King of Dust

Chapter 16

My steps echoed throughout the corridor as I trudged down the stairs again, back to the tombs. Urien was right. It was the right thing to do, and hopefully putting these children away would put the house to rest. The bones I held looked large, too large to be that of a six-year-old, so into Rosemarie's tomb I went when I reached the bottom. The tomb was dusty, years since it had been entered, and I sighed. How dismal it was. I hated tombs.

Oh, Darius, you must be thinking. You're a vampire! Vampires love tombs! I don't. It's a terrible trope. Tombs make me incredibly sad and holding that little body in such a dirty place felt wrong. It had been a long time since anyone had checked on the body, and I could not imagine starving to death under such horrible circumstances.

I did not tell Urien this, but I remembered. These cultists thought me their savior. They had killed unborn children and virgins in an attempt to summon something like me. Nothing came, but my dark curse happened shortly afterward. Thunder cracked across the countryside, and I came into my hellish gift. What the cultists didn't realize was that it was all a coincidence. My gift came from witches, not from their crackpot magick.

But...coincidences did mean something. Maybe their summoning did work. Maybe I did come at their call.

I brushed dust away from the crypt with my hand and pushed the stone lid off the box. No vermin had made the crypt their home, luckily, and as delicately as I could, I laid Rosemarie's body into the tomb. Her skeleton settled and the bones creaked as her head rolled. One down. One more to go.

Before I could even make it back to the stairs, Yra came down with the second body. He looked so chivalrous in the dim light, carrying such a little treasure in his arms. He looked me in the eye, his red irises glinting in the near-darkness. He entered Viggo's tomb without saying a word and went to do as I did. I decided I did not need to be in close proximity to him at the moment and waited in the hall.

"Darius?" he muttered from inside the tomb.

"What?" I replied.

"There are rats in here. Can you get them? I don't want to drop the body."

I rolled my eyes and entered the tomb. He was right. Two or three rats scuttled about. I clicked my heels and held out my hand expectantly. "Begone from my sight, vermin."

All three rats stood on their hind legs and looked at me like they had just seen their god. Once they decided that I was worth listening to, they scuttled out of the room and out of my sight. Once the room was clear of pests, I pushed open the lid to the coffin. Yra very gently laid Viggo's little body inside, and after the skeleton was laid in the stone box, I closed the lid.

"Did you know that there were children trapped here?" Yra asked.

"No. I... I had no idea. The father never mentioned them in the letter."

"If only you had known. You could've put a stop to all of this."

I turned my ear to the ceiling and waited for something to happen, but nothing did. I had kind of expected a great sigh or at least some sort of spooky thing to happen, but nothing. I shrugged and was about to turn to leave when an icy mist formed around my feet. I whipped around to look at the crypt, where the mist crept from. Little Viggo sat on the stone lid, kicking his legs. "Thank you."

"Yes, thank you," someone said behind me, and Rosemarie walked to stand next to her brother. "Why did you put us back?"

"Urien, our inquisitor, though it was the right thing to do," Yra replied.

"Kind of ironic," Rosemarie cooed, "for two creatures from beyond the grave to put our bones to rest."

I chuckled and leaned against the dusty wall of the tomb. "I've been doing a lot of surprising things lately."