She gasped in a sudden breath, as if she had just surfaced after too long underwater. Her eyes flashed open. Stonework on the ceiling above flickered in the shadow of torchlight. The confines of shallow walls rose on either side of her face, smooth and white and satin. She was in a coffin. A wave of nausea stirred in her stomach, and her heart yammered as memories throbbed back.
A few coins to earn, and an early start. It had been a simple plan. Until the warehouse had no work. Until she had refused to hunt a bounty on someone without knowing the crime. Instead, they had agreed on looting the crypts. She knew he hunted there. But she had seen him slip into the sewers the moment before daybreak. This once, it would be safe. They had time.
A rustle and tapping interrupted the otherwise silent room as Fredek's quill moved across a page. "Ah, you're awake." The voice was outside the coffin, out of her sight but near. Her hands crept slowly towards her pockets, digging for anything. Garlic. Holy water. His quill never paused, "If you go down those stairs, my minions will murder you before you take another step."
Her hand closed around a scroll as he stood, laying his quill neatly across the page. It was not unnoticed. "If you try anything stupid, you'll just make this more difficult. And more painful." His voice came nearer, then the familiar, twisted face came into view. She sat up slowly, as if a sudden motion would impel him to pounce. His gaze settled heavily on her, "You are mine. The sooner you understand that..."
Too slow. They were out of time. She knew it, in her gut - even cut off from the light outside. Yet she had refused the bounty. Should she cut this trip short now, or play the odds? But it was too late to decide, and the odds had resolved against them. Appearing from a bank of mist, Fredek welcomed them to his home.
"Was my coffin comfortable enough for you?" Fredek advanced smoothly a few steps. She scrambled from the coffin, straightening her spine. "Stay away from me," she stated coldly, summoning the hauteur of long experience. Her fingers closed on the clove of garlic in her pocket, and she crushed it beneath her fingers there.
Her hand closed on the potion of invisibility Fox had given her. As Fredek toyed with the others, his magic turning their minds against one another, she inched towards the door. She was halfway down the hallway when she heard Fox's strangled dismay as he collapsed.
"You almost got away," Fredek mused. "But you had to come back to save your friend. Tell me. If you had known I was going to capture you, would you have done it anyway? Or would you have left him there to die, my love?" He was close enough now that she could smell the decay which clung to him, but it was the use of 'my love' which drained the blood from her face anew, She bolted, making a break for the door.
She stopped dead in her tracks as Fox fell, then thinned her lips and quaffed the potion as she raced back. They had no other healer. She would swear Fredek smiled to himself as Fox's stirring marked her return as she healed him. With a single gesture from the vampire, tentacles sprung from the ground around Fox, slamming into them both and knocking her to the ground. Everything went black ...
He stood aside, simply watching. "Go right ahead. Run away and face a gruesome death - my minions aren't as forgiving as I." She needed no second invitation. Better a clean death, than whatever he had in mind. Better yet to live. With a desperate humming, she keyed the weave and vanished into invisibility as she fled down the stairs. She was halfway across the grand room below when Fredek dispelled her protection from his place on the stairs. His minions closed in, and everything went black...
Fox and Tabitha lay dead. The others had fled, and Isabeau was brought to her knees. She spit to one side, "You have me beaten. I accept defeat."
"Of course you do," Fredek purred. He touched her cheek lightly."You were dead the moment you stepped into my home." His fingernail slipped from her chin, and he pointed towards the Fox. "Take the man's corpse. Tell your friends never to step foot here again. The woman is mine."
She became aware again slowly. A distant pain, a distant delight. She watched the back of Fredek's cloak vanish from the hem up to his hair into mist. The mist rolled its way backward up the stairs and out the door of the mausoleum. Her neck throbbed in pain and her head spun with familiar dizziness.
He lifted Tabitha's body up carefully, and looked down at the woman in his arms. "Now go. I want to be left alone. With my family."