Changeling: Zombie Dawn (23 page)

The vampire at the door screamed out in fury and attacked.

Lucien reappeared in the first-floor apartment over the shop, just in front of the window he’d eyed from the street. Despite his momentary disorientation following the mist, he relished the look of shock on his brother’s face when he appeared at almost the very instant Caliban stepped through the doorway. His brother’s reaction, and the momentary inaction it caused, was enough to buy Lucien the time he needed to recover, but he’d lost the element of surprise, and now his vile sibling was hurtling across the room towards him. Lucien didn’t hesitate. He hefted the heavy-bladed weapon he still held and swung it hard, aiming for his attacker’s neck in a blow he hoped would decapitate the onrushing vampire.

There was a blur of movement as Caliban brought up his hand in a futile attempt to block the blow. Lucien had already witnessed how the honed blade was capable of carving through muscle and bone, and he knew that it would not be impeded on its deadly path. But he’d forgotten about the metal prosthesis that his brother now wore since his hand had been severed at the wrist by Trey when they’d first met. The blade hit the artificial limb, and a harsh, sharp sound, accompanied by a vampire’s wail, filled the small room. The vibration the blocked blow sent back along the metal blade and through its handle was enough to force Lucien to let go of the weapon, which clanged to the wooden floor, where it stayed. The metal hand had succeeded in preventing the blade from reaching its intended path, but in doing so it had been wrecked: the rods that ran along the back of the hand and into the wrist had all broken so that the bladed fingers hung uselessly, and the hand itself was twisted back at an odd angle. Undeterred, Caliban threw himself at his brother, driving his body forward with his legs so that he was now in a headlong dive, arms outstretched, teeth bared and aimed at his enemy’s exposed throat.

Lucien reared back, and at the last second managed to shove his hand into the side of his brother’s face, deflecting those deadly fangs from their intended target. The shift in his own weight, combined with Caliban’s irresistible forward momentum, lifted Lucien off his feet, and he found himself flying backwards towards the window he had just appeared in front of. He grabbed hold of Caliban, determined that if he was to plunge to the street below his brother would be joining him. There was a cacophony of smashing glass and splintering wood, and the two vampires crashed through the window. They continued to kick and strike each other as they fell, both knowing that the hard, uncompromising concrete was rushing towards them.

There was the sickening snap and crunch of bone as they landed. The impact forced them from each other’s grip, and both vampires covered up as best they could against the deluge of heavy glass daggers that rained down on them from above. The deadly torrent added to the terrible injuries they had already suffered from the fall and their exit through the sheet glass window. Blood the colour of tar flowed freely from their numerous deep, ugly wounds.

Lucien knew he had to get up. With a great effort he rolled over on to his knees and forced himself to stand. He looked up and was not surprised to see that his brother had also managed to get to his feet and was turning to face him. Both vampires were in a terrible state. Lucien allowed himself the briefest of mental checks to ascertain the degree of his own injuries. He knew he had several broken ribs, and that his left shoulder was dislocated. The bones in his right foot were smashed to pieces. His left cheekbone and skull were almost certainly fractured, and blood ran freely from a wound in his head, making him blink repeatedly to keep his vision clear. He could feel his body starting to mend, but knew from the extent of his injuries that this would be a slow process. Despite the pain and discomfort he was in he allowed himself a half smile when he saw that his brother was, if anything, in an even worse state. The wrecked hand hung uselessly from one arm and his left leg was twisted at an impossible angle so that his foot pointed inward towards the other. One of Caliban’s ears had been completely torn off, and the gore that poured from the wound had already soaked through his clothes. A huge shard of glass stuck out from his abdomen, and Lucien watched as his brother wrapped the fingers of his good hand around the offending object and yanked it free, throwing it to the ground where it shattered into a hundred pieces.

‘You look terrible,’ Caliban said, spitting a globule of blood to the pavement, his eyes never leaving those of his brother.

‘You look worse.’

Caliban nodded as if knowing this to be true. He appeared to be utterly exhausted, wavering on the spot like a drunkard. Yet his eyes burned with a terrible intensity as he took in his sibling. ‘So this is the end, brother?’

Lucien nodded. ‘This is the end.’

‘Are you ready to die – again? It will not be like before, Lucien, when I gave you my blood to bring you back to life as a vampire. If I had known then that I would create the traitor before me I would have left you to rot.’

A strange smile crept on to Lucien’s face, accompanied by a look of defiance that he knew the other vampire found unsettling. ‘I’ve already died twice at your hands. What makes you so sure I can’t come back a third time?’

Caliban narrowed his eyes at his brother, small frown lines creasing his forehead. ‘What are you talking about? Died
twice
?’

‘Exactly what I say, brother. The last time we fought you bit me – here.’ Lucien pointed to the shoulder that Caliban had sunk his teeth into during their last battle in a derelict factory in the Netherlands. ‘You poisoned me. I don’t know how – perhaps you are so corrupt and foul now you are nothing
but
poison. The wound became more and more infected until eventually I . . . died. But Trey stole Mynor’s Globe from you, and Alexa used it to resurrect me.’ Lucien angled his head to one side, raising one eyebrow slightly as if mocking the other vampire. ‘You didn’t know that, did you? You thought we took it simply to stop you using it. That really is rather sloppy of you. Almost as sloppy as leaving your sorceress unguarded and all alone up in that portable monstrosity over there.’ He gestured towards the tower with his head, but his eyes never left those of the creature standing before him. ‘So I ask you again, what makes you so sure that you can kill me, brother?’

‘You’re lying. What you say is impossible.’

‘Everything about
us
is impossible. You’ve created a new monster, brother.’ He drew his lips back to reveal his fangs. ‘Haven’t you stopped to ask yourself why these have grown back? And what about my new trick of being able to see inside your head, hmm? That must be a significant inconvenience to you. There are other changes – more profound even than those – that have befallen me too.’

Caliban went to say something and stopped. His eyes took in the tower for a second before switching to the dome-like Shield overhead. Despite the dark purple gloom that existed on this side of the Shield, he could clearly make out the sun in the sky on the other side. He took one last look at his brother and disappeared.

Lucien wheeled round on the spot looking for his brother, expecting one last attack. He was surprised when he saw that Caliban had appeared some distance away from him and was now trying to run back towards the tower, despite his ruined leg making this almost impossible. In spite of everything, Lucien found a tiny sliver of admiration for his evil brother; he knew that he did not have the energy to mist again, and yet Caliban had somehow found the strength to do so. He set off after his sibling, his own ruined foot making progress agonizingly slow, determined to stop him from reaching the safety of Leroth ... and Alexa and Trey.

Tom sat alone in the gloom at the bottom of the tower. The sound of Trey and Alexa’s footsteps ascending the stairs had long since faded to nothing, and now an oppressive silence pressed in on the Irishman like a physical force.

He was in the grip of a terrible fever – shaking with cold one moment, his skin on fire the next. His clothes were wet with sweat, and an appalling smell came from him which made him wish he were out in the open. The pain in his face, neck and shoulders was unbearable; molten metal had replaced his blood in these places and he groaned with pain as it continued to spread further into tissue and organs. He wouldn’t last much longer. He allowed his eyes to close and his head to fall back against the hard stone wall he was propped up against.

He was on his feet and racing up the stairs, taking them two at a time. He could sense them ahead – the boy and the girl. But they were unaware of him pursuing them until it was too late – until he ‘d leaped at them from behind and dragged them to the floor where he ripped and clawed at the flesh of their throats and—

He awoke with a start, the sound of his own terrified shout echoing back at him through the shadows. It was happening. He was losing his humanity, and becoming one of those nightmarish creatures he’d seen and fought outside. It was inevitable. He would soon slip into unconsciousness, and when that happened what limited options he currently had would be gone.

He’d been close to death before. On numerous occasions he’d wondered how his life might end, but
this
had never been one of the ways he’d imagined – alone and scared at the bottom of a dark stairwell, his life slowly ebbing away, each moment bringing nearer the terrifying prospect of becoming one of those things. He wouldn’t allow that to happen.

He looked down at the crossbow in his lap. It was cocked and loaded with a short but lethal aluminium bolt. He would use it. Use it before it was too late.

Helde sat, slumped in the black obsidian throne, struggling to maintain the sorcery she had created all about her. She could feel her strength slipping away along with her grip on the forces necessary to maintain the Shield. In her mind she continued to occupy the place of dark magic, where she still imagined herself as a huge spider at the centre of the web that was the Shield, but she knew it was time to return to the human realm and the vile physical body she now inhabited. She must return, dismantle the Shield and move on. She allowed a part of herself to drift away from the place of sorcery and return to her physical body. And the second she did, she knew that she was no longer alone. She was in danger, and her guardian had failed to keep her safe.

Trey and Alexa stood in the doorway looking at the nightmare creature sprawled across the throne. These were Caliban’s rooms, and the place was cold and stark. The sickly, coppery smell of dried blood filled the place, so that Trey initially recoiled at the stench that painted black shadows across his vision. Open windows set into the walls looked down on the scenes of death and destruction below, and even at this height the screams and moans of the dead and dying reached them.

It was their first sight of the sorceress, and even though they knew Caliban had returned her from the grave, the manner of her resurrection took them both by surprise. ‘Helde,’ Alexa said in a whisper, nodding towards the thing, which seemed to be entirely composed of tiny insects. ‘So that’s how Caliban brought her back.’ She wrinkled her nose up. ‘I think I’d have preferred to remain deceased.’

The sorceress was apparently unaware that they were in the tower, let alone the room. The sound – almost like white noise – of hundreds of thousands of hard, chitin-covered bodies crawling over and into each other came from the sorceress’s body, and were it not for this constant movement of the invertebrate host, Trey and Alexa might have believed the prone creature before them was dead.

They glanced at each other.

Is this a trick?
Trey asked, reasoning that there was no longer any need not to use the thought transfer spell.

Alexa shook her head. ‘It’s taking so much effort and concentration to keep that Shield in place, she’s had to abandon her physical self and enter another realm. She wasn’t expecting to be left alone like this. She couldn’t have known that her guardian would abandon her at the first whiff of fresh blood.’

They stepped further inside the room until they stood at the small dais on which the stone chair sat. They looked at each other, and Trey nodded towards the machete hanging from the strap round Alexa’s wrist.
We should get this over with,
he said.

He watched as Alexa wrapped her fingers round the handle of the weapon, slowly bringing it up before her so that the tip pointed at the nether-creature. Her eyes went from the blade to its intended target, and she took a deep breath as if to steady herself, but made no further move towards the thing. She stood there, the end of the deadly blade wavering in the air, incapable of making the final thrust.

Trey knew what was stopping her. Helde was, right now, utterly helpless. He knew that in the same position, with the knife in his hands, he would be having the same difficulties. But then his thoughts turned to Tom, alone and dying in the darkness at the foot of the tower – dying from an infection that this creature had let loose on this realm. He thought of how his friend and mentor would become a thing of horror, and how the Irishman had threatened to take his own life rather than let that happen. This thing in front of him was responsible for that. It was responsible for the screams reaching them from below, and if it was not stopped, would be responsible for ending the world as he knew it.

Do you want me to do it?
he asked, stepping forward and gently putting his hand on Alexa’s shoulder.

‘No, I’ll be OK.’

The heart. Remember, it has to be the heart.

Alexa nodded and took a step towards the prone figure. She drew the blade back, aiming for a spot in the centre of the chest. She thrust her hand forward ... just at the very moment Helde became aware of the danger she was in. That death was rushing towards her. The blade never found its target.

Helde’s mind snapped back into her physical body a split second before she was about to be killed for the second time in her very long existence.

Several things happened at once.

Helde’s grip on the Shield, and her ability to hold it in place at its current size, was lost. She was about to abandon it altogether when it occurred to her that she had no idea how big this attack force was. She did the only thing she was able to, and reduced the Shield’s size to the area immediately surrounding the black tower. Instead of a great sprawling dome, the Shield became a tight, cylindrical cone which was easier to keep in place. At the same moment that she did this, she used a simple spell to deflect the steel blade which was heading towards her chest, so that it struck nothing but a solid wall and careered away from its murderous path. Helde had done all of this without once moving from her hunched position on the throne. Now she lifted her head for the first time and took in the two intruders. The huge werewolf must be the boy Caliban had spoken of, and the girl must be the dhampir daughter of the vampire, Lucien Charron. The ancient sorceress only had seconds to take this in – she was under attack, and she must fight to stay alive.