by T. C. Rypel
Serge growled. “Oui—reload quickly, Monsieur Chabot. Your time of reckoning is at hand.”
Now Reynald Labossiere aimed two pistols at the door-shielded werewolf. Serge looked surprised. “Really, Labossiere—such a display of valor! So uncharacteristic. Your voluptuous wife would be so impressed, I’m sure—”
Another trembling rebel warrior appeared from a storage room and fired two pistols in sequence. The first shot missed, wasted by a quaking hand. The second lead ball struck the door as Serge bore down on the terrified man and crushed him against a wall. Serge reached behind the wooden portal and did something to the poor man that caused his dying screams to electrify the dim hall.
Serge whirled and held up the door before him defensively again. He caught the sudden movement and flicked his gaze toward the wind-lashed hole of the doorless front portal.
Father Giroux stood just inside, brandishing a large wooden crucifix.
The werewolf howled a maniacal laugh. “So…it’s a trap! I like that. Such noble death does a Farouche proud. You, priest—will you see me cringe before your misplaced faith in an abandoned god? I think you’ve been listening to too many inspirational tales. You see, I’m not an animal, and I won’t bow before your holy symbol. I shall save your test of faith for last. But you, Labossiere—you disappoint me. I thought you were a committed cheek-turner. It’s very hard to become a true fighter at an instant’s turning. Or to try to win back a wayward wife…”
He stalked Labossiere now. Reynald’s hand was steady as he fired a noisy shot that splintered wood.
“Come ahead, then, demon,” he said. “The inn is open for business—”
A second pistol—a second shot—this one tore Serge’s ear half off.
The werewolf howled and lofted the door to smash him to pulp. Labossiere lithely flipped over the bar as the door crashed against an oaken counter. He brought up two more planted pistols in steely grips and fired them as one in a double cloud of fuming smoke. Both lead balls struck truly, staggering Serge.
Another hidden rebel broke from cover in the rear larders, and one more from the upper rooms. The inn came alive with pistol reports and yellow firelicks. Serge roared and plunged after the man at the larders with astonishing speed, like a shot from a mangonel, catching him by the legs before he could flee. The monster flailed the rebel about like a rag doll, bashing him against walls and beams until he was unrecognizable. Tossed him away with cold arrogance—
Another pistol ball struck the foul creature in the upper arm.
“How many shots, little men?” he taunted, taking another in the chest. “How many rounds and how much faith to put me away, eh?”
Serge’s lupine biped form darted in a quicksilver zigzag toward another concealed warrior, who screamed as his guns were spent uselessly and the werewolf raised him up in one taloned hand and raked him to ribbons with the other.
“Do you know what will happen to your useless lead missiles in the morning? My body will expel your shot like so many grains of sand—”
He charged at Labossiere again, who shot him in the neck and lower jaw. The monster shrieked in agony and rage now as it leaped over the counter to land on Reynald, who drew a dirk and stabbed it deeply in the belly before it vented its outrage on him.
“Stop it—agent of Satan!” Father Giroux was shouting behind it.
“Reynald!” Faye had broken away from the rebel who strove to hold her back at the upstairs newel post. She stumbled down the stairs in horror to see what the monster had done to her husband.
“Out! Out of here, demon!”
Serge turned on Father Giroux, his movements now belying the haughty disregard he’d shown toward the Wonder Knights’ guns moments before. Blood spattered the floor from his numerous wounds. Despite his arrogant scorn, Serge was weakening.
Faye collapsed at the base of the stairs. Henri and another man scampered down to attend on her, their eyes ever on the beast.
Serge raised a clawed hand to strike the wide-eyed cure, a disdainful sneer wrinkling his bleeding snout.
But before he could attack the priest, he saw his mercenary escort scattered and downed in the street. Rebels on horseback bounded up before the inn. And at their head—the golden werewolf, Simon.
Serge knocked Father Giroux aside with a sweeping backhand blow and went out to meet Simon, knowing that he could not die by the accursed man’s hand. He was encouraged to see Simon himself bleeding from a score of wounds, delighting in the thought of making him suffer before destroying him.
But then Serge paused. He was abruptly overwhelmed by a creeping sense of menace. Simon stood firm before him in the street, though he surely knew he was powerless to kill Serge. It was when he scanned the others that the interspheric invader felt his fur stiffen, the flesh crawl underneath. They glared at him with eyes of grim determination and profound loathing. To a man they sat firm astride their skittish mounts, studded with meaningfully angled polearms and longbows.
Energy pulsated from them. The energy of mutual commitment, courage, and what they knew as faith. Serge backed into the inn, caught sight of the priest from the corner of an eye, just standing beside an overturned table, stanching the blood flow from his mouth and nose.
But unafraid, projecting the same energy as the others.
Suddenly Serge’s manifold wounds pained him greatly. Suddenly he had no desire to fight Simon, to dare the hands of those blood-spattered warriors in the street; the gleaming eyes of Wyatt Ault, whose wife had died in the jaws of his wolf pack. And where were the wolves now? The pack was gone. The siege force had pushed on in mindless obedience to its directive.
Serge was alone. Now he realized what it might mean to be denied the life of power that was all he’d ever known. The immortal life of power. Practical immortality…but not invulnerability.
For the first time ever, Serge was afraid.
He snarled in defiance and wheeled about to escape through the rear of the inn. Simon anticipated him and tore through the back lanes to intercept him, outdistancing his men. Simon met the wild-eyed, panicked Serge at the rear of the inn
The werewolves threw themselves at each other in a brief, frenzied engagement of snapping jaws and shearing talons. In mighty desperation, Serge caught Simon by one leg and the ruff of his neck and flung him off, gaining enough time to bolt away into the darkness.
Two gargoyles—all that remained from the once prolific assaulting flight—saw them and gave Serge halfhearted cover fire with crossbows as he took command of a decimated squad of mercenaries. They held Simon at bay as Serge ran on along a street that became a deadly gauntlet.
Weapons began to appear at every portal in the hands of obsessed rebels. Serge took bowshot and musket ball as he ran, seeking sanctuary where there was none. An old man who’d lost a son to mercenary action surprised him out of concealment on a stoop and shot Serge in the snout, causing him blinding, maddening pain, and costing him his ability to scent danger. As Serge howled and plunged on in his bewildered anguish, a woman whose child had been among the kidnapped leaned from a second-floor window and fired her dead husband’s pistols, one ball crashing into the base of his spine.
The off-world invader Serge Farouche began to crawl, numbness washing through him. He heard the clattering hooves coming up fast behind him. Saw the ringing steeds that curvetted and tossed nervously upon nearing him. But they grew bolder now, under the firmly held reins of vengeful, purposeful men of this unenlightened world.
Serge rolled onto his back. He saw the cold, hard eyes of Wyatt Ault, just before the man’s guisarme drove downward into the shape-shifter’s abdomen. As searing pain blurred his vision, Serge saw the glinting flash of Wilfred Gundersen’s katana.
And then nothing more.
Among Simon Sardonis’ numerous strength-sapping wounds, he had broken hi
s leg in the fight with the larger Serge. His body would repair itself, but not before it could rest, at least the next day. And he would have the horrible transformations to suffer through, which would tear open the wounds anew.
Simon was laid on a makeshift pallet—a portion of broken wall from the livery—as, in agony, he thanked them all for their assistance against his bitter enemy, whom he could not kill because of the blood charm.
The Farouche Clan’s siege force, having suffered unexpectedly great losses, had plodded southward, quitting Lamorisse, leaving the town to sort through the carnage. Mourning wails greeted the first rays of dawn, even as Serge Farouche’s riven parts eerily became those of a man again.
The Wunderknechten who chose to pursue the Farouche legion loaded the now human but horribly wounded Simon Sardonis onto a wagon—at his insistence—and pounded off along the trampled southern roads. Already the snow was turning to slush, as the overlapping worlds’ climates clashed like the sentient warring beings.
“We need sleep,” a jouncing warrior grumbled from his mount. “I can’t go on.”
“We’ll sleep in the saddle,” Wilf replied, kicking his steed.
As they galloped away, Father Giroux strove to comfort Faye Labossiere. He turned her away from the horrible sight of the dead Serge, whom she regarded with a grimace. He eased the pointlessly spent pistol out of her stiffened fingers and slowly walked her back toward the inn.
* * * *
Normand Gareau and Gabrielle Chabot had been with a small squad of rebels who lay in wait of siege in the southeast quadrant of Lamorisse that was the last to be attacked.
They had listened to the sounds of battle in the distance, heard the squalling of gargoyles above the din, seen the angry red flames over the rooftops.
All the while, Normand had calmly kept the warriors’ nerves in check by cajoling them into tilts with the devil’s bones. Gareau had amassed a small, unsecured fortune from the others. Only Gaby was interested in playing on as the siege force neared the millinery shop area that had become their fortress-snare.
“I owe you my half of the inn,” Gaby told him, simpering. “And I’m not sure Henri will agree that I own half. I may have to find another way to repay my debt.”
“Another way and another time,” Gareau said, scooping up his dice and trading his slouch hat for a morion helm. “Time to bare our fangs.”
The killing ground about the millinery shop had been well designed, Gareau calling upon memories of what The Crow had taught him during lessons in military science conveyed over sloshing ale flagons.
Men swore to see the intimidating charge of the red-bearded barbarian giants, astride those monstrous, snorting draft horses. The giants trampled defenders in their wake, crushed bodies and torn garb entwining about the horses’ hooves. The off-world monsters guffawed in hellish mirth as they lofted severed heads atop their spear-points. Arbalest-bearing boar-men accompanied them on foot, entangling them in what became a mass chaos of mounting slaughter as the well-designed ambush took them by surprise.
Calthrops in the snow spilled the leading edge of the huge barbarians in three different lanes, their fellows piling atop them to scream and thrash helplessly, impaled by spikes and jagged metal; nets sprang up at several points, separating the confused savages into pockets of disarray. Before they could even fix on the positions of their assailants, the rebels poured gunshot and armor-piercer arrows into their numbers.
For half the night Gareau’s band ravaged the invaders, trapping them, raking them with sleek shaft and burning lead, pouring boiling oil and water on their heads from the rooftops adjacent to the millinery command center. Monstrous forms were heaped in mounds amidst blood and slush and grimy snow. The sector was an icy arena in which beasts died at the hands of men.
And in the end, as dawn light filtered over the horizon, a last desperate effort at dislodging the rebels was essayed by a mixed band of wounded outworlders and Farouche mercenaries. The ground floor of the millinery was taken, all the defenders killed.
Normand and Gaby ascended to the roof, where they spilled oil through the drain spouts until it ran down the walls on all sides of the building. Gareau then ignited the millinery shop, tossing a flambeau into the faces of the enraged attackers who strove to reach them on the roof. The torch caught below in the oil-soaked fabrics as Normand slammed and locked the roof hatch over their heads, sealing them in.
The shop went up in a blazing dawn inferno as Normand and Gaby leapt to the lower roof of another building, joining other rebels inside, as planned.
They gazed dejectedly into the streets as the siege force swept southward and the fires that could be were brought under control.
Gaby moved up close to Normand and laid her head against his shoulder in relief and exhaustion.
He pulled her close a moment. They saw their surviving rebel fellows stagger out of concealment, watching in silence for a long time. Gareau caught sight of Luigi Leone, stumbling along a cobbled lane, holding his side or abdomen. He seemed badly hurt. Two people came to his assistance, half-carrying him into a dwelling.
“You were very brave last night,” Gabrielle said softly, swooning with fatigue as she clutched his arm.
“Hah! You weren’t exactly a shrinking violet yourself. I was quite impressed, you know. The last time I counted you were one Viking and two snorting pig-heads ahead of me…Look at the sun,” he went on, wondering to see the glow of a new dawn. “I think it’s going to be a warm day. Weird weather you have here in Burgundy.”
She chuckled breathily. “Were you afraid?” she asked.
“Hell, yes. Don’t tell me you weren’t—?”
She shook her head. “Non. Last night—two nights ago, whatever—I dreamed that we’d win.”
“Now you tell me.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Blaise Farouche had no stomach for combat. He left that to his boorish brothers, knowing what foolish chances they took while so many more pleasurable pursuits were available.
Indeed, should any more of them suffer unfortunate demises at rebel hands, his position in this desirable world would be all the more enhanced. He took steps to ensure that it would be so.
During the first night of the storm, he slipped into the sleeping chamber of his father-in-law, Duke Cordell de Plancy, and drained him of enough blood to assure that this time…he would not awaken.
The marchioness’ husband would now soon assume the position of power that went with the power he wielded in actuality.
* * * *
Aimee de Plancy considered the phial of poison as she readied for bed in the early evening.
As long as her father had remained alive, though withered and senile, there had been some tenuous link to her former happy life. Now, robbed of his presence as well as any semblance of self-respect, she knew that she could no longer continue.
All that stayed her hand was the knowledge that Blaise’s evil will alone would rule over Burgundy once she was gone. And there would be no justice in his ascension to power, for she was sure that it had been Blaise who had slowly murdered her father. And she suspected how, though she could not bring her conscious mind to frame the unspeakable thought.
Why has God allowed this to come to pass? she thought as her fingers worked at the small bottle. Non. It was not God’s doing. People allowed this. People like her father, and herself, and the common folk, who even now were taking steps to rectify it, if only too late.
Her father…
She swallowed back the rising bile as she thought about his death again.
Change. Nothing can be the same as it was. All things must submit to change. Death was not change. One must live in order to change.
Control, her mind told her. You must fight Blaise for control.
But how?
By changin
g…
Aimee smashed the phial of poison against the mantel. Then she began to pray for forgiveness for the perversion she’d allowed entry in her life, and for those things she might still have to do. But there was no choice. She must live, and to live she must fight Blaise for control, by whatever means.
That evening she sat under the canopy of her bed, regarding one empty bottle of wine and a second that was well on its way to matching it. She was clad only in the peignoir that was Blaise’s favorite. Silk from the Far East, and blood-red in color.
Exquisitely fitting, she thought dimly, now pulling herself to her feet unsteadily as evening gloom collected over the snowy land below.
Snow in September…or is it October? Drunk. You, milady, are stinking drunk…
She would have to be drunk to see it through. That was very important. Blaise hated drinking—he seemed to irrationally fear it—and she thought she knew why. But she would have to be drunk to see it through.
She staggered to the door, saw the loathsome servant girl she’d sent for waiting impatiently, wondering what business the marchioness might have with her when she was Blaise’s personal servant.
“You—Brie,” Aimee heard herself blare. “Come here.”
The girl approached, a sour look on her face.
“Bring my husband here—directly. Not by way of your little trysting places.”
Brie smirked. “I answer to His Lordship alone.”
“You answer to me,” Aimee growled. “Now get along.”
She watched the insolent servant girl shuffle off sullenly, surprise and revulsion informing her expression in equal measure.
“And if you want to move like the walking dead, I’ll see that you have a place among them—move!”
