Another wraith came at me and I whirled around with my stake raised, ready to send it to ash.
But my stake never fell. It was Connery.
But it was not Connery as I knew him. His skin was several shades paler than normal, his mouth hung open, his movements, though still quick and strong, were now jerky and puppet-like. But the biggest change was his eyes. Their vivid green had faded, the spark and animation in them had gone, replaced by a blank void that saw me but reflected nothing. There was no personality behind the eyes, only the will of his new master, the King of Nightmares. Connery had been turned into a Night Wraith.
It had always been a risk; he had known that, I had known that, we had all known that. In fact, more than a risk, it had been almost an inevitability. Perhaps we had kidded ourselves that there was some other way this might have gone. But accepting the possibility and seeing it were two different things. To see the man I loved – the only man I had ever loved – like this, to see the wit, the intelligence and the tenderness wiped from him. To see those eyes that had looked on me with love now look on me without even recognition. It was more than I could bear. It was a stab to the heart and a punch to the gut, and everything else ceased to matter.
I knew what I had to do. Connery wouldn’t thank me for leaving him alive like this. We hadn’t talked about it but I knew my man well enough to know that. He would have asked me to do it, he would have trusted me to do it, trusted that I was strong enough to stake him through the heart and remove him from the living death into which he had been plunged.
But I couldn’t.
However painful it was for me to see him like this, I couldn’t kill him.
“Connery…” My stake arm dropped as hot tears streaked my face and my whole body sagged. I was beaten. What was there left to fight for?
But I did fight. Maybe I couldn’t kill him, but as he came for me, I tried to fight back. I knocked away his grasping arms – those arms that had held me. I smacked away his face as he tried to bite me – the man whose bite I had once welcomed. I fought, but to what end – my heart wasn’t in it, I couldn’t kill him, and wraiths never give up.
The strong hands that I knew so well now grabbed me, pinning my arms to my sides and dragging me towards the center of the chamber. Now I didn’t even try to fight back, my world had imploded and I no longer had the strength to try and save anyone else’s.
The protective ring of wraiths around the King of Nightmares parted as we approached, Connery taking me to his master to be drained. The thought no longer disgusted me the way it once had – I had seen something far worse.
The King loomed above me. Up close, he was still more terrifying. I stared into the monstrous face, its thin, pasty skin stretched over prominent bones. The blue fire in the black eyes now seemed tinged with red as he became excited at the prospect of drinking the blood that had twice before eluded him. His mouth opened wide, enveloping me in the foul stench of stale blood and death as I stared at the jagged teeth that protruded from blue gums. It was hard to tell if all the teeth were fangs or if they were simply so broken that it no longer mattered, he could use them all to tear a ragged hole in my throat.
Connery shoved me forwards into the reach of his master, whose bony fingers closed tight about me. It was not a death I would have chosen, but by far the worst part of it was knowing that Connery had delivered me into it, and that he had an eternity of servitude ahead of him, doing things that the Connery I knew would never countenance.
A leering grin stretched the white skin of the King’s face into a ghoulish imitation of a smile as he looked at me and his nostrils twitched again at the smell of the blood in my veins.
“Aaaat… Laaaaaassssst…” They were the only words I had heard the creature speak.
He lifted me up towards his mouth and I wrenched my head around. At least I didn’t have to look at him. I screwed my eyes tight shut.
My body jerked in the King’s grasp and I opened my eyes. On the King’s thin forearm, another hand rested, holding him back.
I looked back at the owner of the arm and saw Connery, his eyes still blank and wraith-like, but his face creased in confusion.
“Connery?” I dared to dream, but there was no sign of recognition in his face. “Connery!” I snapped – sometimes you have to yell at a man to make them listen.
Suddenly, Connery snatched me from the hands of his stunned master, catching the King of Nightmares unawares.
“No.” The word was choked out of Connery’s mouth. His face was in flux, his eyes struggling to reassert some sense of self. He wasn’t my Connery yet, but he wasn’t a wraith, either, or at least not one who could obey without question. He didn’t know who I was, but he could not let me be hurt, even if he did not know why.
But if Connery was confused then the confusion of the King was greater still. This did not happen. But first things first, he was still determined to drink my blood. Two more wraiths grabbed me from behind as I struggled. But I needn’t have worried. Connery was there in a moment, hurling them aside and wresting me from their clutches. Another wraith approached and he sent it flying, protecting me as he always had and as he always would.
Now the King himself reached for me, forced to pick up his own food for once. But Connery was there again, battling against the will of his master, putting himself between me and the King of Nightmares. I saw Connery’s body flinch and jerk, and a moment later, he cried out in pain, clutching at his head. I could only guess at the mental battle going on. He belonged to the King, he was a wraith, but he would not obey, something within him, something that had survived the terrible conversion to what he now was, still stood strong. Something that I could only call Love.
The King snarled with anger. It did not seem to me that this was about me anymore. He had wanted me but I was by no means ‘important’. Far more important was a wraith who would not obey. Connery had become the new focus of the King’s immediate interest as the fighting in the rest of the room continued. And if the King could not break Connery mentally, then he would do so physically. His arms might be bone thin, but they contained the impossible vampiric strength accrued over millennia of existence. The King lashed out and Connery went flying, his body hitting the wall with a crack.
Amazingly, Connery started to get up again. How much pain wraiths felt, I did not know, but blood was soaking through Connery’s shirt, making it cling to the contours of his muscular body. Seething with rage, the King went after his prey, grabbing Connery, who fought back as best he could through his injuries and through the King’s continued attacks on his mind.
As he punished his disobedient servant, the King had forgotten me. He had turned his back on me as he had on Jack two centuries earlier. And I was human – he would never see me coming.
I pushed my body hard to move faster than I ever had before in my life, and yet I felt that I had never moved slower, as if I was running through water. Past the fighting VTs and wraiths, I ran as if in slow motion, my stake in my hand raising above my head. Ahead of me, I saw Connery scream in pain as the King of Nightmares inflicted fresh physical and mental wounds on his body. I leapt up to reach the broad back of the King, which seemed so far above me. He jerked as I landed, only now aware of my presence. Dropping Connery’s broken body to the ground, he reached a pair of huge clawed hands back to tear me free.
But he wasn’t fast enough.
I still don’t know how I was faster than the King of Nightmares. Perhaps being human paid off again and he could not locate me. Perhaps, sometimes, the fates align and the good guys get to win.
Either way, I drove the stake down into his back with all my strength. Someone else might have struggled to find the heart from that angle. But I am Ursula Lee, I am a bounty hunter specializing in vampires, and this is what I do.
The King exploded in a shower of white ash. I had seen that moment before in my dreams and as I was blown back across the room by the force of it, I could swear that for a moment, I saw Marianne smiling
at me, offering an ‘atta girl’ from across the centuries.
“Ursula.”
My eyes started open. “How long was I out?”
“About five seconds,” said Caldwell, his face badly cut and dripping with blood. “I don’t think you were really ‘out’ at all.”
The room was still chaos. I didn’t know if the wraiths were turning back or if they continued to fight for their dead master, and right at that moment I didn’t care. I raced across the room, pushing through the thick confusion of people to reach the far wall where the spreading of white ash lay thickest.
From behind me, I could hear Caldwell yelling. “Try to keep your blood off the ash, we’re not damn well doing this again.”
But I wasn’t listening. I scooped handfuls of ash away from the body by the wall.
Connery’s eyes were open when I uncovered his face. I couldn’t tell if he was alive or dead, but his eyes were his own. They were green and bright and wonderful, and as tears sprang to my own eyes, I saw his move.
“Connery! Say something!”
His lips moved and a sound barely escaped them. “Ow…”
I laughed. But even as he made the joke, I say his eyes sliding away, his body growing limper. Vampires can only be killed in a few prescribed ways, but if they lose enough blood, then they are unable to heal themselves. Connery seemed to have more blood soaking his clothes than there was inside him. When he could not master Connery’s mind, the King had broken every bone in his body.
I grabbed his head, guiding it to my neck. “Drink.”
Nothing. I was losing him.
I grabbed my knife from my belt and slashed it across my wrist before holding it to his mouth.
“Drink, damn you, drink. Connery?”
Chapter 20
Vampires don’t have funerals, as there’s usually nothing to bury or burn. In the old days, they wouldn’t even stop to remember their dead because they were essentially a solitary people. But the modern vampire, who lived in cities and had friends, has learned from humans that there is a value to memorializing the dead, particularly those dead who lost their lives for a reason.
So many lost their lives during the months of terror under the shadow of the King of Nightmares; vampire and human; those turned into wraiths and those killed by them. The Boy King – now once again the current and only King of Clubs – declared a day of memorial and gave a speech to commemorate all the dead.
It was a good speech. It stressed the positives that had come out of the terror. The resistance and the Court of Clubs had been unexpectedly brought together and that alliance would continue, bringing a real chance of change for the better in the governing of the city. Humans and vampires had worked together to defeat the King of Nightmares, proving that it could be done, and that we were living in an age of inter-species co-operation. Most of all, he said, he had never seen such an outpouring of love for the city that so many vampires had chosen to call home. By vampire terms, it was still a new venture, and that people had fought and died to protect it, showed the cherished place it occupied in the hearts of so many.
“I am sure,” the King concluded, his childish voice ringing out from the Castle of Clubs, “that Lundercity is stronger for having gone through this together.”
None of that mattered to me. All that mattered to me was that I got to watch the speech holding the hand of the man I loved.
Connery kissed me.
“What was that for?” I asked.
“Just to show how much I am in favor of inter-species co-operation. And some other inter-species activities.”
“Aren’t you recovering from major trauma?”
Connery shrugged, wincing slightly. “Yes. But I think I read somewhere that regular sex helps a man recover.”
“I think I’d like to read that myself, first.”
“Sure, just give me a pen and paper.”
I laughed. “Well, I’m recovering from major blood loss, so…”
“You’re never gonna let me live that down, are you?”
I kissed him. “As long as you live, I really don’t mind.”
We were both on the wounded list after that day. Vampires have astonishing powers of healing, but Connery’s injuries had put him out of action for at least a week. My blood had saved him but if Katya hadn’t dragged me off of him then I might have given him more than I could afford to lose.
“Do you think he’s right about Lundercity being stronger now?” I asked.
It was a fair question. The victory had come at a price. Two of the VTs had been killed by wraiths. With the death of their King, the wraiths changed back to the vampires they had been before, which was wonderful, but only served to highlight how many we had killed who might themselves have been saved. There was no bringing back the humans of London Topside on whom the King of Nightmares had gorged himself, and they would be holding their own memorial. The death toll was a significant one and that wasn’t the end of it.
Word had reached us from the Undercity New York resistance – the Circus, as it was called – to tell us that the King of Hearts was preparing for imminent war. The official announcement came not long afterwards. The King might have been holding back while his old adversary was at large, but with the 1st King of Clubs gone, we had effectively cleared the way for invasion. And however much the Boy King said that Lundercity was stronger now for what it had been through, that seemed a largely metaphorical claim. The reality was that Lundercity had had the shit kicked out of it. Its Guards had been decimated by the awkward change in government following the Boy King’s seizing of power – power that had supposedly been his all along – and the campaign against the wraiths. The resistance, too, had suffered losses. The people who stood in defense of the city had never been weaker or more depleted, and were about to face the sternest test of their lives.
“I think we are,” replied Connery.
I shook my head. “Always the optimist.”
Connery sat up in bed, gasping slightly as some internal injury caught him. “You know what I think? Lundercity is like you and me. Yes, we’re a bit beat up right now. We’re a bit weak and feeble, it hurts to move too quickly and one of us is refusing to put out.”
“I’d rather you didn’t die on top of me.”
“But,” Connery went on, “all the same things that hurt us are the things that brought us closer together. So much of what’s made us the couple we are is the bad stuff. We came through it together and we’re stronger for that. Maybe not physically, but stronger as a couple. I think Lundercity is like that.”
I could only sit and smile at him. “Damn, you are sexy when you’re inspiring.”
Connery shot me his best grin. “When I met you, you’d have said that was corny.”
“It still is,” I admitted. “I’ve just grown to love it.”
“Feel better?”
Weirdly, I did. I didn’t know what the coming months had to throw at us, but between us, I felt like we could rise to meet it. The ashes of the King of Nightmares had been distributed as widely as possible to ensure that he was not coming back. There had been some talk of using them to keep the King of Hearts at bay, but the decision was that we could not take such a risk. Sharpe was overseeing the rebuilding of the resistance HQ – although ‘resistance’ was seeming less and less like an appropriate name for what we were. Katya had come through the attack unscathed and had been appointed to the Court of Clubs as advisor and liaison between the King and the resistance. She had also enjoyed a bit more casual sex with Marco before he had headed back to Milan with half the VTs, to see if he could beg more to help in the upcoming war. The commander of the VTs, Anthony, who had fought so bravely against the wraiths, was still in hospital and was yet to come around, but the doctors were now making optimistic noises about his chances.
Maybe we didn’t have much, but what we had, I had faith in. I trusted these people. I believed in us.
“So, it’s seeming like you and me are going to be healed up, just in
time to go get beaten up again,” said Connery.
“Story of my life.” Until recently, that had been my life – I hunted my target, brought him down, rested up, then went after the next one. The life of a bounty hunter. “You ever stop to wonder what the bounty ought to have been on the King of Nightmares? I could have retired on that.”
“I think I did my bit, too.”
I shook my head. “As I remember it, you just lay on the ground bleeding.”
Connery laughed. “Well, I hope you’d at least have shared it.”
I kissed him again. “What’s mine is yours.”
“I like that.” Connery reached into the drawer by his bedside. “I had Katya get this for me. She’s got taste and I trust her judgement, but if you don’t like it, you can blame her.”
“Don’t like what?” I frowned.
“I’d get down on one knee,” Connery continued, matter of factly, “but there’s a danger of me not being able to get back up again. Plus, the screaming pain involved in getting down there might kill the romance of the moment.”
“Connery…” Was this actually happening?
“Ursula Lee…”
“Connery…”
“Ursula Lee, will you do me the…”
“Connery.”
“Will you let me get through this? Ursula Lee, will you do me the honor of becoming my wife.”
The ring stared at me from the box he had taken from the drawer.
“I’m human,” I finally gasped.
“This is a yes or no question. Some people say ‘maybe’ but that’s always struck me as a ‘no’ waiting for a less hurtful moment. ‘I’m human’ is not an acceptable or useful response.”
“But, Connery…”
He took my hand. “I love you. And you love me – whether you like it or not. Nothing else matters. We just had a pretty close call and in a week or so we’re going to war. I don’t know if we’ll get the chance to do this again. But if I’m going to die in battle, then I’d like to know that I’ve made it as inconvenient as possible for you to find another man after I’m gone.”
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