Chapter 19

Nikolai moved around a lot from place to place, but made sure to keep avenues open for people to contact him. He was well known for his profession, and tip offs from members of the public were one of the ways he commenced hunts, other than his own roving investigations. He had just recently received a letter from a distraught woman, and this case seemed very out of the ordinary. However, he always took these calls for help seriously and made sure to investigate them himself, even if they did turn out to be false. If there was even a small chance it was true, he couldn’t risk ignoring it.

In the letter, the woman claimed that her son had been charmed by a vampire, who was actually the court jester to the royal family of that kingdom. Nikolai’s life mission was to slay all vampires, and to that end he had become the most successful and famous vampire hunter in the realm. He had decimated the majority of the large colonies of the creatures, and now usually hunted lone vampires still in hiding, similar to this case.

It would have taken the letter many days to reach Nikolai, and it would take him many days to travel to that kingdom. It may end up too late for this woman’s son, but if her story was true then he could still slay the vampire and protect the rest of her town from the monster, hopefully without anyone else even having to know about it.

When Nikolai reached the town, he didn’t even bother to visit the woman who had contacted him. There was no need, she had provided all he needed to know in the letter. The court jester shouldn’t be too hard to track down, should be somewhere around the castle most of the time, so this should be quite a straightforward task.

Moving through the town, Nikolai received the usual strange looks from the citizens. His appearance was quite unique and recognisable, with his blind scarred eye and greying brows contrasting against dark hair. Someone was bound to know who he was, and then word would spread quickly and he would probably be asked by the guards why he was in town.

He needed to get into the castle anyway, so he decided to save himself the trouble and go and speak to the monarchs directly. That may tip off the vampire to his presence, but if the creature fled he would simply pursue it. He had a bit of a knack for tracking them, and if the jester skipped town that would only be proof as to what he was. 

Nikolai was granted an audience with the king and queen, introduced himself and explained he was looking into a lead in the town, and was seeking their blessing to undertake his investigation. The king seemed quite happy with this, welcoming the famous vampire hunter to the kingdom and indicating that if he needed any help from the guards for his investigation then he would be given it.

Nikolai couldn’t help but notice the body language of the king's bodyguard, who was probably the largest man that the vampire hunter had ever laid eyes on. Nikolai noticed that the guard was holding himself very stiffly but was subtly fidgeting in an almost anxious manner. While Nikolai looked quite intimidating to many people, and was by no means short himself, he didn’t see any reason why this giant would feel nervous around him. He made a mental note about it before he bowed to the royals and took his leave.

Nikolai told the guards which had escorted him in that he would like to take a look around the castle, especially the courtyard and gardens, and he could find his own way out when he was done. The guards didn’t seem to want to try and argue with him, and so let him go off on his own.

When the vampire hunter went out into the courtyard to investigate, he came across a sight he was certainly not expecting to see. The court jester was seated on the edge of the fountain, playing a lute and singing, his smooth voice carrying throughout the area. There were two things that struck Nikolai about the jester. First of all, he was seated in the sun, and while most of his pale skin was covered by his costume, his face was exposed to the sunlight, which he didn’t seem at all bothered by.

Nikolai also noticed that while the jester did indeed have red eyes, which were cast down at his fingerwork on the instrument, he also had white hair and eyebrows, which along with his almost transparently pale skin indicated that he was in fact albino. While red eyes were a telltale sign of a vampire, there had been occasions before where innocent humans with albinism had been accused of being creatures of the night due to their genetic mutation.

Well that was that then, the jester was not in fact a vampire, but had been falsely accused because of his appearance. Nikolai couldn’t really blame the woman for wasting his time though, perhaps she didn’t have a very good understanding of vampires, or had never seen him out in the sun. The jester was also very small as well, much more similar to an elf than a vampire in size, and perhaps if the woman had seen pointed ears on him it was due to elven blood instead.

Nikolai realised that as he had been standing there thinking, the jester had looked up and noticed him. A smile spread across the small man’s face, and he winked playfully at the vampire hunter. Nikolai quickly and quietly made his retreat, working his way back through the castle hallways and out into the town. He made his way to the home of the woman who had sent him the letter, to let her know the findings of his investigation and reassure her that the jester wasn’t a vampire so her son was safe.

But despite his attempts to explain the truth of the case to her, she remained convinced that the jester was a vampire and refused to believe otherwise. She claimed to have seen him feeding on one of the pig carcasses in her butchery one night, and also spoke about bite marks covering her son’s shoulder and neck, and that he knew the jester was a vampire too. Nikolai tried to argue that he couldn’t be as he was unaffected by the sun, and that was when the woman mentioned her son had said the jester was half vampire.

Nikolai was slightly taken back and confused by this. He had never heard of vampires cross breeding with humans before, it didn’t even sound like it should be possible. But the woman begged him to investigate further, that if he just tried he could soon expose the jester for what he really was, that she was completely sure about what he was. The hunter wearily agreed that he would look further into the so-called half breed. He left the woman's home with her thanking him for believing her, and wishing him luck to kill the creature quickly.

Nikolai returned to the castle with an idea of how he might easily discover if the jester was a vampire or not. There was a spell which could make vampires feel dizzy, or even knock them out for a moment if they were weak, something the hunter had used to give him an advantage when facing the creatures in the past. He entered the castle grounds again, claiming to the guards that he had accidentally left something in the gardens which he needed to retrieve. 

After searching around a bit, he was almost starting to wonder if the jester had figured out the hunter was after him and had skipped town after all. But eventually Nikolai found him in the training grounds, talking to two soldiers. One was the giant royal guard from earlier and the other was an older looking man, perhaps a commanding officer. The huge guard was still wearing his helmet, but Nikolai could see the other two were wearing concerned looks as they spoke.

Nikolai began reciting the incantation from memory from where he stood by the entrance to the training grounds, hoping he would be within range. To his relative surprise, he watched as the jester went from talking and gesturing animatedly with his hands one moment, to then falling quiet and clutching his head. As his legs gave out beneath him, the large guard reached out and caught him in the air before he could hit the ground. The guard then quickly lifted him up until he was cradling him in his arms.

The officer looked at the passed out vampire, before glancing around the area. His eyes came to rest on Nikolai, who was now walking towards them. Any sort of charm spell the vampire would have had on them should have been broken, and the hunter would be able to explain the situation to them before killing the creature. But he was again surprised when the officer quickly snapped something at the guard, then both of them hurried away from the approaching hunter. Nikolai hesitated from a moment in confusion before following after them, wondering what they were doing.

Nikolai ended up following the two soldiers through the castle until they disappeared through a door into a room. When he reached the door he tried to open it, but of course it was locked. He sighed and pressed an ear to the door, trying to listen in to what they were saying on the other side.

“What happened to him?” a smooth, deep voice with a foreign accent asked in clear concern.

“There’s a vampire hunter in the castle, must have used some sort of spell on him,” a gruffer voice explained.

“A what?!” the first voice exclaimed in apparent disbelief. “Why didn’t you come to me sooner?”

“We were about to, when it happened,” a third voice said sadly. “Please Balthasar, is he going to be okay?”

“Let me get a look at him,” the deep voice muttered, and then as they continued to speak they seemed to move away from the door so Nikolai couldn’t hear them anymore. He pulled away from the door and looked at it in confusion.

These three knew the jester was a vampire it seemed, and while he was out cold they would no longer be charmed by him, so why did they sound so concerned for him? Why were they protecting him? It didn’t make any sense to the vampire hunter, who knew the nature of the creatures better than anyone. He also knew what they were capable of, as everyone he had cared for had been killed by them, which is what had set him on the path to ensure their complete destruction.

But these people seemed to genuinely care for the creature, which caught Nikolai entirely off guard. Did it have something to do with him being half human? True vampires could do an alright job at pretending to be human, but they lacked emotions to make real connections with humans, like empathy. But it wasn’t like they needed those emotions, as they could just charm humans to bend to their whims. Did the jester not have to charm the humans because he was actually friends with them? The thought seemed preposterous, but Nikolai had never dealt with a halfbreed vampire before.

The vampire hunter finally reached up a hand and rapped his knuckles against the thick wood of the door.

“Aye, you think I’m about to just let you in, hunter?” the gruff voice said from inside the door.

“I just wish to talk. I promise I won’t hurt anyone, not even your little vampire friend,” Nikolai called back through the door.

“And why should I believe you?” the voice, who Nikolai assumed belonged to the officer, responded.

“It’s three of you versus one of me, and I’m pretty sure the big guy could knock me out in a second if he wanted to,” Nikolai pointed out. “What do you have to be afraid of?”

He heard the man mumble something before stepping away from the door. Everything was quiet for several moments while the vampire hunter waited for a response. Then the door swung open, and Nikolai found himself looking at a tall man with long dark hair and an intense scowl. This guy looked exactly like what you would assume a proper vampire to look like, except his eyes were dark grey rather than red, so he clearly wasn’t one.

“What did you do to him?” the man demanded, holding up a knife threateningly.

Nikolai put his hands up in surrender. “The spell is only supposed to knock them out for a moment at best, it does no lasting damage,” he explained.

“Then why is he still unconscious?” the stranger growled, then reached out and grabbed the vampire hunter by the collar of his cloak and started dragging him into the room. Nikolai stumbled after him in surprise, and noticed the officer frown at him while closing the door behind him. The tall dark haired man pulled the hunter part of the way across the room, which Nikolai realised was some kind of infirmary, towards where the large guard was sitting on a sick bed cradling the tiny vampire in his arms.

The tall man, who seemed to be a chirurgeon, pulled Nikolai in close to him and held the knife to his neck. “Whatever you did to him you better undo it. Right now.”

“Slow down Balthasar, let's get him to disarm first,” the officer said as he walked around them and stood to the side, pointing his sword at the hunter. “Drop your weapons,” he ordered.

Balthasar grunted, then pulled away slightly, removing the knife from Nikolai’s throat. The hunter was still in shock from the way these humans were acting towards him, he hadn’t experienced something like this before. Wordlessly he unclipped his sword and dagger sheath and let them clatter to the floor. Then he removed his crossbow and quiver from his back, more gently setting them down beside him. 

Then Nikolai straightened up and held up his hands in capitulation again. The vampire was weak, clearly hardly a threat to him, and as long as he cooperated with the humans he doubted they were actually going to hurt him, so hopefully his weapons would be unnecessary anyway. He had said he just wanted to talk, and that was exactly what he was planning to do, at least for the moment.

“Now I would say, just hand the vampire over to me, I’ll take care of it quickly. But I have a feeling you are not going to cooperate with that idea,” Nikolai started with. “So instead I will ask; why are you, a bunch of humans, protecting this creature?”

“Because he is our friend,” Balthasar said tersely, still scowling at the hunter.

“Vampires don’t make friends with humans. They only care about other members of their colony. And lone vampires only care about themselves,” Nikolai attempted to explain to the men around him.

“I have studied him for years and I can tell you that he is just as human as the rest of us,” the chirurgeon snapped in response. “The only vampire part of him seems to be the insatiable blood hunger, but he doesn’t even have the ability to charm others to fulfil that need. He is entirely harmless, and relies on Beowulf and I to feed him out of pity.”

“Look, Beowulf is certainly never going to let you harm the jester. If you try to hurt or take Thedrick away from him, he will rip your head off your shoulders,” the officer said while gesturing to the large guard who was still leaning over the jester cradled in his lap, watching him breathe while holding one of his tiny gloved hands in his large armoured hand. “So whatever you were planning, forget it.”

Nikolai gave the officer a look of confusion. “But… why?” he asked, not knowing what else to say.

“Why does anyone do anything?” the chirurgeon snapped in annoyance. “For love, of course.”

“W-Wait, what?” Nikolai exclaimed as he reeled from the revelation. “Those two are… in love?”

“If you have a problem with that, feel free to take it up with the big guy,” the officer said, gesturing over to the large guard. Beowulf finally looked up at the vampire hunter, and let out an extremely low warning growl that rumbled out from deep within his chest.

“Okay, this is all just too weird for me,” Nikolai announced, leaning back away from them all. “So if you don’t mind, I am just going to take my things and leave you be. I don’t want anything to do with whatever you have going on here.” He started bending down to collect his gear up off the floor, keeping his eyes on the others.

“Hold on, what about Thedrick?” Balthasar asked, taking a menacing step towards the hunter. “You need to wake him up before we let you go anywhere.”

Nikolai shrugged and gave an apologetic look. “I’m sorry, but I have no idea how. As I said, it was only supposed to last a few moments, I don’t know what’s going on with him.”

“You better hope he wakes up, or there is nowhere in this kingdom you’ll be able to hide from me,” Balthasar threatened as Nikolai gathered his weapons in his arms.

“Yeah well I am not planning on sticking around this kingdom. Farewell,” the vampire hunter said, as he quickly backed over to the door, pushed it open and slipped through, out into the hallway.