Chapter 4: The Price of Fear

Chapter 4: The Price of Fear

The supernatural paralysis receded, not vanishing, but lessening its grip as Ulrich von Strauss turned his full, predatory attention to the broken man on the floor. The release was not a mercy. It was a calculated cruelty, allowing Thomas to feel the full, undiluted horror of what was happening. He could breathe again, ragged, agonized gasps that did nothing to calm the frantic hummingbird of his heart. He could feel the cold sweat plastering his shirt to his back, the tremor in his hands, the burning throb of the bite on his arm—a festering promise of the monster's claim on him.

Ulrich moved with an unhurried, liquid grace. He was not a creature of rage; he was a connoisseur of suffering. He stopped beside Mr. Baumann’s discarded pistol, nudging it with the toe of his immaculate leather shoe. "Silver," he mused, his voice dripping with condescending pity. "And I see you've carved your little runes into the grip. The old ways. So quaint. So utterly ineffective."

He bent down, not to retrieve the gun, but to grasp the front of Baumann's tweed coat. With one hand, he lifted the old man from the floor as if he weighed nothing more than a bundle of sticks. Baumann’s head lolled, his chest a concave ruin, a faint, gurgling sound escaping his lips with every shallow breath.

"Tell me, old man," Ulrich whispered, bringing his face close to Baumann's, his luminous blue eyes glowing with cold fire. "Was it worth it? Chasing a shadow across the world for seventy years, only to die in a dusty attic, your legacy ending in this... pathetic whimper?"

He laughed, a low, resonant sound that vibrated through the floorboards and into the soles of Thomas's feet. "Your father was a screamer. Did you know that? When I tore out his throat, he screamed for his god. And his god, as always, was silent."

With his free hand, Ulrich took hold of Baumann's left arm. He held it for a moment, his smile widening as he felt the old, brittle bone beneath the sleeve. Then he twisted.

The sound was sharp and sickeningly loud in the dead air—a dry, percussive crack that echoed off the rafters.

A scream, raw and guttural, was torn from Baumann’s throat, a sound of pure, unadulterated agony. Thomas flinched so violently he almost fell, a cry of horror strangled in his own throat.

"Ah, there it is," Ulrich purred, dropping the old man in a heap. Baumann lay twitching, his newly broken arm bent at an impossible angle. "The fire I was looking for. The music of your bloodline."

He began to advance on the crumpled form, his intent clear. This was the end. He was going to finish it, slowly and with pleasure.

But in that moment of supreme agony, Klaus Baumann found his last reserve of strength. His one good arm scrabbled at the floor, and his head lifted, his eyes, wild with pain and desperation, locking onto Thomas. The boy was still frozen, a statue of terror, his mind a white void of panic.

"The stake!" Baumann roared, his voice a shredded, bloody wreck. "Thomas! The stake! Finish it!"

The words cut through the fog. Thomas looked down. Not five feet from him, where Baumann had dropped them, lay the mallet and the sharpened wooden stake. A simple piece of wood. A weapon. A fool's hope against a god of darkness.

Ulrich stopped his advance. He turned his head slowly, his inhumanly beautiful face a mask of delighted surprise. The smile was back, wider than ever, a fanged invitation. He didn't seem threatened. He seemed amused, as if a mouse had just been offered a chance to fight the cat.

"Yes, Thomas," the vampire echoed, his voice a silken caress of mockery. "The stake. Come now. Be the hero. Fulfill the old man's dying wish. Become a Jäger."

The world narrowed to three points of a terrifying triangle: the broken hero on the floor, the waiting monster, and the weapon between them. Baumann’s plea was a commandment from a dying king. Do your duty. Avenge me. End this. The old man’s entire life, his entire legacy, had been funneled into this one, final, impossible request. Thomas could see the ghost of the man he’d known—the kind cobbler, the wise protector—in those desperate eyes.

He took a shuffling step forward. His hand reached, trembling, for the stake. Its wood was coarse and real against his clammy palm. He could do it. He had to do it. For Mr. Baumann.

Then he looked up and met Ulrich's gaze.

The monster’s smile was a vision from hell. The elongated canines were fully descended now, gleaming like polished ivory in the moonlight. The glowing blue eyes held no anger, no malice—only a bottomless, ancient contempt and the promise of a pain so absolute it would unravel his soul. In that gaze, Thomas saw his own death. He saw himself being torn apart, piece by piece. He saw the laughter in the monster's eyes as it happened.

The weight of the stake in his hand was no longer a weapon; it was a tombstone.

And sixteen-year-old Thomas Price, the boy who mowed lawns and dreamed of a Ford Escort, broke.

The hero inside him, the one Mr. Baumann had gambled on, died a swift and silent death. In its place, a primal, shrieking animal took over. An animal that knew only one thing: survival.

Run.

He dropped the stake. It clattered against the mallet with a hollow, wooden sound that was louder than a gunshot. In the same motion, his hand fumbled at his own neck, tearing away the small, crude wooden crucifix Baumann had pressed into his hand an hour earlier, whispering, "Faith is armor." He dropped it too, a final, desperate shedding of a faith that could not save him.

Behind him, he heard Mr. Baumann give a single, choked sob of despair.

Thomas turned and ran.

He scrambled, half-falling down the attic stairs, his sneakers slipping on the narrow steps. He burst into the master bedroom, past the wardrobe that hid the secret passage, and didn't slow. He fled down the grand staircase, taking the steps three at a time, his ankle twisting painfully as he landed on the ground floor. He ignored it. Pain didn't matter. Only distance.

He slammed through the front door, the rotten wood splintering around the lock, and burst out into the cool, clean night air. The smell of damp earth and autumn leaves was a shocking, beautiful contrast to the grave-stench of the attic. He didn't stop to breathe it in. He ran across the overgrown lawn, thorns and brambles tearing at his jeans, his lungs burning, his mind a howling void.

He was a hundred yards away, his legs pumping, his breath tearing at his raw throat, when a sound from behind him made him look back. It was a deep, resonant whoosh, like a giant gas furnace igniting.

He skidded to a halt on the cracked asphalt of the deserted road. The derelict mansion was no longer dark. Every window on the second floor, especially the single dormer window of the attic, was glowing with a hungry, hellish orange light. As he watched, a gout of flame erupted from the roof, licking at the night sky.

The mansion was burning. A funeral pyre, consuming the truth, the monster, and the hero he had abandoned.

From the heart of the inferno, he thought he could hear a sound carried on the wind—not a scream of pain, but the faint, triumphant echo of aristocratic laughter.

Thomas turned away from the fire and ran into the night, leaving the flames to swallow his cowardice. He had bought his life. The price was everything.