The beast took advantage of Jürgen’s distraction. It drove its claws into the Sword-Bearer’s left leg, picking him up and lunging at him with its fangs. Jürgen drew back and punched it in the face; bones snapped under the blow and blood gushed from the creature’s nose. It dropped Jürgen and staggered backwards. Jürgen landed in a heap and rolled to his feet, taking time only to grab his sword.
He glanced over at Václav. His childe was clambering to his feet, healing himself slowly. Jürgen took a step and winced; the claws had pierced him straight to the bone. The monster pawed at the ground like a bull about to charge. Jürgen tried to lock eyes with it, thinking that perhaps he could command it or at least slow it down, but the creature was all rage and blood. Changed, thought Jürgen. It said that someone touched it and now it could change.
The monster sprang forward. Jürgen had healed his leg enough to move, and dove out of the way, but couldn’t quite clear the monster’s reach. It caught him by his shirt and tore his mantle away, leaving Jürgen flat on his back. The beast balled both fists above its head and brought them down on Jürgen’s chest like a blacksmith’s hammer. Jürgen felt pain as his ribcage gave, and then sharp, tearing agony as his skin split and his shattered ribs tried to poke their way through his mail shirt. His undead flesh began mending immediately, but he couldn’t muster the strength to roll out of the way.
Something grabbed his feet and pulled just as the creature’s fists struck again. The stone floor cracked under the assault. Jürgen looked up and saw Václav, looking pale and wild-eyed from hunger. Healing the wound the creature had dealt him had cost him dearly. “Václav, go and find the knights. Feed, and bring me a prisoner.”
The creature had backed up into the corner and was preparing to charge again. Václav never took his eyes off it. “My lord, are you certain—”
“Go, childe!” Jürgen pulled himself fully to his feet and shoved Václav, wincing at the pain it brought his chest. Václav ran from the room; the beast charged at him like a hunting dog. Jürgen hit it from the side, stabbing where a man’s kidneys would have been and sending it sprawling into the corner.
The creature stood almost immediately and lashed out with both hands, trying to knock Jürgen off balance again. Jürgen’s sword flashed upwards and severed one of the creature’s fingers, deflecting the blow, but its other hand caught him amidships, hurling him through the desks and against the far wall. Better, he thought wearily, than being stabbed by those claws again. The wound in his leg hadn’t fully healed yet, and he suspected that the creature could probably tear his heart from his chest with its talons.
The beast charged again, smashing desks out of the way and howling the word “changed” again. Jürgen grabbed one of the desks near him and smashed it to pieces against the floor, then threw one of the shards at the creature’s face. It lodged in the beast’s right eye and the monster veered off and ran into the wall, its howls winding up in pitch to crow-like shrieks.
Jürgen flanked the beast and kicked one of the desks towards its feet. The monster responded more quickly than Jürgen would have guessed, smashing the desk to kindling and flailing blindly with its other hand. The Sword-Bearer darted under its swing and plunged his sword into its back. He worked the blade back and forth, trying to sever the creature’s backbone, but it was like working the blade through a wooden post. The creature tried to round on Jürgen, but he had no intention of taking another blow from it. He left his sword embedded in its back and backpedaled out of reach of its arms.
While it was certainly still capable of fighting, the creature was slowing. The blade in its back limited its movement—when it tried to extend its arms to their full length, its hands began to spasm. Jürgen circled the creature; he didn’t want to get backed into a corner, and certainly not the corner where he’d seen the moving blood.
He could hear footsteps approaching. They were loud, the footsteps of warriors, not monks, although he didn’t think the creature could differentiate between friend or foe anyway.
“Stay away from the door!” he shouted. The creature was blocking the entrance to the room; anyone who entered would walk straight into its arms. Jürgen looked about for a weapon and seized a loose flagstone from the fireplace. He ran for the creature, stopping just as it leapt forward to grab at him, and threw the stone.
The stone hit the monster in the mouth, shattering most of its teeth. It spat blood, stone and bone on the floor and roared with hate, but Jürgen had already moved behind it to retrieve his sword. He stepped back out of the room to see Václav and two knights running towards him. Václav had a monk over his shoulder, whom he dropped at Jürgen’s feet.
Jürgen knelt and grabbed the monk’s wrist, then impatiently exposed the throat and bit. This monk wasn’t as filling as the last—he didn’t have the same odd richness to his blood. Jürgen ignored this, gulping down great mouthfuls of the blood, feeling it leak from his mouth to stain his face, and cast the now-desiccated Obertus aside. Picking up his sword again, he braced. The monster was charging at them.
The two knights stepped forward to engage it, but Jürgen waved them back. He had no desire to bury any more knights than necessary and, even wounded, this creature was beyond the skill of any save the Sword-Bearer himself. He would lead the attack; he, after all, could heal any wounds it dealt him. He lunged forward with the strength of the monk suffusing his limbs, and thrust his sword forward and up.
The blade entered the creature’s chest just below his rib cage, and its bellow changed to a wet gurgle as blood filled its lungs. Jürgen pushed on the blade, shoving it up, into the monster’s throat. The creature lashed out with its arms, but only managed to strike the doorway. “Now!” cried Jürgen.
Václav and the other knights leapt forward and began hacking at the creature with their own blades. It tried to stand, but Jürgen pushed it down with his boot. Finally it slumped over, bleeding from uncountable wounds, and heaved a dying breath.
“It was alive?” Sir Thomas wiped the creature’s blood from his blade. He looked green. Doubtless he wished he could have stayed behind with Rosamund, but his compatriot Raoul had apparently won that right somehow.
“It was a ghoul,” muttered Jürgen. He was staring at the creature. It was dying—he could hear its heartbeat slowing—but there was still activity on some level. He could see whirling, maddened colors around the thing.
“Like us. Mother of God.” Thomas crossed himself and staggered against the wall.
Jürgen looked up at him sharply. “No, Thomas. Nothing like you. If you wish to be defined by blood, be defined by the English blood in your veins, or by the blood of Lady Rosamund, or by the blood of Our Savior and your vows before Him. This thing was defined by Tzimisce blood.” Jürgen glanced back at it. The colors were muting somewhat. “It was human, until he touched it.”
Václav stood close to Jürgen and spoke under his breath. “Can a Cainite do such a thing to a man? What if it touches one of our knights?”
Jürgen whispered back, “I am rather hoping that Nikita can only do this to someone who already carries his blood, but let us pray the theory is not tested.” He thought again to Gotzon’s envy and fear of Tzimisce power, and felt somewhat sickened.
From behind them, Sir Thomas cried, “My lords, look!” Václav and Jürgen raised their blades and stepped back from the creature, but the body wasn’t moving. The other knights looked with confusion at Thomas and then the creature. Jürgen, however, saw what he meant.
Something was rising up from the creature’s corpse. It looked like a black mist, but seemed to be shot through with streaks of red. The mist swirled into a vortex around the body, emitting an angry hissing sound. The knights recoiled from it, and one of them clapped his hands to his ears. Jürgen and Václav, however, simply stared.
Jürgen’s Beast growled, and then purred. It ordered Jürgen to touch the mist; Jürgen refused. Václav reached out for it and his sire caught his wrist just in time. The mist rose and oozed along th
e ceiling, slipping into the same crack in the wall that the blood had.
“What in God’s name…” Thomas’s question went unanswered. For a long moment, not one of them moved or spoke. Jürgen could still hear sounds of battle from elsewhere in the monastery, but they were growing faint. His knights were winning.
“Václav,” he said quietly. “Please find out a way into the room behind that wall.” Václav took a step, but stumbled. Jürgen didn’t bother to ask his childe what was wrong; he knew. Dawn was coming.
Chapter Thirty
Jürgen sat at one of the few undamaged writing desks, carving a crude sketch of the monastery into the wood with a knife. His knights stood around him, some watching the cracks in the walls, others watching the door. Václav and Thomas were out searching the monastery—since only the two of them and Jürgen had seen the foul mist rise up from the monster’s corpse, Jürgen guessed that Thomas had learned the gifts of perception from his mistress and could therefore ferret out any remaining monks hiding in the corners.
Jürgen doubted that the place would have held any more, though. Many had died in the fighting, but despite the fact that these Obertus seemed quite willing to pick up swords, they were poor warriors. Most of them lay about the room, bound and gagged, eyes bulging with fear. Jürgen had ordered his knights to drag the corpses outside—three brothers who had sloughed off some of their flesh to escape their bonds joined the monks who died in battle, the two he had fed upon and the once-human monstrosity. One of those monks had actually fled as far as the doorway before a knight tackled him. Jürgen simply drained those monks white; he would need every drop of blood his body would hold.
The monastery was large, but not vast, and he didn’t think that it housed catacombs. That meant that there had to be an entrance to the room on the other side of that wall. In that room waited Nikita of Sredetz, and Jürgen intended to take his head.
The trouble was, he didn’t have enough time. Daybreak was coming. He could sleep here for the day, guarded by his knights, and attack come the following sunset, but he wanted to be sure of where his foe slept, first. Now, he could only wait for news, and plan.
He stood and paced the room, looking over his men. Some of them were wounded; two had died in battle. He turned to a young knight named Friederich. “Do you have the chalice?”
Every knight in the room glanced up. Friederich nodded, and took a silver cup from a pouch at his side. Jürgen took the chalice in his right hand and bit open his left wrist, and then bled into the cup until it was almost full. He looked around the room again; he would have to refill the cup at least twice before all of the knights could drink, but it would be well worth it to have strong, loyal, alert troops at his command. He raised the chalice and looked around the room, meeting each knight’s eyes in turn.
“You have each sworn to stand under the Black Cross, to fight against the enemies of God, to bring His Holy Word to those who have not heard it. You have seen what lies beyond the light, what your fellows in the Order of the Teutons are not prepared to behold. You have taken your drink from me and you have been judged worthy to fight this crusade, for as long as the night lasts.
“I have sworn to give you strength and guidance, and so I have. I have sworn to lead you to glory, and so I shall. Marvel not at the horrors you have seen here tonight or will before another sunset, for you have the strength you need to defeat them. Your souls are made pure by God.” He handed the chalice to Friederich. “And I, Jürgen the Sword-Bearer, I make your hearts strong by my blood.”
The knights passed the chalice, and the wounded among them drank deeply. By time it was over, four more monks lay dead and drained at the door, but all of the knights could stand and walk, Jürgen’s blood knitting flesh and resetting bones in moments. All of the knights looked upon Jürgen with devotion, and although the dawn was upon him, Jürgen was not tired.
“Blasphemy,” came a hoarse whisper. One of the monks had worked his gag loose. Jürgen rounded on him and picked him up by the throat.
“You, heretic, dare to accuse me of blasphemy?”
“I know no heresy,” the monk hissed. He was speaking Latin, but his accent wasn’t local. It was Greek. Jürgen realized that many of these monks must have traveled here after the fall of Byzantium. “I follow the rule—”
Jürgen’s grip on his throat tightened. “Where is your master?”
“I do not know.” Jürgen wasn’t surprised; most Cainites kept their havens secret from even their most trusted servants. The man’s face began to turn purple from the pressure, and Jürgen dropped him. The monk lay there on the floor gasping like a fish, his reddened face changing to a more healthy hue.
Healthy?
Jürgen looked around to the other prisoners. All of them were healthy-looking. None of them had the haggard, sallow look of mortals in habit of giving up their blood for Cainites.
And yet, he had seen no evidence of travelers, nor had any of his knights reported it. So upon whom was Nikita feeding?
Jürgen snatched the monk off the floor again. “Does he feed on you?”
The monk looked confused, and then frightened. He started babbling in a language Jürgen did not understand. Jürgen locked eyes with the man and bared his fangs. “Talk, worm. Does he feed on you or your brothers?”
“No,” whispered the monk. The knights looked on with interest.
“Who, then? Travelers? Hunters?”
“No,” he stammered. “Cainites.”
Although he had been expecting this answer, the horror of an elder who fed only on the blood of vampires stunned Jürgen. “Where do these Cainites come from?”
“He… calls them here. They all arrive wearing the robes of the Church, but they do not leave. He does not tell us who they are. He simply lets us go on about our business. He does not even see us, except for when we pray. He is beyond us, exalted, he does not—”
Jürgen dropped him and nodded to one of the knights. “Gag him. Tightly, this time.” He sat back down at the desk. Suddenly the impending dawn seemed only moments away, and sleep tugged at Jürgen’s heart. He felt the fire in the room grow warmer, and the heat felt uncomfortable; he longed for the chill of death that the day-sleep granted. His Beast yawned loudly, demanding that he sleep, trying to force his mind to shut down, to die for a few short hours.
Jürgen could not allow it.
He stood and strode towards the door. One of the knights called after him; he ignored the voice. He listened in the hall, heard footsteps, and walked towards them, carefully stepping around the beam of sunlight now coming in the main door.
He heard a sound like a peddler’s sack being dropped from a wagon. Sleep had apparently claimed his childe for the day.
Jürgen rounded a corner and saw Thomas standing over Václav’s inert body. The knight looked helplessly at Jürgen. He brushed Thomas aside and raised Václav’s head, slapping his face lightly. He received no response.
Grunting in frustration, Jürgen bit into his finger and smeared the blood across his childe’s lips. Václav’s eyes flew open and then fluttered. “Stay awake,” Jürgen growled.
“My… lord,” said Václav slowly. “We have found the entrance, I think.” Jürgen looked behind him and saw that they had smudged a section of the wall with ash. The entrance was there, blocked so that only a Cainite of superlative strength could open it.
“We must attack. Now. We cannot allow Nikita to survive until sunset.” He waved at Thomas. “Fetch the others. Bring them all here; leave Friederich behind to guard the monks. Go!”
Thomas fled down the hallway. Jürgen helped Václav to his feet. “But, my lord, how can we fight during the day?”
Jürgen glanced at the wall, listened, and heard nothing. “I think that Nikita will have a much more difficult time functioning while the sun is high than I will, or even you. And that is why we must face him now.”
Václav only looked confused.
“He feeds only on Cainites, Václav. The Thirst of Ca
ine has taken him.” Václav’s eyes grew wide. “Yes,” said Jürgen, shaking his head. “That is why Dieter escaped. He has grown so old, so far from the world of man, that he doesn’t even see mortals anymore, except those who know how to attract his attention. Had I known, I would have brought not only Jervais on this trip but Christof as well. But there’s nothing for it now. We must fight by day.”
“But my lord, if we fight by day, when we are so weak—”
“Then how much weaker must an ancient be, one who commits the sin of diablerie on his own kind, one who manipulates God’s Church, a traitor? During the day, the Beast holds sway over him completely, and during the day, the Beast wants nothing but slumber.” Jürgen heard footsteps approaching and stared at the door. “We will take his head while he fumbles with consciousness.”
Jürgen’s Beast began to speak, but then shied away. Jürgen stood and pulled Václav to his feet. He stared at the door, still tired, but unflinching. The knights came down the hallway towards them, and Jürgen set them to the task of moving the stone. He watched as the wall began to give, then crack, and finally fell inward in a heap of rubble.
Jürgen threw a torch into the room, but could see nothing but stone and dust.
“Here, then, is the lion who called the animals to him to pay him respect,” murmured Jürgen. “But you will not add my dust to your parlor, nor my soul to your memories.” He drew his sword and stood straight, the distant sun irrelevant, a minor nuisance. He stepped through the fissure in the wall to meet the Archbishop of Nod.
Chapter Thirty-One
The room couldn’t have been large, but it seemed to swallow sound and the firelight both. Václav and Jürgen stood just inside the hole the knights had made, waiting for some indication that their quarry was present. They heard nothing.
The room was filled with dust; it sat several inches thick on the floor. This dust wasn’t simply from time, Jürgen knew. As he walked, his feet caught on the remains of clothes that had once belonged to dignitaries of the Cainite Heresy. He felt a snarl catch in his throat as he glanced down and saw Klaus’s shirt amidst the dust.
Dark Ages Clan Novel Ventrue: Book 12 of the Dark Ages Clan Novel Saga Page 19