by Nathan Long
Ulrika smiled at that. She would rather trust her nose. Sigmar was not likely to favour a woman of her nature with any guidance in the near future.
The corpse reek grew stronger as they continued west through a tree-choked dell, and then up another low hill and through a line of overgrown cypress trees that overlooked a bowl-shaped valley. Here the smell hit Ulrika square in the face, and even Holmann jerked his head back. It seemed to be all around them, denser than the fog.
‘Sigmar’s mercy,’ he murmured. ‘The stench again.’
‘Aye,’ said Ulrika, grimacing. ‘I think we have found the place.’
They looked down into the fog-wreathed valley, the sides of which were ringed with cracked and crooked monuments like the sharp teeth that filled the maw of a remora. At the bottom – the throat – a cluster of derelict mausoleums surrounded a long-dry fountain with a headless statue of Ulric the Wolf God rising from its centre.
The templar pointed with his lantern. ‘One of those tombs, I’ll warrant you, houses more than its rightful occupants.’
‘Aye,’ said Ulrika. ‘I believe you’re right.’
Holmann started down into the valley, drawing his basket-hilted long sword. ‘Then come. Let us evict them.’
Ulrika paused. She was not at all sure this was a good idea. Unlike the witch hunter, she had seen what the monster who had killed the Lahmians was capable of. It had torn vampires with centuries of experience to shreds. She knew she was a skilled fighter, and her new powers gave her great strength, but she wasn’t so confident that she was willing to go up against such a thing alone. And she would be alone. Holmann was brave and true, but no human, not even a Templar of Sigmar, would have the necessary strength to fight it.
‘Herr templar, wait,’ she whispered, hurrying after him and unsheathing her sabre. ‘We may face overwhelming odds. Let us reconnoitre and see if we should come back with reinforcements.’
Holmann turned, his brows lowered, but then he softened. ‘Your pardon, fraulein,’ he said. ‘I take you into danger without a by-your-leave.’ He smiled. ‘You make such a brave show that I momentarily forgot that you are still but a–’
Ulrika silenced him with a gesture. She had heard a noise. She turned and looked behind her. There was a movement in the mist at the top of the hill. ‘Something above us,’ she hissed.
Holmann raised his lantern and peered down the hill. ‘Below us too,’ he said.
She turned to look, but saw nothing. Then a movement to the left caught her eye. A dark shape had slipped behind a shattered monument. She looked right. More shapes were advancing – vanishing behind graves and statues the moment she spied them.
‘More to either side,’ she murmured.
Holmann set his lantern on a cracked marble plaque and drew a heavy pistol. ‘We are surrounded.’
Ulrika extended her senses. The death reek she had come to associate with the killer was wafting from the hidden figures. They were ripe with it but, to her surprise, they did not seem to be dead themselves. She could hear their hoarse breathing and their feverishly beating hearts. ‘Aye,’ she said. ‘But by what?’
‘I will inquire,’ said Holmann, then strode forwards and stood tall. ‘Reveal yourselves, ye skulking creepers!’ he barked as Ulrika cringed. ‘Be ye man, beast or fiend, step into the light in Sigmar’s name!’
Ulrika shook her head, bemused. That was one way to do it.
There was no reply to his command but the echo of his voice ringing back from the far side of the valley and the whispering patter of stealthy feet coming ever closer. Ulrika counted the low-burning heart-fires that swarmed around them – ten, fifteen, twenty – like fireflies drawn to a torch. She stepped back and bumped into Holmann, who was looking out into the darkness in the opposite direction.
He looked over his shoulder at her. ‘My lady,’ he said. ‘I am shamed that I have led one so fair to so foul an end, and I hope you can forgive me.’
Ulrika warmed at his words, and she fought down an urge to kiss him, then bite him. ‘Let us not speak of endings and death, templar,’ she said. ‘Let us instead fight and win, so that you may compliment me again another day.’
Holmann’s stony face split into a grin. ‘With a will, fraulein,’ he said. ‘May Sigmar watch over us both.’
Then, with ear-piercing shrieks, the lurking shadows attacked. Bounding from behind gravestones and trees and leaping over fallen columns and faceless statues came a hideous horde of hunched, loping naked things – men once, but men no longer. Their limbs were white and gnarled, their hands hook-clawed talons, their cadaverous heads bald and criss-crossed with scars and lesions. Teeth filed to points flashed in their howling mouths, and eyes lit with mindless madness blazed in their sunken sockets.
Holmann’s pistol cracked and one went down, spindle limbs flailing, then he threw aside the gun and tore one of the glass vials from his bandolier. A creature fell screaming as he hurled it at its face and it shattered, splashing the thing with blessed water that ate the flesh from its bones.
Ulrika spit another on her sabre. It did not even try to block, but as she fought to pull the point free, three more were on her, pummelling her. Only her inhuman speed and strength saved her, allowing her to dodge one while shoving another into the third. She cleared her blade at last and gutted the other two, then gashed out the throat of the other with the claws of her free hand.
Only as she drove back the next wave did she remember what company she kept, and drew back her claws with a painful effort. Her fangs had extended too. She retracted them and glanced over her shoulder to see if Holmann had noticed. He was too busy keeping half a dozen of the things at bay with his sword and more vials of blessed water. What a foolish predicament. She would have to fight with sabre alone, and remember not to show too much of her strength.
More monsters came in from every side. She drew her dagger and fought Tilean-style, blocking her opponents’ claws with the short blade while running them through under their raised arms with her sabre. The fiends fell back screaming with each impalement, but half got up again, so lost to bloodlust that their wounds seemed only to goad them.
‘With the power of Sigmar, I cleanse thee from his land!’ roared Holmann. He hurled another vial and two more ghouls fell back, screaming, as their flesh bubbled.
‘What are these things?’ Ulrika called, gagging at their stench as she cut them down.
‘Ghouls,’ said Holmann. ‘Fallen men. Eaters of the dead.’
Ulrika was embarrassed. A human telling a vampire about the children of the night? And yet, was it so strange? Krieger’s knowledge had not been poured into her with his blood – only his hunger. She had not risen from her deathbed instantly wise in all the things a vampire should know. She knew more of these filthy scavengers from the battlefield stories of her father’s soldiers than she had yet learned from Countess Gabriella. Haunters of graveyards, cannibals, feral servants of vampires and necromancers, they were the lowest a living man could go, lower even than mutants, who at least kept their intelligence.
She decapitated one and turned to face two more, but there was a sudden tearing pain in her right calf. She looked down. A ghoul she thought she had killed had its filed teeth deep in her leg. Cursing, she hacked down at it, cleaving its skull. The other two leapt. She brought up her sabre, but too late. They slammed her down and the three of them bounced down the hill in a jumble, with more bounding after her.
‘Fraulein!’ cried Holmann.
She slammed to a halt against a granite grave marker with stunning force, and saw through the tangled limbs of her opponents the witch hunter fighting through five of the monsters to come to her rescue.
‘No! Protect yourself!’ she shouted, but he didn’t hear her.
A ghoul raked him from behind and he staggered forwards, lashing around him desperately. Another grabbed his wrist as he was about to throw a
nother glass vial. A third bit his shoulder.
‘No!’ Ulrika shrieked.
She surged to her feet, claws and fangs shooting out, and threw the ghouls who held her aside like they were children. More leapt at her, ripping her clothes and flesh. She gutted one and tore the arm off another as she rushed up the hill.
Holmann was down, clubbing in all directions with the butt of a wooden stake and trying to free his sword from a ghoul’s abdomen as three more tore at him.
‘Get off him!’ Ulrika screamed.
She hacked off a ghoul’s head and leapt over two more to land behind the one on Holmann’s chest. She tore its throat out with her claws and threw it over her shoulder, then slashed left and right with her sabre. The other ghouls scattered and she hauled Holmann up. He was staring at her through half-conscious eyes. Had he seen?
‘Can you fight?’ she asked.
He only stared, his mouth hanging slack. His clothes were in tatters and he had bite and claw marks all over his body.
A ghoul slashed Ulrika’s arm. She turned and fanned it away. The others were closing, snarling, still more than a dozen. She lashed out and the ones in front of her danced back, but those behind attacked Holmann. She spun to fend them off, and more came in from another angle. It was impossible. She couldn’t fight them all, not and keep Holmann alive.
With a curse, she tucked her left shoulder against the templar’s belt buckle and heaved him up off his feet so that his head and torso hung down over her back.
‘Away, filth!’ she shouted, then flailed out at the ghouls and ran up the hill. Even with her unnatural strength, Holmann was heavy – taller than her and twice as broad – but she would not slow. She would not leave him to such a death.
She ran through the line of cypresses and turned east, towards the stone wall that separated the cemetery from the temple quarter. Unencumbered, the ghouls paced her easily, but she kept her sword flashing around her and they did not close. Like wolves chasing an elk, they were content to wait and let her tire, then pounce when she stumbled.
And she would stumble soon, she knew, for the fight and the wounds she had taken had weakened her. Already her legs were buckling under Holmann’s weight. She looked ahead for the wall, but could only see more hills and graves before her, receding into the mist. She would not make it.
Then salvation appeared – an old mausoleum, weathered but intact, except for the door, which was missing. She turned her steps for the yawning black rectangle, finding new strength with her renewed hope. The ghouls saw what she intended and tried to get ahead of her, but she hacked at them savagely and they fell back.
With a final burst of speed she ran down a grassy bank and shoved through the mausoleum’s open door, the ghouls baying at her heels like albino hounds. She dumped Holmann roughly on the leaf-strewn floor then turned to face them. Some had already made it inside, but these she cut down swiftly and stepped into the door, kicking more back and blocking it.
‘Come and die!’ she snarled.
They did just that, but it didn’t matter how many came at her now. In the narrow confines of the door they could no longer flank her, and they could not avoid her flashing sabre. One after the other they fell back, missing fingers, arms and eyes, and dying of wounds that bled from both the chest and the back. Finally, after a few furious moments, they had had enough, and ran howling with rage and fear back the way they had come, leaving their dead and dying behind.
Ulrika stepped out and finished off the last of these, then made sure her fangs and claws were retracted, and went back into the mausoleum to see how badly Holmann was hurt.
He was standing, leaning against the crypt’s central sarcophagus, his broad-brimmed hat lost and his head bare, and stared at her with wild grey eyes.
She stopped, cold dread filling her chest. ‘Templar Holmann,’ she said, as evenly as she could. ‘Are… are you well?’
Holmann shoved away from the sarcophagus and stepped forwards into a shaft of moonlight that streamed down through a hole in the ceiling of the tomb. He raised his sword and pointed it at her. ‘You are one of them!’ he cried. ‘You are a vampire!’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CLAWS IN THE NIGHT
Ulrika stepped back. ‘You are mistaken, mein herr. In the excitement you must have imagined–’
‘I know what I saw!’ he shouted, then pointed again, his sword trembling. ‘Look! Your hands still drip with their blood! And no mortal woman could have carried me so!’
Ulrika retreated again, her heart sinking. ‘Templar Holmann, Friedrich, please.’
‘Call me not by my name, whore of darkness!’ He roared. ‘I see your ways now! You have seduced me with your soft words and foul sorcery! You have tricked me into believing that–’ He choked on the words. ‘Into betraying my oaths! You have tainted me with your corruption!’
It tortured her to see his pain. This was exactly what she hadn’t wanted to happen. ‘Templar, please,’ Ulrika pleaded. ‘Let me explain.’
‘There is nothing to explain!’ Holmann bellowed, raising his sword and pulling one of the glass vials from his bandolier. ‘You are fiend in female shape! An enemy of the Empire and humanity itself! In Sigmar’s name, I shall destroy you!’
He threw the vial and lurched at her, stabbing clumsily, hampered by his wounds and his rage.
She dodged both attacks easily. ‘But I saved you!’
‘Another seduction!’ he snarled, stabbing again. ‘You save me to falsely win my loyalty! You mean to make a pawn of me. A besotted spy that would do your bidding against my masters!’
‘I don’t,’ said Ulrika, but she knew it was no use. He was a Templar of Sigmar. His beliefs were too strongly held. He would never see her as anything other than a monster. Again the temptation to feed on him came to her, but she cast it away. She would not be what he called her.
Of course, that left killing him. There was no question that was what she should do. He knew her secret. He knew she was in some way connected to the vampire women that had so recently been exposed. He knew everything she knew about the murder in the plague house and the secret in the cemetery. He had to die, and he would be easy to kill. He could barely lift his sword or throw his glass grenades. He was limping and slow. She had only to knock aside his blade and thrust him through the heart with her sabre and it would be over.
He came forwards once more, throwing another vial and flailing wildly. She knocked the vial out of the air with her sabre and sidestepped his attack. He stumbled and caught himself against the wall. His neck was exposed. A swift chop and he would be dead. Her hand clenched her hilt, but for some reason she could not force her arm to move, instead she only stood there and watched him recover.
‘I’m sorry to have disappointed you, Templar Holmann,’ she said, then turned and fled out of the mausoleum and into the cold black night.
Ulrika cursed herself as she ran. Was there ever a bigger fool? She should have killed Holmann when she first met him in the sewer. Failing that, she should have killed him in the plague house. What possessed her to try to befriend a witch hunter of all people? She could say that it was to gain knowledge and use him to get her into places she would have found it hard to enter, but that was little more than a rationalisation. Was it because she was lonely for company other than Gabriella? Was it because she missed Felix? And why hadn’t she killed him just now when she’d had a perfect opportunity? Was it because she liked him, or was it only pride? Had she spared him only to prove him wrong?
At least she had given him no clues to follow. He could not follow her back to Aldrich’s house. She would never have to see him again.
And why would she want to, she thought peevishly? He had tried to kill her only moments after she had saved his life. Of course, she knew his reasons. She had revealed herself to be a monster, by his reckoning, but he hadn’t shown even a moment’s regret before he at
tacked, only blind, savage rage. He had fought the ghouls with less passion.
Of course she knew the reason for that too. The ghouls hadn’t pretended to be anything other than what they were. They hadn’t won his heart.
Three houses from Guildmaster Aldrich’s home, Ulrika knew there was something wrong. Faint screams reached her sensitive ears as she trotted down the wet cobbled street, screams she recognised – Imma, and Gabriella, frightened and enraged, then a splintering crash and an animal roar.
She sprinted ahead, drawing her sabre. Something was attacking her mistress! She must protect her!
From the front, the rich house appeared quiet. The door was closed and the drive empty, but shrieks and crashes came from the upper floors, and as she ran up the front steps, she saw a smear of blood on the threshold.
She tried the door. It was locked tight. She stepped back and kicked it near the latch, using all her inhuman strength. It flew inwards, wood splintering, lock parts flying, and she launched herself through it, sword at the ready.
Aldrich’s disapproving butler was dead in the foyer, slumped against the wall with his throat torn out. She cursed and leapt up the stairs four at a time. At the first-floor landing she found Aldrich himself, his nightshirt and his belly ripped asunder and his intestines spilling out across the carpet. He had a sword in his limp hand. It didn’t appear that he’d had time to use it.
She pounded down the hall towards the screams and the sounds of violence, then slammed through Countess Gabriella’s door into…
Blackness.
Not since before Krieger’s kiss had she been so blind. She could see nothing, not the room, not her sabre held in front of her, not the open door behind her. She froze for an instant, frightened and disorientated. Her night vision was no help. It was as if someone had thrown a sack over her head. Her other senses still worked, however. She could hear shrieks and roars and furniture smashing all around her, and she could smell – blood, smoke, Imma’s fear, Gabriella, and over all of those, like a filthy, choking blanket, the smell of a battlefield full of corpses after a week in the rain. The killer. The killer was here!