"Dealing the Death Card" by Amy ´Insom´ Downum

   Beyond the ebon-stained glass windows the storm writhed. Ever so often a vein of intense lightning charged the sky, throwing a dark, pacing form into sharp relief. Her name was Agatha, and she had been pacing for an hour.

   The rhythmic tap of her heels against the oak and black marble floor created an accompanying harmony to the steady thrum of the rain battering the gargoyle guarded roof of the LaCroix Castle. She strode across her study, over to the farthest wall, paused, turned on her heel, and strode back. Below her, Agatha watched the gleaming marble floor. She had no reflection.

   The clock struck one. Every nerve in her body exploded with long awaited desire. At last, at long last…it would be hers. Obsidian eyes agleam, she spun and wrenched the heavily tooled oak door aside. Her steps echoed rapidly down the twisted stone stairway from the West Tower.

   “What news?” she demanded, bursting from the shadows of the stairwell into the glow of the common room fire. Navar was quick to answer her. “They haven’t returned yet, m’lady.” The elder’s voice was hoarse and cracked. Agatha’s eyes turned vicious.

   “Why haven’t they?” The common room trembled to the force of her challenge. Navar scrutinized her with eyes of slate and shadow. His gaze burned holes in Agatha’s breast.

   “It is not my duty to track our Dealers. If they have gone astray it is not my fault, it is yours.” Stinging humiliation lit Agatha’s pale cheeks. She was saved any further accusations by a soft, clear bell. The note brought back the vivid desire in her blood, crowding out the disgrace of seconds previous. She turned to a frail young woman with silver orbs void of sight and a throat without a voice.

   “Speak.” The request was not made in vain; for at that moment a haunting, bleeding whisper shadowed the edges of all minds present. “They come.”

   Agatha’s heart beat like war drums. She flew to the greatest of the Castle’s windows and fixed her eyes on the wrathful sky. And waited…

   They came in droves. The sky belched them forth like flies in the Plague. They themselves were a plague unknown to mankind. They had been unknown since their creation fifteen thousand years ago, and had no immediate desire to reveal their ancient culture to the primitive pigs that now claimed the planet. Volk, they called themselves. Russian for ‘wolf’. It was in Russia they were born and first slithered from the ruin of an empire, leeching blood and malcontent and hatred and feeding from them like leeches on cattle. Ravenous, they were, these Russian wolves. They slipped into the night and whispered sweet lullabies to the sun, and when she sank into her slumber they crept out again and spread, multiplied, evolved. The Plague had since never been cured. Each victim of the Volk turned back to its creator. Each being bitten writhed in agony from blood poisoning, stiffened and stood erect once more as a Volkian child. As a member of this Plague.

   Wild sensation slammed Agatha’s heart against her ribcage. No look shot to the elder for permission, she hastened through the vaulted halls and into the deluge beyond the thick stone walls. Shadows, deeper than the sky above, swept across the estate’s lawn. In the brief flash of lightning, keen eyes selected the foremost figure of the pack. Leather boots carried Agatha in swift silence to Rurik. Her voice came in a soft hiss, fluid and entrancing, but urgent now face to face with the Dealer Captain. “Did you succeed?” Dark eyes glittered in vibrant expectation. She had no reason to suspect otherwise. “Did you kill Bezborodov?”

   The Captain’s gaze met hers. His eyes were sunken pits of infinite promises and very little hope. They burned with a sudden ferocity, and Agatha knew what she did not want to hear was forthcoming.
   “No.”