Bloodborn (33 page)

Ulrika frowned, confused. What was he doing? He had only to push through the trees and he would find the place he was looking for.

Holmann stopped abruptly halfway down the hill and looked around him, then stared at a nearby monument and balled his fists. ‘Not again! I was just here! Curse this fog!’

Ulrika almost laughed. How could he not see the valley? It was foggy, but no worse than when they had come together to the spot previously. Why had he turned away when he had been right at the boundary? Then, all at once, Ulrika knew exactly why. There was a spell of confusion laid on the place, made to keep people from finding it. With her inhuman senses, Ulrika had seen through it, and had last time led Holmann into the valley without even knowing it was there. Now he had returned to the spot, but without Ulrika’s guidance he could not pierce the enchantment.

A wave of compassion for the templar flooded Ulrika. Here was a man who did not mask his fear of the unknown by boasting around the fire. Here was a man who instead stepped bravely into the night to face the enemies of his kind, and yet, with his limited human senses, he could only stumble around in the darkness, lost and befuddled while his foe, quicker, stronger and blessed with abilities he could only dream of, crept up on him to take his life before he knew it was even threatened. Such seemed the fate of all men in this world of daemons and monsters, and it saddened Ulrika to have to murder one who had the courage to fight that fate – but it had to be done.

She rose and crept towards him as he started up the hill again. But then, with only ten paces between them, she heard another heartbeat in the fog, and then another. The pulses were slow but still strong, and with them came a new gust of corpse stench. More ghouls.

Ulrika paused, her chest constricting. It seemed that Holmann’s shuffling and cursing had not gone unnoticed. The undead killer’s guard dogs had come sniffing at the gate, and were slinking closer. Ulrika could see the shadow of one lurking in the ring of cypress trees at the top of the hill, waiting as Holmann approached, and the other blurred from one gravestone to the next off to his right. This was a perfect solution. Holmann would be dead as Gabriella wished, and Ulrika wouldn’t have to do the killing. All she had to do was continue up the hill to the line of trees and let the witch hunter be the distraction that allowed her to pass through them unnoticed.

Aye, it was perfect, which did not explain why she found herself padding under the branches of the cypresses towards the closer of the ghouls, rapier poised to strike.

The misshapen thing didn’t hear her coming until she was three paces away, and by then it was too late. She sprang as it spun to face her, and she ran it through the neck. It gargled wordlessly and clawed at the blade as it died.

The noise brought Holmann’s head up, and he went on guard where he stood, halfway down the hill, sword and pistol at the ready.

‘Show yourself!’ he barked.

As Ulrika hesitated, the second ghoul leapt from hiding, bounding over a gravestone and launching itself at the witch hunter. Holmann turned and fired and the thing went down in a rolling ball, blood spraying, but then it gathered its limbs under itself and lumbered at the templar again like a charging ape.

A third ghoul, one Ulrika had missed, broke from a clump of rose bushes further down the slope, aiming for Holmann’s back as he parried the claws of the second and clubbed it with the butt of his pistol.

Ulrika cursed. She should leave now. Let him die. Forget him. But again she was sprinting to intercept. What was she doing? She suddenly felt just like Holmann, walking up to the cypresses but unable to push through them into the valley. There was a barrier here, and she could not make herself cross it.

She jumped over Holmann’s head and landed in front of the third ghoul. It shrieked and lunged at her, claws extended. She hacked at them, severing half a dozen fingers, but still it came, immune to pain. Its head shot forwards, snarling, jaws distending. She jammed her forearm up under its chin and its filed teeth snapped shut an inch before her face, its corpse breath gagging her.

She ran it through, then shoved it back. It slid off her blade and curled on the ground like a burnt spider. She cut off its head, just to be sure, then turned.

Holmann was levelling his second pistol at her, the other ghoul dead at his feet.

Ulrika froze, knowing he loaded silvered shot. ‘Is that any way to greet your rescuer, templar?’ she asked.

He glared at her, his hand trembling. ‘Why do you torment me so, fiend? Why do you toy with me? Why not kill me and have done?’

Ulrika blinked at him, then lowered her sword. ‘I don’t know. It is what I must do, and only a moment ago I fully intended to, and then…’ She trailed off and gestured around at the dead ghouls. ‘I did this.’

‘
Why
?’ Holmann demanded. ‘For what evil design do you keep me alive?’

‘None, Herr Holmann,’ she sighed. ‘None. I… I just can’t seem to kill you.’ Her mouth twisted with bitterness. ‘I seem to have a… a fondness for you.’

‘Do not lie to me, monster!’ Holmann cried. ‘Creatures of the night have no fondnesses! They have no hearts!’

‘I heard that too, when I lived,’ said Ulrika, as much to herself as to him. ‘But I find much to contradict it now I am dead. Would it ache so, if it wasn’t there?’

Holmann sneered. ‘You seek to cozen me with sentiment. I will not be beguiled into lowering my gun.’

Ulrika looked up at him, frowning, as something dawned on her. ‘And why haven’t you fired it before now, templar?’ she asked. ‘Witch hunters are known to be heartless as well.’

Holmann glared at her, and the tremble of his hand became a violent shake. ‘Bitch!’ he cried. ‘Whore!’ Then, with a snarl that was as much a sob, he turned the gun and put it to his own head.

‘No!’ Ulrika cried, and leapt up the hill at him.

The gun went off as she grabbed at his wrist, and she slammed down with him on the grass not knowing if he was alive or dead. She rolled off him and came to her knees, looking down at him. His arm was flung over his face, the spent pistol slack in his hand. She pulled his arm away, then breathed a sigh of relief. His face was black from exploding powder, and his eyebrows singed, but the ball had missed. He lived, though he did not seem grateful for it.

He jerked his arm from her grip and rolled on his side, facing away from her. ‘Leave me be!’

‘Templar Holmann,’ she said. ‘Friedrich–’

‘I killed my own family because of their sin,’ he choked. ‘My mother and father! Yet I cannot kill you.’ He covered his face with his hands. ‘I am not worthy to be called a Templar of Sigmar. I am not worthy of life!’

Ulrika held herself still beside him, wanting to comfort him, but knowing her touch would not be welcome. ‘And I cannot kill you,’ she said softly. ‘Though you denounce me and threaten my kind and burn down a house around me.’

Three slow-burning heart-fires bloomed at the top of the ridge and Ulrika looked up. More ghouls in the cypresses. She stood and took up her rapier to face them.

‘Get up, Templar Holmann,’ she said. ‘There is work yet to be done.’

The ghouls sped down the slope, gibbering and shrieking. Holmann looked up at the sound and groaned, but got to his feet as well.

Ulrika leapt to meet them, hacking one across the shins, then spinning as it stumbled and transfixing a second with her blade. The third crashed into her side and she rolled down the hill with it as it clawed and bit at her.

They slid to a stop on the wet grass and she caught its throat in her left hand, pushing its mouth away from her as it raked her with its talons. She tried to free her sword arm, but it was trapped awkwardly against the ground.

‘Foul maggot,’ she growled. ‘I have claws too.’

She extended her nails and closed her free hand around its neck, then jerked it back, tearing its throat and windpipe out in a red gush. It reared back, clutching at the ruin of its neck and trying to scream. She freed her arm at last and chopped it in the side, shattering ribs and finding organs.

It sank to the side and she extricated herself from its limbs. Up the hill, Holmann was finishing off the one she had lamed earlier. It fell with his sword through its right eye, and the witch hunter turned to face her, breathing heavily. His eyes were full of pain and uncertainty.

Ulrika raised a hand as she stood. ‘Let us not go through it again, shall we?’ she said, then nodded up the hill. ‘Our purposes are the same here. We both seek to discover what is beyond those trees. We both seek to kill it. Let us put what lies between us aside for this common goal.’ She sighed. ‘Perhaps it will slay us both, and our troubles will be ended.’

Holmann frowned. ‘You seek to kill it too?’

‘Did we not track it here together?’ Ulrika asked.

‘But, I thought–’

‘That I led you here as a ruse?’ Ulrika laughed. ‘Herr Holmann, had I wished to kill you, there would have been no better place for it than the plague house, or the sewers where I first discovered you. No. I may have lied in all else, but in this, at least, I spoke the truth. I am a vampire hunter.’

She whipped her rapier through the air to shake the ghoul blood from it, then started up the hill towards the trees. ‘Now, will you come? Our prey awaits.’

Holmann stood undecided for a long moment, but then followed at last. As he joined her at the line of cypresses he frowned and sniffed. ‘Is it you that smells of rose water?’

Ulrika cringed with shame. ‘They are borrowed clothes. Pay it no mind. Now, hurry.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

INTO THE CRYPT

Holmann stopped, stunned, as he pushed though the row of cypress trees with Ulrika and looked around at the bowl of the misty circular valley.

‘Why could I not find this before?’ he murmured.

‘An enchantment,’ said Ulrika. She smiled. ‘You see, we help each other. You can speak to priests. I can see what is hidden.’

She pushed her senses ahead of her, hunting heart-fires or footsteps, and found neither. She started stealthily down towards the cluster of crypts that surrounded the dry fountain at the bottom.

Holmann followed behind her, still troubled. ‘I understand none of this,’ he said. ‘Why would a vampire hunt another vampire?’

Ulrika paused behind a statue of a winged saint holding a sword. She raised her head and inhaled. The rotten corpse smell was so overpowering here that it blotted out almost everything else. ‘Do you imagine us more united in purpose than humanity?’ she asked. ‘We have feuds. We have murderers and madmen among us that threaten the rest. And others who work for the common good.’ She moved on.

‘There are no good vampires,’ said Holmann, creeping after her. ‘They are all monsters that drink the blood of humans. Even you.’

‘And if that blood is freely given?’ asked Ulrika.

Holmann grunted angrily. ‘Do you say it is freely given when you take it from some beglamoured slave?’

Ulrika was about to snap off an equally angry retort, but she paused. His words aligned uncomfortably with her own feelings about the blood-swains she had drunk from. Quentin and Imma had lost all self will when she had fed from them. And could she say they had been willing before they had fallen under their mistress’s influence?

‘Then let us just say that some are worse than others,’ she said at last, then added to herself, just like witch hunters. The thought raised a question in her head, and she turned to Holmann again. ‘Why have you come here alone?’ she asked. ‘You were overwhelmed the last time. You should have brought reinforcements. Where are your comrades?’

Holmann snorted. ‘Captain Schenk is convinced that he already knows who the vampires are, and continues to hunt them in the Faulestadt. We went to the Wolf’s Head because a woman told him it was a nest of vampires. And indeed, we found you, but when you vanished, he would not listen to me when I mentioned this crypt. He said that vampires could not live on sanctified ground.’ He snorted. ‘So I came alone.’

Ulrika hardly heard half of what he said. ‘What woman?’ she asked, clutching his shoulder. ‘Who told him about the Wolf’s Head?’

Holmann shrugged and drew away from her. ‘I know not. I wasn’t there.’

Ulrika cursed under her breath. Had it been Hermione? Who else could it be? And yet, as Gabriella had said, could she have been so stupid as to endanger herself by exposing her ‘cousin’?