Bambi and the Duke

The more Vivian thought about it, the more muddled it turned out to be that she couldn't stop thinking about the switchers. She wasn't able to read the black witches but she could read the humans and switchers. With that thought in her mind, she asked the magistrate, "Could you take me to where they have been buried?"

"The couple?"

"Yes, the ones who had come here," she said hoping she could pick something from them," but to her utter disappointment, the man said shaking his head,

"We don't have them here," as if something that was stuck to his teeth, his face flinched as his tongue went to reach the far ends of his mouth, "When the council had come here they took the body along with them. After all, they didn't belong to this particular village," he said turning to see where the men had gone as they were not in view anymore. 

The existence of the switchers was still being learned when this incident must have taken place but no one had given each other details, "Might you know who was handling the case when it happened?"

"Hmm," the man tried to remember but then shook his head, "I don't think I remember, they were all new faces who came in here and I just wanted those things off my village. You should have seen those slimy bodies, milady. They weren't pretty," he said with a grimace filled look. The man seemed to not have bothered himself with any details that concerned with the people who had died in or around the village.

But when switchers left a body and adopted to another person, they weren't usually left slimy but almost dissolved into a mass of melted flesh. This made her wonder if the switchers had a time limit when it came to their life span. 

Thinking about it, she looked at the village that was quiet except for a few of the people who was walking through the streets and the other ends of the village. There were some whose eyes she caught looking at her before they would look away. 

The black witch had tried to aim to get as many people as she could so that they could be part of her coven but how was one to know who were turned? Since the time of yesterday everyone had been giving them looks so would that mean everyone were witches? It was going to be a few more hours before they would be able to burn the transformed witches. 

One would think it was easy now as they had cut the main snakes head but with one gone, there would arise a few more to take its place. 

Suddenly remembering there was another person who had tagged along with the couple, she halted her footsteps and asked, "The dead man. Where have you buried him? The man who was with the couple," she waited for him to speak. 

"We buried him here in our local cemetery," the man tipped his in the other direction to show where the cemetery was, "We buried him with the rest of the villagers."

"Under what name?" she asked him. The man was a stranger with no name and she wanted to know under what he was buried. Seeing the man start to thinking, she hoped he would remember this one little thing. 

"Adam. He's under the name Adam in there," taking that little information, Vivian went in search of Leonard who was still completing the circle around the village with a pile of coal he had found. Going to him, Vivian spoke, 

"I need to borrow the guards," he nodded and then turned to one of the guards who was helping him. Vivian took the village guardsman to the cemetery to where the man had been buried under the headstone name of Adam. She couldn't get her hands on the switchers but there was a possibility to know what happened or who those switchers were if she was able to read them. She wanted to check the man because it could link them to the actual switcher who was working in the council right now. 

With that thought, she looked at the guardsmen begin to dig the grave with a shovel in his hand. First came the snow-covered layer around the headstone. As it was Bonelake where the rain had seeped into the ground over and over again after the snow had arrived the mud and soil had turned hard. It took more than half an hour for the man to completely dig out the ground until he hit a strong object on the ground.

As it was a local village with a decent amount of population, they had a local cemetery where one could bury their family members but it wasn't all welcome to the outsiders. As the guardsman pulled the long brownish-black sack out from the ground, she saw that the person had not been put in a coffin. 

"Could you open it please," Vivian requested the buff man who waited for her order on what to do next. Bending down, he pulled out the sack to reveal a corpse which had dried worse than what he had come to see in since the last one day. The body hadn't undergone complete decomposition and it was still in the process. Thanks to the mud that it had been surrounded, the body didn't stink. She remembered Mr. Fleek telling them on how the body was in the carriage for far too long which meant it had dried up in the weather condition. 

"Do you want me to put it back?" asked the guardsman thinking she had only wanted to see the body. 

Two women who had been walking by stared at Vivian and then the dead corpse with a look that held something sinister on their face before the expression slipped out of their face as if it was never there. 

"Could you fetch me a bucket of water? I need to possibly clean to see his vitals," her speech was polite and even though the guardsman didn't know what the lady's actual intension were, he bowed his head and obliged to her words, leaving her with the corpse with a doubtful look.

"I will be fine," she assured him with a smile.

Seeing him gone, Vivian sat down to look at the dead man who was with the switchers as told by Mr. Fleek. The man was lean in structure, his clothes still intact on his body but they looked torn and dirty. His dried self reminded her of someone but she couldn't point a finger on it was.

Looking up to see no one around her to watch her, she readied her hands and placed it on the man's withered hand for emotions to come at her rushing along with memories.

She stood in the forest, a forest that was as dark as the night with no moonlight that spread on it. The wind blew too strong that she had to bring her hands up to stop the wind going into her eye. She walked through the paths, her legs taking her aimlessly as she tried to see why and what had brought her here. If this belonged to the dead man's memory, she could tell there was someplace where he was in this forest and her guess was right. She saw him standing with his back to her and an older man who stood almost adjacent to him. 

Her feet stepped on the branch making enough sound for the older man who was talking to the man to look in her direction where she suddenly hid behind the large tree. After what had happened with young Lord Alexander and his cat, she didn't want to risk being seen that was if they could see her. 

"How kind of you to bring yourself here," Vivian heard one of the men speak whom she guessed to be the older man as he held a deeper voice with a quiver as he spoke to someone. She peeked out to see a third person who had come to join them. It was a woman in the hood, "Meet my son Rory," the older man introduced the younger man whose face she still couldn't see.

"My, such a young handsome man you have here. I am sure he will do a good job with what I have for him," said the woman. The wind was enough to gust back the hood that she wore that Vivian saw the woman's face. A shocked gasp escaping her lips when she came to realize it was the woman she had met in the dead man's land. She remembered her because of her striking blue eyes. 

Her guess about the involvement of the black witch along with the switchers had been right but there was one thing she had been wrong about. When the two bodies went missing, her thought was that either the switcher or the black witch had stolen them but the truth was that one of the bodies was of the black witch so she had stolen only one dead body. 

"Father said you wanted my help. What is it about?" asked the young man where Vivian was still trying to get a good peek from where stood. 

"Your father told me the hate you hold against the vampires or more precisely the pureblooded vampires. I heard how they killed one of your beloved girl on the street market," the black witch smiled, her smile sinister as she looked at the man coyly, "I have the right task for you."

"And what is that?" 

"Try to find a pureblooded vampiress of this land and try to seduce her," the young man huffed, he took a step forward for Vivian to see the same man she had come to see in Charlotte's memories before they had buried her. This was Rory, Charlotte's Rory. Anger began to bubble up inside her at what he had done to the poor vampiress who had trusted him with her heart and soul. 

"Do you think I have been bitten by a mad dog?" Rory asked crossing his arm to find the witch smiling up at him. 

The black witch looked at him sweetly to say, "I don't know about mad dogs but if you want the rest of your family members to be slaughtered the way your woman was by the vampires, then I think you should consider what I am proposing," she paused for a second to see him listening to her, "I have a potion I have made by myself. It consists of a lot of things which is harmful to the very nature of the pureblooded vampires. Each and every element in it will help in stopping that heart of theirs if they consume it. It is still under preparation and I will give hand it over to your father when it has been completed. What you need to do is, find a pretty princess who can fall for this handsome face of yours. The rest I will tell you how to proceed with the plan."

"What is it? Like a poison? It will only kill one person which is pointless," Rory didn't sound pleased with the idea. 

The woman clicked her tongue, moving her finger back and forth in a sideways motion, "This isn't a mere poison. Don't you know how the pureblooded vampire's heart work? Let me educate you, boy," she said. She appeared to look way younger than Rory in age but in truth, she was much older than his father, "A pureblooded vampire's heart is different when it comes to you or me. Once he or she will drink this, it will cause corruption which will not just kill them in the process but will also kill the ones around them."

"Will this work?" asked the old man unsure as pureblooded vampires were stronger than any other walking creatures on these lands. 

"Oh, it will. The last time I made it, it was a sample and unfortunately, it needed to be consumed until the very last drop. Sadly I couldn't find out what happened, maybe the person died who had consumed but this time I am making sure that it doesn't have to be so. Most than one drop and it should be enough to drive the person crazy and start killing," she laughed.

"Alright, I will do it," answered Rory before the scene shifted to the night when Rory and Charlotte were eloping from Mythweald together. Vivian stood to see four people standing near the carriage where a scrawny looking man who had his teeth forward and was short in stature take a rod to hit her dear friend, Charlotte's head. Vivian screamed to stop but no one could hear her. 

Vivian ran to where Charlotte laid with her head spasming before another hit came on her head for her eyes to start closing. A pureblooded vampire was strong but not enough to not feel the pain unless they were built for such an environment. The person whom she had thought all this time to have killed Charlotte also fell down on the ground in less than two hits and he died. 

Tears streamed down Vivi's eyes where she had to see a ghastly death of Charlotte.

She saw her struggle, her hand trying to reach the man whom she had fallen in love with. Blood oozed out of her head and thought Vivian had placed her hand on the ground, the warm blood that had come to flow out of Charlotte's head, it never touched her.