Henry didn't hesitate to put a bullet through the nearest arch-vampire the first chance he got.

None of them did. Though, everyone else had their own respective weapons in this instance. Flames, sharpened roots sailing through the air like javelins, a wide variety of motes of multicolored light… all honed in on the two ghoulish humanoids approaching them. Martin didn't even have to give the word. They all just knew they either stopped them here, or they were completely done for. No in-between.

They did manage to get most of it on target, for what it was worth. Damage was slowly accumulating across the arch-vampires' bodies in the form of cuts, welts and burn marks from whatever cheap spells the mages still had left in the tank. But it was slow, painfully slow to accumulate. It felt like they were throwing everything and the kitchen sink at these guys.

Might as well have tossed the sink in there, too, for all the good any of their efforts were doing overall.

"How quaint," the one trailing slightly behind remarked. Neither of them flinched as they strolled – casually strolled! – towards the increasingly terrified mages. Even as new wounds opened up from fresh hair-width cuts, the old ones were sealing shut just as quickly. "With all the investment we made to corner them, you'd think they'd have some better tricks up their sleeves, good Brother."

Henry's bullet tore through the air at its usual breakneck pace, squarely burrowing into the thin membrane of the other's wing. He could tell it connected dead on because of the small cloudburst of oily blood, and the way the limb twitched in response to the impact, but… that was it. It didn't even look like the magical acceleration had been enough to penetrate.

The priest grunted in mild discomfort, the only indicator he gave that anything at all had hit him to begin with. Henry could safely say he wasn't a fan.

"Even the supposed Devil over there is underwhelming," the pseudo-priestly vampire grumbled as the wound closed up before his very eyes. "I never thought I'd see the day. Maybe Măcel had the right idea after all, loath as I am to admit it."

Somewhere behind the upturned shelving, raucous laughter from the vampire in question cut through the din like a battleaxe. Apparently, those fancy ears of theirs weren't just for show.

Carte Mare sighed. "He does seem to be having the most… fun… for now." He drew the word out, like it was an entirely alien concept to him."Perhaps we should change that?"

"Be my guest. But please, do try to be a bit more surgical with these than the last batch. The last one of your 'pets' you so graciously gifted me nearly drowned themselves in a puddle of their own filth. The smell lingered for nearly a full week afterwards."

"Fine… fine… I'll stick to the abbreviated version, if you're going to be a philistine about it."

The vampire cracked its neck, making a sound somewhere between a hiss and a phlegmy deathrattle. Blood began foaming from its mouth, black like tar and about the same consistency. Much thicker than normal, but undeniably of the vampires own lifegiving essence. One might be forgiven in mistaking it for something other than blood, given the apparent differences.

Unfortunately, Henry recognized what was going on the moment he saw it happen.

He'd had the dubious privilege to see this sickly performance on multiple occasions now, during prior encounters with their lesser cousins. A bigger beast responsible for it this time, yes, but past that this appeared to be no different. The end result was the same: enthrallment bile.

Henry wasn't sure if the fluid being the same across all vampires was a blessing or a curse. He was leaning towards the latter. The question 'can things possibly get any worse' wasn't exactly rhetorical around here.

Technically speaking, he'd never seen an arch-vampire conjure the stuff before. But that was more because he'd never had the… distinct pleasure of meeting and arch-vampire face to face before today. Which unsettled him a lot more than he was letting on, if he was being honest. He'd gotten used to the idea that he was well-acquainted with basically everything Hallow London could throw at him.

That leaves me with just secondhand reports from the Knights to work off of, in terms of their true capabilities. Sure, they've managed to kill a few before, but that silver lining doesn't account for oh dear lord I'm gonna be sick-

Carte Mare retched up the last clotted globs from his throat, the bundle of small, saclike orbs hanging from his jaws like diseased water balloons. They could almost be mistaken for having a mind of their own, ready to wriggle their way inside the closest unfortunate soul and take away their autonomy. Only exposure and desensitization barely kept him away from throwing up at the sight of it.

If only he'd been so lucky the first time he'd seen it happen. He'd felt dirty even after the five or six cold showers he'd taken that day.

The lead vampire's wings unfurled for the first time, shaking themselves loose and stretching out to their full breadth. It crouched low and leaned forward in preparation for its leap, teeth clenched tight on the tails of enthrallment bile still hanging in its throat. Through the blaze of their own concentrated spellshot, it lunged, simply ignoring the continuous stream of firepower it received in response.

There was no stopping it. The monster blitzed past their overlapping fields of fire entirely. In mere moments, it was practically on top of them, with the only sound announcing its arrival being that of jingling finery wrapped around its neck and arms.

Faster than the mages could properly track, faster than Henry could lead his own shots, it closed with the first rank of survivors. Fangs gleaming silver and black under the pale light shining in through the hole in the ceiling above. Carte Mare was about to claim his first victim, with Brother Noapte looking to be angling to do much the same only a few seconds behind.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Henry didn't have a few seconds, so he made a split second decision. He kicked the plated ribs of his steed as hard as he could, ignoring the resulting bruises on his heels. The pain was temporary, but not having enough speed or not reacting fast enough had the potential to haunt him forever. So he pushed through, aiming for one reckless gambit that would likely cost his own life, but would perhaps mean a chance for the others to save themselves.

A countercharge.

The skeletal horse leapt over the lines of mages in between him and his enemy, the full weight and momentum of its heavily laden frame falling in behind its two front hooves.

"Over my dead bodies!" he shouted just before impact.

Damage was irrelevant; with that many kilos behind anything, physics demanded that the impulse of the collision push the arch-vampire back from its prey. The weight of the horse hit center mass, and the steed let out a haunting warcry of its own as the monster in front was sent sprawling into a tangled mass of limbs and leathery folds.

Henry was nowhere near done. Before he lost the momentum to the other vampire nearing the execution of a counter-countercharge, he drilled his downed opponent with two rounds between the eyes, and one to an exposed knee joint. Just to see what would happen.

The answer was more than he'd thought, but less than he'd hoped. Aiming for crippling wounds was an immediate bust, the little damage accomplished with his gun being undone nearly as fast as it had been dealt. It cost the vampire maybe a half second in its recovery, at best. The headshots, on the other hand, were much more interesting.

One basically bounced harmlessly, but it softened up the creatures skull just enough that the other got through and clearly scrambled something inside for a moment. Carte Mare jerked at a weird angle and spent a good amount of time just drooling over himself, before his partner in this endeavor pushed him aside and away from the immediate danger.

The healing factor started kicking in just as it skidded to a stop, and the two lead caps slowly pushed their way out with a squelch. It took a considerable while longer to finish up than the knee joint had, but Henry almost missed it happening entirely.

He was too busy fighting for his life against the other vampire, who was very noticeably both not taken by surprise as well as mightily pissed off.

"An interesting little trinket," Noapte mentioned offhandedly towards his revolver as he whiffed a point-blank shot in the chaotic melee. "Trying to play at being the Constable with that pea shooter, perhaps? Because if you are, I find its potential thoroughly dissapointing. Like you."

"Oh yeah?" Henry grunted back. "Well, see if you feel that way after you have to try and heal back from five or six bullets to the head. I'm thinking if it doesn't metaphorically change your mind, it'll at least manage it literally."

"Such bravado! Truly, your tongue is sharper than your blades."

Its eyes bore into him with a mixture of arrogance and satisfaction as it focused entirely on taking him out of the picture. He'd almost hate it, if it wasn't very clearly justified arrogance. The skeletal horse was much better at moving forward than backward, and the pressure Noapte was putting out to keep it moving in that direction was no joke.

With almost alien agility combined with its own supernatural strength, chips of bone were already flying left and right, as the warhorse rocked from each magically enhanced blow. Frustratingly, the vampire did more damage to himself with those attacks than anything they'd thrown at him. It took a lot of kinetic energy to shatter bone, and if it weren't for the near-constant reconstruction of the monster's own arms with each impact, the gradual weakening of his steed likely would have ended prematurely after the second radial fracture on its wrists.

For context, right now they were at five of those, and rising.

Henry found it much easier for himself to dodge than for the horse to. The arch-vampire stood almost exactly as tall on its own as he did mounted on the animated construct, flowing from one bone-splintering attack to the next in rapid succession. The moves it performed were like a carefully orchestrated dance, feeling more in line with the 'art' side of the term martial art.

"And, just like every other Devil…" it mocked. "You forgo technique in favor of raw strength. Though judging how little of the latter you seem to have, perhaps that assessment is a bit generous."

"Oh, laugh it up," Henry snapped back, punctuating his point with another bullet. "Seems to me like its been more than enough to keep you both busy. I'll glady keep at this, if it means protecting everyone else here from the likes of you."

"Hah! If you consider this to be protecting them…" it chided back, "Then please, by all means, protect them harder."

In the distance, Carte Mare slowly rose back to his feet, totally unblemished from Henry's own reckless intervention now that he'd had some time to recuperate. The enthralling fluid still clinging to his face like pustules rippled in anticipation as the bones in the arch-vampires chest set back into place with a sickening pop. Once again, he made his way towards the mages with intent to do as he saw fit.

With one key difference this time. Henry wasn't able to get in the way, now.

The first one was lifted bodily off the ground with a scream. Panic gripped them all just as firmly as Carte Mare gripped the one in his own leathery hand. He cried out for anyone and everyone to help him, which only served to hasten his own end as one of the pods ringing the vampire's maw sprung forth and worked its way down his throat. The mage started convulsing, and was cast down to the ground like discarded trash.

Henry roared futilely in anger.

"NO!!!!"

The vampire only grinned in sadistic glee, redoubling his efforts to interpose. Another mage was plucked from the mass, converted, and thrown aside like garbage.

"You stay THE HELL away from them!!"

Red started to line the periphery of Henry's vision. He felt it only get more and more profound with each new victim. Everything he tried fell just short of breaking through.

He desperately pushed to get back into the fray, to force his way back in between the horrors and the survivors like a wedge. He'd already failed one, and felt like shit because of it. What kind of person would he be if he failed the rest?

Despite his best efforts, Noapte kept finding new ways of placing himself in front of his horse and stunting his efforts before they got off the ground.

Another mage enthralled. Then another.

"STAY THE HELL AWAY!!"

Another. Another. His voice strained raw against his own helplessness, and he nearly ditched his own horse before his opponent made it painfully obvious it wouldn't bring him any closer to saving them. By way of nearly twisting his foot off at the ankle joint, no less.

Another. The once formidable and organized lines had fully devolved into a rout, those few still ambulatory deciding to abandon the others in hopes of escaping into the night to risk it on their own. Those still too weak to move were left at the mercy of Carte Mare. They went first. The ones who had a head start didn't get much further.

Another. The sounds of battle outside still reached Henry, every so often. Grace, Dee and the rest were still stuck fighting the small fry, keeping them from aiding their overlords. No way they'd be able to make it inside in time to do anything, now.

Another. Some decided to go down swinging. Not in any hopes of actually escaping, more as a way to spit on the shoes of their captor before they lost everything that made them... them. A few actually managed to get some decent licks in, before the enthralling fluid invaded their mind and forced them to go limp.

Another. Another.

Martin.

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