Bloodborn (23 page)

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 attacked, 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!

She leapt at the stench, swinging blindly with her sabre, and connected with something that roared. A club or a fist hit her in the face and sent her flying back into a jumble of broken furniture, stars exploding in the darkness behind her open eyes.

She sat up, head ringing, and heard lighter feet dancing away from her – and another scent she recognised. The smell of cloves! The fat little man from the sewers.

‘You!’ she snarled, and lashed out at him with her sabre.

The hidden man laughed and kicked her in the temple, then skipped back out of the way again as she covered up. He can see, she thought.

‘Ulrika!’ came Gabriella’s voice. ‘Are you here?’

‘Aye, mistress,’ Ulrika gasped.

‘Get away!’ Gabriella cried. ‘Go to Hermione! Go–’

A smack like clay hitting stone, and the countess’s voice cut off with a gasp.

Ulrika surged up and leapt towards the source of the stench again, stabbing this time. An invisible foot tripped her and she went down flat on her stomach. She whipped the sabre at the retreating steps and was rewarded by a hiss of pain and an eye-blink dissipation of the blackness before it closed in again.

In that eye-blink she saw the fat little warlock hobbling back, clutching his leg through his all-enveloping robe, and the shadow of something huge and hunched looming on the wall, raising massive, clawed fists over its misshapen head. Then all was dark again.

Ulrika rolled up. There was no time to go after the little man. She spun and swung where she hoped the thing that had cast the shadow was, and chopped into something meaty. Another animal howl, and the whistle and breeze of something moving through the air. This time she ducked, almost in time. Claws raked the top of her head and her ear, but at least she wasn’t knocked across the room again. She stabbed in front of her, and scored a glancing hit, tearing flesh and cloth.

A strike like a hammer knocked her sabre away, and a hand as big and hard as a hay rake caught her by the ribs and lifted her off the ground. She struggled against it, but another hand grabbed her head, crushing it, and trying to twist it off. She could feel her vertebrae grinding. The pain was impossible. She tore at the huge fingers with her claws, shredding flesh and trying to rip them out at the root, but her assailant’s strength was as far beyond hers as hers was beyond a human’s. She could not stop it.

‘Murnau!’ came the fat warlock’s voice. ‘Behind you!’

She heard the dull chunk of a blade stabbing into flesh, and suddenly the thing that held her shrieked in agony and flung her away. She spun through the air and hit something hard and narrow, snapping it, then landed on what felt like a collapsed bed.

Another stabbing thud, and another inhuman scream battered her ears as she tried to stand.

‘I have a claw too,’ came Gabriella’s ragged cry. ‘You see? You see!’

Heavy footsteps thundered away across the floor and there was a tremendous shattering of glass and sudden rush of cold winter wind.

‘Damned coward!’ rasped the little man, then his footsteps retreated towards the hallway door.

Ulrika regained her feet and ran after the warlock’s steps, then tripped on something soft and came down hard on the edge of a table.

‘Stop!’ she cried, and pushed painfully to her feet.

She clutched her aching shoulder and limped after the fading footsteps. It wasn’t until she dodged around a broken table that she realised she could once again see. The unnatural blackness was dissolving. She looked around as she rushed for the door. The room was a shambles. Every stick of furniture was ripped to kindling and the logs from the fire had been scattered across the rug, setting it on fire. The tall windows on the outside wall, which had been so carefully blacked-out and curtained, were smashed and open to the night.

Then she saw Countess Gabriella on her knees beside the toppled wash stand, head down and clutching her arms, her robe shredded and soaked in blood. Ulrika stopped and ran back, the invisible beast and the fat little man forgotten.

‘Mistress!’ she cried, dropping to her knees beside her. ‘Are you hurt?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Gabriella weakly. ‘Very much so.’

She sank against Ulrika, her arms falling limp in her lap and a thin dagger slipping to the floor.

Ulrika gasped when she saw her wounds through the rents in the countess’s tattered silk robe. Her breasts and belly had been shredded to the muscle and the bones of her left arm gleamed through four deep ragged gashes. Splinters of glass and wood pierced her legs and face.

‘Please fetch Imma,’ she murmured. ‘I must feed.’