The Last Benediction in Steel

by Wright, Kevin

  I grabbed a second ring. “Ready?”

  “Yes.”

  Together we pulled, bowing our backs, iron hinges groaning, squealing, lifting the hatch open.

  A deeper darkness lay beneath, so solid I half-thought if I stepped on it, it’d bear my weight.

  “Lady Mary…” I called into the abyss. “Sarah…? Joshua…?”

  Nothing at first, my stomach dropping and then, “S-Sir — Sir Luther?” A muted voice, limping up through the darkness. “Is … Is that you? Stephan?”

  “Mary!” Stephan lunged headfirst down the chasm.

  I caught him by the belt, dead-lifting him up, hauling him dangling back. “Watch it, you damn fool!”

  “Stephan!” Lady Mary’s voice sounded from below. “Get us out of here. Now. Rose of Sharon! Please.”

  I knelt. “The kids down there with you?”

  “Yes. O-Only the children.” Her voice seemed distant, muffled, small. “Ruth is … with Abraham. And Avar…”

  “Yeah. We know. We’re gonna get you out. Judas Priest.” Stephan stood, casting about for something, anything, then stripped off his belt. “Lou. Give me your belt. Karl, you too.” With his one hand, he started forming a knot, fumbled, froze. “Forget it.” Stephan tossed me his. “Here—”

  I bound mine to his then added Karl’s.

  “How long?” Stephan squinted.

  “Seven feet, give or take.” I yanked on the line, testing my knots. “But we need more. Gotta make a loop.”

  “Here.” Karl tossed me his thane-axe. “Loop it under the beard. Just watch the blade.”

  I did. “Alright.”

  Stephan leaned down into the hole. “Get ready.” Whispers in the dark as they conferred.

  “Ready? Watch your head.” Gripping Karl’s thane-axe, I stepped in and kicked the makeshift rope into the hole. “Gonna look great with our pants round our ankles.”

  “Not yer strongest suit.” Karl had an axe in each hand.

  “It’ll still be better than down here,” Lady Mary called up.

  “You got it?”

  I felt a tug.

  “Yes.”

  “Best be quick about it, lad,” Karl spat. “Whatever’s below’s riling hard.”

  Whatever it was down there was sliding against stone. Like some enormous serpent writhing within. Images of the Half-King clawed their way ripping through my mind. Long slithering rat-tail appendages. Desiccated flesh. That withered stick tongue scraping furrows through blood. I closed my eyes, shook it off.

  “Alright,” I opened my eyes, “heave!”

  I set to it like a demon, gripping the axe haft, trudging backward til I hit wall, then hauling hand-over-hand til a head poked free.

  “Sarah!” Stephan snatched her rag-doll arm and pulled her into his embrace.

  But I’d already kicked the belt-rope back down, rekindling my effort, ripping hand over hand. Joshua’s head emerged an instant later, and Stephan snatched him. He didn’t look any better. “Get over with your sister, kid.” In a fugue, he didn’t move til Sarah gripped his arm, dragging him aside. “Good girl.”

  The metal trapdoor by Karl’s feet started shifting, rising, jangling as something pressed up against it from below. Only the lock held it shut, but the metal hasp was bending, stretching like sinew. For want of some other dumb heavy thing, Karl jumped onto the trapdoor, booted feet slamming it shut.

  “Out!” Stephan herded the children through the dungeon-door. “Quickly. Go.” He glared back at me. “Lou?”

  “Go!” I waved a hand. “I’ll get her.”

  Stephan didn’t move. Couldn’t move.

  Karl’s trapdoor squealed as iron failed, the corners knurling up, a nightmare pouring out in length and tendril. A lithe rat-tail appendage slithered out, slapping around like some blind idiot thing finding its way, naked flesh wrapping round Karl’s leg, gripping him from ankle to knee. “Odin’s Eye!”

  The belt-rope was already back down and Lady Mary on it instantly. “What’s going on!?”

  “I have no fucking idea,” I grunted and heaved, hand over hand, foot by foot, forcefully not looking Karl’s way for fear of shitting myself.

  “The children?”

  “Get ‘em out!” Karl hacked with his hand-axes, slithering appendages flailing about. Squeals and howls erupted as more poured free, sliding, slithering, grasping, wrestling him down to one knee.

  Lady Mary’s head emerged from the black, and Stephan was at her, grasping her, pulling her free. “Where are the children!” Lady Mary screamed like a banshee.

  Wordless, I stepped over the empty hole and snatched Yolanda from the floor as Karl abandoned his hand-axe for a dagger. Teeth bared, he sawed at the tentacle slithering round his thigh as more poured out.

  I pointed at the dungeon door, “Get out of here,” and marched toward Karl.

  The thing had him up to his waist now, squeezing, gripping, constricting.

  I raised Yolanda. “Roll to your left.”

  “Rrrrg—” Karl kicked and squirmed off the trapdoor, gripping at the floor, holding onto the joint-work by fingernails as the rat-tails flexed, bulged, squeezed.

  “Don’t move—” With a two-handed overhead stroke, I chopped at a tentacle, severing it twitching away like the broken tail of a lizard. Below, a piercing keen ripped out, unearthly, inhuman, the mad screech of Geryon himself. Stones shifted as the monstrosity pressed against the trapdoor, slobbering, keening, working up like puke out a drunkard’s throat.

  Karl scrambled to his feet, growling, peeling the severed monstrosity from his thigh and flinging it still wriggling across the room. I shoved his thane-axe into his hands as we staggered for the door.

  Lady Mary stood dazed, frozen, staggered, as the trapdoor burst into shard, hurling iron and stone. A monstrosity seethed forth, deformed appendages slithering up and out, birthing free, darker than the darkest night.

  Lady Mary covered her mouth, “Oh, my dear sweet Lord…”

  …made a poor choice in my cohorts, being veritably held hostage by their occult knowledge. I should have known better. I should have ended it myself. I should never have fathered any…

  —Haesken Family Treatise: King Eckhardt Haesken III

  Chapter 62.

  IN THE HALF GLOOM, something birthed up from the trap, something crooked and malformed and willow-thin tall. To my mind’s eye, it was the Half-King of the crypt. But then it wasn’t. Where the Half-King had been a decrepit thing, a broken desiccated husk of a thing, here stood a thing at its apex, a thing at its prime, a thing full of a malevolent vitality, huffing and squirming and scrabbling up, out, slipping, slavering, free.

  “C’mon—” I shoved Lady Mary, gawking, stunned, stutter-stepping woodenly into the wine cellar. “GO—!”

  Karl stumbled after, skidding to a halt, whirling, slamming the dungeon-door shut, bracing it with his shoulder.

  Across the wine cellar, Stephan slammed the keep-door shut and braced it with his back. His eyes wide. Face pale. Teeth bared.

  “Open up, you fuckers!” someone roared from beyond the keep-door.

  “Mother of fuck,” I gasped. “Are you kidding me?”

  Stephan’s legs locked out straight. “It’s von Madbury.”

  “Least of our bloody worries.” Karl wiped his beard, adjusting his feet to gain purchase.

  The keep-door shivered at Stephan’s back as someone hacked at it with an axe.

  Thunk! Thunk! Thunk!

  Beyond Karl’s door, the horror slid, its rat-tail tentacles and nails grating against wood.

  “Hide,” I snarled at Lady Mary.

  Gawking all round, “Where!?” she demanded.

  “Jesus Christ—” But she had a point. I pointed toward the empty racks. “I don’t know. Fuck. Jesus. Somewhere!”

  “Lady Mary!” Sarah’s head popped up from behind a pair of barrels.

  “Wait for my the signal.” I pressed a dagger into her hand and marched to the middle of the chamber.
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  Lady Mary gripped the dagger. “And what’s the signal?”

  “Me shitting my pants.”

  “Right.” She scrambled toward the barrels.

  “Just get out.” I brandished Yolanda. “And keep going. Don’t look back.” I fixed Stephan a glare then shot Karl one for good measure. “Know where I’m going with this?”

  “Straight to hell?” Karl sneered as a board at his back cracked.

  “Yeah. Hop aboard.”

  “Brother—” Stephan’s legs shivered with each smash against the door, splinters raining.

  “On a three-count,” I spread my feet, glaring at Karl, “if you can count that high.”

  “Are you bloody—” Karl let loose a chain of expletives as the door at his back groaned outward, wood splintering, iron bands squealing.

  I turned to Stephan. “Open it.”

  Stephan unlatched the door and dove aside as it burst open.

  Silhouettes stood beyond.

  One…

  I rose to my full and glorious height. “Gentlemen,” I pointed with Yolanda, “I magnanimously accept your unconditional surrender.”

  Two…

  Von Madbury staggered huffing into the room, a great axe in his two fists as he righted. Gideon Felmarsh slid in behind and along came Brother Miles, a makeshift bandage wrapped round his head. A glut of blackguards wrestled through the doorway behind.

  “Lad—” Karl hissed.

  Von Madbury wiped a greasy lank of hair from his eyes as he slunk forth, all teeth and murder. “Kill them all.”

  “Come now, you blackguards!” I stepped forth.

  They took the bait whole and ran with it.

  Right towards me.

  “Three—!” I yelled and launched off to the side, diving through a rack and out the other side.

  Behind, a shower of splinters blasted outward. The rack I dove through toppled. I don’t know what happened to Karl, but something shot past in the gloom, something malformed and hunched and only peripherally man-like. Frozen in terror, a blackguard was instantly engulfed in a tangle of appendages. His screams echoed as bones snapped, popping in quick succession.

  “Mother of God!” Brother Miles froze to a halt, turned to run, dropping his mace as the thing descended upon him.

  Von Madbury’s lone eye blared as he stutter-stepped back.

  Brother Miles writhed in chittering madness, squealing as needle-teeth buried into his neck to the sound of slurp and unrepressed ecstasy, his hands flailing, legs kicking, pale face gasping as a long arm slithered into his mouth, thrusting deep, stifling his impotent whimpers. “Nnng—!” Brother Miles kicked and writhed until the thing tore its naked arm free, ripping crimson insides out in a wet pile of slop.

  “Holy fuck!” someone yelled.

  It might’ve been me.

  Loping under a fallen rack, I struck down a blackguard frozen in terror.

  Gideon Felmarsh turned and bolted for the door, and I scrambled after, skewering him through the back. Gasping, screaming, he whirled, Yolanda wrenching from my fist as we both slammed the wall. Felmarsh gained the upper hand and smashed an elbow across my face, shoving me off and clambering up. He was nigh at the door when Stephan cross-tackled him off his feet.

  “Go!” Stephan shouted, and Lady Mary bolted into the void, gripping Sarah and Joshua, half-dragging, half-carrying them onward.

  The blackguards scrambled.

  Something whip-like cracked past my head, knocking me sideways.

  The horror from the vault cast Brother Miles’s husk aside, just a flaccid sack of skin and bone, and rose to its full height, its head nearly scraping the ceiling, half man and half … something else. It was a thing of sinew and manged fur, half trudging, half slithering boneless as it flowed forth. Its face was a cruel parody of Prince Palatine’s, contorted, distorted, inhuman. Except for his eyes. Crocodile tears rolled down its face as it snatched up another mercenary, engulfing him, shifting in a quick whirling half-shrug to the sound of dislocating joints. Breaking bones. A trembling squeal.

  Then it cast him aside.

  Licking his lips, glaring me down, von Madbury inched toward the door as the prince-thing, the monstrosity, the strigoi, surged toward Stephan and Felmarsh, struggling on the floor. Gripping a fallen axe, I flung a cut at the monstrosity, shearing through sinew, catching its attention. It whirled instantly.

  Lucky. Fucking. Me.

  “Stephan!” I dashed for the dungeon-door, freezing as the thing cut me off, looming over like a tidal wave of insanity. “Go!”

  Stephan kicked free of Felmarsh and bolted.

  Von Madbury dashed, hurdling a noose-like rat-tail, slick as oil, hacking a back-handed slash my way. I ducked it but was on the ground as a tail snagged my leg, wrapping round it, crushing tight. Von Madbury disappeared through the mauled doorway as the strigoi drew me close, tearing the axe from my grip.

  My fingernails broke off on the flagstone edges. “No!”

  It peeled me back.

  The strigoi rose in the dim lantern light, a thing of shadow and mange, black eyes smoldering, glaring down with inhuman curiosity. The thing that was its mouth yawned open, dripping pink, drool coursing, as though trying to form words.

  It failed.

  Utterly.

  Upside down, dangling in the air like the hanged man, tails slithering about my body, I screamed. I screamed senseless. Meaningless. If I’d had a blade, I’d’ve slit my own throat. The appendages seizing me were snakes of iron, sharp hairs biting into my flesh—

  “Fucking die!” Karl roared nearby and it cast me across the void, breaking through shelves of felled racks. Next I knew, I was splayed across the ground, seeing double, triple, God, as three monstrosities lurched onward.

  A shadow bolted behind it. Short. Squat. Stupid.

  “Get up!” Karl set his feet, axe raised. “Run!”

  I struggled, arms wobbling, and could do neither.

  Thane-axe in hand, Karl hacked at the monstrosity, quick glancing chops, never committing, always moving, never stopping. He drew it back towards the dungeon, leaving me a clear path. Out. Jesus. Reality wobbling, I struggled to my knees, my feet, as Karl growled and hacked and ducked and dodged. But the strigoi moved with a feral tenacity, an inhuman zeal, quicker than thought, and cut Karl off, cornering him.

  “Valhalla!”

  Two-handed over his head, Karl hacked into it with a stroke that would’ve felled an ox, but the strigoi barely flinched, taking the blow, engulfing Karl against the far wall. Tentacle and pink appendage poured onto him, over him, sliding across his face and chest, spreading out fluid to all directions.

  “Run!” Karl screamed and then didn’t as appendages slid over his mouth, consuming his face, choking down his throat.

  My head was mush, legs jelly, arms useless. I crippled across the floor like some old thing, some broken thing, some useless thing. “Fuck!” I screamed.

  “Wha—?” I froze as a large hand thrust in my face.

  I blinked.

  “Jesus Christ.”

  And it was. Sort of. Ensconced by a nimbus of rippling torchlight.

  “Rise, brother.” The Nazarene gripped my hand and shoulder and grunted, hauling me bodily to my feet. He stood before me, his half-head empty, yawning like some crimson chasm, his body thick and massive and hacked nigh on to pieces. His big belly’d been ripped ragged, ropes of innard poured outward in slick glistening loops, trailing behind, thrown across his shoulder. His severed arm was reattached but wrong somehow, off-kilter, backward.

  “Jesus. Fucking. Christ.”

  “Remember we are all brothers against the darkness.”

  “Yeah! Brothers!” Tears streamed down my face. “Sure! Whatever!”

  “Go now, brother!” the Nazarene boomed as he strode toward the monstrosity. “Flee!”

  But I didn’t run. Couldn’t run.

  I staggered headfirst toward the wall, using the fallen racks to stay upright, working my way for the
door, tripping, falling to one knee, drooling, bleeding over Gideon Felmarsh’s twitching corpse. His eyes glared, his teeth fixed in grimace, but he didn’t move. Couldn’t. And Yolanda lay there, skewered through him neat as you please. Digging a fist beneath him, I seized the hilt, whispered, “This might hurt,” then ripped her free.

  Crushing tears from my eyes, I turned toward the twin monstrosities closing in upon one another.

  “Come to me, brother!” The Nazarene bellowed, his arms up, open.

  The strigoi turned at that, its green eyes greedy-full with inguinal ecstasy, its one arm still somewhat human slithering out, long and many-jointed and wrong. His other half writhed in an orgy of tail and tentacle, coiling, slithering, twisting.

  “Let me sate thine hunger!” the Nazarene bellowed, his thick arms opened, exposing his body, his soul.

  The strigoi descended, a movement too swift to grasp, too distorted to follow, engulfing the Nazarene in flesh and tendril, wrapping round him in an iron embrace, constrictor snakes surging, all disparate yet acting as one.

  Against the wall, forgotten, Karl collapsed, trembling to all fours, eyes blank, gasping, hacking. I didn’t say anything, I didn’t wait, I just grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and by some force born of desperation and cowardice and ten-fold terror, dragged him limp as a sack of drowned kittens.

  Behind, the strigoi let loose a keen, and I thought he’d finished with the Nazarene.

  I was wrong.

  The Nazarene, for all his terrible wounds, for all that he was wrapped up in the strigoi’s legion of appendages, for all that he was buffeted by the slash of the strigoi’s excoriating force, he was still game. Still on his feet. Still fighting. His thick arms, though twisted askew, grasped the strigoi’s core, a crushing embrace, his hands disappearing, slipping hidden through hellish flesh.

  The strigoi keened.

  The Nazarene bellowed.

  Dust rained from above.

  “Brother!” The Nazarene took one single step, grimacing, twisting, bulling the horror before him. Then another. And another. “Show us the light!”

  The strigoi wailed and gnashed and fought, snatching onto a fallen rack and dragging it behind. But the Nazarene kept moving, slowly, inexorably, step by bloody step towards the dungeon-door. Appendage flailed. The strigoi gave up on fighting and latched onto the Nazarene’s neck and skull-hole, needle teeth gnashing and gnawing, biting from the inside, sucking blood and bile and unholy ichor, drawing sanity and soul and sustenance, diminishing the Nazarene with each tread of his heavy step.