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[18+] “The Vixen and the Vampire” by Kohitsuji (read by Leuna, part 2 of 2)
[18+] Linnet the vixen is a newly anointed nun and a freshly sired vampire. On a holy mission, she grapples with arrogant and hateful magic that twists and consumes the lives of others.
Today’s story is the second and final part of “The Vixen and the Vampire” by Kohitsuji, who is a medical wolf and sometimes-writer, and you can find more of his stories on Furaffinity, under Kohitsuji_Writes.
Last time, Linnet the fledgling vampire struggled with her new un-life and the violent hunger that came with it. We left her standing over the bed of her only friend in the city, desperate for real blood, with only one night left to find and slay her target.
Read by Leuna, your Internet Half-Creature
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https://thevoice.dog/episode/the-vixen-and-the-vampire-by-kohitsuji-part-2-of-2
Transcript
Today's story concerns adult subject matter for mature listeners.
Speaker:If that's not your cup of tea,
Speaker:or there are youngsters listening,
Speaker:please skip this one
Speaker:and come back for another story another time.
Speaker:You’re listening to The Voice of Dog.
Speaker:This is Rob MacWolf, your fellow traveler,
Speaker:and Today’s story is the second and final part of
Speaker:“The Vixen and the Vampire”
Speaker:by Kohitsuji, who is a medical wolf and sometimes-writer,
Speaker:and you can find more of his stories on Furaffinity,
Speaker:under Kohitsuji_Writes.
Speaker:Last time, Linnet
Speaker:the fledgling vampire
Speaker:struggled with her new un-life and the violent hunger that came with it.
Speaker:We left her standing over the bed of her only friend in the city,
Speaker:desperate for real blood,
Speaker:with only one night left to find and slay her target.
Speaker:Read by Leuna, your Internet Half-Creature
Speaker:Please enjoy “The Vixen
Speaker:and the Vampire” by Kohitsuji, Part 2
Speaker:of 2 It took all night for Linnet to gather the will not to tear out Sully’s throat.
Speaker:She waited, jaws hinged wide and dripping, until the morning threatened and ended her internal stalemate in the otter’s favor.
Speaker:The fledgling fled silent down the stairs, grateful and starving.
Speaker:She lay in the cellar for the final hour of the evening, curled in the peaceful dark.
Speaker:It was hard without her coffin.
Speaker:The dreams continued, and memories crept over her again like a carpet of infant spiders.
Speaker:The day her eyes were cut out to make room for the eyes of the Red God.
Speaker:Dinners she’d had with the sisters, sipping at a goblet of pig’s blood. Drilling her swordsmanship in the deep basements, for days
Speaker:and days and days on end, until she could no longer move.
Speaker:The dark presence of His Excellency, the bishop.
Speaker:When she woke, it was moonrise and the land was dark.
Speaker:She rose to see if Sully perhaps was still awake, but when she sought him out the house was empty.
Speaker:The fox wasn’t overly troubled—it was very possible he’d gone to the tavern.
Speaker:Maybe he tried to wake her, but she’d slept through it.
Speaker:She was hungry too, and though she would have sold what was left of her soul for a feral goat or something.
Speaker:It was going to have to be rats again.
Speaker:Anything more than vermin was forbidden to her, except in times of great need.
Speaker:There was no lying about it either. Their bishop was an inquisitor of alarming reputation, and she did not like his presence in her nightmares.
Speaker:Her mind wandered.
Speaker:Tonight, you find the magus and kill him somehow.
Speaker:Master said he isn’t immortal, so maybe it’s doable.
Speaker:As an immortal, you’ll have at least that advantage--
Speaker:but magi in general, even novice Verses, are nightmares.
Speaker:What’s the plan,
Speaker:here? Hit him with everything, hack him until he stops moving. Get him unawares, if you can.
Speaker:Maybe you have to drain him.
Speaker:Master would forgive you if you did it to survive. He’s weak somewhere. Master thinks you can do it.
Speaker:It has to be something only you can do.
Speaker:And anyway, where did Sully go?
Speaker:These thoughts followed her down alleyways and into dark places for her supper.
Speaker:The fledgling picked over the dark corners, found a few choice morsels, and ate in contemplative silence.
Speaker:She began to fantasize about meeting the Verse. About
Speaker:what biting him would be like,
Speaker:puncturing him, penetrating him, drinking and feeling the vibration of his cry in her mouth
Speaker:—and then she shook herself,
Speaker:finished her rat,
Speaker:and discarded the rest for some other enterprising scavenger.
Speaker:The sooner this was done, the better.
Speaker:Sated, Sister Linnet trekked from the light of the city into the dark of the northern copse. It was
Speaker:a number of miles she had to walk, but there was the moon, and the cold couldn’t bother her anymore.
Speaker:The little vixen marched over snow ridges and little hills, down into tiny valleys where streams flowed wet and shining,
Speaker:cutting clean through the snow.
Speaker:There was no sound but her boots.
Speaker:Finally, hours into the night,
Speaker:there it was before her: an emerald set amid pale opal.
Speaker:The magus’ estate was grand and opulent with a single high turret rising from its body,
Speaker:and this would have been sufficient for a mere banker. But here and here alone it was springtime,
Speaker:green and fertile and fragrant with dandelion,
Speaker:lilac, and foxglove.
Speaker:Heat rolled from his land, and a thin curtain of fog hung around the edges where it was still bleak midwinter.
Speaker:This was an arrogance only the magi possessed.
Speaker:The instant she felt the warm breeze roll over her, Linnet took the hilt of her little concealed dueling sword in hand.
Speaker:Her shrike’s thorn, Master called it.
Speaker:Even before she’d been a vampire, she’d been a semi-competent swordsman, and death had improved her somewhat.
Speaker:With any luck, however, she wouldn’t require these skills tonight.
Speaker:Truly good thieves never did.
Speaker:The great villa, shrouded in moonlight, welcomed her with serene whispers of a breeze from nowhere.
Speaker:She circled it on the grass for almost thirty minutes, working the problem through in her mind.
Speaker:Within the hour she was on the roof, choosing her point of ingress.
Speaker:When the time came, Sister Linnet took a steadying breath,
Speaker:teased open a window with a small metal crook,
Speaker:and let her instincts guide her through the swallowing dark.
Speaker:And while she crept the servants slept, and all was green in flower.
Speaker:With red ringed eyes, to kill or die, she treaded to the tower.
Speaker:The fledgling moved amid the shadows and marveled at the change in herself.
Speaker:Some thread of her old life pulled taught as she crawled through the gloom with predator patience,
Speaker:canny as a fox might be, and picked her way through halls and galleries and great tabled rooms
Speaker:with splendid windows to behold the sunrise.
Speaker:Lavish portraits in gilded frames followed her with their eyes, and all around her she could sense the vulnerability of sleeping servants and maids, all of them totally unaware of her or the trauma her dark heart
Speaker:dreamed of inflicting on them.
Speaker:It took every bit of iron Master had alloyed with her will to keep from cracking one of their doors and stealing over to a bedside
Speaker:where she could have her dreadful fill of one of them.
Speaker:She’d sworn oaths
Speaker:however, and was afraid of breaking them.
Speaker:God saw through His own eyes and He could take them back
Speaker:if He so chose. Soon she found her way into the barrel of the tower and made her way up a winding staircase, past barrels of wine and food stores,
Speaker:past a number of sleeping footmen,
Speaker:exhausted from their day’s labors and snoring gently on cots.
Speaker:She came down a dim wooden hallway to a short wooden ladder, which she climbed.
Speaker:Soon the fox could feel something folding the tips of her black ears. A hatch.
Speaker:She pushed up and rose into the night.
Speaker:“Well, I thought I smelled vixen cunt. Good evening, Linnie.” said the Verse of Grass. “Are you eating well?
Speaker:You’ve lost weight.”
Speaker:The fledgling looked across the great round turret and saw him at last.
Speaker:She’d remembered Rafford as an older stag, fatter,
Speaker:cumbersome and ponderous in every affair of his life.
Speaker:Careful, attentive and meticulous too, he’d been an excellent specimen among bankers.
Speaker:But now here he stood,
Speaker:swathed in forest-green silks and adorned with heavy jewelry,
Speaker:thin and lithe as a proud soldier buck.
Speaker:His face was handsomer, he wore flowering blossoms in his antlers.
Speaker:A true magus. The red fox picked herself up and stood in the moonlight to face him.
Speaker:The wind turned warm and passed lethargically over the tower, and she saw by moonlight thirteen more figures.
Speaker:Twelve of them were young doe women, each naked and still as they knelt on cushions
Speaker:in solemn obedience.
Speaker:They had been formed kindly by nature, or else by the intervening hand of the Verse of Grass,
Speaker:and the beauty of their bodies was darkly immaculate.
Speaker:The thirteenth was Sully.
Speaker:He too was bare, save for a silver cord around his throat which the Verse of Grass held in one triumphant fist.
Speaker:His old, weary frame was curled upon the stone of the tower and his tail was desperately tucked
Speaker:to hide the shame of his nakedness.
Speaker:The otter met her eyes across the span, and in them was fear
Speaker:and pleading. He had not been treated with kindness.
Speaker:Seeing this, something stirred in Sister Linnet that was neither fox nor vampire, but whose fangs
Speaker:were very sharp, and who took
Speaker:very a personal offense
Speaker:to Sully’s predicament.
Speaker:“Verse of Grass,” She intoned, kicking the trapdoor flat behind her.
Speaker:“By decree of the Holy See, and with the power vested in the Good and Faithful Servants of His Majesty’s Holy Inquisition, I name thee
Speaker:‘Heretic’.” She flung back the cloth concealing her sword
Speaker:and took the hilt.
Speaker:“In the name of God,
Speaker:Rafford, I command thee
Speaker:to die.” “Oh Linnie, I could see your eyes, but I didn’t really think you’d swallowed all that
Speaker:rigmarole,” said the stag, his lyrical voice as warm as May.
Speaker:He gave her a sunny smile as he lifted the cord,
Speaker:forcing Sully to sit up
Speaker:or choke, threatening to hang him on the loop of silver wire.
Speaker:“When I first saw you skulking around in town last night, I thought ‘oh, she must be very desperate for work’,
Speaker:because I assumed
Speaker:you knew better than to risk showing your pelt in front of me again.
Speaker:You fucked me very hard, Linnie. Harder than anyone else from your little guild could even dream of doing.”
Speaker:The stag yanked the cord up, the loop tightened.
Speaker:“Not that I need the money now, of course.
Speaker:It was only a symbol for power, in the end. Not the real thing. Not like what I’m going to do to this old man here--
Speaker:not like what I’m going to do
Speaker:to you.” Warm, fragrant air twisted a flurry of snow above them into a light rain.
Speaker:It glittered briefly in a lunar rainbow as it fell.
Speaker:“Just like that.” Said the stag,
Speaker:in almost a whisper.
Speaker:“It was Father’s command.
Speaker:You had it coming anyway.”
Speaker:“I’m sure your ex-‘Father’
Speaker:would appreciate the symmetry then.
Speaker:He just loved an extra pinch of misery with everything. And speaking of which,
Speaker:just who is this man to you anyway,
Speaker:eh?” He stroked a length of wire in one hoof-digit, admiring the white shine of it.
Speaker:“He was the only one to let you in
Speaker:last night. I watched from right here as he led you inside,
Speaker:and you couldn’t so much as enter a tavern before.
Speaker:What happened to you,
Speaker:Linnie-girl? You used to be such a nice vixen.
Speaker:And then you went and joined the church… and you got yourself bitten,
Speaker:too. What is it like?
Speaker:Being a vampire, I mean?”
Speaker:Sully’s eyes went wide and he squirmed to look at her,
Speaker:the silver wire cutting into his throat and lifting up a dark brown fan of fur.
Speaker:Sister Linnet could smell the sharp spike of fear in the otter and tried to ignore how sumptuous
Speaker:it was in the pleasant spring breeze.
Speaker:She set her jaw and said nothing.
Speaker:“Oh Sully, didn’t you know?”
Speaker:Said the stag, wilting his ears and turning the otter’s face toward his with a firm hoof.
Speaker:“You let her into your house last night. And just a little bit ago, when you were screaming for her to come make the pain stop,
Speaker:you let her in here, too.”
Speaker:Shit. Shit, she’d been able to crawl right inside, just like the old days. It should have been a warning,
Speaker:it should have told her something was wrong, but she’d been too absorbed in the memory of her life.
Speaker:Mired in the thrill of hunting for this very monster, who’d been squatting up here like a venomous toad
Speaker:and waiting for her
Speaker:to come up and do something
Speaker:stupid. Stupid fucking fledgling,
Speaker:stupid fucking thief.
Speaker:“Oh, do you feel bad?”
Speaker:Whispered the stag with a mockery of concern, his eyes and voice betraying real excitement.
Speaker:The wind pulled aside his robes a little, revealing him underneath, eager and youthful as any buck in the flower of manhood.
Speaker:He pinched the silent otter’s muzzle, forced Sully’s gaze to meet
Speaker:his. “Are you thinking you just got her killed because you were weak? Because you couldn’t endure me? Does that
Speaker:remind you of anything,
Speaker:you servile little mortal stain?” The magus leaned in and forced his mouth against the otter’s muzzle.
Speaker:Sully squirmed and let out a muffled
Speaker:cry, but the silver cord wrapped tight,
Speaker:forcing him to choke and sputter into the kiss.
Speaker:Moonlight reflected off a panic-tear drawing a line down the otter’s face.
Speaker:When the two men parted, a string of saliva connected their muzzles.
Speaker:The Verse of Grass drew it away with a hooftip.
Speaker:“I bet that felt real good.
Speaker:Let’s teach Linnie here our game,
Speaker:Sully. I bet she’ll want to play.
Speaker:I’ll bet she learns real fast.”
Speaker:Sister Linnet felt some gathering tension.
Speaker:Her black paw clutched the hilt of her sword with sudden desperation, but she dared not draw until she understood what was happening.
Speaker:With a flick of his wrist, the cervine magus slid a hooftip up the otter’s back, and a hideous shriek
Speaker:split the night air as the tension passed.
Speaker:The fox beheld with hunger and amaze the thing the Verse of Grass had done.
Speaker:From the tip of his hoof a long strip,
Speaker:thin as a string, dangled wetly down.
Speaker:It was brown on one side and red on the other and the smell of living sentient blood infused with fear
Speaker:and confusion was
Speaker:heavenly to draw in.
Speaker:A little strip of otter skin,
Speaker:torn fresh away. The cold blood pooling in her heart sparked,
Speaker:her eyes lit, every strand of her fur stood on end as her hackles lifted.
Speaker:“If you do that again,”
Speaker:said the vixen, and her voice was needle-thin and vampire
Speaker:-cold, “I will flense you clean,
Speaker:old kine.” The ring of the shrike’s-thorn sounded in the evening air, and Linnet turned it to show him the white line of the blade against the black sky.
Speaker:Now he stood at full attention.
Speaker:His own lambent eyes, pink and lovely as flowering rhododendrons, stared
Speaker:laughing into hers.
Speaker:“That’s the spirit, little Linnie!”
Speaker:he cried, unable to contain his delight. With a hoof, he kicked Sully down and tossed the silver cord to one of the twelve naked does, who caught it and held the tether in her lap.
Speaker:“Come here, you Red
Speaker:bitch! Let’s have us a brawl.”
Speaker:She was on him in a steely flash, bearing down on the stag with half-blind rage.
Speaker:He slithered out of a thrust or two, spun and danced back, leading her into the center of the turret.
Speaker:Around them, the semicircle of does watched silently and Sully gulped ragged pulls of air on the floor, tender and wounded.
Speaker:The smell of his bleeding drove the hungry ravening of Linnet’s thorn,
Speaker:and every sweep and jab was brutal strong.
Speaker:The stag slipped around every one, and in her frustration, the fox pressed even harder. Her robes snapped with the speed of her swings,
Speaker:but still she could not
Speaker:touch him. What she would have given
Speaker:just to cut a bit of velvet from those antlers.
Speaker:Just to bite his fingers, put his blood in the air for her to smell,
Speaker:instead of having every third thought divert itself to think of the crumpled form of the weeping old man.
Speaker:It was a cheap fucking trick,
Speaker:and it was working on her.
Speaker:Linnet’s attention was splitting.
Speaker:In a blur of movement, the stag caught the tip of her blade between his hooftips,
Speaker:and though she yanked and pushed, the fox
Speaker:could not take it back.
Speaker:She began to panic,
Speaker:and then there was a gathering tension before Sister Linnet was flung violently to the floor,
Speaker:skipped across the stone like a rock across a lake.
Speaker:That was it, then.
Speaker:The Fearsome Thing, the true magic, the gestureless craft:
Speaker:High Art, which only the magi command.
Speaker:It wrenched away her breath
Speaker:and made her suck squeaking, wheezing breaths through the crushed straw of her windpipe.
Speaker:Suddenly her dead heart was flooded with desperation.
Speaker:Her paws groped wildly. Where was the damn thorn? Where was her sword?
Speaker:She glanced up to see him holding it there
Speaker:in the moonlight,
Speaker:contemplating the blade serenely.
Speaker:All she’d achieved was to cut the belt of his robe,
Speaker:so that it hung open to billow in the breeze.
Speaker:“Oh Linnie. I thought you were a swordsman,” said the stag.
Speaker:“You even fought a duel in front of me once, remember? You thought I was drunk and half-asleep, but I saw every little turn and cut of yours.”
Speaker:He frowned at the sword, and then down at her.
Speaker:“Dying made you stiff, I guess.”
Speaker:Sister Linnet felt that weird tension once more, and bright red flowers began to blossom all along the length of her weapon.
Speaker:A puff of spring wind blew lazily by and scattered petals all over the tower.
Speaker:The shrike’s thorn
Speaker:had perished from reality.
Speaker:“I’m disappointed.
Speaker:I knew someone would come after me eventually… it’s a
Speaker:right of passage in my circles. It’s insulting to think that I only merited
Speaker:you. Your little Weeper cult must really look down on me, Linnie.”
Speaker:He stepped forward and Linnet drew her lips back,
Speaker:showed her fangs, and hissed a feral rebuke.
Speaker:She had only her teeth now,
Speaker:and his encroaching visage stirred fright into the cauldron of anger boiling away inside her.
Speaker:The Verse of Grass was no wizard, no hedge-mage.
Speaker:He was one of the magi,
Speaker:even if he was young, and he was going to pull her in half, just as she’d told Master he would.
Speaker:Linnet compelled herself to stand,
Speaker:panting, fangs bared and ready.
Speaker:They came together again in an instant, and now it was Linnet’s turn to dance and wheel.
Speaker:The fledgling dipped under the touch of the Verse’s hooves.
Speaker:A single touch could well be fatal. She was certain he wanted to touch her,
Speaker:to feel her as she died.
Speaker:So she wound around the thrust and sweep of his bare hooves,
Speaker:feeling a second death passing over her eartips and by her whiskers as every blow fell.
Speaker:Then the magus overextended.
Speaker:He stretched his wrist slightly too far, and Linnet bit it out,
Speaker:sparing only a moment to gnaw the ulna well before she danced away,
Speaker:mouth full of doe’s blood.
Speaker:Doe’s blood? Her head snapped over in the direction of a smell- one of the cervine maidens was laying on her side in the moonlight,
Speaker:eyes wide and rolling, breasts heaving, body shaking as she spouted blood
Speaker:from a vicious bite-wound on her wrist
Speaker:where the flayed ribbon of her radial artery dribbled and spat.
Speaker:Linnet felt a flush of horror and shame that mingled with the violent sexual triumph
Speaker:of having that need for blood met,
Speaker:a dark red hallelujah smearing itself across the vixen’s black lips and white fangs.
Speaker:Grass was laughing, shaking his head and tapping his untouched wrist,
Speaker:indicating the flawless fur.
Speaker:“That’s one. All you have to do is kill me again, Linnie,
Speaker:and again and again I’m out of leal servants.
Speaker:Think you’ll last long
Speaker:enough to do it? Think you can do it before day breaks?”
Speaker:The fox swallowed a mouth of sweet, nourishing blood, and felt
Speaker:for the nightmare strength lurking in the scarlet mist through which she marched.
Speaker:Vain, mad pride gathered in her breast and lit her dead nerves aflame.
Speaker:Sister Linnet was going to lose
Speaker:her mind after her first mouthful of mortal blood,
Speaker:and there was nothing anyone could do.
Speaker:Master would be disgusted with her.
Speaker:Very fucking well.
Speaker:The vixen composed herself
Speaker:a duelist’s posture,
Speaker:and licked her fangs clean.
Speaker:“Yes.” She whispered redly. The magus ducked her kick, sprang back to gather the tension again but felt it snap early when the vixen’s teeth wrapped around his throat and tore.
Speaker:Linnet had to close her eyes against the spray of blood. Another of the does toppled, crimson stains all down the white blanket of her naked fur.
Speaker:Grass caught a few wild punches, then grunted as the sister kicked out and snapped his leg at the knee.
Speaker:Another shriek. The Verse of Grass reeled, stumbled, hooves clicking on the stone.
Speaker:He snarled, and Linnet felt a few snaps of tension before she could feel her flesh being curled off of her,
Speaker:split and yanked apart by the passage of invisible crossbow bolts.
Speaker:She swayed bleeding in the dark,
Speaker:confusing him, working his attention from one side and then the other before testing him with a gnash of her jaws.
Speaker:Each wound she dealt him sprang onto his servants like the mad slash of a painter’s brush,
Speaker:ruining their immaculate pelts,
Speaker:tearing at their wholesome bodies and shattering their young, healthy bones.
Speaker:There was supposed to be pity
Speaker:in her, but Linnet could not find it now– she was lost
Speaker:in the pleasure of her violence,
Speaker:and the vampire inside her followed suit.
Speaker:They stumbled drunkenly together through the blood-fog, their twin muzzles fresh with praise for all creation,
Speaker:singing that ancient killing hymn that is native to the hearts of all such immortal monsters.
Speaker:She came to herself crouching
Speaker:on his shoulders, claws pulling his throat open from the front
Speaker:when the stag’s voice rang like thunder.
Speaker:“ENOUGH!” he cried, and a great will plucked her from his shoulders and slammed her to the stone.
Speaker:She lay heaving and dazed, drunkenly peering up at the moon as the world spun faster and faster on its new
Speaker:insane axis. “Enough,
Speaker:you fucking flea! You cocksucking insect!”
Speaker:The stag’s eyes were at last filled with it,
Speaker:the sweetest sight,
Speaker:the blazing life-ending fear that steers fleeing rabbits into tunnels with no exit,
Speaker:and traps feral mice under the gaze of feral cats.
Speaker:A hideous force was crushing her to the stone,
Speaker:but Linnet did not care-
Speaker:she could see and smell all the pleasures of the night, now.
Speaker:She was burning to have them,
Speaker:so she watched the wild face of the stag as it came into view, staring unblinking into his eyes
Speaker:and drinking every quivering saccade like communion wine.
Speaker:He snarled, arm out, focusing everything he had into his Art to keep her imprisoned.
Speaker:The stag stalked over to her, robe slashed and torn to tatters,
Speaker:his own perfect body heaving with breath and effort now,
Speaker:glittering with starlit sweat.
Speaker:He plucked her from the stone and held her up to the moon, hoof-tipped fingers crushing her throat.
Speaker:“That’s… just… fine…” he panted into her face and tried to compose himself.
Speaker:He swallowed. Petals were drifting down from his crown of flowers.
Speaker:“You crazy fox bitch,”
Speaker:he snarled, when he had mastered himself.
Speaker:“You think this is all I have?
Speaker:I’m a disciple of the Verse of Spring!
Speaker:I could have a thousand of these wound-takers, ten thousand, I could have
Speaker:that whole village
Speaker:for all you know!
Speaker:At first I was entertained--”
Speaker:He squeezed her throat,
Speaker:and the force threatened to snap her spine.
Speaker:Sill she stared into those eyes, pleasured and comforted by the terror
Speaker:that paced in the ring of his florid irises.
Speaker:“… But now you’re wasting
Speaker:my fucking time!” Grass spit on the vixen’s face, shaking her.
Speaker:“You’ve wasted your time, too. You’ve wasted their lives. Is that what you wanted,
Speaker:you Red whore? You wasted your life, and then you wasted your death!”
Speaker:He snapped his free hoof now,
Speaker:and a long holly stake sprang into it from nothing,
Speaker:fire-hardened point shining in the moonlight.
Speaker:“When you get to that Red Hell, or wherever you
Speaker:zealot sadists go, you tell them
Speaker:the Verse of Grass is sending their whole
Speaker:fucking church after you.”
Speaker:She dangled limp in the spring breeze.
Speaker:Smelled the flowers,
Speaker:smelled the blood,
Speaker:felt the vampiric fear boiling at the point of that stake as he pressed it just under her left breast.
Speaker:In a moment he would ram it clean through her heart,
Speaker:and then he could do whatever else was necessary for her destruction.
Speaker:She could feel the faint burning of the cross around her neck.
Speaker:A little bit of clarity returned to Sister Linnet in that moment,
Speaker:and she turned her gaze from the stag’s eyes to the lonely moon.
Speaker:Her throat moved
Speaker:and the Verse of Grass hesitated.
Speaker:She murmured again.
Speaker:“What?” He said, unclenching his hoof just a little.
Speaker:Some instinct told her to lift her arm as she relaxed in his grip
Speaker:and said “There is nothing wasted in this world.
Speaker:Not even pain.” Something hard
Speaker:clapped into her paw and the magic of it thrilled up her arm.
Speaker:The sword of the Master, which is called Elil,
Speaker:Enemy, Sword of the Dead had come to her from the empty night.
Speaker:She spun it in an instant and drove it like a viper fang past the stag’s collarbone.
Speaker:He gasped, wounded
Speaker:for the first time in a decade,
Speaker:and dropped her as she staggered back.
Speaker:First there was confusion in his eyes,
Speaker:and then there was nothing.
Speaker:A chill wind blew.
Speaker:Linnet lay on the stone of the tower,
Speaker:heaving softly. She could hear the sudden frantic, panicked sobbing of the one remaining doe as she broke free of the magus’ tether.
Speaker:There was a rustling as Sully slipped his silver bond and knelt next to the sacrificial doe,
Speaker:trying fruitlessly to comfort her.
Speaker:Linnet closed her eyes.
Speaker:She felt a dark presence loom over her.
Speaker:“Master.” She said, breathing hard.
Speaker:“I did it.” “Yes.” Came the reply.
Speaker:She lay in thought
Speaker:a while, dizzy with the smell of blood now that the danger had passed.
Speaker:The fight had taken everything out of her, and now she couldn’t get up, even for her urge to feed.
Speaker:She wanted to lay in the moonlight and rest.
Speaker:Then a thought occurred.
Speaker:His sword. He’d been there, watching her struggle. Some part of her was angry with the realization, but the fact remained:
Speaker:when she’d needed him most,
Speaker:there he was. When Linnet finally sat up to talk,
Speaker:she saw his long, dark wing draped across the naked forms of Sully and the weeping doe.
Speaker:Sully was reaching up to touch the Master’s face with one webbed paw.
Speaker:“Where have you been…?”
Speaker:he breathed, anger and disbelief and relief all mixing in his voice.
Speaker:“All these years, why now?
Speaker:Why come back to me now?”
Speaker:The vampire said nothing.
Speaker:He merely held the two,
Speaker:and the crosses and chains that bound his body smoked faintly in the cold night air. ***
Speaker:They pushed through the snow-covered fields in a steady march,
Speaker:the vampire and his fledgling.
Speaker:Unbothered by the cold, they came at last to the hill overlooking their monastery.
Speaker:The question had been burning her like a holy symbol since they’d made their departure from Rafford’s villa,
Speaker:but now that they were home,
Speaker:the time to ask it was rapidly running out.
Speaker:“Master.” She said as he started down the hill.
Speaker:“Those women, the other night. At the villa…”
Speaker:He turned, and gave her his cool, dark regard.
Speaker:“I killed them. Drank their blood.”
Speaker:“You were ready.” He said simply.
Speaker:“To kill inn—” But he cut her off with a look, and she fell silent.
Speaker:A few instants of lonely night passed.
Speaker:“Ready to drink. Killing
Speaker:magi… difficult. Innocents bound up in
Speaker:Art- very little frees them.
Speaker:Hard to kill magus, if many thralls. Elil kills when only few remain.” Sister Linnet gripped the sleeve of her robe. “And the
Speaker:thralls? What becomes of them?”
Speaker:The good father was silent again,
Speaker:and Linnet had begun to think he would not answer her when his raspy voice sounded quietly with the winter wind.
Speaker:“Taking on others’
Speaker:pain… Holy act, if unintentional.
Speaker:Come again to the world, maybe.”
Speaker:It was the most she’d ever gotten in answer to her questions,
Speaker:and though there were others, she did not feel the need to ask.
Speaker:They made their way to the warmth of the monastery, greeted the sister at the gate,
Speaker:walked down the profane path and into the basement.
Speaker:Sister Linnet thought of many things as she clamored back into her coffin at last
Speaker:and shut the lid over herself.
Speaker:She was thinking still when she drifted off to sleep as the sun rose,
Speaker:but for the first night in what felt like a long time,
Speaker:she was totally untroubled by dreams.
Speaker:This was the second and final part of
Speaker:“The Vixen and the Vampire” by Kohitsuji, read for you by Leuna,
Speaker:your Internet Half-Creature.
Speaker:As always, you can find more stories on the web at thevoice.dog,
Speaker:or find the show wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker:Thank you for listening
Speaker:to The Voice of Dog.
