Hunting in Bruges

by E.J. Stevens

  “It’s just a little air magic,” she said, preening like a cat.

  “So you can keep that stuff out of my gear?” I asked, pointing at the sludge.

  “That will be more difficult, but yes,” she said. “Just be sure to keep your head above the surface. You too, Ash.”

  She turned to Ash, and he raised his hands and backed away.

  “Just because I have no sense of smell doesn’t mean I want to go swimming in that shite,” he said.

  “Don’t worry, you’ll make it across without a speck of that stuff on you,” she said. “Get to the other side quickly and I can shield all three of us with an air spell. Jenna, just remember what I said about keeping your head above the surface. The air flowing over your skin creates a seal, but that’s a problem if it has to cover your face. It’s air magic, not an oxygen mask.”

  “Got it,” I said with a nod. “Just let me know when your spell is ready.”

  She drew a circle in the filth at our feet with the toe of her boot and pulled two candles from her satchel. Another bubble burbled to the surface, belching more gases into the air. My eyes widened as realization dawned, and not a moment too soon. I grabbed Celeste’s hands and shook my head.

  “No fire,” I said, flicking my eyes to the burbling sewage. “I don’t think you want to light those candles.”

  She frowned and rolled her eyes.

  “Why not?” she asked.

  “Because you’ll send us to kingdom bloody come,” Ash said.

  I nodded.

  “If there’s enough methane built up in these lower tunnels, any open flame could cause an explosion,” I said. “I don’t know about you, but I’d rather not learn what it’s like to be a bullet shot down the barrel of a gun.”

  “Not the analogy I’d use, considering our present situation,” Ash quipped.

  Celeste gaze clouded and she blinked.

  “Oh,” she said.

  “Can you still do the spell?” I asked.

  “I think so,” she said. “But…it might not be as effective.”

  Some protection was better than none. I nodded and gave her an encouraging smile.

  “Aer bhac gaoith,” she whispered.

  Celeste brought her thumb and middle fingers together, pointing toward me and Ash with her pinkies. Next, she shook out her hands and waved her fingers as if indicating wind or sideways rain. My skin began to tingle and a warm breeze caressed my skin.

  “It’s working,” I said.

  Celeste dropped her hands to her sides, and Ash flashed me an impish grin.

  “Ladies first,” he said, gesturing in front of us.

  “What a gentleman,” I grumbled.

  I wrinkled my nose and gingerly stepped down into the sludge, keeping my arms out for balance. The liquid came up to my waste, but my legs and feet remained dry. Celeste’s spell was functioning as planned.

  I’d made it halfway across when Ash and Celeste joined me. On my next step, I stumbled as my foot came down on something the size of a dead cat. I wobbled, but managed to stay upright. My crossbow didn’t even take a fatal nosedive.

  Wading through sewage gave a whole new meaning to being up shit’s creek.

  Once I was on the other side, I pulled myself up and onto the tunnel floor. The smell was bad enough to make my eyes burn, but when I stood and brushed at my skirt with my free hand, it came back dry. I started to smile, but before I could thank Celeste for the spell, I heard footsteps running toward us.

  “You have got to be shitting me,” I muttered. “Hurry up, you two. We’ve got company.”

  “I’ve heard of shit hitting the fan,” Ash said. “But this is bloody ridiculous.”

  He struggled to pull himself up out of the moat. Once he was out, he turned around to give Celeste a hand, but she just gave him a scathing look.

  “Remember, Celeste,” I whispered. “No fire magic.”

  “Why not?” she asked. “I like fire magic.”

  Athena give me strength. Mandragora use had seriously damaged that woman’s brain.

  “Trust me,” I said. “No flames. No sparks. No goddamned fire balls. Got it?”

  “Fine, fine,” she said, giving a one armed shrug as she came up beside me. “Whatever.”

  I cut off my retort as the vampires rounded the corner. If Celeste didn’t listen to me, then at least we’d take out a bunch of vamps as she blew us all up. I let off three shots in succession, reloading fast and furious.

  After the third downed vamp, I slammed the bow into its thigh holster and drew my sword. There wasn’t much room here, but if I could flank these vamps, it should give Ash and me both enough room to fight. If not, I would be down to using handheld stakes and my trusty combat knife. I’d still be able to take out vamps, but it would get messy.

  Severing a vampire’s head from its body with a combat knife is slow, grueling work. It takes time and determination to saw through the thick layers of leathery sinew, not to mention the spine. That’s why I ducked and ran down the tunnel, dodging vamps and bumping into the tunnel wall, like a psychotic game of pinball.

  At the back of the posse, I spun and launched myself at the rear guard. I took off his head with a laugh. Ash let out a whoop of pleasure, and we proceeded to cut through the vampire patrol like weeds. We met in the middle with me covered in dust and ash, and him flashing me a wide smile.

  “Well, that was fun,” he said, tipping his hat back on his head at a jaunty angle.

  “Whatever,” Celeste muttered.

  She swiped at his hat, attempting to knock it off his head, but miraculously missed. Maybe his hat was spelled. There was no other rational reason for it to remain on his head.

  I smiled at Ash, but my lips soon pulled into a frown as I took note of the number of vampires we’d just faced.

  “They’re traveling in larger numbers,” I said. “Come on. We must be getting close.”

  I hoped that we’d be in time to save the Vandenberghes. Being alive didn’t mean that they were unharmed. My throat constricted as my mind conjured all of the atrocities that could have befallen Sofia and Nicolas since their abduction.

  There were much worse things than death.

  Chapter 34

  “Hunters protect the innocent from monsters, no matter the personal cost.”

  -Jenna Lehane, Hunter

  We hurried down the tunnel, careful to keep our steps as silent as possible on the damp floors. After dispatching two more vampire patrols, we descended to a rocky outcropping overlooking a cavern filled with the moans of living prisoners.

  Welcome to Hell.

  We’d stepped inside a goddamned Hieronymus Bosch painting. In fact, Bosch had spent time in Bruges. Perhaps the local vamps had invited the artist down here as an honored guest. Since he’d lived to recreate this place in his paintings, he obviously hadn’t been a prisoner. It didn’t look like the vampires’ human feeders had much hope of escape.

  Iron cages hung from the ceiling, and prison cells, with iron bars that were built into the stone walls of the cavern, held the dead and dying. A larger pen seemed to be used as an exercise space, or perhaps for when there was a glut of prisoners. Either way it was more suited for cattle than humans, though PETA would have had a field day if that were the case.

  A low growl rumbled deep in my throat. No creature deserved to be treated this way.

  Thankfully, House Dampierre appeared to be low on rations. The dungeon was obviously equipped to handle more human feeders, but fighting with Philip’s men had probably curbed trips into the city to stock the nest’s larder. Though I knew that it could have been much worse, the whimpers and groans coming from below were still hard to stomach.

  At the moment, the place was half empty, with only a few occupied cells and a body dangling from one of the walls at a painful angle. I hoped that the person shackled to the wall was dead. If not, they’d be in excruciating pain whenever they regained consciousness.

  I was going to free these people—the ones
who still lived—but first I needed a plan. If I ran down there without knowing what kind of numbers I faced, then I might as well fall on my own sword. The vampires had the home advantage. It’d be smart to remember that.

  I swallowed hard and scanned the dungeon for guards. It wasn’t easy. The undead have perfect night vision and they obviously didn’t take the comforts of their prisoners into consideration. The cavern was cloaked in darkness, broken only by an eerie luminescence coming from patches of some type of glowing subterranean fungus.

  Identifying targets by the light of bioluminescent fungi is not as easy as it sounds. The glow radius was often less than a meter. It was like trying to keep score of a hockey game in a pitch black arena, using only a handful of glow sticks. The best way to determine guard activity was to patiently watch for a silhouette to pass in front of one of the mushroom clusters.

  I grit my teeth, keeping my breathing slow and even, and tracked the movements of the dead. It wasn’t easy, not at all, because the vampires weren’t the only dead in the cavern.

  The entire place was swarming with ghosts.

  Tormented souls, spirits of the dead writhing in agony, choked the dungeon. Their numbers were so great that I couldn’t tell where one ghost began and another ended. Vampires had been feeding on, torturing, and murdering their prey in this place for centuries.

  That kind of shit left a mark.

  I squinted, ignoring the spectral forms as I counted vampires. One, two, three, four… What the hell? It was while I counted the fourth vampire that I noticed a peculiar phenomenon. The ghosts, moving as one ectoplasmic mass, shifted in the presence of a vampire.

  After that, it wasn’t difficult to track the guard’s movements. I just wish I had better news to report.

  “Fifty-three,” I whispered. “And that corpse on the throne? Pretty sure that’s Guy Dampierre.”

  Guy Dampierre, the ancient master vampire. I couldn’t see Ash, but I could feel his body go rigid.

  “The Master of the City, here?” Ash asked. “Bloody hell.”

  We might be in the bowels of the city, but apparently this was the heart of House Dampierre’s nest. For some reason, that seemed fitting.

  “Where?” Celeste asked, her voice a husky whisper.

  “There’s a ledge, similar to this one, but larger,” I said. “It forms a balcony overlooking the dungeon…at your two o’clock.”

  The quick intake of air let me know when she’d found it. It wasn’t so difficult, once you knew what to look for. More than half of the vampires were amassed there at their master’s feet.

  “So, what’s the plan?” Celeste asked. “You do have a plan, don’t you?”

  “It’s a work in progress,” I said with a shrug.

  “Great,” she said. “We’re going to die.”

  “Shut up, Celeste,” Ash muttered.

  “Hey, will that poppet start screaming again if it gets close to the Vandenberghes?” I asked, nudging Celeste’s shoulder to get her attention.

  “Um, yes, as long as there’s a crossroads…a place where there’s a choice to be made on which direction to travel,” she said.

  “Good, that’s good,” I said, nodding eagerly. “When we reach the cavern floor, I want you two to turn left toward that block of cells. Celeste, when you reach that spot where the path branches near the largest pen, wave the poppet in either direction. It should start screaming its head off. As soon as the poppet starts screaming, drop it and run toward the cells.”

  Celeste let out a heavy sigh.

  “We’re using a root as a distraction, that’s your plan?” she asked.

  “At least some of the guards should head toward the noise,” I said. “When they do, you flank them and take them out. Just remember, no fire magic.”

  It wouldn’t do us any good to reach the prisoners if Celeste blew us all up before we got them out.

  “You’re no fun,” she muttered.

  “Where will you be?” Ash asked.

  This was the tricky part, convincing my companions that we’d be better off splitting up. It wasn’t a sensible plan, but it would ensure the best chance of survival for Ash, Celeste, and the prisoners. That was good enough for me.

  I was a Hunter. Hunters protect the innocent from monsters, no matter the personal cost. I’d taken a vow, and now was my chance to put that promise to the test.

  “Someone needs to hold back the guards and take out Dampierre,” I said.

  I managed to say the entire sentence without my voice wavering. Go me. I was proposing a single Hunter battling more than two dozen vamps. That alone would be difficult. Add a seven-hundred-year-old master vampire to the mix and this became a suicide mission, plain and simple.

  “No flippin’ way,” he said. “I won’t let you kill yourself.”

  “Just try to stop me,” I said.

  I lifted my crossbow to shoulder height and took off down the tunnel, leaving Celeste’s gasp and Ash’s cursing behind me. It was better this way. I was no good at sentimental touchy feely crap.

  I never did like goodbyes.

  My boots hit the cavern floor without making a sound, a spongy moss absorbing my footsteps. I grinned, baring my teeth. I was going to take down as many vampires as possible. I wouldn’t have chosen a cavern stinking of sewage and death as the place I’d take my last breath, but I didn’t regret that this was what I was about to do.

  I always knew that this was how I’d die. It had just been a matter of time.

  Using the sea of ghosts to find my targets, I took down three vampires before anyone noticed any trouble. That was me, trouble with a capital T.

  A vampire rushed toward me, knocking the bolt I shot at him and deflecting it away from his chest. Shit. I stopped running, hoping to increase the odds of a heart shot, when the poppet’s cry rang out.

  To my left, all hell broke loose. Still rushing toward me, the vampire snapped his head in the direction of the screams, and I took my shot. Four vamps down, only fifty more to go. And that last one, the Master of the City?

  He was mine.

  I took up position behind a whipping post, using it as a partial blind, and picked off vamps as they rushed toward the prisoners’ cells. That little poppet sure made one heck of a distraction, even better than I’d hoped. The vampires probably didn’t have much experience with attacks this far inside their defenses.

  It was like shooting fish in a barrel.

  I’d downed over twenty vamps when I ran out of ammo. All I had left was my lucky bolt, the one that Jonathan had given me with the crossbow for luck. Not bad. Not bad at all.

  I switched to my katana and, leaping over paralyzed vamps, I started cutting a path to the throne. Vampires are selfish, but sooner or later one of these creeps would probably realize that helping his brothers by removing the wooden bolts from their hearts would be mutually beneficial. Until then, I had a chance at Dampierre.

  I wasn’t going to waste it.

  I raced forward, ignoring the burn in my leg and the warm, wet trickle of blood that oozed into my sock and pooled in the heel of my boot. Unfortunately, I wasn’t the only one who’d noticed that I’d popped my stitches. Three vamps in the throes of blood frenzy launched themselves at me. They moved lightning fast, too fast for my human eyes to follow, but I was good at estimating trajectories.

  I swung my sword based on where I calculated they would be. I used speed and distance, and swung, taking off two of their heads and slashing the third across the chest. See kids, you really do use algebra outside of high school. I laughed, and let my momentum propel me to the left and out of the vampire’s reach.

  It hissed and lunged at me, claws outstretched. I took off both hands at the wrist and kicked him in the stomach. The vampire staggered, and I brought my sword back up and took off his head.

  My eyes flicked to the throne, but the vampire sitting there didn’t so much as twitch. Either he didn’t deem me worth his trouble or he was having trouble deciding what to do with the annoyin
g little gnat that had invaded his home.

  Some vampires are like that. I guess the passage of time is different when you live millennia. But whether his seven hundred years had made him cocky, or slow to make a decision, I didn’t hesitate.

  I ran up the steps, chest heaving, and swung my sword. The clash of weapons rang out, but the corpse still sat rigidly in his throne. Good god, I was fighting a statue.

  With a sigh like gases escaping a bloated corpse, Dampierre came to his feet. He moved stiffly, but no matter how fast I slashed and stabbed, I couldn’t get inside his defenses. Dampierre might look like he was half asleep, but he knew his swordplay.

  If I was going to win, I’d have to fight dirty.

  Dampierre pressed the attack, taking the offense, and my muscles burned. Losing ground with every strike, I staggered and shifted my sword to one hand. The tip wavered, my arm growing fatigued, but I maintained a meager defense as I used the other hand to draw a bottle of holy water.

  I tossed the holy water at Dampierre expecting a reprieve, but it didn’t come. He was either too ancient to feel its effects, or was too far gone to notice the holy water burning his face and chest. Instead of shrieking and clawing at his melting chin, Dampierre slammed into me with such force that I lost all feeling in my right arm.

  My sword dropped to the ground, the hand that held it going numb. Heart racing, I reached for my combat knife, but my ankle rolled as the sole of my boot came down on a discarded skull. I lost my footing and staggered backward, collapsing to one knee.

  I was going to die.

  Instead of seeing my life flash before my eyes, the world seemed to slow. It only prolonged the agony of defeat. Dampierre’s sword was coming toward me, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I was a Hunter, but he was a seven-hundred-year-old master vampire. I just wasn’t fast enough.

  I sent up a prayer that if this was to be our deaths, that the vampires made it quick. The thought of Sofia, Nicolas, Ash, and Celeste rotting in this place brought tears to my eyes. But before a single tear could fall, Dampierre’s sword shot toward me…and into Ash’s chest.