A Monster Life

85 - Overwhelming Forces

The second chamber looked ordinary, with seats and sofas, a writing table, a couple of bookcases, and cabinets. Ulric smelled something out of place though. 'I smell the blood of animals. And not what I call fresh.'

Caylais scrunched her nose. 'Indeed, yuck.'

Valdys looked at the music box playing on one of the cabinets while her paranormal sense gave her chills. 'There is a different kind of death lingering here. Something twisted, unnatural.'

Elzbieta watched single spider threads cross the walls. 'It feels more like a trap than a regular room.'

A thud of something dropped on a heavy wooden table came from the other side of the double doors on the far side. Ulric sneaked closer and listened. 'I can't make out what's going on. I hear shuffling and some noises I don't recognise.' He squatted and looked at the keyhole. 'Either the hole is plugged, or it's pitch black inside.'

Iphigenia moved behind him. 'You still want to continue with the attack?'

He looked up at her. 'We can't hide the death of his servants, so we have no option other than to finish what we began.'

She nodded, and the others agreed. They moved in an attack formation, and Ulric placed his paws on the door handles. The call from the other side startled them.

'What's keeping you? Show me who you are.'

Ulric looked left and right at Iphigenia and Elzbieta. Elzbieta gave him a slight nod. 'We're invited, darling.'

He opened the doors as he stepped inside in a large, candle lit room with walls and ceiling covered in webbing, and small and large cocoons hanging from them. Dornus sat at a table on the other side of a large trapdoor in the floor, pulling a piece of meat from a hunter carcass. He stared at them with fully black eyes set in a sixty-something year old face. 'I take it you surprised my servants somehow, otherwise you wouldn't have made it this far.'

Iphigenia glanced briefly at several spiders hanging on the wall on her side of the room, the bodies the size of her hand with thin legs, and faint dark green and yellow irregular blobs on their mostly black exoskeletons. They sat motionless while they watched the party. 'You all seeing these things?'

Valdys had seen a lot of spiders in her time, but these gave her an eerie sensation. 'Even though my skin may be dead, these make it crawl. There's something deeply sinister about them.'

Rachael gripped her staff and stepped away from a nearby spider rubbing its frontal pair of legs. 'I may have a thick coat, but I don't like a spider like this crawling over me.'

Dornus rose from his seat, and the party stared at the right side of his naked upper body. Most of his right arm was missing, and a good chunk of his right side around his lower ribs. 'Seems we're not dealing with your average kind of vampire.' said Ulric.

Dornus laughed once. 'You can say that again.' he said, and part of his body above his hip transformed into a spider, pulled free, and crawled away. 'A wizard attacked me during my transformation, and something went horribly wrong with his spell. Now I can't return to being a full vampire, and I have a need to feed on meat. Seeing how disgraceful my current state is, my servants prepare animals down below in secret, which I then retrieve here to feed on. Or better said, the spiders which are part of me.' He lowered his left hand to the table, and one spider crawled up on his arm. 'And now I need to find myself two new suitable servants since you killed them.'

Ulric chuckled in mock amusement once. 'You can save yourself the trouble since we're here to finish you off.'

Dornus grinned. 'The only thing you'll finish, is your lives in my trap.' he said, and gestured behind them.