“Be my instrument,” she whispered, elbow-deep in him. Her fingers closed around his spine. “Give me this.” Her elbow jerked, trying to obtain a sense of how to remove it. “And I will use it to claim the lives of good people. The innocents you sought to defend.”
His eyes were dull, the light all but extinguished. A shame he couldn’t comprehend this more fully.
“Accompany me in destruction. That will be your legacy.”
With a snap, his spine broke free from his head, killing him at last.
Elisabeth wrestled the bone through the cavity and took it in her hand, holding it along with the dagger as she rushed into the crypts below, following the familiar scent.
She closed her eyes and breathed a sigh of relief. Survivor hadn’t gotten far.
And soon he’d go no further.
It was impossible to mask her joy as she hurried down the stairs, eager to make another kill.
***
Timothy moved through the dark with a stiff arm extended out before him. He stepped fast, trying to ignore the sleeping dead on either side. Even in the blackness, he felt their permanent gawks. What’s your hurry? They seemed to be asking.
The tunnel carried him inland. Occasionally, the direction shifted and his fingers tapped against the open remains of those buried here. A hardened rib cage or a frozen grin. Each was provocation to move faster. Each was a reminder that he was about to join them in permanent slumber.
Timothy remembered that he carried a pistol. It wasn’t much, but could serve him well. Every so often, a shadow scuttled through the gloom and encouraged him to fire it. Probably at nothing more than a rat, though, and he’d come too far to surrender to gullibility. After what he’d seen, it was beneficial to believe there were worse things down here.
That thought put more speed into his stride. He pushed on, thinking this tunnel had to end sometime and why couldn’t it be soon? Dying down here wasn’t how this ended. Coming to Constanta suddenly felt like a strategic disaster. Had he truly believed it was going to be as simple as finding the order and telling them about the Raven? Was he expecting a pat on the back and a we’ll take it from here assurance?
I think I was.
For all his trouble, there was imprisonment and a conspiracy to murder him. Hardly worth his efforts to find the order.
And Garrick had been planning to do the same?
He felt ill. Bile rose in this throat like high tide. He’d wanted to find and kill Raven, but that courage was dissipating. The Order of Osiris was no better than she was. Maybe they hunted varcolac and other abominations, but they were prone to murder innocents who learned of their existence.
For what?
Timothy regretted this peek behind the curtain. Sebastian was dead, same as Evan before, and Mum before that. Striking back against Evan’s killers had done nothing for his emotions, except render him morally suspect.
If Garrick hadn’t deceived them in Rodica, they could’ve faced the wolf together. He put his duty ahead of his need for immediate vengeance, perhaps knowing that Raven would’ve hunted him to Constanta regardless. If she didn’t know about the order and their outpost, he might’ve been able to lure her into another trap.
That was his backup plan all along, the rotten bastard. Had to be. After the mountaintop debacle, he must’ve figured this was the only way. Drag them through living nightmares, keeping them naïve and loaded with hopefulness—all of it a charade for the werewolf bitch chomping at their boot heels. Garrick wanted Raven to think they were fleeing her when in reality he dangled them like carrots just beyond her reach.
Raven had been smarter than that, however, and now it was Timothy’s mess.
His shoulder smacked against something and the ground overhead shook. It pelted him with dirt and light debris. He lifted his jousting arm and his hand skittered across earthen ceiling.
His feet found a bottom tread. He carefully ascended the stairs, counting sixteen of them. Soon his caution arm was burnishing a stone slab.
Why had Salih bothered sending him down a dead end? And if it wasn’t, how was he supposed to find the way out in the dark?
Stairs didn’t just lead to nothing. Timothy put his shoulder to the wall and pushed. The soles of his boots stuttered. The slab cracked against his weight and the sound of rock grating against rock led to a shaving of dampened light.
He grunted and pushed harder until the stone came away from the hole with a slow and grumbling whoosh.
The room beyond was nearly as dark as the catacombs. There remained little slats of light shining through the tiny windows near the ceiling, just enough to make the décor pop with vague outlines. The dead surrounded him; wall slabs masked what must’ve been five generations of family. He stumbled inside and dropped to his knees as the door swung back and closed. Timothy turned to find a lever, but there was only a flat wall. No access from this side.
He could shoot his way out of this place if need be, and crossed the room to reach what looked like the entrance. It wouldn’t move when he tried budging it, and readied the flintlock.
Maybe it was best that he called off the hunt. No reason to play the hero when everyone who’d care was dead. Ignoring the Raven meant stripping her of power. One way to win. She may perceive this as cowardice, and search him out. Nevertheless, the world was big and there were plenty of places to hide.
He took aim at the door but froze.
There was another sound in here.
The sound of hushed laugher—a deranged soul who couldn’t believe his dumb luck.
The sound of feet falling on the floor.
The sound of excited teeth chattering.
Yellow and familiar eyes lifted out of the darkness.
***
Elisabeth raced through the tunnel, ignoring the pain as it attacked. She followed Survivor’s smell like a trail of breadcrumbs. She shifted her ears periodically, hoping to find his precise location.
Up ahead, his heart raged with newfound fear. The thump thump was obvious and distinct. The otherwise arid chamber suddenly moist. He wasn’t scared of her but something else.
Something close.
She pushed her feet harder than before, disturbed by the infringing reek of decayed flesh.
***
The vampire came out of the shadows and Timothy was helpless to defend against it. He heard the swoop of raking claws but saw nothing. His chest struck hot, and fresh trails of blood rained off his body.
The evil eyes disappeared, but Timothy lifted the gun anyway. One shot was all he had. It wasn’t enough to put a vampire down, but if the damned creature opened its eyes once more, he could hope to shoot one out and use that time to escape.
It might’ve been smarter to shoot the door, though there was no time to consider it.
Somewhere close, the vampire’s mouth popped. Its tongue slurped off the roof of its mouth. The yellow eyes reappeared, glowing like midday suns.
Timothy winced as the orbs hovered near. Retreating steps afforded him some distance until the crypt’s wall scraped his back.
His gun hand trembled as the menacing eyes narrowed, the devilish glare ushering in a sense of inevitability.
Timothy did the only thing he could. The shot rang out and his ears wrenched beneath the boom.
The vampire didn’t flinch. Sadistic laughter grew. Icy fingers coiled around Timothy’s neck, colder than the surrounding stone slabs. Thin, frosty lips followed and Timothy’s body froze solid at the monster’s touch.
A stinging sensation heralded by two sharp thrusts dove into his jugular. Timothy winced and gasped.
Then he felt his blood dribble to the floor.
The Kingdom of Darkness
Elisabeth watched the vampire. The wolf’s strength held the one-way slab open, but what she saw made her feel helpless.
In this moment, she realized that she’d lost.
The parasite seemed stunned by her presence. He released his grip on the Survivor. The bloody boy crumpled as th
e vampire turned to greet her.
Survivor, pale and stagnant, could hardly be called that anymore, even if he looked like a harder man today. It could’ve been the death on his face, specifically his acceptance of it, but his features were chiseled now where there had once been doughy innocence. Whatever happened beneath St. Matthew’s had changed him.
And he was dying. The air in here was stained with spilling life, an admittedly welcome respite from the vampire’s odor.
“I did this for you, huntress.” Codrin stepped forward in a laconic offering of submission. “You wanted him, and I got him…for you.”
Elisabeth felt leering eyes once more. His audacity was the ultimate insult. He’d cheated death so many times that he took each day for granted, no longer aware that it was luck guiding his continued existence.
Instead of acknowledging him, she went to the bleeding boy and studied him.
Meek eyes glanced up.
Their stares held.
Her heart skipped a beat.
There was no hatred there. Elisabeth had watched countless faces die and the look was always a dependable combination of shock and disdain.
This one had every reason to loathe her, almost as much as she loathed him, and yet the flicker of life that remained inside of him was calm.
Peaceful.
He wheezed for air while she chewed the inside of her lip. He’d accepted his fate, depriving her of what little satisfaction might’ve been taken from this. Killing him now, like this, afforded no closure. There were countless dead men in Constanta, each one taken in Aetius’ name. And yet, her pain was worse than ever. She hadn’t been healing, but rather digging at her wound so that it would never close.
Elisabeth could count on the wolf to ensure her physical wounds would, again, heal. In return, the animal depended on her to fill the void spreading in her soul. But Elisabeth couldn’t. There was no peace to be had when all she could think about was death, and never of living.
The realization made her feel ill.
It’s pointless now.
“I got him for you,” Codrin said again. Perhaps if he repeated the lie a few more times, he’d begin to believe it, though she would never.
Elisabeth turned to the crypt door and went toward it in a daze, feeling lost and rudderless.
The vampire growled. Motivated by her refusal to acknowledge him and his lies, he pinned himself against her back with his body, licking blood off her without a modicum of control. His weight knocked them forward and they smashed the metal entrance.
“Not even a thank you,” he said in between licks. “What do I have to do for your thanks? After everything that you took from me…”
Elisabeth thought about sticking the silver blade in his face, but he deserved worse than inconvenience. Her anger brought the wolf bounding. The vampire wrapped his arms around her, squeezing her breasts for grip, as she wobbled and changed. Her increased mass pressed against the door. Her muscles stretched, allocating additional strength through her body. Her fingers curled around the circular latch, and with a growl, she threw herself forward.
It sent them spilling into the earliest rays of morning light.
Codrin shrieked and released her. Elisabeth’s reflexes were better now; the wolf spun on her still-human feet, dashing after the sizzling vampire.
Her claws boxed the sides of his head, penetrating flesh and cheekbone as if he were a rotten pumpkin. The severed spine and dagger fell to the grass but she didn’t need them. She threw her knee against his back and pulled, the two of them tumbling. The vampire screamed. Her hands remained in the parasite’s soft and crackling skull.
Codrin’s throat bubbled like rising dough. He struggled to say something but it was too late for that. His bursting skin disappeared beneath the angry blaze. She yanked her talons free and pushed him aside, rolling away from the singing flames.
The wolf, quelled by fire, allowed Elisabeth to return once more. She was beginning to feel as she once had. In control.
Toggling back and forth could be exhausting. It was an ability that many varcolac never mastered, and those who did continued suffering from the physical toll it brought.
The wolf would come no further until she got the silver ammunition out of her body. That had to be done soon, but the grass felt cool against her cheek. Her eyes fell shut as somewhere behind her, the long-dead vampire turned to scattering ash.
With a host of corpses inside St. Matthew’s, and another soon-to-be dying man inside the crypt, she’d have a lot to answer for if she lost consciousness now.
“Help her!” A child’s voice jolted Elisabeth. At the bottom of the hill, a young girl held her mother’s hand. They watched with reasonable anxiety.
“Help me,” Elisabeth slurred, well out of their earshot.
She writhed with as much energy as she had to show them that she was alive.
“She’s moving,” the mother said. In a moment, approaching steps.
Elisabeth buried her head in the grass to stop them from seeing her smile.
***
Timothy slid against the crypt’s farthest wall, recoiling from the sun that reached through the door.
He shivered and rubbed beads of sweat from his forehead. Inbound change tugged from within. For all his efforts, everything he’d survived and all of the creatures he’d destroyed, he was becoming that which shouldn’t exist.
His fingertips tapped the vampire’s bite. Pierced holes were raw to the touch and his neck was sticky hot. It was a twist of fate he could only laugh at. At least Sebastian and Garrick had died fighting against these elements. Beaten, yes, but unjoined.
The invading presence demanded his surrender. Focus was a luxury he no longer possessed, feeling only a cursory awareness of his surroundings. His soul was in the process of being reshaped, as if molded from wet clay. The change facilitated a thirst that was difficult to understand. How could he crave something so unnatural?
So demonic…
His morals went next. Right and wrong became secondary concepts without meaning, slaves to the thirst.
Puddles of previously spilt blood called to him. Timothy wanted to think that he’d crawl into the sun before fulfilling that urge.
Yet you crawled away from it.
He stared out at the greenery, mourning a world that was already unfamiliar. Or fleeting. Bright and lively, something about that orange-kissed aesthetic made his eyes hurt and his stomach nauseous. Beyond the door, the Raven crawled on her belly just out of sight as dark splotches of ash fluttered through the sky.
Timothy shriveled into the fetal position. Cloudy eyesight became a gradient of solid yellows and reds. This thirst was an angry infection, constantly throbbing.
Outside, a woman screamed. Her hysteria was severed by a sloppy babble, then her smell drifted inside the crypt like sizzling bacon. Timothy got to his knees, driven by it. A much younger voice screeched next; a high-pitched squeal. The worst he’d ever heard.
Even that wasn’t enough to make him stop thinking about fresh blood.
I need it.
He didn’t yet. His tongue traced the bottoms of his teeth to check and there was nothing abnormal about them. But it was coming. People with amputated legs could feel a rainstorm’s approach from a few days out, just as Timothy sensed phantom fangs already crowding his mouth.
The crypt’s entrance went dark as the Raven filled the frame, a sobbing child standing perfectly still in front of her. The she-wolf’s bloody hands rested on her shoulders, her fingers tapping the fabric of her tiny coat.
It was dark, but Timothy’s augmented vision caught sight of the evil grin splashed across her disfigured face. One of her eyes was chalk-white, and two scabrous holes in her cheek were ever wet. The red and yellow hues of Timothy’s newfound eyesight rendered her features appropriately demonic.
The bawling child drew no empathy from him and he was stunned by how fast this metamorphosis had taken place. He watched the girl with a predator’s stare, thinking
about how pleasurable it would be to slice her open and feast.
“You wasted no time embracing it,” Raven said. Her tone was jovial, despite its soft raspy-ness.
“I wish we killed you.”
“Stop it,” she said. “You tried your best.” This time, she coughed and looked annoyed by her forced display of vulnerability.
Timothy’s heart raced, energized by the prospect of feeding. He wasn’t supposed to want this. That it was forbidden suddenly excited him.
She nudged the sniffling child forward. “This is yours.”
He wouldn’t allow Raven to have this satisfaction. To see him shred the last of his humanity. However, the child was fresh and soft, a hot loaf from a baker’s oven. Timothy cupped a hand over his damaged chest to discover that his heart no longer pounded. His breastbone was as unresponsive as a slab of beef, but he swore that he felt it all the same. He was certain that it pumped with excitement as he got to his knees and crawled.
“Your change was immediate.” The she-wolf sounded dismayed. “If the vampire had not drained you so during his feeding, it would’ve taken you days to turn.”
He got to his feet in defiance and met Raven head on.
“Sorry that Codrin got to me first?” His smile was more triumphant than it should’ve been, but this was the last weapon he had and he intended to wield it.
He saw faltering composure beneath her mask of arrogance. A flash of annoyance that maybe said, you’ve beaten me.
There was satisfaction in knowing that he could trump her somehow. Show that he rejected bloodlust in both his thirst and his compulsion for vengeance. He might even take a bow before stepping into the sun, one final act of defiance.
To think, your greatest contribution to this world will be taking yourself out of it.
Raven was fast. Her hand was like a mallet to his stomach. There was no wind to knock from his lungs, but he still doubled over. His back hit the floor and she splayed her legs over him. Timothy stole an instinctive glance at her sex before she collapsed onto his torso.
DEVIL’S ROW Page 21
