Thread: Blood Lust (Lady Bloody Ava & Erit of Eastcris)

If Rosa thought his offer eerily nice, Aerin thought her offer perplexingly so. At the end of the day, she still supposedly numbered amongst his worst enemies, and he hers. Why, then, had she not only sheltered him twice, but now offered him free entry to her house? But that was of little concern to him at that moment, really he had a bargain to uphold. So, with her leavewhich irked Aerin to no end, as he did not like it to seem as though he was obeying herhe left at a brisk jog, leaving the house and heading for the woods. He went straight into the thick brush beside the higgledy-piggledy dirt track of a road, treading softly and being thankful for the new moon casting the world into oblivious shadow. He stopped, then, when he heard the sound of marching feet and hooves, alongside the faint rattling of armor. A moment later he saw the gleam of steel in torchlight Aerin suppressed a snort at the mortal's lack of his night vision. He slid back into the dark, and waited. After about half the mediocre force had passed by, he deliberately stepped on and snapped a piece of deadwood. The soldiers nearest him immediately stopped and brandished their polearms and hand-axes and shields, peering into the darkness. One of them, idiot that he was, took a torch and trudged into the darkness, passing Aerin by close enough to kiss him. Then, swift as a tempest wind, the Lord Lacceta swept up from behind him, knocking the torch out of the soldier's hand and hoisting the both of them into the branches of a nearby tree, clamping a hand over the mortal's mouth to stifle him as Aerin sank his teeth into the man's waiting neck. But he did not drink rather, he cut his own tongue and forced some of his own blood into the man's body. A moment later, after it reached his heart, the former Beaumont went still, his eyes gaining the usual half-glazed, placid look as he was turned to a slave of the Lacceta, gaining a thrall's typical black eyes. Aerin took his mouth away, that job done, and gave a simple order don't let yourself be found until the given signal. And so he continued, luring in, surprising, and converting six more soldiers while the rest of the force had stopped, trying to investigate the sudden vanishing of their fellowmen. And then, Aerin gathered his new thralls and bade nine of them to gather up the road, and playing dead. The other three he gave rather different jobs. Then, he lured in one final soldierthe eighthand drained that one dry just in case things went awry, then sat hide himself near a branch that hung over the road. It was some time before the main force finally resumed their march, and Aerin smiled as he heard them approach his little trap, gasping and muttering prayers to themselves as they saw some of their friends, apparently dead. One went to check on them, and then the plan began to bear fruit as the first thrall did his work. There was a halting scream as one of the Beaumont soldiers was yanked into the darkness, a second later his mangled corpse being thrown into the pile of dead. But first, the slaves intoned, their voices identical and seeming to come from everywhere, on Earth, as Vampire sent... A second, the tenth loss, was taken and chopped apart before his dismembered body was strewn about the pretenders. Thy corpse shall from it's tomb be wrent... The thralls playing dead began to stir, rising up slowly, jerkily, like puppets on invisible strings held by an unskilled puppeteer. As a nightmarish choir, they spoke. Then ghastly haunt thy native place... An eleventh and twelfth were torn from their ranks and flung into the air, landing on a branch overhanging the road. The branch upon which Aerin now stood, his dark garnet eyes glittering like fresh blood in their torchlight. He stepped off, landing lightly amidst the front line and cleaving a thirteenth in two. He alone spoke the last line of the mantra. And suck the blood from all thy race. It worked. They stood, shocked silent, for but an instant. And then they began to shout, and turn and trip and scrabble away, screaming in fear as they fled back to where they had come from. Aerin waited until they had long since vanished, then allowed himself a bit of half-mad cackling while his seven newest troops assembled behind him. Well, now, he sighed, I haven't done that in quite some time. He smiled, then turned on heel and started back. It was only an hour until dawn not enough time for him to make it home, but time enough to return to the Lady's house. He knocked, rapping his knuckles against the wood seven times in rapid succession, then waited.