by Tim Waggoner
Qarakh got his saber up in time to meet Alexander’s strike, but as disoriented as he was, he wasn’t prepared to counter the strength of the blow. The saber went tumbling out of his hand. He jumped backward just as the Ventrue slashed at his midsection. The tip of the blade sliced through his leather vest and cut a line across the flesh beneath, but it was a minor wound and healed almost immediately.
Despite the smith’s promise, Qarakh felt no stronger than he had before his vision of the Grove of Shadows.
… you shall be bonded to the land, and as long as you remain in direct physical contact with it, you shall be able to draw upon my power…
Qarakh understood then what he needed to do. Alexander rushed forward with inhuman speed, sword now held in a two-handed grip over his head, ready to bring the blade down like an ax upon his opponent. Qarakh fell into crouching position and pressed his bare hand to the earth. Power surged into his being, unlike anything he had ever known before. It was beyond the heady sensation of blood gushing down his throat, beyond the exhilaration of riding into battle upon the back of a hardy steed, beyond the wild abandon of being swept up in the hunt.
Is this what Alexander feels? Qarakh thought. No wonder he believes he is unstoppable.
Qarakh’s perceptions altered, and suddenly Alexander was moving no more swiftly than an ordinary Cainite. As the Venture brought his sword down—clearly intending to cleave Qarakh in twain, the Mongol warrior reached up with his free hand and caught Alexander’s wrists in an iron grip. Qarakh’s Beast howled with delight while the prince’s eyes widened in surprise, but before he had a chance to react, the Mongol warrior twisted the Ventrue’s wrists as hard as he could. Alexander cried out in pain and dropped his sword. Qarakh then yanked Alexander in the other direction. Off balance and confused, the prince slammed into the ground and lay there, stunned.
Qarakh’s first impulse was to grab the Ventrue’s sword, rush over and cut off Alexander’s head, but he knew that if he removed his hand from the ground, he would lose the strength and speed granted by the dark god who dwelled in the Grove of Shadows. Without that power, he would be no match for Alexander. What he needed to do was free his hands so he could fight while still maintaining physical contact with the earth. But how could he—
And then it came to him. As Alexander struggled to rise, Qarakh took his hand away from the ground. He felt a sudden loss as energy drained out of him and his perceptions returned to normal. Alexander seemed to leap to his feet; he came striding toward Qarakh with death in his eyes.
The Gangrel sat back and reached for his left boot. He didn’t have time to be neat about this. He gripped the leather and tore it to pieces and then did the same to his right boot. Scraps of shredded leather clung to his feet, but for the most part they were now bare.
Alexander bent down and retrieved his sword so swiftly that it appeared the blade flew upward into his waiting hand. But before the Ventrue could strike, Qarakh planted his feet on the ground and stood up. Strength surged through him once more, and Alexander again moved at what appeared to Qarakh to be normal speed.
As the Ventrue drew back his sword for another blow, Qarakh stepped toward Alexander, moving in so close that the prince no longer had room to wield his weapon. Before Alexander could do anything, Qarakh grabbed him by the throat and squeezed as hard as he could, concentrating all the power granted him by the smith into his hands. At the very last, he hoped to snap Alexander’s neck and render him helpless long enough to finish off the ancient Cainite. Though as strong as Qarakh felt, he wouldn’t have been surprised if he severed Alexander’s head with his bare hands, just like a child popping off the head of a flower with a flick of his thumb.
Yes! his Beast urged. Do it now!
Alexander dropped his sword once more and tried to pull Qarakh’s hands away from his throat, but he was unable to. The Ventrue’s face grew red, then purple, and his hate-filled eyes bulged forth from their sockets. He snarled and spat, a wild animal caught in a trap it could not escape. He then balled his hands into fists and slammed them into Qarakh’s ears.
Bright bursts of light flashed behind the Mongol’s eyes, and his ears roared with a sound not unlike the breaking waves he’d heard while in the Grove of Shadows. Alexander continued hitting him, but Qarakh ignored the pain and continued to squeeze. He thought he could feel the bones of Alexander’s neck grind and begin to give way under the pressure. A few more moments and the battle would be finished.
As if realizing this as well, Alexander stopped striking Qarakh’s head. He gripped the Mongol’s sides and then lifted him off the ground as easily as a mortal might lift a small child. Qarakh’s feet were no longer touching the earth.
He continued to choke Alexander, but his hands were far weaker than they had been a second ago, and the Ventrue no longer appeared to be in distress. His usual Cainite pallor returned to his face, and he smiled.
“You are as great a deceiver as I, Qarakh the Untamed.” His voice was a raspy whisper at first, but as he spoke, it gradually returned to normal, the internal wounds Qarakh had inflicted healing with supernatural swiftness. “Only sorcery could allow you to stand against me as an equal. It seems your Telyav friends decided to borrow a page from Greek legend, eh, Antaeus?”
Qarakh had no idea to what legend the Ventrue referred, and he didn’t care. He needed to break of free of Alexander and get his feet back on the ground once more. Qarakh hit, kicked and clawed, but no matter how much he struggled, he couldn’t loosen the prince’s grip. Alexander continued to hold him in the air, only inches above the ground. But inches or miles, it made no difference. If Qarakh couldn’t touch the earth, he couldn’t draw on the smith god’s power.
“It appears we have reached an impasse,” Alexander said. “Like a man who has caught hold of a poisonous snake just behind the head, I am safe as long as I maintain my grip, but if I put you down to reach for my sword, you will bite me.”
Qarakh let go of Alexander’s throat and clawed at his eyes, but the Ventrue turned his head back and forth with such speed that all Qarakh managed to do was scratch the prince’s cheeks. Vitae welled forth from the gouges, the scent different from any Cainite blood Qarakh had ever smelled before. This was vitae aged like the finest of wines for two millennia, suffused with time and power. The Mongol began to salivate, and he heard once more the words of prophecy given to him by the ancient Cainite at the Obertus monastery.
Victory is in the blood.
Qarakh realized then that the Cainite with the stars in his eyes had not been speaking of diablerizing Aajav; he had been referring to the vitae of another.
Alexander’s eyes grew wide with fear, and Qarakh knew the Ventrue sensed what he was thinking. But unless he could find a way to free himself from Alexander’s grip, he could not—
Free me! the Beast roared inside him. I will slay the Ventrue, but only if you release me from my chains!
Giving in to the Beast would mean allowing himself to fall into unchecked frenzy. Qarakh thought of Wilhelmina and the awful transformation she had suffered. A similar fate might well await him if he were to give his Beast the freedom it desired.
Release me!
Qarakh inhaled the heady bouquet of Alexander’s blood. He had come too far, fought too hard, sacrificed too much to turn back now. He freed his Beast.
At last!
Qarakh’s body shimmered as it shifted into wolf form. The alteration in size and mass dislodged Alexander’s grip, and the gray wolf fell, landing all four feet upon the ground. Power flooded the wolf’s body, and it lunged forward and fastened its jaws around Alexander’s leg before the Ventrue had a chance to move. The wolf bit through boot leather and sank its teeth into the flesh beneath until its teeth found bone. Vitae, hot and sweet beyond measure, gushed into his mouth, the taste and the power it contained driving the wolf to even greater frenzy. Alexander screamed in pain as the wolf—infused with the strength given to him by the god of the grove—bit clean through the bone, severing
the leg at the calf.
Alexander tottered and fell over on his side, and the wolf was instantly upon him. The Beast—for that was truly what Qarakh had become—clamped down on the Ventrue’s throat and began to draw forth the prince’s life essence in great, gasping, ravenous gulps. The Beast sensed its prey attempting to resist, felt it grabbing fistfuls of fur in an attempt to dislodge the predator that was stealing its vitae, but it was no use. The Beast had already drained too much, and the prey had grown too weak to defend itself any longer. Alexander’s hands released their grip on Qarakh’s wolfish hide. The former Prince of Paris slumped to the ground as the Beast continued to fill its belly full to bursting.
When it was done, the Beast lifted its blood-soaked muzzle skyward and released a howl that shook the very stars in the heavens.
Alexander was floating, drifting, almost weightless… He opened his eyes and saw a gray sky above him, and surrounding him in all directions, a sea of crimson.
“No…” he whispered as the first of the blood-swimmers came toward him. As it drew closer, he saw that the creature had Rudiger’s face, and it was grinning. The bloody sea churned as thousands of sharp-toothed, fish-eyed monsters surged toward the man that had slain them in the world of the living. And as the monstrous apparitions tore into him, Alexander’s last thought was a surprisingly tender one of a woman called Rosamund.
And then he thought no more.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Qarakh, in man-form once more, stood looking down at the corpse of Alexander. The body of the ancient Cainite was rapidly falling away to dust, and in moments it would be gone. He understood that he had somehow defeated the Ventrue, but he couldn’t quite remember how. Then he looked at the backs of his hands and saw they were covered with wiry gray-black hair that was almost but not quite fur. He ran his tongue over his teeth and found them still sharper. He’d allowed his Beast to take control, slaying and—from the energized way he felt—diablerizing his foe.
He looked around at the knights and tribesmen still trapped by the Telyavs’ spell. The earth that held them was no longer a wet mire but had become dry and cracked, the grass brown and dead. The Telyavs’ enchantment had run its course.
The soldiers of both armies were looking at Qarakh in stunned silence, and then the tribe—led by Alessandro—let out a chorus of cheers. Realizing the battle was lost, the knights struggled to free themselves from the ground that encased them, tearing up chunks of soil with their bare hands. The Gangrel, however, had no such need to rely on brute strength to win free. The same blood gift that allowed them to inter themselves within the ground allowed them to slip out of the earth with ease.
“Slay the Christians!” Arnulf bellowed, waving his ax over his head. Wilhelmina—looking more bestial than ever—growled her assent, and the Gangrel fell upon the knights, most of whom were still stuck in the ground.
It was a slaughter.
Qarakh merely stood and watched as his people wallowed in an orgy of bloodletting. Even Alessandro, plucked from the ground by Arnulf, was soon covered with vitae as he chopped his sword into the neck of one knight after the other. Arnulf’s ax was a blood-smeared blur as the Goth warrior reduced enemy Cainites to wet piles of ragged meat and splintered bone. Wilhelmina buried her snout deep within the bellies of her victims and thrashed her head about like a hound worrying a well-chewed and beloved bone as she sought the tender meat of their hearts.
Despite the savagery surrounding Qarakh, his Beast remained silent. Perhaps it was finally sated—at least for the time being.
Qarakh saw a few knights dig free of their earthen prisons and flee the battlefield on foot. His tribesmen chased after most of them, but one or two escaped without pursuit. Let them go, Qarakh thought. The war was over.
He sensed someone approaching and turned to see two robed figures—one in black, the other in brown—coming from the direction of the nearby woods. One was Malachite, but the other’s face was hidden by a hood. Qarakh assumed the Nosferatu’s companion to be one of the Telyavs, but which?
“My congratulations on your victory,” Malachite said.
Qarakh felt a darkness stir somewhere deep within him, and he heard a whisper of an echo of a thought: Traitor. The voice was Alexander’s. He told himself that it was only his imagination, that his mind had not yet settled after experiencing the vision of the grove, of being filled with the smith god’s power and diablerizing Alexander. He almost believed it, too.
The Telyav reached up with age-gnarled hands and pulled back her hood. Her skin was wrinkled, eyes receded into the sockets, their bright emerald green now dull and cloudy. What hair remained was thin and white, no longer a thick, lustrous red. But when she smiled with her dry, cracked lips, a ghost of her wry humor was still there.
“You may have to start calling me Grandmother,” Deverra said, her voice soft and quavering.
Qarakh wanted to ask her what had happened, but he couldn’t find the words.
“You paid your price to Telyavel,” she said. “And I had to pay mine. I still retain my immortality, but my appearance will forevermore reflect my true age.”
Qarakh reached out to take her hand, and though she tried to pull away, he grabbed it and held it gently but firmly.
“The other Telyavs?” he asked, fighting to keep his voice steady.
“Recovering. The enchantment of the land cost some of them a great deal. Some may not survive much longer.”
“I’m sorry.”
Deverra nodded and squeezed his hand.
The three of them stood and watched as the tribal warriors finished their grisly work. It didn’t take long, and when the last knight finally lay slain, Alessandro, Arnulf and Wilhelmina walked over to join their khan. The trio gave Deverra puzzled looks but didn’t remark upon her transformation.
The battlefield was littered with severed limbs, detached heads, strewn viscera, abandoned weapons, spent arrows and dead horses. Tribesmen sat among the carnage, talking and laughing, already recounting exaggerated war stories. Those still in wolf form lapped at puddles of vitae or gnawed on bones.
“The tribe has won,” Alessandro said, his voice full of pride. “Livonia shall remain a free land, thanks to you, my khan.”
Arnulf looked on, then without a word turned away from Qarakh. He became a huge black wolf by his third step and was gone.
“Yes, it was.” Qarakh couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of his voice. Still holding Deverra’s hand, he looked up at the stars that filled the night sky. He had seen similar lights in the eyes of the ancient Cainite outside the Obertus monastery, as well as in those of the dark god who had helped him achieve such a costly victory.
Great Father Tengri, he thought. What has my tribe become? What have I become?
But the stars did not answer, choosing instead to remain as they always had: silent, distant and cold.