Blood And Wine

Chapter 1 – Blood in the Grass

The tavern door slammed open hard enough to rattle the iron hinges.

Tedric Sablethorn stumbled out into the cold night air, half-thrown, half-falling. A thick-fingered hand shoved between his shoulder blades for good measure. He hit the muddy cobblestones on one knee, the impact jarring up through his bones. The taste of copper flooded his mouth.

Behind him, the tavern guard—a broad man with a face like old meat—stood in the doorway, wiping his knuckles on a stained apron.

“Next time you drink, you pay first, you hairy bastard,” the guard growled. “Or I’ll break more than your pride.”

Tedric spat a thick glob of blood onto the stones. It steamed faintly in the chill. He wiped his mouth with the back of one large hand, leaving a dark smear across his knuckles. His amber eyes, glassy from drink but still sharp, lifted toward the man.

“Fuck your overpriced piss-water,” he muttered, voice rough and low. “And fuck the horse you rode in on.”

The guard took a step forward. Tedric pushed himself up before the man could decide to finish the job. He was slow about it. One boot slipped in the mud. His left leg protested with a deep, throbbing ache—someone had gotten a solid kick in while he was still inside. He favored it as he straightened to his full height, well over six feet of thick muscle and stubborn weight.

The white shirt he wore was open nearly to the sternum, the fabric strained across the heavy curve of his chest. Dark hair dusted the exposed skin, trailing down between thick pectorals that rose and fell with each steadying breath. Over it hung a long dark brown coat that reached past his knees, heavy and weathered, the kind of garment that had seen too many roads and too many bad nights. It hung open, moving with him as he shifted his weight. Dark trousers clung to heavy thighs, and the old leather boots on his feet were scuffed nearly through at the toes.

He rolled one shoulder, feeling the fresh bruise blooming there, then turned away from the tavern light without another word. The limp was slight but noticeable—more of a careful, uneven gait than a full drag. Each step sent a dull pulse up his leg. He didn’t look back.

The town thinned quickly. Houses gave way to low stone walls and empty animal pens. The road dipped, then rose again, carrying him toward the open valley beyond the last of the lanterns. Night had settled fully now. A half-moon hung behind thin clouds, casting the hills in shades of blue-black and silver. The air smelled of wet earth and distant woodsmoke.

Tedric walked until the sounds of the town faded behind him. Only then did he stop.

He stood at the edge of the valley path, where the ground fell away in a long, gentle slope toward a dark line of trees. Wind moved through the tall grass with a low, continuous whisper. He reached into the inner pocket of his coat and pulled out a thin black cigar, slightly bent from the earlier scuffle. A small metal lighter followed—worn smooth by years of use.

He turned his body slightly against the wind, cupped one large hand around the flame, and struck it. The light flared briefly, illuminating the heavy lines of his face: the dark stubble along his jaw, the faint cut on his lower lip still seeping, the tired set of his amber eyes. He held the fire to the end of the cigar until the tobacco caught, then drew in slowly.

The first lungful burned pleasantly. He held it, then let the smoke drift out through his nose and mouth in a long, gray plume that the wind immediately pulled apart. His shoulders dropped a fraction. The ache in his leg remained, the blood in his mouth still lingered, but the ritual of it settled something in him.

He stood there for a while, coat shifting around his legs, white shirt open to the cold, thick chest rising and falling beneath the drifting smoke. The valley stretched out below him, quiet and indifferent. Somewhere far off, a night bird called once and went silent.

Tedric took another slow drag, eyes half-lidded, and stared into the dark.

Tedric finished the last of the cigar, the ember glowing dull orange between his fingers before he dropped it and ground it out under his boot. The smoke still clung to his coat and hair. He glanced once more across the dark valley, then turned slightly off the path toward a low stand of bushes where the ground dipped.

He unfastened his trousers with practiced ease, the cold night air sharp against his skin as he relieved himself. The stream of urine hissed into the grass. For a moment there was only that small sound and the distant sigh of wind moving through the trees.

Then a sharp, wet noise cut through the quiet.

It was not a scream. It was the sound of something being torn open too quickly—like thick cloth ripping underwater. Tedric’s head snapped up. His amber eyes narrowed, already searching the dark.

Not far from him, perhaps thirty paces down the slope, a shape hung in the air.

A man—thin, ragged, clearly one of the homeless who drifted between towns—was suspended several feet above the ground. His arms and legs dangled limply. Something unseen held him aloft. The air around the body shimmered with a faint, sickly distortion, like heat rising from summer stone, only colder. A low, rhythmic pulling sound filled the space between them. The man’s skin was already collapsing inward. Cheeks hollowed in seconds. Eyes sank. His mouth opened in a silent, endless gasp as the blood and fluid were drawn out of him in invisible streams.

Tedric’s pupils tightened.

“Fuck.”

The word came out low and hard. He stepped forward on instinct, left hand rising, fingers already shaping the beginning of a binding sigil in the air. Old knowledge surfaced without invitation—the right words, the right pressure of will, the small blood price it would cost him. The spell gathered at the edges of his awareness, ready to snap shut around whatever was feeding.

The thing noticed him.

The distortion shivered. The drained body was suddenly released. It dropped like a sack of dry sticks, hitting the ground with a brittle, hollow sound. Bones clicked inside the desiccated husk. What had once been a man was now a withered shell, skin stretched tight over a skeleton that looked years dead instead of moments.

The presence that had held him was already gone—slipping sideways through the dark faster than Tedric could close the working. The half-formed sigil in his hand collapsed into nothing, leaving only a faint sting across his palm and the bitter taste of unfinished magic at the back of his throat.

Tedric stood frozen for a second longer, chest rising hard under the open white shirt. Then his jaw tightened. He reached up with one large hand and pressed his fingers hard against his temple, as if trying to push the image back out of his skull. The dried corpse lay crumpled in the grass, empty eye sockets turned toward the moon.

He could already see how this would look if anyone came along. A big, bloodied stranger standing over a freshly drained body. The bruises on his face from the tavern. The limp. The open coat and the smell of drink still on him.

No one would care what he had or had not done.

Tedric lowered his hand from his head. His teeth remained clenched. The valley suddenly felt too open, too exposed. He scanned the tree line once, then the road behind him, already calculating the fastest way to put distance between himself and the husk on the ground.

Tedric did not linger in the valley.

He turned away from the dried husk without another glance and started back toward town at a steady, limping pace. The long dark brown coat swung around his legs with each uneven step. The night air had grown colder; it bit at the open collar of his white shirt and the exposed skin of his chest. He kept one hand near the inner pocket where the lighter and remaining cigars rested, more out of habit than any real expectation of trouble. The thing that had drained the man was already gone. Chasing it alone in the dark would only leave another body on the grass—his own.

The town’s outer lights eventually came back into view. He cut through a narrow side street to avoid the main square and the tavern he had been thrown out of earlier. A few windows still glowed with late lamps, but most of the place had settled into sleep. At the far end of a quiet lane stood the inn he had been using for the past three nights: The Weary Stag. Its wooden sign creaked softly in the wind, painted with a tired-looking stag whose antlers had faded to gray.

The owner, an older man named Harlan, had known Tedric years ago on a different road under worse circumstances. That old debt was the only reason Tedric still had a room and a key when money was short. Harlan asked few questions and kept the side door unlatched after midnight. Tedric slipped inside without knocking, climbed the narrow back stairs, and locked the door of his small room behind him.

The space was simple: a narrow bed, a washstand, a single chair, and a low chest. A oil lamp burned low on the table. Tedric shrugged the heavy coat off his shoulders and hung it on the wall peg. The white shirt followed, peeled carefully over bruised arms and tossed onto the chair. The cold air of the room touched the broad, thick planes of his chest and the dark hair that covered it. Heavy muscle shifted under the skin as he moved—deep pectorals, a solid midsection, arms built more for force than elegance. Fresh bruises mottled his ribs and left shoulder in darkening shades of purple and red. The kick to his leg had left a deep ache that throbbed in time with his pulse.

He had borrowed a small kit of medical supplies from Harlan earlier in the week: clean cloth, a bottle of cheap spirits, and a tin of salve that smelled of pine and something sharper. Tedric sat on the edge of the bed, poured the spirits onto a cloth, and pressed it to the cut on his lip. The sting drew a low hiss through his teeth.

“Fucking hurts,” he muttered to the empty room.

He worked methodically, cleaning the worst of the scrapes, then rubbing the salve into the larger bruises across his chest and side. Each press of his own thick fingers pulled another quiet sound of discomfort from him, but he did not stop until the job was done. When he finished, he set the kit aside, pulled off his boots and trousers, and stretched out on the narrow mattress in only his underclothes. The bed creaked under his weight. He stared at the low ceiling for a short while, amber eyes half-lidded, the image of the drained body still sitting somewhere behind them.

Then he closed his eyes and slept, as if the night’s events were nothing more than another ugly errand already finished.

On the other side of town, carriage wheels rattled over uneven cobblestones.

Cedrion Vaeloran sat straight-backed against the dark leather seat, gloved hands resting lightly on his knees. The carriage was well-made but not ostentatious—black lacquered wood, heavy curtains drawn half against the night. Across from him, his servant, a quiet man named Ellis, kept his gaze politely lowered. Outside, the last stretch of road into the town passed in a blur of low roofs and shuttered windows.

Cedrion had been traveling for two days on his father’s orders. The reports were thin but consistent: a string of bodies found emptied of blood across three neighboring districts, always near smaller towns, always without clear signs of struggle. The pattern was close enough to an older matter the Duke still wanted watched. Cedrion had not been given the full history—only the instruction to observe, confirm, and report. He had accepted the task without argument, as he always did.

The carriage slowed. Ellis leaned toward the window.

“The nearest respectable inn, my lord. The Weary Stag.”

Cedrion gave a single nod. The vehicle came to a stop beneath the creaking wooden sign. Ellis stepped down first, opened the door, and waited. Cedrion followed, unfolding his tall frame from the carriage with controlled ease. He stood slightly over six feet, broad through the shoulders and chest but cleaner in line than bulk, his build the product of careful training rather than rough labor. Smooth skin showed at the open collar of his dark travel coat. Slicked-back blonde hair caught the lantern light above the inn door. His face was handsome in a restrained way—gentle in structure, yet held with a cool distance. Ocean-blue eyes moved once across the front of the building, assessing it without visible judgment.

“See to the horses and the rooms,” he said quietly. “One for myself. One for you.”

Ellis bowed and moved to speak with the innkeeper. Cedrion remained on the cobblestones for a moment longer, breath visible in the cold air, gaze lifting toward the upper windows of The Weary Stag where a single lamp still burned low.

Morning light filtered weakly through the thin curtains of Tedric’s room at The Weary Stag. He woke the way he usually did—suddenly, fully, with the dull ache of yesterday’s bruises already catalogued and accepted. The cut on his lip had closed overnight. The deeper soreness in his leg and ribs remained. He dressed without hurry: the same white shirt left half-open across his thick, hairy chest, the long dark brown coat, dark trousers, and scuffed boots. He checked the small pouch of coins he had left, found enough for a proper drink, and stepped out into the street.

The town looked different in daylight. Smoke rose from chimneys. Carts rattled over cobblestones. Tedric walked toward the center, where the largest tavern stood on the corner of the main square. The Gilded Antler was already open, its wide doors propped to catch the morning air. Inside, the place smelled of warm bread, strong coffee, and the sharper scent of early liquor. A few laborers sat at the long bar. Two older women occupied a corner table, speaking in low, interested voices.

Tedric took a stool near the middle of the bar and set a coin down. The bartender, a sharp-eyed woman with her hair tied back, raised an eyebrow at him.

“You’re paying today,” she said.

“Miracles happen,” Tedric answered, voice still rough from sleep. “Morning pour. The decent stuff.”

She poured without further comment. He wrapped one large hand around the glass and drank. The burn settled pleasantly in his chest. He listened without seeming to.

The women at the corner table were still talking.

“—arrived last night, they say. Fine carriage. Blonde. Tall.”

“A Vaeloran, if the talk is right. One of the Duke’s sons.”

“Handsome, though. Cold-looking, but handsome. And rich enough that the whole inn straightened up the moment he walked in.”

Tedric’s amber eyes stayed on his glass, but his attention had sharpened. He turned his head just enough to catch more. The name Vaeloran meant something in the higher circles he preferred to avoid. He finished the drink in two more swallows, set the empty glass down, and was about to signal for another when a familiar weight settled onto the stool beside him.

“You’re harder to find when you actually have coin,” a voice said.

Tedric glanced sideways. The man was lean, sharp-featured, with a short beard and the kind of smile that never reached the eyes for long. Rook. An old acquaintance from years of shared bad decisions and worse jobs. Not quite a friend, but close enough that Tedric did not immediately tell him to leave.

“Rook,” Tedric said. “You still breathing. Disappointing.”

Rook signaled the bartender for two drinks and waited until they arrived. He pushed one toward Tedric.

“I’ve got work,” Rook said quietly. “Pays well. Local family. Quiet job.”

Tedric did not look at him. “I don’t do quiet jobs. They never stay quiet.”

“Money’s clean. Half up front.” Rook kept his voice low. “A boy went missing for three days. Younger son of a merchant family on the east side. Came back on his own. No marks on him, but he’s not right. Father says the boy stands in corners and talks to someone who isn’t there. Two days ago the family dog disappeared. They found blood on the boy’s sleeves the next morning. Not his blood.”

Tedric turned the glass slowly between his thick fingers. The familiar weight of unwanted knowledge settled behind his eyes. His mother had taught him the signs when he was still young enough to think magic was only a tool and not a chain—how to read the leftover wrongness in a person, how to bind, how to force answers from things that should not speak. Spells, rituals, the careful lines of witchcraft. He had used them for worse reasons than this. Sometimes the work was honest. Sometimes it was only a convincing performance for people who needed to believe something had been done.

He needed the money. The bruises from last night were a reminder of what happened when the coin ran out.

Tedric drank again, then set the glass down with a soft click.

“Details,” he said. “All of them. And the upfront half before I walk anywhere near that house.”

Cedrion stood at the edge of the valley slope, the same ground Tedric had occupied the night before. Morning light had not softened the place. The grass remained flattened in a rough circle, and at its center lay the dried corpse—skin stretched tight over bone, mouth open in a final silent shape, eye sockets empty and turned toward the pale sky. The body looked as if it had been dead for months instead of hours.

Ellis waited a few paces behind him, gloved hands folded. The servant’s face was calm, but his eyes had the distant focus of someone listening to something beyond ordinary hearing.

“Report,” Cedrion said.

Ellis stepped closer. “The pattern matches the earlier cases, my lord. Drained completely. No visible wounds. The residual energy is the same—dark, hungry, and recent. But there is something else.” He paused, tilting his head slightly as if catching a fading note. “Another presence was here. Not the killer. Different in texture. Older knowledge. Controlled. It lingered only briefly, then moved away toward the town.”

Cedrion’s ocean-blue eyes remained on the husk. He did not speak for a long moment. The wind moved across the valley, stirring the dry grass around the corpse. His expression stayed measured, almost cold, the refined lines of his face giving nothing away.

“The merchant family on the east side,” he said at last. “The boy who returned after three days.”

“Yes, my lord. The same household you asked me to confirm this morning. The father has grown desperate enough to seek outside help. Word is already moving through certain channels.”

Cedrion’s gaze lifted from the body and traveled toward the distant roofs of the town. The long dark coat he wore shifted once in the breeze. Sunlight touched the slicked-back blonde hair and the smooth, controlled set of his shoulders.

“Then we will speak with them today,” he said quietly. “Before anyone else does.”

He turned from the corpse without another glance. Ellis followed. Behind them the valley remained still, the emptied body lying where it had fallen, while two separate paths—one driven by coin and old, reluctant skill, the other by duty and quiet investigation—began to angle toward the same door.