Free Liaison by Anya Howard

voice sympathy for a vile creature, one who would assume those privileges only I can appreciate!”
    The vampire’s head shook vigorously. With an indignant grunt, Griselda turned her imperious attention back to Carina.
    “You are an ugly insect compared with me! The only reason you have not met death yet is that we need you to guide us past the trifling wards placed in the valley by you and your damnable priestess sisters. Death will come, justly and soon, you ugly, brazen thief!”
    Griselda released her and wrapped her arms about herself. She spat on Carina, then glared at her for a time with the pout of a spoiled child. But her next direction came in the voice of the practiced self-victim, “Place her in the sarcophagus. There she may plead with the spiders and other insects until she is persuaded to serve me willingly.”
    The uncowled son moved about the sarcophagus eagerly. He untied the hemp cord from his robe, and with a nod to his brothers, the three of them wrested Carina’s struggling arms behind her. While his cowled brothers secured her elbows, the berating vampire tied Carina’s wrists together with the hemp. But when he bowed over and grabbed for Carina’s knees, she shrieked and flailed her legs violently. Pinned by the other two, however, she was no match for his determination, and at last his ashen hands vised about her ankles. Together, the three conveyed her over the rectangular opening of the sarcophagus. As they raised her high over the portal, I caught a glimpse of something dark and hairy scurry down from one corner and into the murky recesses. Carina shrieked again as they dropped her inside, and the thud of her impact upon the cold interior surface stilled the next beat of my heart.
    I squeezed the hammer’s handle in frustration as they worked to push the lid back into place. Carina’s screams echoed within the stone confines. My chest was heavy with the impulse to run forward and challenge them right then and there. Only Griselda’s last heartless words reassured there was still time. They were not planning to leave her in the stone coffin forever, and so would not yet harm her in any way that might damage her priestess’s ability to avail them safe passage into the valley. No, Griselda’s aim at the moment was merely to condition through terror.
    When they had sealed Carina inside, Griselda’s sons began to utter some heavy, woebegone chant. The words were not Latin but some unknown language, though its cadence was reminiscent to somber Christian chants I had heard in other parts of the world. Griselda’s lips turned up in a self-assured grin. She spun and paraded over the courtyard toward the shade from whence she had come. Her monstrously blithe laughter wafted through the air as her sons turned and filed after her.
    I despaired to leave Carina alone in the sarcophagus. But the rite was not finished, and I knew she would suffer more if I acted rashly. I waited a while, until her panicky screams deteriorated to thin sobbing. I let the sound of this imprint itself on my memory and welcomed the vision of what vile creatures must have that moment surrounded Carina in the blackness. These things were branded upon my purpose, and clarified the ration of my hatred.
    My grip crushed around the hammer’s handle so that some of the splinters gave way under my hand. Drawing a long, calming breath of air, I turned away and headed back through the archways.

7
    I did not sleep the rest of the night. I was miserable to think of Carina shut up in the sarcophagus, yet I knew my feelings were unproductive. Compelled to search through my collection, I found the hemp-paged copy of The Breath of Life. A manuscript I had only skimmed through before, I spent the remainder of hours until dawn digesting it.
    The book was only one of five known existing copies of the personal and quite priceless diary of the sorcerer-priest Catullus of Aricia, written before his death by assassins of Constantine the First.