands. Make haste, but ensure you are rested before you arrive, I fear we may be in a worse state than the woman you see before you.
Lord James.

A spatter of blooded under lied his name, and I sniffed it, confirming it was that of my old mentor.
“Curses a thousand fold!” spat Jeremiah, tearing the note apart and tossing the remains into the shadow drawn barn.
“We need to leave immediately,” I said, looking down at the corpse, “They would not throw away a life of their own so hastily at a time like this if it was not deathly serious,”
“What do you think happened?” said Jonathon, looking fairly nervous. He was the second youngest here, after Michael, only having been blooded fifteen years ago. Michael was still technically in training, his vampire years at a count of eight, but it had been postponed due to the emerging crisis and the need for more recruits.
“I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough,” Jeremiah growled, then hauled Michael to his feet. “Get moving!”
In less than two minutes we were on our feet and ready to go, but we were stopped short as Michael shot back into the barn and returned with Gabriella’s lifeless form.
“I will not leave until we’ve at least buried her,” he said firmly, putting on a brave face as he squared up to Jeremiah.
“We don’t have time for this,” Jeremiah snarled, nose to nose with Michael. After a few tense moments I pushed them apart and stepped between them.
“Give him five minutes to bury his lover. He’ll be in no fit state until he’s let her go I can promise you that,” I motioned for Michael to begin and he jogged off to a nearby tree, Jonathon at his side and Maria walking slowly behind them.
“If we don’t make it in time,” Jeremiah warned, and then barged past me, folding his arms and watching as Michael dug his lover’s grave.
We left a six foot length of fresh soil and a hastily carved name in the tree before it behind. Michael took the lead, wiping his eyes and holding his head high.
No-one looked back.

♦

I trod carefully, memories swarming my mind as we neared the entrance. We had stormed through the country side, stopping only to drink and rest, and only then at short periods at a time.
However we had taken heed of the notes warning, and slept for an entire day through to night a mile outside the entrance to our clan’s headquarters, in human terms.
Obviously, keeping our lords home and place of rest for over a thousand vampires in hiding in the human world would be near impossible, above ground.
It had been a century after the formation of the clans that we began to tunnel underground. Back then vampires didn’t exactly try to keep quiet about who they were, and so of course the humans retorted with the deaths of their own.
Vampire hunters. Bloody crucifix wielding, pestering bastard human beings. They drove us down, crushing our numbers and forcing us into hiding. It wasn’t their utensils, a knife is as good as a stake. And forcing into our hearts, yes it would kill us but so would forcing it into our stomachs, or necks. Rumours spread, and false ideas of holy water, stakes, our ability to turn into bats and such became well known.
They would take the vampires in the day, hammering stakes into their chests and ending over three quarters of the vampire population in a decade.
Our clan was the first to think of the idea to tunnel deep underground, where we were safe from the sun’s rays and no human dared tread.
I stopped as Jeremiah raised his hand. He stood alert for a moment, his eyes focused dead ahead. Peering over his shoulder, I saw what he was staring at. In a small crevice underlying the base of the cliff we stood before, a hole had been hastily dug, the fresh soil flung madly in all directions.
Maria carefully trod the ten paces to its edge, drawing her blade and peering down into its dark depths. We joined her, gathering about the entrance to our clan’s realm. Jeremiah cursed, picking up some soil and feeling it.
“Its fresh,” he murmured, keeping his voice low. I frowned, looking down the hole. A large boulder was set in place, a good three or four metres below ground level.
“This isn’t right,” Jonathon murmured, looking at to us, “anyone who enters knows to rebury the earth after them,”
After a pause, I leapt into the hole and landed with a soft thud on the large boulder. The others moved back as I grasped the boulder on each end, and then hauled it up with all my might.
Now, even for a vampire, that boulder was heavy. As I held it aloft I briefly remembered lord James dangling his legs over the side of the pit as I was forced for lingering hours to chuck the boulder in and out of the pit during my first decade.
Blinking away those tedious memories, I flung the boulder up over the edge, clearing it by half a foot. The ground shook as it landed atop some of the freshly dug earth.
The boulder covered the entrance to the realm of the clan, a clean cut hole leading onto a thin corridor sloping diagonally down beneath the cliff. A single cracked and heavily worn staircase led down into the dark depths of the corridor.
I stopped and listened, only losing concentration for a moment as Jeremiah dropped stealthily into the pit beside me. For two minutes we concentrated, trying to hear even the slightest sound to tell us what was happening, some sound that told us if danger was afoot.
We had no such luck.
“We’ll have to move down further before we have even the slightest hint of what’s going on,” I whispered, and the rest of the group nodded stiffly in agreement.
“Down we go,” murmured Jeremiah, leading the way into the darkness.

The steps were never ending. After an hour of cautiously making our way down the precarious steps and avoiding overhanging stalactites and other ancient natural compositions, I began to wonder how far down we actually were.
It had been so long since I had last trodden those steps, and I had clearly forgotten just how deep our ancestors had tunnelled in their desperation to hide.
After another half hour the steps finally began to level out into we were gently jogging along a thin path, its surface surprisingly dry for something so far underground and an age away from the sun.
Jeremiah raised his fist, and we instantly stopped, crouching and drawing our blades. I took point, moving past Jeremiah. We had reached a corridor leading off to the left, lit by torches hung on the walls at accurate intervals.
Something was wrong. There should have been guards by now. The others knew it too, and tensed, keeping their blades warily by their sides.
Maria stifled a gasp. I looked down, and was horrified by what I saw.
Two guards were bundled crudely against the wall, swallowed by the shadows hold, their throats slit and crimson blood welling in a pool by their shoulders.
But this was not the worst of it. For beneath the two guards, with bruises littering his face, was my old mentor.
Lord James.