The Tales of the Wanderer Volume One: A Book of Underrealm (The Underrealm Volumes 4) by Garrett Robinson (elon musk reading list TXT) 📕

“Mag,” I said again.

“It says … it says many leagues,” she told me.

I felt the blood drain from my face. “Lan Shui stands at the feet of the Greatrocks. There is nowhere in Dorsea, and few places in all of Underrealm, where vampires can be found in greater numbers.”

“But … but vampires never work together,” said Mag. “You both said so.”

“That is what the stories say,” muttered Dryleaf. “But you should know better than to believe every story you hear, child.”

And then in the town above us, the screaming began.

“Leave me here!” said Dryleaf. “Close the chamber door while you go and help the town.”

“We cannot,” I said. “They are coming for this place. You are in danger while you remain here. Come, we will hide you upstairs.”

We hurried him up to the second floor and made him lock himself in a bedroom. Then Mag and I burst out of the house’s front door. In the open air, we could finally place the direction of the screams—north. We flew that way, our boots slapping on the cobblestone streets.

A pallid, hissing form leaped out of the night.

I skidded to a halt, but the vampire had not been attacking me. It fell instead upon a man I had not seen, who had been cowering in a doorway. The man’s scream was abruptly cut off as claws sank into his neck, and the vampire bit hard into his throat with its needle teeth.

“No!” cried Mag, flinging herself at the creature. But the vampire, having already taken deep gulps of the man’s blood, chittered and fled. It leaped straight up an impossible height, landing on a roof above and vanishing from sight.

I fell to my knees beside the man and threw off my coat. I bunched it up and pressed it to the gaping wound in his neck. He sputtered and gasped, but each desperate attempt at breath only sent a new gush of red cascading down his shirt.

“Mag!” I cried.

“Coming.” She ran to me.

“No!” I said. “Go find them. Kill them. Drive them off from the town. I will do what I can for the people. You are the only one who can face the creatures.”

She stared down at me, face white as a sheet, eyes filled with fear for me. And then, even as I watched, the mask came down. The life died in her eyes, and her expression went slack.

Without a word, she turned and ran off into the night.

In mountain lion form, Kaita lurked on a rooftop above me. From her perch, she could see me and Oku battling against another vampire that had come swooping at us. We were hard pressed without Mag there—I fought with a sword in one hand and an arrow in the other, trying to drive the wooden shaft into the creature. Oku snapped and snarled whenever the vampire pressed me too hard, driving it back for only a moment at a time.

At last the vampire decided it had had enough and fled to search for easier prey. It leaped up on the rooftop where Kaita lurked. She ducked back just in time, her black fur melding with the night sky so that I did not see her.

The vampire landed several paces away on the rooftop. It stopped short and turned to her, sniffing. Kaita met its gaze and growled, the deep, rumbling sound shaking the shingles beneath them both.

The vampire sniffed harder and recoiled. Why feast on a mountain cat when there were so many delicious humans nearby? It knew the taste of lion well enough, and it much preferred two-legged prey. It stalked off into the darkness.

Kaita snorted. Then she turned to the corpse lying at her feet. Pantu. The boy’s bulging eyes were pointed up towards the moons.

Kaita seized his leg in her wide muzzle. She threw him over the edge of the roof, listening as he landed on the street beside me with a thud.

“Sky above,” she heard me say. “Pantu. Pantu, are you …”

My voice trailed off as I saw his sightless eyes. Kaita smiled in her mind and slunk away.

Mag flew down the streets, searching for her prey. There were screams in all directions, but they rose and faded too quickly for her to get a good sense of where she should go. Only one thing was certain: the Shades had succeeded in their aims, and there was more than one vampire in the town now. From the sound of it, there were at least half a dozen.

The citizens of Lan Shui scrambled and fled in all directions, like chickens who had just found a fox in their henhouse. But no one seemed to know which way to go. Mag saw one group fleeing east collide headlong with another group running west. After some of them slammed into each other and fell to the ground, those still standing kept running the way they had been going. Away from danger, or towards more of it, Mag could not know.

A moment ago, she would have grown frustrated. But her emotions were gone, pushed to the depths of her soul, and only the killer was left. The killer could not afford the thought necessary to care for these people, to be anguished at their terror and their pain. That would be later, when she was herself again.

Finally she heard a scream close by, from the next street over. She turned on the spot and rushed towards the sound. And there, at last, she found her prey.

A vampire crouched over a figure on the ground. A figure in red leather armor. Sinshi, the constable, whose arms still beat feebly at the vampire’s shoulder, even as it sucked its meal from his jugular. On the other side of the creature, a man and woman watched in horror from where they sat on the ground. It looked as though Sinshi had pushed them out of the