"Maybe he threw up enough blood so this will not take so long," Berdole said with a halfhearted chuckle.
Curt snickered at the grim humor as well, knowing that jokes might be his only defense against his abhorrence of this task.
High in a corner of the mausoleum, on the opposite wall and to the right of the door, Druzil sat and scratched his doglike head, muttering curses under his breath. The imp had tried to get into this place since Rufo's body had been put here, thinking that he might somehow recover at least a portion of the chaos curse from the corpse. Too many priests had been around then, including one of the leading members of the Oghman order, and so Druzil had waited, thinking he would just break in after the others had left. He found the door locked, though, and the window blessed, so that he did not dare enter.
The imp knew enough of the human rituals to understand what the two men now meant to do. They would drain the blood from the body and replace it with a smelly, preserving liquid. Druzil had overheard that Rufo could not be given a proper Deneirian or Oghman burial, and the imp had hoped that the priests wouldn't waste their time with this pointless embalming. Druzil thought of swooping down -and stinging the men with his poison-tipped tail, or of hitting them with magical spells, burning their behinds with little bolts of energy to chase them away. It simply was too risky, so all the imp could do was sit and watch and mutter silent curses.
Every drop of blood that the priests took from Rufo's body would be a little less of Tuanta Quiro Miancay the imp might recover.
Berdole looked at his partner and took a deep breath, holding up the large needle for Curt to see.
"I cannot watch this," Curt admitted, and he turned away and walked past a couple of the slabs, near the other set of columns.
Berdole laughed, gaining confidence from his friend's weakness, and moved beside the slab. He pushed the shroud away just enough so that he could pall out Rufo's left arm, pushing back the black robes that Rufo had been dressed in and turning the arm so that the exposed wrist was up.
"You might feel a small pinch," the muscular priest joked lightly to the corpse, drawing a disgusted groan from Curt.
From the far rafters, Druzil chewed his bottom lip in frustration as he watched the large needle go against Rufo's exposed wrist. He would have to steal the blood, he decided, every drop of it!
Berdole lined the needle's point up with the vein in Rufo's skinny wrist and angled the instrument for a good puncture. He took another deep breath, looked to Curl's back for support, then started to push.
The cold, pallid hand snapped around in a circular motion, catching the needle and Berdole's hand in a crushing grasp.
"What?" the muscular priest stammered.
Curt turned about to see Berdole hunched low at the slab, both his strong hands wrapped around Rufo's thin forearm, with Rufo's clawlike digits clasping tightly to his lower jaw. This was Berdole the Brutal, the strongest of the strong Oghman's. This was Berdole the Brutal, two hundred and fifty pounds of power, a man who could wrestle a black bear to a standstill!
Yet that skinny arm of Kierkan Rufo - of dead Kierkan Rufo! - jerked Berdole down to the slab as though his muscular frame were no more than a wet towel. Then, to Curt's disbelieving eyes, Rufo's hand pushed up and back. The muscles in Berdole's thick arms strained to their limits, but could not halt the push. Up and over went his chin - it sounded to Curt like the cracking of a large tree right before it tumbled to the ground - and suddenly, the surprised Berdole was staring at the world upside down and backwards.
The Oghman's strong hands let go of the skinny, pallid arm and twitched uncontrollably in the empty air. Rufo's fingers loosened, and Berdole fell backward to the floor, quite dead.
Curt hardly remembered to breathe. He looked from Berdole to the shrouded corpse, and his vision blurred with dizziness wrought of horror as Rufo slowly sat up.
The shroud fell away, and the gaunt, pale man turned his eyes, eyes that simmered red with inner fires, toward Curt.
Druzil clapped his clawed hands together and squealed in happiness, then flapped off for the door.
Curt screamed and fled with all speed, five long strides bringing him near the sunlight, near salvation.
Rufo waved a hand, and the heavy stone door swung shut, slamming with a bang that sounded like a drum of doom. The Oghman threw all his weight against the door, but he might as well have tried to move a mountain. He scratched at the stone until his fingers bled. He glanced back over his shoulder and saw that Rufo was up, walking stiffly toward him.
Curt cried out repeatedly and went for the window, but realized that he had no time. He fell beyond it, backing and watching the corpse, crying for mercy and for Oghma to be with him.
Then the side wall was against his back; he had nowhere to run. Curt caught his breath finally, and remembered who he was. He presented his holy symbol, a scroll of silver on a chain about his neck, and called to Oghma.
"Be gone!" Curt cried at Rufo. "In the name of Oghma, evil undead thing, get you back!"
Rufo didn't flinch. He was ten steps away. Nine steps away. He staggered suddenly as he crossed in front of the window, as though he had been burned on the side. But the light was meager, and the monster passed beyond it.
Curt began a frantic chant of a spell. He felt strangely disconnected from his god, though, as if Rufo's mere presence had despoiled this place. Still he chanted, summoning his powers.
He felt a sting in his lower back and jerked suddenly, his spell disrupted. He turned to see the bat-winged imp, snickering wickedly as it flew away,
"What horror is this?" Curt cried. Rufo was there then, and the terrified man swung his lantern out at the monster.
Rufo caught him by the wrist and easily held the makeshift weapon at bay. Curt punched out with his other hand, connecting solidly on Rufo's chin, knocking Rufo's head to the side.
Rufo calmly turned back to him. Curt made to punch again, but Rufo hooked his arm under the man's, brought his skinny fingers around Curt's back, and grabbed the man's hair on the opposite side of his head. With terrifying strength, Rufo pulled Curt's head to the side, pressed Curt's cheek against his own shoulder, laying bare the side of the man's neck.
Curt thought that Rufo would simply snap that neck, as he had done to Berdole, but the Oghman learned better when Rufo opened his mouth, revealing a set of canine fangs, half an inch longer than the rest of his teeth.
With a look of supreme hunger, Rufo bent over and bit down on Curt's neck, opening the jugular. Curt was screaming, but Rufo, feasting on the warm blood, heard none of it
It was ecstacy for the monster, the satiation of a hunger more powerful than anything he had ever known in life. It was impossibly sweet. It was ...
Rufo's mouth began to burn. The sweet blood became acidic.
With a roar of outrage, Rufo spun away and heaved the man away with the arm still hooked behind Curt's back. The poor man flew head over heels, his back striking the nearest column. He slid to the floor and lay very still. He felt nothing in his lower body, but his chest was on fire, burning with poison.
"What have you done?" Kierkan Rufo demanded, looking to the rafters and the perched imp.
A creature of the horrid lower planes, Druzil was not usually afraid of anything this world could present to him. The imp was afraid now, justifiably afraid of this thing that Kierkan Rufo had become. "I wanted to help you," Druzil explained. "He could not be allowed to escape."
"You tainted his blood!" Rufo roared. "His blood," the monster said more quietly, longingly. "I need ... I need."
Rufo looked back to Curt, but the light of life had gone from the man's eyes.
Rufo roared again, a horrible, unearthly sound.
"There are more," Druzil promised. 'There are many more, not far away!"
A strange look came over Rufo then. lie looked to his bare arms, held them up in front of his face, as though he had realized for the first time that something very unusual had happened to him.
"Blood?" he asked more than stated, and he put a plaintive look Druzil's way.
Druzil's bulbous eyes seemed to come farther out of their sockets as the imp recognized the sincere confusion on the dead Rufo's face. "Do you not understand what has happened to you?" Druzil cried excitedly.
Rufo went to take a steadying breath, but then realized that he wasn't breathing at all. Again that plaintive, questioning look fell over Druzil, who seemed to have the answers.
"You drank of Tuanta Quiro Miancay," the imp squealed. "The Most Fatal Horror, the ultimate chaos, and thus you have become the ultimate perversion of humanity!"
Still Rufo did not seem to understand.
"The ultimate perversion!" Druzil said again, as though that should explain everything. "The antithesis of life itself!"