Isu walked over, staring coolly at the decapitated, pulverized body at my feet.
“Ah,” she said. “Blood Demons walk the earth once again.”
“Blood Demons?” I said, still breathing hard. “What the fuck is a Blood Demon?”
“I’ll tell you when you have your breath back. The creature didn’t touch you with its dagger, did it?”
“No, I managed to smash its weapon out of its hand.”
“Fortunate,” she said coolly. “Otherwise, you would have become a Blood Demon too. Well, I’m not sure if the magic would have worked on a god. But probably better not to test that theory out.”
“Yeah, I’d rather not test that shit out, thank you.”
“You have truly awoken the Blood God’s anger if he’s sending Blood Demons after you. I can tell you one thing for certain now.”
“Oh yeah, and what’s that?”
“Things are about to get a lot more difficult, and a lot more dangerous, for all of us,” she murmured. With an uncharacteristic calm, she simply turned and walked off into the darkness.
Chapter Nine
After getting my breath back, I walked over to Jort’s decapitated head and pulled Grave Oath out of it. The thing’s head still wore that mocking grin, and its dead eyes remained solid red.
“Great,” I muttered, transfixed by the gruesome sight. “Now I have fucking Blood Demons to deal with.”
I took the torch and searched through the bushes where I’d sent the Blood Demon’s dagger flying. I found it soon enough. The wavy-shaped blade was around fifteen inches long, and the entire thing was made of a blood-red stone. I figured it might be unwise to touch this cursed weapon, so I went to Jort’s headless body, cut some cloth from his ragged tunic, and wrapped the dagger in it, taking care not to let it touch any part of my skin.
Isu seemed to know a fair bit about these Blood Demon things and this Blood dagger, and I was going to make damn sure that she told me everything she knew on the subject. I didn’t have the time to allow her to go on acting like this, dropping tidbits of information wherever and whenever she felt like it. Things were getting far too serious to keep playing games.
I headed back to the camp, but before I got there, I found Elyse waiting for me on the trail.
“Thank you for saving my life, Vance.” She threw her arms around me. “I’m so sorry for this; it’s all my fault. I had no idea he was a… a…”
We were on far too serious a mission to be saving strays from the woods and having them tag along. We already had one stowaway, and that was one too many in my book. Still, I knew that she had only brought Jort—or rather, the thing posing as a man called Jort—along out of compassion. I could hardly be angry at her for that. Still, she needed to know that there could be no more of this. She’d need to get tough and learn to mistrust. She’d get the hang of it soon enough and learn to detect who was genuinely in need and who was hunting for a kind heart to make use of.
I gently pried her arms off me and fixed her face with a stern look. “I know that you were just doing what you thought was right. But picking up some stranger in the middle of nowhere like that… it almost got you killed, and hell, it almost got me killed too. I know that you couldn’t have known that thing was a Blood Demon, but now, you do know that such things are out there, and that they’re after us. No more picking up strays, okay? I know that you have a big heart, but you have to treat everyone we meet from now on as a potential enemy, no matter how helpless or harmless they look, until it’s proven otherwise.”
Elyse looked as if she was on the verge of tears, and she simply nodded in response.
“I’m sorry, Vance. It won’t happen again.”
“Go on, get back to camp and have some dinner and rest up. We have a long journey ahead of us tomorrow.”
With her shoulders slumped, she turned and slunk back to camp. I felt a little bad, but she needed to understand she wasn’t allowed to do anything like that again. I returned to camp, got my wineskin out, and had a good slug of the stuff. I needed a drink after what happened.
Rollar and Drok had a good campfire going, and Drok had managed to bag a deer—I still didn’t know how the big lout could move with such stealth as a hunter—so we had roast venison and potatoes for dinner. I kept the Blood dagger hidden, but it was on my mind the whole time I was eating.
I figured Rollar might know a bit about Blood Demons since he was well-read and had done plenty of research into such things. And of course, since he was a loyal follower of mine, he would share everything he thought would be useful for me to know, unlike Isu. So, I decided to have a chat with him first.
“Rollar, my friend,” I said, “why don’t you and me go and pour ourselves an ale from the cask and share a drink.”
“That sounds good, Lord Vance,” he answered.
We poured ourselves two mugs of ale, then headed to a quiet section of the camp and sat. I took out the bundle of cloth in which I’d hidden the Blood dagger and unwrapped it.
“What do you know about Blood Demons and their weapons?” I asked.
A shudder rippled through him as his eyes fell on the red dagger.
“Not much,” he admitted, “although I’ve come across mentions of their existence. I do seem to recall a passage I read in one ancient tome saying something like, ‘When the worshipers of the Blood God grew many, Blood Demons walked the land once more.’ Now, a Blood Demon has risen, so
