Chương 11

One second, all the bats were hanging in neat little rows, lined up one after another. As soon as the door broke, all of them took off, all at once, in every conceivable direction. The human man's furious bellow turned into a hoarse cry of surprise as bats swarmed into his house. Before the bad dog could follow them in. Lemon jumped down onto its back and sunk her teeth into its ruff. The bad dog felt that and immediately jerked back.

It thrashed around, trying to dislodge Lemon, but she had a good chunk of skin between her teeth now, and her speaking charm was practically vibrating off her collar as she forced bark after bark through it. The bad dog rolled, squishing Lemon between its bulk and the road for a second, which almost hurt bad enough to make her let go. She held on stubbornly though, and set her nails to scrabbling against the bad dog's back to give her better purchase when it came back to its feet.

The human man barreled out of the door, a glinting sword leading the way, and stabbed it up to the hilt into the dog's side. It let out a pain and fury-laced howl, jerked away from the man, and smacked him hard with its tail. Lemon pulled on her feather charm's magic, hoping to catch the dog in it. She knew it was too big and too heavy, but she didn't need to float it up into the sky. She just needed to get its paws off the ground so that it couldn't roll or run.

The man came back in, warily dancing around as the bad dog tried to bite him, and eyed up the hilt of his sword still sticking out of the dog's flank. When the dog tried to bite the man, Lemon jerked hard on its ruff and pulled its head back. The man got hold of his sword and ripped it free. Then he hacked at the bad dog again, and again, while Lemon did her best to keep control of its head and keep its paws off the ground.

She wasn't entirely successful, after all, the bad dog was many times heavier than her and also much stronger, but between her and the human, they eventually put it down.

"The barking thing," the man said, grabbing at Lemon's collar and pulling her towards the house.

"Do it again!" Lemon wasn't sure exactly why the man wanted her to do that, but she could smell him panicking, so she obliged and sent another bark out. The bats still fluttering around all seemed to shudder at once as the sound rolled over them, and many of them collided with each other or the walls. Most of them recovered, but a few ended up twitching on the floor. The man ignored those and rushed up the stairs, with Lemon following closely behind.

They got to the top just in time for the screaming to start, and burst into the room to find so many bats there that they clogged the air. The human pup wailed in terror as bats clung to her nightgown and lifted her off the floor while her mother tried desperately to swat them away. The shutters burst open and the bats dragged the pup towards it.

"No!" the man shouted, rushing into the cloud of bats without hesitation.

"Do the bark!" Now that she'd caught on, Lemon understood exactly what to do. She barked and barked and barked, the speaking charm's magic pushed as hard as she could get it to go. Bats rained from the skies, but not quick enough for the man to fight his way through, or to stop the human pup from being pulled out of the window into open air.

"Nemba!" the woman cried out as she lunged forward. But the pup didn't fall. Instead, the man who'd been at their front door earlier was suddenly just there, floating in the air, his cloak flared out around him, and the pup in his arms.

"Kill them," he said to the bats swarming around him, with even more pouring in through the open window now. The man, the vampire, glanced down at Lemon, and added, "All of them." Then the shadows folded around him again, and when they cleared, both he and the human puppy were gone. Lemon felt a low growl rising up in her chest. The vampire was Bad, worse than the harpies, worse than the swamp hag. Even worse than pooping on the carpet, he was a Bad, Bad, Bad man.

She concentrated on the speaking charm, let it build up as much magic as possible, then released it. BARK! The sound wave crashed over the room, where all the bats were busy biting the humans, and stunned them all. They hit the floor like heavy, fat rain drops, thumping in one loud, singular wave. Both humans were breathing heavy, covered in bloody scratches and bites, but the man immediately closed the shutters, then started stabbing every bat that so much as twitched.

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel. The woman joined him, but she used a rolling pin she'd snatched up at some point to squish them instead. Within a minute or two, there were no more bats, but there was a huge mess. Lemon looked around at the room and shook her head. She wasn't cleaning that up.

"What do we do now?" the woman asked.

"Go up to the castle and get her back," the man said without hesitation.

"How? We couldn't even stop him from taking her from our home, a place he couldn't set foot in." The man glanced over at Lemon, who wagged her tail back.

"You, dog. Uh, Lemon?"

"Miss Lemon."

"Right, Miss Lemon. Sorry. Look, I shouldn't have been so rude to you. I apologize for that." Her tail wagged even harder.

"It's okay. I forgive you."

"I've got to go now. Thank you for your help. That was the biggest wolf I've ever seen in my life, and I'm not sure I could have taken it in the house like I was planning." Oooooh. A wolf. That made sense. Those were like dogs, only bigger and meaner. And smellier. Not that that was a bad thing! Smelly things could be interesting too, but maybe not this time. It mostly just smelled bad.

"Oh no you don't. You're bleeding from everywhere. Go sit down and I'll get some bandages."

"I don't have-""Go sit," the woman said. Lemon felt her butt involuntarily hit the floor.

"…Yes, dear." The man plopped down on a three-legged stool that was way too small for him, and the woman started cleaning the many, many bites covering his arms, neck, and stomach where the bats had gotten up under his shirt. Lemon was glad she had a nice, luscious coat of fur. No bats had bitten her.

"Why is there a vampire here?" Lemon asked.

"Don't know," the man grunted.

"Showed up two days ago. Announced his presence, demanded fealty and… tribute. We all thought it was a joke at first."

"It wasn't a joke," the woman said softly as she wrapped a bandage around the man's arm.

"No, he showed us. The bats and the wolves are the least of it. He makes the dark darker and the cold colder, just by standing there."

"Bad Magic," Lemon growled.

"That's a good term for it. But he isn't invincible. I know all about his kind. Vampires like Hollington, I mean. They only come out at night. They don't like silver. An oaken stake through the heart or decapitation kills them, permanently."

"Harmut used to be a monster hunter," the woman said.

"Long time ago. Got a bit too old, bit too slow. Met Isana, settled down."

"Which is why you shouldn't be going up there now. You gave up that life for a reason," the woman said.

"And I'll take it right back up again if it means saving Nemba."

"I'll help," Lemon said. The two humans turned to her, surprised. They'd both forgotten Lemon was even there for a moment when they started arguing. Lemon gave them a full blast of puppy dog eyes (no matter how old a dog got, they never outgrew puppy dog eyes, or as Hogarth called them, 'table scrap begging eyes'), set her tail to maximum wag, and watched them.

"Alright," the man, Harmut, said slowly.

"Can see where that'd be helpful, what with the magic and all."

"You are not going up there alone with only a dog to help you, magical or not," the woman said flatly.

"Well, who else!" Harmut said.

"Everybody is afraid to walk out of their doors at night, and I don't blame them. The dog is braver than any of them, but it's not their little girl up there in that castle, waiting for her dad to show up and save her."

"We should have left," she said.

"We're lucky we didn't."

"Why?" Lemon said.

"It's our home. We have nowhere else to go, no money to leave anyway. We all thought if we just stayed inside, he couldn't get to us. We just needed to hold out for a few weeks until help got here. Hah! Hollington showed up on the second night with the messenger we sent out and strung him up in the middle of town, then told us no one was allowed to leave. If the whole village had gone at once..." Bad, Bad, Bad, Bad vampire. Lemon wasn't going to let him get away with this.

"We'll go together if no one else will help us," the woman said.

"Isana, no. I love you, but you are not a warrior. I can't protect you and fight at the same time."

"So you'll take a dog, but not your wife!" The man looked over at Lemon, shook his head, and said, "Would you mind waiting for me outside? Just for a minute?"

"Okay," Lemon said. She trotted out the busted down door and sat down near the house. The neighbors were peering through their window slats at her, trying to figure out what was going on. One part of Lemon was disappointed in them for being cowardly and not helping, but she reminded herself that they weren't magical dogs like her. It wasn't fair to hold them to the same standards.

She did her best to ignore the sounds of shouting inside the house, pretended she couldn't hear the words, even though she had no doubt the humans in the nearby houses understood every word quite clearly. A few minutes later, Harmut stomped out, now wearing a thick leather shirt that smelled a bit like oil, with an unlit torch in one hand and a coil of rope around his shoulder. His sword was strapped to his back, and he smelled like blood, medicine, and clean linen.

"Are you ready?" Lemon asked.

"Yes," he said shortly.

"Hollington's got a ten-minute lead on us, but he can fly and teleport. He's probably already at his castle. Come on, we have to hurry."