Hunting in Bruges

by E.J. Stevens

  Ash, the fool, had thrown himself in front of Dampierre’s blade. My vision blurred, but I’d seen the entire thing at close range. There could be no mistake. It was a killing blow. That much was obvious.

  Alistair Ashford was dead.

  Chapter 35

  “It’s the things outside our control, the problems you can’t solve with a bow or a sword, that are the hardest to accept.”

  -Jenna Lehane, Hunter

  “No!” I screamed.

  I screamed with every fiber of my being. I screamed with rage, and fear, and loss. And as anger bloomed hot within my chest, it burned away the fatigue and pain. My right arm might be useless, but I was still in this fight.

  I would make Dampierre pay for killing Ash, and then I’d wipe out every last bloodsucking son of a bitch in this god forsaken hellhole.

  Fumbling awkwardly with the thigh holster, I managed to retrieve my crossbow with my left hand, raise it to Guy’s chest, and fire a wooden bolt into his heart. My aim with my left hand wasn’t as good as my dominant hand, but at point blank range it was an easy shot.

  The bolt sunk into Dampierre’s heart and he froze, becoming a statue once again. But that wasn’t good enough. He’d killed Ash. Dead, dead, dead…

  I shook my head. No time for gibbering. I could fall apart later. For now, I would take Dampierre’s head and rescue the survivors. Later, when this was all over, I would mourn Ash.

  I holstered my crossbow, wincing as feeling started to return to my right side, sending pain down my right arm. I grit my teeth, shook my hand, and grabbed my sword. I lifted it to Dampierre’s neck and glared, nostrils flaring.

  “If I had my way, I’d disembowel you with my bare hands and make balloon animals out of your intestines,” I said. I choked on a laugh as it bubbled up out of me. It sounded harsh, as if it flayed my throat on the way to my mouth. “Lucky for you, I don’t have the time.”

  I swung my sword and severed Dampierre’s head from his body. He was gone in a puff of ash. It was too kind a death for someone who’d sat here overseeing the murder and torture of countless people—for the monster who’d killed the honorable man who’d fought by my side.

  I knelt down and sifted through the ashes for Dampierre’s fangs. When I found them, I gripped them so tightly they cut into my palm. It was the same hand I’d sliced just a week before, and it sent a jolt of pain down my fingers, but I just smiled. I welcomed the pain.

  Finally, I zipped the fangs into an inside pocket and stood, brushing the powdery remains from my hands. I shuffled over to Ash’s fallen body, breath hitching in my throat as I crouched beside his remains. I never did learn why he’d left the Hunters’ Guild, but it didn’t really matter. He’d proven himself to be a man of honor and courage.

  I reached down to take his hat. It was a silly sentimental token, but the only piece of him I could carry out of this place. With prisoners to rescue, his body would have to be left behind.

  “I always knew you fancied my hat,” Ash said.

  I gasped as he reached up and took my hand. His skin was cool against mine, but he was alive. I pulled my hand away and stumbled backward, awkwardly crawling and falling on my butt. I blinked rapidly and shook my head.

  “You were d-d-dead,” I stuttered.

  Leather clad legs moved into my field of vision and I flinched, but it was only Celeste.

  “Tell her,” she said.

  Her voice was hard, and I looked up to see her frowning at Ash.

  “Tell me what?” I asked.

  My eyes flicked around the cavern, but all of the vampires were gone, either dead or escaped. Celeste had freed the prisoners and had left them huddled around one of her witchlights. The humans looked dazed—a bit like how I felt.

  I turned back to Ash, and he winced. Oh god, Celeste wanted Ash to say goodbye. It’s the only thing that made sense. He might still be hanging on to life, somehow, but he had Guy Dampierre’s sword protruding from his chest. If we moved him, he would die. If we left him here, he would die. There was nothing I could do to stop his death. It was just a matter of time.

  It’s the things outside our control, the problems you can’t solve with a bow or a sword, that are the hardest to accept.

  I’d thought that seeing Ash die the first time was painful, but this—sitting here and waiting for it to happen—this was worse. But I’d let him have his deathbed confessional. It was the least I could do for someone who had saved my life.

  “I didn’t mean to keep it a secret, love,” he said. “It just kind of happened that way.”

  “Keep what a secret?” I asked, blinking away tears.

  Ash reached down and gripped the sword protruding from his chest with both hands, and I gasped.

  “No!” I cried.

  But before I could reach him, he’d pulled it free and tossed it to the ground. There was no blood on the blade. His clothes weren’t bloodied or torn. There was no sign of a wound at all.

  “I’ll give you two a moment,” Celeste said, patting my shoulder as she sauntered away.

  I blinked at Celeste and back to Ash. Ash, who was alive. Ash, who just pulled a sword from his body without any blood. Ash, who sat up and leaned toward me, a pleading look on his face.

  “Please, love, try to understand,” he said.

  Suddenly, I did understand. Ash’s ability to stay clean. His knack for stealth. The way women walked past without a single look.

  That last bit should have clued me in the first day we’d met. As much as I’d tried to ignore it, Ash was gorgeous. In a city that appreciated beauty, he should have been drawing stares. Except that wasn’t possible.

  People didn’t see Ash. The only people I’d ever known to interact with him were me and Celeste—and she was a witch with ties to the spirit realm. I covered my mouth with my good hand, afraid I was going to be sick. Yes, I did understand. The truth had been there all along.

  Ash was a ghost.

  Chapter 36

  “Ghosts are flimsy shadows, remnants of strong emotions left behind.”

  -Jenna Lehane, Hunter

  “You’re a ghost,” I said.

  I stumbled over the words. I tried not to make a habit of conversing with the dead, and yet here I was, discussing the fact that Ash was a ghost, a spirit, a specter. By Athena, I’d spent this past week hanging out with a dead man.

  “Yes, love, I am,” he said.

  “How?” I asked, shaking my head. “How is any of this possible?”

  “You can see ghosts, love,” he said. “You try to hide it, but I’ve watched your reactions to their presence.”

  “Yes, but…they don’t look real!” I said. “Ghosts are flimsy shadows, remnants of strong emotions left behind. They don’t manifest whole. They are not flesh and blood, and they can’t do the things I’ve seen. Even poltergeists don’t have enough power to swing a sword the way you do. Is this some kind of trick?”

  But I knew this wasn’t a joke. Even Ash wasn’t foolhardy enough to attempt a prank like this in the heart of a vamp nest.

  “I am not going to argue philosophy, but I can assure you that I am real,” he said. “Though as you’ve already witnessed, I’m no longer flesh and blood.”

  He gestured at his unmarred chest.

  “If you aren’t flesh and blood, how did you stop Dampierre’s blade?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said, letting out a heavy sigh. “I wish I had answers for you. All I know for certain is that I wandered this city for two years with no one except Celeste the wiser. Not that she reacted well to my appearances.”

  Two years. He’d haunted the witch for two years. No wonder she turned to Mandragora.

  “How can Celeste see you?” I asked. “Is it because of her magic? Because I’ve known witches who don’t even believe in ghosts.”

  “Celeste has always had an affinity for moon spells and spirit magic,” he said. He grimaced and looked away. “But I think it was our ties that allowed her to see me.”


  “Oh,” I said, picking at the layers of soot and blood on my hands. “I thought that was just a onetime thing.”

  He met my gaze, and cocked an eyebrow.

  “Not those kinds of ties, love,” he said. “Celeste and I were partners, hunting partners, until I was drained by a rogue vampire. I think she blames herself, though it wasn’t her fault. The bastard came out of bloody nowhere.”

  Ash had been drained by a vampire? Suddenly his affinity for flamboyant scarves made more sense. He may not suffer new injuries as a ghost, but he’d still have the wounds inflicted at the time of his death. Wearing a scarf would keep those telltale wounds hidden.

  “Wait, so you were a Hunter when you died?” I asked. “I thought you left the Hunters’ Guild.”

  “I said that I was no longer a member of the Guild, which was true,” he said with a shrug.

  “And when you said that the Guild wouldn’t welcome someone like you, you meant they wouldn’t welcome a ghost, not a former Hunter,” I said.

  Ash nodded and I winced. He really hadn’t been able to come inside the guildhall, at least not by the front door. The building, except for the basement and underground parking structure, had been warded against the dead.

  “It must have been lonely,” I said.

  “It was bloody boring,” he said. “I tried to leave the city, but I always ended up right back in Bruges.”

  “Like the day we met,” I said. “That’s why you were on the train. You were trying to leave.”

  “I was, but I didn’t mind being in Bruges once you turned up,” he said. “Imagine my surprise when you could see and hear me.”

  “But you grabbed my hand,” I said.

  I thought back to that day and shook my head. I don’t know how Ash managed to manifest so fully, but he hadn’t appeared so to everyone. That cyclist had ridden his bike clear through him.

  “Oh god,” I groaned. “The old ladies in the church.”

  I’d yelled at Ash when he’d started doing the chicken dance in the Basilica of the Holy Blood, but it must have looked like I was yelling at the elderly women who were sitting behind him.

  “Like I said, death became much more interesting since your arrival,” he said.

  He pulled himself to his feet and reached down to help me up. I hesitated, but took his hand. What the hell? I tried not to encourage ghosts, but Ash wasn’t like the others. That much was clear.

  “Come on,” I said. “Since I’m not rid of you yet, you might as well make yourself useful. We’ve got prisoners to take topside, and there could still be vamps down in these tunnels.”

  “You wound me,” he said in mock horror. “I’m nothing more than an extra pair of hands.”

  “Athena, give me strength,” I muttered.

  But I couldn’t hide the smile. It was nice to have Ash back, even if he wasn’t alive in the normal sense.

  “You know, I heard most of what you said while I was incapacitated,” he said.

  I groaned and stared ahead toward the huddle of sobbing humans.

  “You were prepared to make balloon animals out of someone’s intestines for killing me,” he said. “I’m flattered.”

  “It didn’t mean anything,” I said.

  “Whatever you say, love,” he said.

  “Then I say, get your ass over there, and start getting these people on their feet,” I said.

  Ash gave me a wink and a mock salute and hurried over to help Celeste who was tending injuries. We’d defeated Guy Dampierre and his nest of ruthless, murdering vampires, but I didn’t kid myself.

  This mission was far from over.

  “We better get moving,” I said, looking over our ragtag group of survivors. “I know you’ve all been through a lot, but…”

  A shadow broke away from the wall on the far side of the cavern. The prisoners we’d just rescued couldn’t see the vampire from where they sat huddled together. Heck, I could barely see it, the vamp was moving so fast. I reached for my sword, since my crossbow was now completely out of ammo, but Celeste stepped in front of me, waving her fingers in the air as if playing an invisible game of cat’s cradle.

  “Dóiteáin!” she shouted.

  Too late, I realized what she intended. I threw myself on top of the human prisoners, knocking them to the ground and using my body as a shield. A wave of super-heated air hit me like a steam train, knocking the wind out of my lungs and leaving my skin burning as if someone had taken a flame thrower to my back.

  In a way, someone had—and that someone was only now realizing her mistake.

  “Oops,” Celeste said.

  At least she had enough smarts to sound embarrassed, though smart and Celeste were not two words I’d expect to use in one sentence—not after the stunt she just pulled. I’d warned her about using fire when we were so far down in these tunnels. We were just lucky that we were in the large, high-ceilinged throne room when the explosion happened. If we’d been in the narrow tunnels, we’d be dead right now.

  Since those were sewer tunnels, pieces of my dead corpse would probably have shot up into some poor fool’s toilet. I let out a heavy sigh. Celeste was a goddamned menace.

  “I could have sworn I said not to use fire magic,” I said, pulling myself to my knees and shaking my head.

  “Bloody hell, Celeste,” Ash said. “Lay off the pipe. That shite is eating your bloody brain.”

  It was true. I’d noticed Celeste’s memory slips, but until now her mistakes had been relatively minor. Today she could have killed somebody—a lot of people, in fact. The knowledge that the humans we’d just freed from the vampires could have ended up dead from the witch’s mistake, sat heavy on my chest.

  My hands balled into fists at my sides and I took two slow, calming breaths before turning to face Celeste. What I saw at the far end of the cavern stole the air from my lungs for the second time tonight. As expected, the vampire had been turned to ash along with a number of pieces of old furniture. But that wasn’t what held my gaze.

  I stared at the giant pile of rubble and swore.

  “There goes our exit,” I muttered.

  Chapter 37

  “Vampires don’t always take the best care of their undead servants.”

  -Jenna Lehane, Hunter

  Never bring a forgetful, addle-brained witch with a penchant for fire spells into a warren of sewer tunnels.

  Celeste’s fire magic had ignited the buildup of explosive gasses in the tunnel nearest the attacking vampire, the same tunnel we’d already cleared of vampire patrols. The explosion had brought down part of the ceiling, blocking the mouth of the tunnel.

  She had sealed off the route we’d taken to enter the cavern, removing our safest way out.

  “I guess we need to find ourselves another way to the surface,” I said with a heavy sigh.

  I just hoped that the vampires had a back door out of this place. Otherwise, we had a whole lot of digging in our futures.

  I straightened and checked the humans for visible signs of injury. They appeared startled, but unharmed by the blast. That was one blessing at least. If we had to carry these people out of here, we wouldn’t be able to keep our weapons drawn. Since we’d be venturing into unknown territory, I didn’t doubt we’d need to be ready for a fight.

  There was no saying what evil still lurked down in these tunnels.

  I strode to the one remaining exit, a pitch-black, narrow hole in the opposite wall. The faint glow from the nearest phosphorescent fungus wasn’t bright enough to penetrate the inky darkness. I swallowed hard and clicked on my flashlight. Squinting and blinking rapidly, I waved the beam of light inside the opening.

  It took my eyes a minute to adjust, and what I saw when the tunnel came into focus wasn’t much of an improvement. The opening was large enough for us all to stand upright, but we’d have to walk single-file. This was no public works project. From the scratch marks in the damp earth, it appeared as if the vampires dug this tunnel with their bare hands—like a newly born vamp clawi
ng its way out of the grave.

  Now that was a cheery thought.

  Ash and I took point, with Celeste bringing up the rear. I’d rather have Ash at our backs, but the humans couldn’t see him, and we needed someone to keep them moving. Ash wouldn’t be able to help with the humans, because he was a ghost.

  I was still having trouble wrapping my head around that fact. Thankfully, the nest of ghouls we stumbled into kept my mind off the fact that Ash was one of the living impaired.

  Ghouls may not have vampire speed, but they were damn persistent and difficult to kill. That doggedness was why their vampire masters created them in the first place.

  Vampires create ghouls as slaves to do their bidding. Unlike vampires, these revenants are spawned when a vampire turns a corpse, rather than someone with a pulse.

  Thankfully, ghouls can only be sired by very old, very powerful vampires. Unfortunately for us, Guy Dampierre was about as ancient as they came. He had ghouls aplenty and they were all intent on one thing—eating the flesh from our bones.

  When a ghoul rises, it has very little mental functioning beyond the innate need to feed on human flesh. This suits the vampires just fine. They use their putrescent slaves as servants, and if a servant pleases them, they feed them their blood-drained table scraps. The service of ghouls who are neglected by their masters ends when their bodies rot beyond usefulness.

  The ghouls coming at us were in various states of decomposition. If I’d thought the sewers were bad, this tunnel smelled even worse.

  “Celeste, keep those people back, and whatever you do, don’t use any fire magic!” I yelled. “Ash, go for their heads.”

  “I know how to kill a bloody ghoul,” he said.

  More of the creatures began crawling out from alcoves that had been carved into the walls at shoulder height, scuttling out of the holes like cockroaches eager for a meal.

  “Good, ‘cause we’ve got company,” I said.

  A ghoul that had probably been a teenager when he’d died limped toward me, baring his teeth. I raised my sword as he lunged at me with a snarl. On closer inspection, he didn’t have much of a choice when it came to showing his teeth. He was missing anything resembling lips and most of the flesh from his cheeks was being eaten away by blow fly larvae.