[Von Carstein 03] - Retribution

by Steven Savile - (ebook by Undead)

  “You have a good thing here, you and your kind, but don’t make the mistake of believing it will last forever, Narcisa. It won’t, I promise you that.”

  “So you threaten me again in an attempt to earn my trust and win my support? You really are quite the animal, and I don’t mean that as a compliment.”

  She turned easily in his arms, as he arched back, releasing the beast within. His face twisted as he grabbed her by the hair and yanked her head back. He lunged forwards, sinking his teeth into her throat and tearing out a mouthful of her tainted flesh. He tasted her black blood, swallowed gluttonously and then pulled his head back. Skellan savoured the look of fear in her eyes. To be feared was an intensely erotic feeling. “You taste… luxurious. Now,” he said, licking her blood from his lips. “My master will meet your mistress. You will make it happen.”

  She nodded, all the fight gone from her body.

  They were not equals. For all that she might have wanted to pretend otherwise, playing the aristocrat, Skellan had shown that the beast was more than a match for beauty. It had taken a single moment of blistering savagery to impose his will on her. She had buckled, leaving him dominant.

  Beyond the city gates peasants fired up by the witch hunter Moroi stormed the Strigany caravans.

  The winter night could not have been bleaker. A thin patina of snow had fallen, but instead of adding an edge of romance to the city streets it only served to drape a ghostly veil of despair over a world locked in winter. A bitter wind chased through the narrow streets, sending corkscrews of snow twisting across the frozen cobbles.

  They ran through those narrow frozen streets, shouting and screaming, torches blazing. They swarmed over the Strigany camp, pulling caravan doors open and shattering windows. As the mob mentality gripped them, righteousness turned to fury. A thick muscled townsman threw his burning brand through the door he’d just yanked open. He stood there waiting for the fire to catch, blocking the exit. As the travellers emerged from their caravan, coughing and choking on the smoke, the townsman thrust another burning brand into their faces, blinding them with fire. As they backed away he tossed a second brand into their home while around him others followed suit, throwing open caravan doors and shattering windows, setting light to the caravans. The screams only served to ignite their anger, the mob feeding off the fear. They plunged into the burning caravans and dragged the Strigany out by the hair, kicking and screaming. One weasel of a man thrust his firebrand into the face of an old grey haired crone. The air quickly smelled of burned meat and brimstone as her hair charred away from her scalp.

  “Is it here, Moroi? Can you feel its presence?” Arminus Vamburg whispered, his breath conjuring wraiths of mist to hang like a veil between the living and the dead. The violence of the mob frightened the man, but it was a necessary evil. They couldn’t hope to flush the beast out without it. The waning moon was a sickly silver eye barely floating above the rooftops. Vamburg ignored the icy chill worming its way into his heart, and wiped the sweat from his brow before it could freeze there. His lips were chapped from the wind’s perpetual kiss.

  Moroi nodded once.

  A cruel wind drove the clouds through the sky, continually masking and unmasking the moon, so that the trees lining the street appeared to shamble like rows of gnarled corpses.

  “Bring out the beast!” Moroi cried.

  Others took up the chant, banging on the sides of the caravans.

  Snow began to fall thicker, a flurry blowing up into a storm. And from out of the centre of the storm came the beast.

  It was not a giant and did not have two heads or blood-dripping fangs. It was a warrior with a huge double-headed warhammer in its meaty fists. It was not the wolf he had chased, but the sickness surging through his body told Moroi that the man walking towards him through the snow and fire was most assuredly a vampire.

  The bravura leaked out of the living as they felt the power of the vampire, the dark aura of fear that the creature exuded. Some fell to their knees, while others scrambled back, trying to hide within the shadows, close to the walls. Only Moroi and Vamburg stood their ground, unflinching.

  “Funny thing, death,” Jerek said, his voice bereft of inflection. “You would think it would hurt more.” Then, almost wistfully, he asked “Have you come to put me out of my misery? I should like that, but it isn’t time. There are still things I must do.”

  “Your life is forfeit, vampire,” Moroi said.

  “I have no life, mortal! Jerek answered. His bitter smile widened, his thin bloodless lips peeling slowly back from the white of his carnivorous teeth. “Isn’t that why you are here? Don’t do this, please. Don’t. Just walk away from here. Let this be one of those rare occasions when all these others live.”

  “You cannot live if you are not alive.”

  “I meant you.”

  Moroi raised his handheld crossbow and aimed it at the beast’s heart. He fired two bolts, less than a second apart, and he knew, even as he squeezed down on the trigger that his was aim true.

  Jerek’s hand lashed out, deflecting the first bolt so that it spun harmlessly wide, and snatching the second out of the air. He snapped it derisively.

  Vamburg pulled a flask of blessed water out of his leather satchel, unstoppered it and hurled it into Jerek’s face, babbling a line of prayer. The beast’s skin hissed and steamed where the water hit, but it didn’t slow his advance. He came at Vamburg first, surging forwards, the monster tearing out from beneath his skin as he launched himself into a blistering attack the man had no earthly hope of fending off.

  It was brutal, savage, ugly, and tragic.

  The man threw up his hands desperately trying to deflect Jerek’s fury, but it was useless.

  Jerek’s fingers sheered through half of Vamburg’s face, ripping his nose and half of his cheek away in a single bloody tear. The man’s screams were hideous to hear. His blood soaked the settling snow. The speed of the attack was dizzying, the ferocity nauseating. Crouching over him, Jerek grabbed both sides of his head in his hands and snapped his neck clean in two with a savage twist. He dropped the man and reared back and howled. He did not feed. Indeed, for the shocking nature of the attack, more shocking still was that the beast retreated from the spilled blood.

  There was a second when the entire street was locked in shocked paralysis and then Moroi hurled himself at the beast, only to be battered back almost inconsequentially. He sprawled in the thin layer of snow, scuffing it up as he scrambled, trying to get back to his feet.

  Jerek rose, standing over the witch hunter.

  The crowd of vigilantes stared, torches spitting sparks that danced high into the air. The sparks conjured wraiths of steam that spun away in tight spirals. None dared move. Their pitchforks and makeshift spears hung slackly in their hands, their wooden stakes clattered to the floor as fear—real genuine terror—wormed its way into their hearts.

  “Do not make me kill you, man. I have no taste for blood. There is something I must do. Then I will seek you out and you can end my life. If you try to stop me, I will kill you. I promise you that. You have my word, as a wolf of Ulric.”

  “Your word?” Moroi spat, nursing his bruised and bloody chin. “You kill my friend and expect me to let you leave, on your word?”

  “No, I expect you to come after me and die. I just don’t want to be forced to kill you. I have enough blood on my hands. I have no desire to add yours.” He turned his back on the witch hunter, as though goading him to try.

  “You are an affront to nature,” Moroi swore. “And I will come after you beast. I will come after you and kill you. That I promise.” For a promise it sounded dreadfully hollow, even to the witch hunter’s ears.

  None of the would-be vampire slayers stopped him as Jerek walked away into the darkness.

  Skellan stared at the curious bird.

  It was neither crow nor raven but some kind of unnatural blend between the carrion eaters and something else entirely. It was a strige, a hideous cross between b
at, bird and wasp with four small, pincer-like legs. It was rusty-red with a dangling proboscis. The name meant owl in the old tongue, a nocturnal bird. In more modern parlance it meant witch, which was decidedly more fitting, Skellan thought. He was uncomfortable around the strange bird, but Mannfred seemed to have taken a liking to communicating through it of late.

  “Is it arranged?”

  “The Lahmian has agreed to facilitate a meeting between you and one she calls the Eternal.”

  “Good, good. You have done well, my friend. I am close. I should enter the city within the week.”

  “I don’t know… There is a peculiar tension to the place these last few days, like something is primed to explode. It makes me uncomfortable. The humans are restless. No doubt it is some part of their never-ending quest to tear their civilisation apart, but be that as it may, I think we should exercise caution. For one, I would avoid coming in overland like the plague. Better, I think, to enter via the tunnels. There is a concealed jetty that disembarks directly into a vast underground labyrinth beneath the city.”

  “Indeed,” Mannfred agreed thoughtfully.

  “It would also serve us to be cautious around these Lahmian women. I do not trust them. They spend their lives lying and trading information for power. I would not put it past the bitches to sell you out to the Imperials in return for turning a blind eye to their presence in the city. They have the fools eating out of their hands while they eat out of their necks!”

  “Then pity the fools who get in my way.” There was no arrogance to the statement. It was delivered flat, matter-of-fact and all the more chilling for it.

  “Still, the less they know of your movements the better.”

  “Agreed. Something is disturbing you, is it not?” The bird-thing craned its neck curiously, peering at Skellan. Its scrutiny made him uncomfortable.

  “There was some kind of riot this past night. A Strigany caravan was burned to the ground, the gypsies run out of town. I believe someone told them I was sheltering with the Strigany and that is why the caravan burned.”

  “They know you are in the city?”

  “No… well, not exactly. A damned witch hunter put a silver arrow in my arse. I know he is looking for me.”

  “That was… unfortunate.” Mannfred’s disappointment was palpable. “What do you intend to do?”

  “Oh, I intend to string him up—dead of course.”

  “Good. See that it is done before my arrival.”

  Moroi could not find it in himself to mourn his friend.

  Arminus Vamburg’s grave looked like a black wound in the earth, surrounded as it was by three inches of snow. Winter had taken a hold of Nuln. Vamburg’s coffin was a simple wooden box bare of any ornamentation. It rested beside the hole, on ropes that would be used to lower it into the ground. Moroi couldn’t take his gaze from the coffin. He couldn’t accept that his friend—his only friend—lay inside, waiting to be interred, dead. The beast had done this, murdered Vamburg without compunction or guilt. It was a stone cold killer—and yet it had promised to return, to find him in order to die at his hand when its work was done.

  There was a surreal quality to the events of the last night that turned his thoughts inside out.

  The priest of the Garden of Morr, an old man dressed in a long black robe of mourning, read words meant to comfort him, “Into thy hands, Oh Morr, we commend thy loyal servant Arminus, our dear brother, may he serve at your side in death as he did in life, steadfast and true. We beseech thee to protect his soul from the devilries of those who would extinguish his light like a candle that has burned out, rather than renew it like the blazing fire that is faith.”

  A gust of wind churned through the garden, drowning out the priest’s frail voice.

  Moroi helped the sexton lower the coffin into the grave. He bent low against the bitter wind. He told himself that the tears on his cheek were due to the stinging wind even though he knew they weren’t. There was no comfort to be had in the ritual. He cast a handful of dirt over the coffin lid and left before the old priest had finished his supposedly soothing words.

  He walked slowly back towards the temple. There were no temple guards, which he found curious, even for a small temple. It was uncommon in this uncertain time for the holy houses to be left undefended. To attack one’s faith was an almost certain way to undermine a man’s courage, and a fearful man died most easily. Moroi shrugged off his momentary unease and opened the door. As he stepped inside, the feeling of nausea was overwhelming.

  He walked slowly through the narthex. There was an unnerving quality to the silence.

  The old temple was half in shadow, the small windows not generous with the light. It was cold—as cold as it was outside. The chapel was austere. He bowed low to the marble statue of Morr as he passed by into the nave. The god turned a blind eye to his tears. Moroi rose and walked down the central aisle, listening. There was a sense of wrongness about the place. His eyes roved across the tiny chapel. With every step the pain in his skull increased, the blood swelling against the bone.

  The air in the temple smelled of snow and something else, something more redolent and utterly out of place—decay.

  Halfway between the altar and the door a man stepped out of the shadows. The man was tall and wiry, his thin-lipped face sharp and laced with scars. He moved with a pronounced limp. Moroi’s heart skipped a beat as the man moved menacingly towards him. His features were bony, lending an angular quality to his face, and a black leather patch covered one eye. His presence was repulsive.

  “No crossbow today, witch hunter?”

  Moroi reached for where the crossbow ought to have been—only it wasn’t there. It was back in his room. He hadn’t wanted to attend the funeral of his friend armed. It had felt wrong, to honour death with the tools of killing so close at hand. So much for respect. Moroi cursed his stupidity as the beast came at him. He should have known the vampire would hunt him out at his weakest moment.

  “You’re not—”

  “Not what?” the man interrupted.

  “Not him… you’re not the vampire… not the wolf.”

  “Oh, believe me, witch hunter, I am all the vampire you will ever need.” A moment later the creature had him by the throat and leaned in close, the sickness of his foetid breath harsh on Moroi’s face. The witch hunter struggled desperately to raise his arm, to push the beast away, but the vampire’s grip was like iron. He held him close in a parody of a lover’s embrace. Moroi kicked and writhed futilely in his grasp.

  The beast shook his head, tutting slowly, and hurled Moroi back across the row of pews.

  Moroi screamed in agony as he came down hard on the wooden backs of the pews, bones in his spine cracking.

  “Oh don’t die on me yet, little man. I have such pain to show you. For you I shall make death exquisite suffering. Morr will welcome you with open arms, overwhelmed by your agonies. They will be legendary even amongst the dead.” The vampire stepped up close, leaning down to stare at the witch hunter, folded over the back of one of the overturned pews. He tutted again.

  The agony was blinding. Moroi couldn’t move his hands; they hung lifelessly at his side. He tried to concentrate on moving his fingers but had no control over them. The pain was savage. It blossomed out from the centre of his spine. He couldn’t support his head. His back was broken.

  The beast hauled Moroi up by the throat, choking him as it lifted him bodily off the floor. “I’m not letting you get away from me that easily.”

  Moroi couldn’t speak. The force of the vampire’s grip crushed his windpipe. Blackness swelled up, threatening to overwhelm him, but even as he tried to lose himself the beast denied him, hurling him again. The witch hunter’s head cracked sickeningly as he hit the foot of the stone altar. His vision blurred, failing completely in his left eye. He felt the warm stickiness of blood matt in his hair and spread slowly down his neck.

  The last thing he saw was the beast grinning as it toyed with his throat, seconds before r
ipping it open.

  Skellan stumbled towards the great iron-banded temple doors, but collapsed more than ten feet shy of them.

  Revulsion tore at his body.

  He had kept it at bay by sheer force of will, refusing to show weakness before his quarry. Finding Moroi had been easy; human weakness was the answer. His companion was dead and the witch hunter would inevitably be there for the internment. Now, with the deed done, the power of the holy place took its toll on him.

  He forced himself back to his feet, screaming at the agony the defiance took out on his body.

  The sanctity of the place tortured his perverted nature. He was sure he couldn’t have survived if not for the fact that the Sigmarites had held him hostage in the Grand Cathedral for so long, fostering in him a tolerance for the excruciating agony that came along with his violation of such a holy temple. It inured him to the repellent “holy” places and that it was their doing was delicious irony that appealed to the darker side of Skellan’s humour.

  He was strong, stronger than he had a right to be, but then his sire had been potent—a rival to Vlad himself. It had been Posner who had risen up when first Vlad fell, not his whelps, Konrad, Fritz, Pieter or Hans. Even Mannfred had hidden himself away. Only Posner had had the strength to dare attempt to fill the vacuum that Vlad von Carstein’s “death” had left—or was it greed, lust and all of those other base human emotions that had driven his sire?

  Strength was the one thing Skellan admired above all.

  A lesser vampire would have lay curled up on the floor of the aisle waiting to be put down by some holy fool with a wooden stake. Not him.

  He was strong enough to rise.

  Behind him the corpse of the witch hunter hung from chains looped around the timbers of the vaulted ceiling. His corpse was torn open, the white bone of his ribs cracked back and parted like a whalebone corset, his anatomy laid open for all to see.