The Cross

by Scott G. Mariani

  ‘Help me!’ Yuri croaked, reaching out a trembling hand.

  For an instant that seemed to last minutes, Dec stood frozen. This was a vampire. It sucked the blood of humans. It deserved to fry.

  Yet in that moment, all he could see was a man suffering horribly, screaming in pain, red-rimmed agonised eyes imploring him for help. Dec thought of Joel, and a powerful surge of pity made him reach out to grasp Yuri’s wrist and drag him towards the door fractions of a second before the cross’s power would have blown him apart.

  ‘Thank you, human,’ Yuri shouted as he went staggering off across the hallway.

  ‘Any time,’ Dec mumbled. Dec Maddon, vampire hunter. A great start to his career, this was.

  The cable car was getting closer. And now the single figure inside could be clearly seen through the glass. Even from forty yards away, the triumphant jagged grin was visible on Ash’s face.

  Chloe spotted Alex’s fallen pistol and scooped it up off the floor. The controls were different from the air gun she was used to, but the essentials were the same. She stuffed it into her waistband. ‘Down the stairs, quick!’ she yelled to Dec. ‘We have to stop that thing so I can get a clear shot.’

  They raced down to the chalet’s ground floor, tore down the short passage and burst through the door of the boarding station to see the cable car just thirty yards away. Chloe ran to the landing platform and felt her knees turn to rubber at the sight of the dizzy drop to the valley below. The mountain wind blew her hair and whistled around the chalet.

  She looked across at the approaching glass front of the cable car and her eyes met Ash’s.

  Both his eyes.

  For a moment of bewilderment, Chloe wondered whether it could be the same man. Because Ash had changed. Something had happened to him. His features were sculpted, symmetrical, chillingly beautiful. The new clothes he was wearing clung to his leaner, taller and more powerful form.

  But it was him, all right. Chloe could see the cross in his hands, clutched tightly against his chest – and, sticking up above his shoulder in a back-scabbard, the hilt of the great sword that had killed her father.

  And now he was hers. All she had to do was halt the cable car, and there’d be nowhere he could run from her. She glanced around for the control box. Sure enough, there was no way to stop the cable car except by cutting the power. ‘The wires, Dec!’ she yelled.

  Dec was no electrician, but the large transformer of the electric motor was easy to spot. There was just one thick cluster of wires running into it, wrapped up in a black shielded covering. He swung his katana at it with all his might, praying that the leather handle of the sword would protect his hands when the high voltage shot up the blade and the tang.

  Crack. The blade missed its target and hacked a piece out of the transformer box. The cable car glided on another few feet.

  Dec swore and hit the wires again, and this time the blade found its mark through the armoured covering. The jolt of electricity almost took the sword out of his hands. A loud bang, a flash and a shower of sparks, and the cable car motor drive suddenly ground to a halt.

  ‘Got you now, asshole,’ Chloe said, and raised the pistol.

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  On his way across the valley moments earlier, Ash clutched the cross tightly to his chest, smiled and his reflection in the glass front of the cable car smiled handsomely back at him. He liked this new Ash he’d become: he was stronger, more dangerous, and more determined than ever. So far, his new Masters had done everything they’d promised they’d do. And there was more to come, when he returned victorious to the citadel after this final mission. The new Ash would be renewed again, with capabilities far beyond anything a mere vampire could offer him. Tarcz-kôi had shown him things that even Gabriel Stone had no conception of.

  The smile dropped from his lips as he felt the cable car’s smooth forward momentum die away without warning and it juddered to a stop, swaying in the mountain breeze. He looked out of the window at the empty space all around him, the drop below. Then gazed back towards the girl he could see standing on the platform. He knew her face – where had he seen her before?

  It didn’t matter. What mattered was his plan. He mustn’t fail.

  And the powers that his Masters had given him would see to it that he didn’t. They hadn’t just restored his eye and made him prettier.

  It was time for a change of tactics. Inside his head, Ash gave his soldiers the silent command to press forward the attack. Then, tossing the cross into the lead-lined case that hung from his shoulder, he drew out his executioner’s sword. With a powerful upward thrust he punched the blade through the aluminium roof of the cable car. He yanked it out with a metallic shriek, punched it through again. In seconds he’d cut a ragged hole. He sheathed the sword, jumped up and hauled himself bodily through onto the swaying roof, between the parallel cable tracks.

  The girl was still standing there, twenty-five yards away on the edge of the platform, nothing below her except the thick wooden support struts of the chalet and a snowy rock ledge. Clinging on to the steel cables with his right hand, Ash ripped the cross back out of its case with his left and thrust it out towards her. He frowned. Why didn’t she fly into cinders? Everyone else did. Raising it higher, he hauled himself over the pulley apparatus towards her.

  By the time he saw the gun in her hand, it was too late to react – but even as Ash tensed at the sight of the weapon, he knew that his soldiers had answered the call to attack.

  Standing on the edge of the platform overlooking the dizzy drop to the valley below, Chloe squared the Desert Eagle’s sights firmly on her target’s chest. She saw her father’s face in her mind. She nodded to herself and squeezed the trigger.

  At the same instant that the pistol bucked wildly in her hands and its huge flat report filled the air, she heard a muffled cry from Dec and a staggering impact knocked the world sideways. For a dazed moment or two as she rolled across the platform, she thought that it was the gun’s recoil that had sent her flying.

  Then she saw the demonic-looking hooded goblin creature coming in for another cut with the chopping blade in its fist. It was Dec who’d knocked her over as he leaped in between them. His face twisted in fear, he managed to parry the blow with his sword and knock the chopper out of the thing’s clawed, muscular hand. It came on. He backed away, shielding Chloe with his body.

  ‘Get away from her, you wee skitter!’

  The goblin gazed at them for a second or two, making a strange twittering sound. Then, with terrifying speed, it pounced.

  The force of the impact knocked the sword out of Dec’s hand and cannoned him into Chloe. She staggered backwards towards the edge of the platform. Her arms flailed for something to grab—

  And then she was falling into empty space, nothing but the black sky above her and the valley far, far below.

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  There was wild chaos as the remaining vampires crowded through the chalet, desperate to put as much distance between themselves and the fearful cross as they could. Gabriel, Kali, Lillith and Zachary pounded down the stairs towards the back exit on the ground floor. Alex and Joel were running down the passage towards the top of the stairs when Sonia, Albrecht and Yuri came crowding past in a panic.

  ‘I’m not sticking around here to be cooked by that thing,’ Albrecht brayed, suddenly breaking off from the rest of the group and turning towards a little window that overlooked the back yard. In his panic, he crashed into Alex, knocking the wind out of her and inadvertently dragging her along with him as he launched himself out of the window.

  Alex landed heavily in the snow, hitting her head hard against a boulder. Dazed, she struggled up onto her hands and knees. She could hear Joel calling her name from somewhere inside the house.

  Albrecht was sprinting madly away up the craggy slope. As she watched, an arrow flew towards him from behind a rock. Still running like crazy, he dodged it, and covered a few more paces before another pierced his throat
. He’d barely hit the snow before a horde of little dark figures swarmed out from their hiding places among the rocks and descended on him. Knives and hackers rose and fell. Body parts were tossed up in the air.

  Alex’s legs were unsteady under her as she staggered to her feet. Even vampires could get mild concussion from a severe blow to the head. She inched away in the shadow of the house, terrified of being spotted by the goblins.

  But in her dazed state she didn’t notice the chopping block behind her, next to a stack of firewood logs and a precarious pile of old varnish cans. She bumped into the handle of the axe that was propped against the block and it fell and hit the varnish cans, which clattered noisily to the ground.

  The nearest of the goblins started at the sound, whipped round and saw her standing there not twenty yards away. Suddenly they were all jumping up from what was left of Albrecht and charging towards her.

  Alex broke into a run, heading for the cliff edge. One time, she’d jumped off the London Eye – and she was still around to tell the tale.

  Shit, she thought as she neared the edge. It was a long way down. She didn’t much fancy spending eternity as a smear of mincemeat spread across the rocks below, although even that was preferable to being paralysed and chopped into dog food by these things.

  But then she realised that three of the goblins, darting around her flank with awful speed, were heading her off. One took out a slingshot as it bounded along, and fired something at her that smacked off a rock. It splintered into pieces and Alex saw what the missile was: a hollow glass ball filled with the black paralysing fluid.

  Terrified, she veered away from the cliff edge, willing herself to run faster. She headed in the only direction she could – up the mountainside. Something whizzed past her ear and another poison ball shattered just a yard away. She felt the splash of poison hit her sleeve, tore it away in repulsion and kept running up the steepening slope, the goblins – maybe a dozen of them, maybe more – converging behind her in pursuit. The white peak of the mountain loomed high up above, as if threatening to topple over on top of her. She hauled herself over a ledge and found herself in a dip in the rocks. A glance back over her shoulder told her that the chalet was out of sight now.

  She thought of Joel. Run, Joel, run.

  Half a second’s distraction was too long. Alex barely had time to react as the goblin launched itself from a hidden crevice up ahead and came lunging at her with a crooked black knife. She threw herself out of the path of the slicing blow and the blade struck sparks off the rock next to her. She grabbed the goblin’s wrist and yanked it hard towards her, straight into the knee that she drove into its ribs. The foul-smelling breath burst out of its lungs and it doubled up in pain. She smashed its head against the rocks, once, twice, three times, grappling with its little muscular body with all her strength until the writhing death struggles had stopped and it lay still, oozing blood onto the trampled snow.

  Then Alex heard a twittering sound behind her and turned.

  Fifteen more of the creatures were gathering round her in a circle, and now there was nowhere to run at all.

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  ‘Chloe!’

  Dec’s scream filled the boarding station as he saw her topple over the edge of the platform. The goblin’s powerful little claws were around his throat. Its hood fell away; the hideous jaws opened wide and came snapping towards him. Before it could rip his face off, he headbutted it so hard that he saw stars. The thing chittered angrily and fell back. Dec twisted away towards the fallen sword. The goblin was back on its feet, muscles coiling for another pounce.

  ‘Come on then, you fucker,’ he said as he grasped the katana with both hands. The creature hurled itself at him, jaws distended . . .

  And hit the floor in two pieces.

  Dec spat goblin blood. ‘Chloe!’ he yelled, rushing to the edge of the platform and staring down in anguish at the sheer drop down the cliff. His heart almost burst with relief when he saw her just a few feet below him, crouching dazedly on a little rocky lip that protruded from the cliff face.

  The crash of the pistol shot was still ringing in Chloe’s ears. Her mind clearing suddenly, she looked up at the cable car and saw Ash. The shot she’d aimed at his chest had gone wide when Dec had knocked her clear of the goblin’s attack – though not too wide.

  Ash’s left hand was still clutching the cross. But it was no longer attached to his arm. Blown away by the expanding hollowpoint bullet, the severed hand had bounced away over the cable car roof and entangled itself in the wire. Fingers curled around the cross’s shaft like the legs of a dying spider, it slid down the cable tracks a distance, then stopped and hung precariously over the valley.

  As Chloe watched, Ash crawled across the roof and tried desperately to work his way down the cable tracks to retrieve the cross – but the vibrations through the wire were only making it slide further away; too much movement risked shaking it free altogether.

  The gun. Chloe scrabbled about the rocky ledge and for a terrible moment she thought it must have fallen off the cliff. No! There it was, half-covered in snow and dirt. Ash was suspended directly over the abyss now, his handless arm hooked over the cable, reaching out with the other towards the cross. Chloe grabbed the pistol to take another shot, but just as she got him in her sights another cloud passed over the moon and Ash was lost in shadows.

  Dec was calling down to her. ‘You okay?’

  ‘I’m not hurt. Help me up.’

  ‘Hang on,’ Dec yelled back. ‘I’ve had an idea.’ If he could get the cable car to travel back downwards, he could scrape Ash off the wire and send him to his death, or else maybe mash him up in the pulleys. Seeing a big electrical switch lever that looked to him like a main fuse control, Dec yanked it. The lights went off.

  ‘Dec, what’s happening?’ Chloe called out.

  ‘Hold on, I’m coming.’ Working frantically, Dec groped about in the dark for a handful of the electrical wires he’d cut earlier and started tearing at the insulation so that he could twist them back together and feed juice back to the control box.

  He scarcely had time to think Shit, wrong fusebox before the electric shock jolted through him from head to toe, making him almost bite his tongue off and flinging him unconscious against the wall.

  The wires fell in a heap and instantly began to smoulder and sparkle. A flame leaped up from the control box and quickly gained a purchase on the wooden panel it was mounted on. In just moments, the fire was spreading in a pool a few feet from where Dec lay inert.

  ‘Dec!’ Chloe called up. ‘Dec, hurry!’

  Ash had crawled down the swaying cable almost as far as the cross. One slip, one excessive movement, and it would fall, and so might he. He inched his way just a little further, gritting his teeth, the case dangling from the strap around his shoulders. He was almost there. He reached out. One more inch . . . and his fingers clamped tightly around the knuckles of his own severed hand.

  He laughed in triumph. The cross was his once more.

  Gripping Kali’s arm, Gabriel led the way, Lillith and Zachary stumbling along behind as the four of them burst out of the chalet and into the night. Every running step took them further from the source of the terrible agony. For the moment it seemed to have stopped advancing on them, but Gabriel was intent on taking them as far from the cross’s power as he could.

  Dashing under cover of shadow as the gathering clouds obscured the moonlight, they found a twisting fissure in the rocks that led steeply away and up towards the eastern face of the mountain.

  The only weapon they carried between them was the machete Lillith had taken from the goblin. The enemy were numerous and well-armed, and Gabriel knew he could ill afford to meet them head on. Cursing himself for having ever put his trust in the Masters, he considered the only strategy open to them: escape. Attempting the vertical cliff face to their right was perilous, even for a vampire – the risk of irreparable damage, whether dashed to pieces on the rocks or impaled on a tree
far below in the valley, was enough to persuade Gabriel to skirt around the mountainside in the hope of finding a less risky descent.

  ‘This way,’ he called back over his shoulder. Kali had kicked off her shoes and was running barefoot over the snow. Lillith followed.

  Zachary brought up the rear, glancing warily in all directions. A flitting movement caught his eye. Something scurrying behind a crevice above them. Then, almost immediately after, he heard the twang of the bowstring and the whistle of the flying arrow. ‘Incoming!’ he yelled. ‘Ten o’clock!’

  The arrow cracked on the rocks inches from Gabriel and stained the snow with venom.

  ‘Everyone down!’ Lillith shouted.

  An instant later, a rain of arrows and glass missiles was showering down on them from a dozen hidden vantage points in the crags above. Gabriel hauled Kali behind the shelter of a snowy boulder to the right of the path, shielding her as best he could with his own body and steeling himself to feel the bite of a poisoned barb in his flesh. Zachary had hurled himself away to the right, rolling through the snow to press his bulk tightly into the angle of two big rocks.

  Gabriel ducked as a glass missile whizzed overhead, then risked a glance around him. Something was wrong.

  ‘Lillith?’ he called out. ‘Where are you?’

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  Joel sprinted out of the chalet and hollered Alex’s name. The only reply was the echo of his own voice ringing off the mountainside. To his right, he could see the distant figures of Gabriel Stone and his three companions winding their way up the slope.

  ‘Alex!’ he shouted again. He was sure he could smell burning. Glancing back at the chalet, he saw thick smoke drifting in the wind.

  Then, out of the darkness, a running figure streaked towards him. Joel’s first panicked thought was that it might be one of the goblins, and his grip tightened on his sword; but no, it was a tall female figure. With a mixture of extreme relief and bitter disappointment, he recognised her as one of the sexy she-vampires that had turned up with Baxter Burnett.