by Nick Stead
The barghest did indeed want us to follow it, turning away the moment we started forward and loping along the passageway just ahead of us. I was kind of glad of its presence, even though it may well be the portent of doom humans had believed black dogs to be, at least as far as Selina and Amy were concerned. Its appearance could be a bad sign that something had gone horribly wrong with whatever the witch was attempting, but at least it would be a strong ally for as long as it remained on our side. I didn’t really expect it to be as protective of us as it would be of its mistress without any direction from her to defend anyone else, though I was guessing the fact that it wanted us to help Selina would mean it was in its interests to keep us alive for the time being. The dog might not be the most reliable of allies, but I suspected it would join in any fights David might suddenly spring on us as we made our way to the room where the witch and my sister were currently being held.
The shadow beast stopped by a nondescript section of the passage, disappearing through what I guessed must be the door to the hidden path. It was so well disguised with the wall that I hadn’t spotted it when I’d first gone down the passage, and probably would have struggled to find it even if I’d been looking for it. Suddenly I had my doubts. It seemed like a hell of a coincidence that the barghest would just happen to turn up and show us the way when David had made this particular secret section of the dungeon especially hard to find. What if the black dog wasn’t bringing us to help its mistress after all; what if it was another complex trap David had prepared to ensnare us in some fresh torment? And yet, there seemed to be no other way back to the chamber where I’d left my sister with the witch, or at least none that I’d found. I couldn’t just retrace my steps since I’d need a way to reach the trapdoor in the ceiling of the room of spikes, and I’d found no other secret passages that might lead me back up to the section of the dungeon where I’d fallen from. And even if I could find my way back there, I had no guarantees I’d be able to find a way into the room from that side. Zee hadn’t said much about what was behind the hidden door other than the fact that it did lead to Selina and Amy, but I doubted he would have told me that if he hadn’t been certain it was indeed them he’d sensed in the room it led to and that there was a way for us to get in. It certainly offered more hope than any other path I might have considered.
I supposed there was the possibility that I might find a way into the main part of the building where the Slayers waited if I went back to the chamber where I’d found the dog. Her mutilations had been so fresh, I suspected they’d waited to carry them out until I was drawing close to that section of the dungeon and had disappeared through some bolt hole before I entered the room. If I could locate the hidden door in that area then maybe I’d find another way through to my sister, though whether it would be any safer was debatable. At least a fight with the Slayers wouldn’t be an encounter David had set up like whatever might be waiting for me on the other side of the door the barghest wanted us to go through, but it might mean facing a large force all armed with guns. Taking that path would be risky and it would probably take more time than I was willing to spend getting back to Amy. It seemed there was nothing for it but to walk into whatever trap it seemed we were being led into.
“What’s wrong?” Zee asked, noting my uneasiness. But he’d already pressed the button to open the panel to the hidden passage.
I was about to voice my doubts as the door slid upwards when suddenly something hard and slimy crashed into me from behind. I landed heavily on my front, the stone ripping away some of my newly formed skin and my flesh bruising from the impact. I’d been so convinced that the danger lay ahead, it took me completely by surprise and I took longer to recover than I otherwise might have done. If Zee hadn’t been there to save me, it may well have all been over then. But he kicked out at this latest adversary, his foot connecting with enough force to send it sprawling off to the side of me. I scrambled back to my feet and turned to face my attacker, shocked by the horrific sight that met my eyes. Empty, gaping eye sockets looked back at me, completely devoid of all my opponent had once been. Lady Sarah’s body had reanimated at last.
Chapter Sixteen – Rebirth
Whether she was truly alive in whatever sense the term meant for vampires was debatable. Her grotesque remains were no closer to being whole, my blood showing no signs of having healed her at all, gore streaked bones moving with some unnatural power since there was no muscle left for the vampire to move them of her own accord. Then she attacked again and I was forced to treat her like any of the other undead opponents I’d faced.
The thing that had once been Lady Sarah still moved with supernatural speed and strength, and she charged me with enough force to send us crashing back to the ground. Her skeletal fingers scratched and carved fresh marks in my flesh, her bony jaws snapping at my throat and trying to find a vein or artery to sink her fangs into. I didn’t know if that was instinct driving her to feed or if David was using the same method to control her as he had with Zee. Whatever drove her, I was struggling to hold her skull away from the soft tissue her fangs sought to pierce, straining against her with all my lycanthropic strength. But it wasn’t enough; her teeth were moving ever closer to my neck and there was nothing I could do to stop them ripping it apart.
Zee lashed out and sent her sprawling a second time, giving me chance to scrabble to my feet once more. She turned to face him, those empty eye sockets locking onto their target as if she still had some ability to see. The pirate dropped his cutlass and raised his fists.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I roared.
He didn’t have time to answer me, Lady Sarah rushing him like she had me. But with his greater vampiric speed, he dodged the attack, though he didn’t retaliate. Zee danced round his opponent, frustrating her at every turn and keeping her busy, long enough for me to pounce on her and try to clamp my own jaws round her skull in a bid to crush whatever remained of her undead existence. If she’d been a weaker enemy I’d have succeeded in making the kill, but there was enough supernatural strength in those bones to throw me off. I smashed into the wall with a yelp of pain and before I knew it the tables were turned and she was back on top of me, biting at my throat once again.
Something black and powerful lunged at her, the two creatures rolling in a tangle of teeth and claws. I picked myself up to find the barghest had returned, joining the fight just as I’d hoped it might, and the shadow beast was successfully keeping the vampire skeleton busy, for the time being at least. Zee took advantage of the moment to answer my previous question.
“I think we might yet have a chance to save her after all but I daren’t risk cutting through those bones and causing any more damage.”
“Then why hasn’t she healed already?” I panted, keeping my eyes on Lady Sarah in case she broke free of the barghest and lunged at either of us again.
“The Slayers’ necromancer must be controlling her as he controlled me. It’s the only explanation.”
“They can do that?”
“I have heard of such things before, though this kind of necromancy is rare. It takes far more power to control a vampire than it does to reanimate and enslave a corpse but then, what are we corporeal types of undead if not reanimated corpses ourselves? Except for you werewolves of course. The fact you still have a living body means the necromancer can’t touch you, from what I understand of such things.”
“And necromancy can keep you from healing as well? Are you sure we’re not just finding more false hope to cling to when we should be accepting she’s really gone and dealing with this thing the necromancer’s turned her into?”
“I can’t be certain,” he admitted. “But her heart hasn’t yet been destroyed. It’s possible there’s just enough left for your blood to bring her back and it’s the necromancer’s power interfering with the normal healing process. Hacking what’s left to pieces will almost certainly render her truly dead though.”
“It’s a risk but I suppose it’s one we have to take i
f there’s any chance we can still save her. How the hell do we free her of the necromancer’s control and get my blood into what’s left of her though?”
Zee wasn’t given chance to answer that, the necromancer’s grisly puppet finally breaking free of the barghest and charging at us once more. Somehow Lady Sarah’s skeleton seemed to have escaped further damage from the black dog’s jaws, though I supposed its ties to Selina might extend to her family, preventing it from doing any real damage. If that were the case I wondered why the barghest had joined the fight at all, unless it was intelligent enough to recognise that we remained the best hope for saving Selina and that keeping Lady Sarah at bay without actually doing her any harm was in its mistress’s best interests. I didn’t have long to dwell on it before she was on us again, raking bony fingers across Zee’s face. He was too slow to dodge completely but it was never meant to be more than a flesh wound, nothing more than a distraction to give her another chance at her real target – me. In those seconds Zee stumbled backwards, I found myself pinned against the wall. And again I struggled to keep her from biting into my throat.
“Zee, if you have a plan now would be the time to say something!” I shouted to him.
Personally, I couldn’t see how to free her from the necromancer’s clutches. With Zee, I’d counted on the hunger overpowering the dark magic if it grew strong enough, but Lady Sarah had gone far beyond merely bleeding out to the point of starvation. Her hunger should already have been at its most powerful, urging her to feed and allow the blood to fuel the regenerative powers of her vampirism until her flesh was completely restored. Then again, she was fixating on me and my throat so perhaps the hunger was driving her to some extent. But I didn’t think it was the sole driving force or she’d surely have ignored the other two undead incapable of feeding her completely and kept coming for me, even when they tried to intervene. The fact that she had gone for Zee and wrestled with the barghest suggested the necromancer was still very much in control, and that her orders were simply to attack (and possibly kill) all three of us.
I was fighting another losing battle, her skull moving closer and closer to my neck. Her fangs were only inches from penetrating my skin and again I shouted “Zee!”
He paused before replying and for a brief moment I didn’t think he would answer at all. I couldn’t see either of my allies in my peripheral vision and I didn’t dare take my eyes from the gruesome skeleton I was wrestling with, but as that horrific mess of gore and bone drew ever nearer I began to fear they’d both abandoned me.
Finally Zee said “Stop fighting her, Nick.”
“What?”
“It’s the only way. Stop fighting and let her feed again.”
“Are you insane, she’ll rip my throat out in this state!”
“I’ll pull her off if I think you’re in any real danger, but now that she’s conscious I think your blood will bring her hunger to the surface and make it powerful enough to beat the necromancer’s hold over her. And it’s not like you’re a mortal; you can heal the damage before you bleed out.”
I wasn’t convinced the transformation could keep up with the damage the crazed vampire could do to me but Zee made no move to help and for whatever reason the barghest was hanging back as well, leaving me with no choice. Even reduced to little more than bloody bones, the medieval vampire was just too strong for me to hold off for long. Her superior strength brought her jaws within reach of my flesh and her fangs slid past my fur and in to my skin, down into the layer of tissue where my jugular hid with its cache full of precious crimson treasure. I knew then it was all over. Either Zee or the barghest would come to my rescue and succeed in pulling her away before she drained me dry, or I would bleed out that time. I wouldn’t have the strength to push her off myself, so I let my clawed hands fall to my sides and surrendered myself to the vampires.
That feeling of losing too much blood was becoming all too familiar, creeping over me yet again while the vampire ravaged my throat, much as I had done to countless victims. She didn’t need to suck my blood, that liquid life force gushing all too freely from my ruined flesh so that she was able to greedily gulp it down like a thirsty human drinking from a water fountain. I tried to look down to see if my latest sacrifice was at least having the desired healing effect this time, but my head was tilted back and my eyes wouldn’t roll down far enough in my skull to really bring the vampire into my line of vision.
I felt myself teetering on the edge of consciousness once more when finally the fangs withdrew and I fell to all fours, limbs shaking with the struggle to support my weight. Weakly lifting my head, I could just make out Zee wrestling with the skeleton that was still all that remained of Lady Sarah and my heart fell. In spite of everything, it seemed it still hadn’t worked. The necromancer hadn’t interfered with her healing after all; her brain must have been destroyed, meaning there was no coming back from this. But if it was purely the necromancer’s power reanimating her grisly remains then that presented a fresh problem. How the hell were we supposed to kill her? If she had effectively become a zombie, that meant only fire could destroy her, and it wasn’t like any of us possessed the power to conjure fire from nothing. Unless Selina could create one through witchcraft. Could we reach her with the skeleton harrying us the entire way though?
My vision grew clearer as I allowed my flesh to heal and plug the leak in my blood vessels. I decided our only option was for me to go on ahead and deal with Selina, since Zee was better matched in the fight with what was left of the other vampire and we probably wouldn’t make it if we both tried to flee. He might be able to reach the witch and seal himself in the chamber with her for as long as it took to convince her to help destroy what was left of her sister (and that in itself would no doubt be a challenge) but I wouldn’t be able to outrun her. And if I was the one left behind to fight, I didn’t fancy my chances. So I rallied what strength hadn’t already been taken from me by all the trials my body was being put through and prepared to sprint the length of the passage leading to Selina and Amy, when a shrill scream sounded from the direction of the vampires, physically painful to my sensitive lupine ears.
I looked back to see Lady Sarah writhing on the floor where Zee had her pinned down, new, healthy flesh creeping across her bones as her vampiric healing finally took effect. Cartilage had already formed round her neck bones, that horrible sound coming from her new voice box in a gruesome display of biology, the grisly structure vibrating with the agony given sound. I couldn’t see what was happening in her chest cavity for the material of the dress still covering it, but I imagined her organs had reformed, her lungs whole once more and swelling with the air needed to produce that terrible scream.
A new tongue was visible between her jaws but her eyes and nose hadn’t regenerated and she hadn’t even grown all the muscles back on her skull, let alone her skin. Her limbs remained similarly bare and skeletal – some new tissue had definitely begun to form around them but it was still not enough to allow movement without the aid of the necromancer’s power. After fearing the worst when the healing hadn’t immediately kicked in from allowing her to feed again, I was stunned to see her body beginning to repair itself at long last. But something was wrong.
“It’s working!” Zee managed to shout to me whilst still struggling to hold her down.
“I can see that. But why’s it taking so long?”
When Leon’s face had been melted away by holy water in the last Slayers’ base we’d been in, the moment he had fresh blood in his system it had reformed almost instantly. The healing I’d witnessed had been a smooth process, one that took only minutes. Lady Sarah’s flesh was reforming at a snail’s pace; in fact, it might even have stopped again.
“I don’t know,” Zee admitted. “It could be that she hasn’t had enough blood or maybe the necromancer’s power is still interfering with the process. Or it could be a bit of both. I’ve never seen any of us suffer this level of damage before and survive.”
“Well she’s not
getting any more of my blood. At this rate, I’m going to be useless in here. I don’t know how much more blood loss I can take before my body reaches its limits, even with my greater healing.”
“We could ask the witch to donate some. She has a living body same as you – her blood should suffice.”
“Good idea, plus it’s her sister. I’ll go get her.”
With that, I tore my eyes from the gory spectacle that was currently Lady Sarah and ran for Selina. I realised the barghest had disappeared and there was no sign of it as I bounded down the passage it had been so desperate for us to follow it into before the attack. Something else barred my path though.
“You,” I snarled, narrowing my eyes as I came to a stop in front of the mysterious being I’d been unable to fathom since we’d first encountered him.
“Woah there, fluffy. Hold on before you bite my head off,” Gwyn said. He was in human form, hands held up to show he was unarmed. “Huh, now that I think of it, for you I guess that saying is just as literal as it is metaphorical.”
I was in no mood for games or to hear him out. My first instinct was to lash out at him, but a better idea came to me. He looked and smelled human in his physical form which suggested he bled just the same as any other undead with a living body. And using him as a donor for the vampire seemed much more appealing than asking Selina to give up some of her blood to save her sister. After all, the Welsh undead had yet to prove any real worth to us or even if he could truly be trusted. As far as I was concerned, he was expendable, while the witch most certainly wasn’t. We would probably have need of her witchcraft to combat the supernatural powers being used against us and that felt like a much more valuable resource than Gwyn’s spirit form, especially as he seemed to need darkness to reveal his true strength.
