Bloodborn

by Nathan Long

  ‘Open it,’ said Gabriella.

  Ulrika reached for the lock, then paused, frightened of what was to come. It was like opening the door to a wolf pack. She steeled herself and gripped the lock.

  Gabriella kissed Lotte on the cheek as Ulrika turned the latch. ‘Thank you for your service, beloved,’ she whispered, then kicked the door open and shoved the girl out into the seething mob. They roared as she landed among them.

  Ulrika choked at the suddenness of it, and stared as the crowd pounced upon Lotte and bore her up, tearing at her fancy clothes and beating her with their cudgels and tools.

  ‘Burn her!’ shouted the boy called Dortman. ‘Burn the vampire!’

  The blond boy struck Lotte with his stolen poker, breaking her arm with a snap. The maid shrieked with pain.

  ‘Lotte!’ Ulrika cried.

  ‘Sit back, curse you!’ hissed Gabriella. ‘Feet up, and be still!’

  Ulrika clenched her fists but did as she was told, pressing back against the bench and drawing her feet up, then tucking her skirts out of the way. Gabriella mirrored her position on the other bench, and they sat there silent as outside the mob raged around Lotte, kicking and beating her and throwing her around like a rag doll on a storm-tossed sea. Frustrated fury boiled in Ulrika’s chest. She wanted to leap out and tear the mob apart as they were tearing apart Lotte. She wanted to push Gabriella out and see her suffer the same fate. It wasn’t fair! It wasn’t right! No one should have to suffer so before death, and particularly not a girl who had been so loyal and sweet in life.

  Those on the edges of the crowd, too far from Lotte to join in the savage sport, quickly looked for other fun. A handful of men and women poked their heads into the open coach door and glanced around inside. One saw Gabriella’s fan on the floor and snatched it. Two others seemed to look directly at Ulrika, and she thought for an instant that Gabriella’s spell hadn’t worked, but then they drew back and started to climb up to the roof.

  ‘Lotsa swag up here!’ called one. ‘Look at all them trunks!’

  ‘Take the horses!’ shouted another.

  Gabriella ground her teeth as the coach rocked and her valises and wardrobes were thrown down to smash on the street. ‘Thieving dogs,’ she growled.

  But then came a call that made Ulrika’s blood-warmed stomach go cold again.

  ‘Smash the coach! Take its wood for the fire!’

  She looked over at the translucent Gabriella as the crowd roared their approval at this suggestion, and saw that she too was alarmed. The countess turned to the right-hand door, which remained locked, and cracked open the louvres to peek through as the mob began to rock the coach back and forth.

  ‘We are against the wall of some sort of workshop,’ Gabriella whispered, clutching her seat. ‘We will go out and into that. Be sure not to bump anyone.’

  ‘Yes, mistress,’ said Ulrika.

  ‘And keep your head covered. The illusion is no protection from sunlight.’

  Gabriella turned the lock with diaphanous fingers and opened the door slowly, waiting for a reaction. None came, except for the continued cheering and rocking of the coach. She hopped out. Ulrika threw her cloak over her head and followed right behind her, but the coach lurched under her feet just as she jumped, and she fell heavily against a half-timbered wall. Gabriella pulled her up and they froze, pressed against the plaster. There were rioters to the left and right of them, shoving at the sides of the coach and putting their shoulders to the wheels. Ulrika could have reached out and touched them.

  Gabriella whispered in her ear. ‘The door is to the right. We will go when it is clear.’

  Ulrika nodded. She hoped it would be soon. The sun was gnawing at her through her clothes like she was covered in ants. She looked right. Two wooden steps led up to an open door with a sign in the shape of a stretched cow skin over it – a tannery. A few men in aprons and rolled sleeves stood in the door, staring out at the riot and holding clubs, ready to defend their business if the mob turned its attention their way.

  Just then, with a deafening cheer from the crowd, the coach went up and over and smashed down on its side. The rioters ran forwards laughing wildly, and began to smash it and kick it, for all the world like primitive hunters dancing around their kill.

  ‘Now!’ hissed Gabriella, and led Ulrika towards the door, tiptoeing around the backs of the rioters.

  There was just enough room between the three men who stood in the door for a slim person to slip through, but Gabriella and Ulrika, with the layers of crinolines under their dresses, did not have slim silhouettes. Gabriella paused and looked around for another door. There was none. She cursed under her breath then began to gather her skirts about her as tightly as she could.

  Ulrika did the same, edging awkwardly away as two women surged towards her, fighting over a bodice from one of Gabriella’s trunks.

  Gabriella crept up the steps and edged through the three men, ducking and bending to avoid elbows and the ends of cudgels. Ulrika took a steadying breath and followed. She passed through the first two men without any trouble, but the third stood behind them, peering over their shoulders, and she had to slip sideways almost directly in front of his face. He shifted just as she was about to pass him, and she stepped back, bumping the back of a man she had already passed.

  She ducked aside and into the tannery as he turned, scowling at the man behind him.

  ‘Y’want to go out there, do ye?’ he snapped.

  Ulrika inched to Gabriella and they watched, nervous.

  ‘Not I,’ said the man at the back.

  ‘Then quit yer shovin’.’

  ‘I didn’t shove ye.’

  Gabriella’s hand curled around Ulrika’s and squeezed, waiting for them to look around, but the man at the front only snorted and turned back to watch the madness outside.

  Ulrika and Gabriella let out silent breaths, then Gabriella tugged on Ulrika’s hand and pointed to a stair that rose along a side wall to the left.

  ‘We will find a place here to wait out the day,’ she said.

  Ulrika looked around as they crossed the room to it. The place had a high ceiling with gantries and chains hanging from it, and rows of huge round vats on the floor. From the vats came an overpowering stench of urine and excrement that made Ulrika cringe and gag. She wondered that she hadn’t noticed it before, but she supposed her blind panic and fear of imminent death had blocked it out.

  Men were stomping around in the vats, their breeches rolled up above the knee, and pushing raw cow hides down into the muck with long poles. Ulrika shuddered. She couldn’t imagine a worse job. They must have no sense of smell whatsoever.

  Gabriella led her up the stairs to the first floor. This was a large loft with wide open windows. Wooden frames with cured skins stretched across them were stacked to the ceiling. Some workers were stretching more hides in one corner, but most were at the windows, looking down at the street and talking amongst themselves.

  Gabriella shook her head. ‘This won’t do,’ she murmured, and turned to a second flight of stairs.

  At the top was a dark corridor lined with doors covered with leather curtains. Gabriella and Ulrika crossed to one and looked through it. Inside was a dark room piled high with finished hides. Ulrika looked into another. It was the same, only the hides were dyed a different colour.

  ‘This is better,’ said Gabriella, and held aside a curtain. ‘Come.’

  Ulrika ducked into the room. It was long and narrow, with the skins piled on either side of a narrow path. At the far end was a shuttered window, and from it came the cheers and jeers of the mob. Ulrika walked towards it. She didn’t want to look, but she couldn’t stop herself. She climbed over a pile of skins at the end of the row and put her eyes to the cracks in the shutter.

  Down below her in the street the crowd was swirling like a whirlpool around a bright central vortex. A
pyre, made from timber torn from the coach, had been built where the narrow street widened out into a small square, and flame was beginning to lick the edges of the wood. In the centre of it knelt Lotte, bruised and naked, with her arms tied around the circumference of an empty wooden barrel as if she was a drunk hugging a keg of beer, and though she was beaten and helpless, the crowd still pelted her with rocks and filth, and shouted curses at her.

  And still through all the noise Ulrika could hear a pitiful little voice moaning over and over, ‘Mistress. Mistress, help me. Help me.’

  Ulrika turned away as the flames crept closer, wishing for the first time that her inhuman hearing wasn’t so acute. Gabriella was looking at her with sad eyes. She had become solid and opaque again.

  ‘I’m sorry, child,’ she said.

  Ulrika lowered her head. ‘Must we be so cruel?’

  ‘We must survive,’ said Gabriella, then stepped forwards and took Ulrika in her arms. ‘We may try our best to do so without causing unnecessary pain to our swains and servants, but when it is a choice between us and them, there is no question.’ She sighed. ‘If I could, I would go down there and give Lotte a swift end to her suffering, but I cannot.’

  ‘But is there no spell?’ Ulrika asked. ‘Surely you could kill her from here.’

  Gabriella hesitated then shook her head. ‘I could, but I will not. Sorcery is dangerous. I use it only when I myself am in peril. To do otherwise would be to risk mishap or discovery.’

  Ulrika tensed and made to speak, but Gabriella shushed her, stroking her hair. ‘We must be selfish, beloved. The world wants us dead. Nature itself abhors us. We cannot allow anything to threaten the fragile thread that holds us to this world, not even kindness.’

  Ulrika butted her head against Gabriella’s shoulder, angry and wishing she could weep. ‘I wish you had killed me. This is no way to live.’

  Gabriella lifted Ulrika’s chin and looked her levelly in the eye. ‘I told you once before that you had only to walk in the sun to end it. I will not stop you if you wish to go down and die to spare Lotte her pain.’ She stepped back. ‘Is that what you wish?’

  Ulrika turned towards the window, visions of death and vengeance filling her head. She could kick through the shutters and leap down amongst the mob. She could put Lotte out of her agony with a single blow, then kill as many of that hateful pack of filth as she might before the sun and the flames of the pyre burned her to death. It would be a good end, a grand end, but it would be an end all the same. Was she ready to be done with her life? Was she ready for what was to come after? If what Gabriella had told her about what happened to vampires when they died was true, the pain Lotte was suffering would be nothing compared to that which awaited her. Could she face that, for the life of a maid?

  Ulrika dropped to her knees with a sob. ‘I am weak,’ she rasped. ‘I am a coward.’

  Gabriella knelt beside her, putting her arms around her. ‘You are stronger and braver than most of us, dear heart, and more compassionate. Most wouldn’t even consider it. Most would call you a fool, but I love you for it. A vampire must sometimes kill to live. It is our nature. But it is when we do so without regret, without conscience, that we are most a danger to ourselves. If you can hold on to this affection for humanity without letting it rule you, you will live long and grow great among us.’

  Ulrika hugged her and nodded against her breast. ‘Thank you, mistress,’ she mumbled. ‘I will try.’

  ‘I know you will,’ said Gabriella, then paused before speaking again. ‘Though I fear you have already failed at least once.’

  Ulrika frowned, confused, then lifted her head. ‘What do you mean, mistress?’

  Gabriella looked down at her, her face set and cold. ‘Tell me of this young witch hunter who singled you out at Mathilda’s place. How does he know you? How does he know you are a vampire?’

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  MASQUERADE

  Ulrika looked at Gabriella with widening eyes. All the warmth had gone from her voice, and all the sympathy from her gaze. It was as if a door had closed.

  ‘Don’t make me pull it from you,’ she said when Ulrika did not speak.

  ‘No, mistress.’ Ulrika hung her head. ‘I won’t. I… I met him while chasing the warlock in the sewers. He was after him too.’

  ‘You didn’t mention him before,’ said Gabriella.

  ‘I… I didn’t think it was important,’ Ulrika stammered.

  Gabriella raised an eyebrow. ‘No?’

  ‘I tricked him,’ said Ulrika. ‘I made him think I was a vampire hunter, and we parted ways with him none the wiser.’

  ‘He seemed wiser today.’

  ‘Yes, I…’ Ulrika dug her nails into her palms. ‘We met again. He was at the plague house when I discovered the place of Mistress Alfina’s death there. I… I used him. He knew that the robes I found were those of a priest of Morr, and I let him interrogate the priests and lead me to the graveyard and the crypt where I believe the killer hides.’

  ‘How very Lahmian of you,’ said Gabriella coolly. ‘But your mask must have slipped, yes?’

  ‘We were attacked by ghouls,’ said Ulrika. ‘They were going to kill him. I… I let my claws out to save him.’

  ‘And he saw this,’ said Gabriella.

  Ulrika nodded miserably. ‘He called me a monster and tried to kill me.’

  ‘Yet you did not kill him.’

  Ulrika shook her head. ‘I could not. He… he is a good man.’

  ‘And our mortal enemy.’ Gabriella sighed and pulled Ulrika close again. ‘Beloved, I understand. It has happened before. In this strange instance you find yourself on the same side as this man, and he is stalwart and brave, and from the little I saw of him, not unhandsome. You fight side by side with him and, as you are a warrior born, you are loath to let a comrade die. But he is not your comrade, and you cannot think of him that way.’

  She lay back against the mound of skins and drew Ulrika down with her. ‘You are not human any more, my dear. Though you look it, and sometimes may feel it, you are not. You cannot have normal relations with them. There are only four options when dealing with men: fool them, kill them, enslave them or give them the blood kiss. A human who knows what you are and is not bound to you cannot be trusted – and a witch hunter least of all – as you have learned to your regret today.’

  ‘I’m sorry, mistress,’ said Ulrika. ‘I won’t let it happen again.’

  Gabriella squeezed her hand. ‘It is a hard lesson to learn, I know, but it must be learned. You will have nothing but misery and pain otherwise. I speak from experience in this.’ She curled against Ulrika. ‘Now come, rest your head. There is nothing for us to do but wait until dark. Then we will cross the river and speak to Hermione.’

  Ulrika closed her eyes, but the shouting of the mob and the crackling of flames from out in the square made it hard for her to sleep.

  After the day’s mad frenzy, the setting of the sun brought a frightened, unnatural silence to Nuln. As Ulrika and Gabriella crept through them, the chilly streets of the Industrielplatz were dark and deserted except for the blackened debris of the day’s excesses. Even the forges, which usually roared day and night, had gone cold and quiet. Everywhere they saw shattered windows and broken tools and clubs, and the sign of Sigmar’s hammer painted crudely on the fronts of businesses and workshops as a ward against the undead.

  The witch hunters were still on guard at the great bridge, stopping every coach and questioning every woman who crossed it, so they turned about and trudged a weary mile back the way they had come to the bridge of the Iron Tower, but that too was watched.

  ‘They will undoubtedly have our descriptions,’ said Gabriella, drawing back into the shadow of a foundry to think. ‘And may be carrying silver or garlic or daemonroot to test us. I don’t care to risk it. They will not be so polite here as they were in Hermione’s par
lour.’

  ‘Can we take a boat?’ asked Ulrika. ‘There must be some fisherman willing to take us across.’

  Gabriella shuddered. ‘An open boat is too dangerous. Vampires are not partial to running water. No. I have a better way, I think.’ She turned south and started walking back towards the Faulestadt, the warren of filthy streets and tottering tenements they had fled only that morning. ‘A Lahmian way.’

  ‘Slumming, m’lady?’ a leering fellow in printers’ sleeves asked Ulrika. ‘Tired o’ weak Altestadt wine, and lookin’ fer strong Faulestadt beer?’

  ‘They wearing it short north of the river?’ chimed in his mate, a fisherman by the smell of him, who was grinning at Ulrika’s hair. ‘We wear it long down here!’ he said, and slapped his leg near the knee.

  ‘Her ladyship is waiting for a gentleman of the watch,’ said Gabriella in a prim voice that matched the maid’s uniform that she still wore, ‘who has asked her to come to this establishment and identify the men who stole a necklace and her wig from her.’

  The men’s eyes widened at this, and they suddenly found they had business elsewhere.

  Ulrika let out a sigh of relief.

  ‘Thank you, mistress,’ she whispered. ‘I did not know what a lady would say.’

  ‘Call me Gabby, here, m’lady,’ said Gabriella, still in her maid’s voice. ‘And a lady would let her maid answer for her. Men of that sort are not to be spoken to by a woman of your stature.’

  They were sitting at a corner table in the Pitcher and Ramrod, a tavern of the sort that ladies of quality did not enter, with or without escort, and were therefore garnering their fair share of odd glances and dirty remarks as they watched the vulgar customs of the boisterous clientele.

  ‘This is why the streets are quiet!’ said Gabriella, raising her voice to be heard over the din. ‘They’ve all come here!’

  Ulrika nodded. It was true. At the trestle tables under the low smoke-blackened beams, jostling crowds of bravos and bashers and begrimed foundry men drank and laughed with feverish energy, while painted strumpets teased money and drink from them and sometimes took them upstairs. Other men babbled loudly about vampires and burnings and bragged of their part in the day’s happenings, and with each telling, the fangs got longer and the claws more cruel. Ulrika shook her head, bemused and disgusted. They huddle together around the fire like savages scared of the dark, she thought.