When Blood Runs Cold - Chapter 256

I meet Azrael down the corridor leading up to his room with two minutes to spare, my heart pounding against my chest as I scurry down the corridor to meet him, giving my hair one last briefing over to ensure all the leaves and twigs have been fully disposed of. Considering it was on my route to Azrael’s room, I was careful to drop by my own quarters to snag some perfume that Azrael had given me at last nights dinner service- a vain attempt to buy off my affections. Though as impartial as I am to his gifts, this particular one made itself rather convenient in washing away that smell of decay and rot that had persisted to cling onto my body as I had legged it out the forest. At least now I can appear as though I have somewhat done what I told Azrael I would do.

“Azrael,” I call out adoringly as I approach him from the other end of the corridor. He spares me a single rigid look, his boots clacking furiously against the floor, quite obviously in a hurry. In the brief moment before our reunion across the corridor, I allow myself a moment to wonder what it is exactly that has gotten his demeanour so in a twist.

Though I don’t have to wait long to find out.

Before I even get a chance to serve him a fake smile, he latches onto my hand, dragging me behind him as he tugs us both down the corridor, his eyes flaming with an ardent determination. White crackles of electrifying magic dart around his body in a series of furious swarms. It would appear today he is in no mood for idle chit chat.

“Azrael…?” I stutter, choking to catch my breath as I struggle to get air back into my lungs, winded from our collision. “What is it? What has happened?”

His eyes lower, but he does not slow down his pace.

“Asocrates found her,” he says simply, not bothering to spare me a glance as he yanks us both down another similar looking hallway, a large arching entrance at the other end of the corridor. If it hadn’t been for my unnatural speed as a hybrid vampire, I would just about be being dragged across the ground right now.

From somewhere outside, I catch the nickering of horses.

“He… found her?” A second passes for me to take a moment just to figure out who this ‘her’ is. Then just like clockwork, it all snaps into place.

“Where? When?” I cry, a little exasperated, my surprise hardly faked this time, for I was not expecting the soul to make her appearance so early, after all, I have only just arrived back at the palace. It seems she is more eager to get this done than I first presumed.

A flicker of a memory rushes over me as I recall the dark expression that had seeped over her face when I told her what Azrael had planned to do to me when I got back, how rigid her form had become, like a lion preparing to pounce.

She wasn’t going to give him a chance.

“Asocrates found her less than a minute ago. It appears she is not as passive as we supposed for she has taken several of our men into the hollow woods. Asocrates supposes if we can trace her steps we might be able to find her, so we better hurry,” he urges, flinging open the huge set of double doors in front of us, pushing us both into the dreary light of the overhead stars. While I am stumbling merely to get my footing, Azrael continues relentlessly, tugging me further forward to a large stable at the back of the palace near from where we exited, his movements focused.

At last when we are both pulled to a halt, I bend over double breathlessly, trying to force some amount of air back into my lungs. I have never seen Azrael so determined in my life.

Asocrates waits for us at the entrance of the stables with two other men, each of them clutching the reins of a horse as though their lives depend on it. To say that Asocrates looks nervous would be the understatement of the year, for as we approach him, he is practically chomping at the bit, his nails clawing apprehensively at the side of his hunting robes. The horses around them seem to fare no better either, the whites of their eyes flashing as we both loom into view.

When he sees us coming it is all he can do but not back into the awaiting mare beside him as Azrael sweeps up the whole of the stables with his ominous aura of icy carelessness.

“Asocrates,” says Azrael sharply, not gesture of acknowledgement given to either him or the guards aside from these words alone. As though pushed aside by a gust of wind, the guards quickly skitter, propelled back into the stables to wait in mindless agony until they have been summoned to usage once more. I wonder, given that they are both under his glamour, whether they have any cognitive abilities left at all.

“Your lordship, we have eagerly been awaiting your arrival,” Asocrates bows, his eyes darting as he lowers his head to the white haired fiend, as though half expecting to lose it entirely. Azrael however, can hardly be bothered with such formalities, pushing past Asocrates lowered figure to hover near one of the two horses- this one jet back and red in it’s eyes, its mouth trothing around the bit and consumed with rage.

This will be his stallion, there is no question there.

“Where has she gone, Asocrates? The soul, tell me now, or I will have your head.”

With such a warning hanging over him, Asocrates wastes no time on informing Azrael of her whereabouts, his fingers fluttering with a nervous exhilaration.

If he can help Azrael find the soul, he would be free from the weight that Azrael has hanging over his shoulders, free from the poignant agony and bitter memory of death that Azrael infects him with.

I have no doubt that it is this sort of freedom that he strives to achieve today. If only he knew that would not be the case. Alas he will have to serve Azrael just a fraction longer. I just hope he is strong enough to survive.

“So,” Azrael says, mounting the black stallion now with a keenly thoughtful expression, his eyes glazing in a brief moment of weakness. Whatever conversation the two of them had passed between each other must have been short and sweet, because I can’t recall a single second of it as Azrael offers me a hand to mount the horse with him. “The soul has taken herself and our men to the hollow woods, and yet she has not killed them, how unbefitting,” he muses. There is a passing moment of kerfuffle as Azrael wraps his hands around me, allowing me to settle in front of him as he takes the reigns between his fingers, anxious to go.

Even the horse looks like he is rearing to be off, perhaps even more than Azrael.

With a long but not unnoticeable sigh beside us Asocrates mounts his own horse, fidgeting to get comfortable with the wings on his back splayed behind him. Then, without another word, he clamps his legs around the horse and whips down the reins, bolting off down the rickety pathway down the palace towards a section of the forest I have yet to touch: the hollow woods.

Gritting his teeth behind me, Azrael presses himself close. The tenseness in his body is absolute as he grips the reins between his fingers, the knuckles of his fingers turning a piercing white.

“He better be right about this,” Azrael growls, before yanking on the reins and sending us flying into the forest.

Unlike the Enchanted forest that surrounds the palace from the outside world- which is lush and green and full of the mystical yet enchanting wonder of a faeries home, the hollow woods is vastly different. Ahead of us, Asocrates’ horse kicks up dust from the worn path, winding through the armies of dead and hollow trees and the empty, reaching branches that tear at our clothes. Nothing grows here- not any more. They say the life was sucked out of the land thousands of years ago by an ancient and powerful curse, mummifying its contents to a grisly parody of its former glory. I, however, suspect that a certain soul might have been involved in its creation, if she truly is as old as she says she is.

“The men were taken just up ahead. I have stationed some of our guards to ensure she doesn’t come back this way,” he announces, his voice swept away by an oncoming gust of wind. A slow in his pace informs us we have nearly arrived, and with a grim frown, Azrael tugs back on the reigns, slowing the wild horse beneath us to a gentle canter. Through the thick mist and the myriad of branches, a clutch of figures looms out from the gloom…