by Jack Yeovil
She heard herself shouting.
The Animus was settled immediately.
The host had been in an excited state when the attachment was made. His confused feelings for Eva were easy to convert into feelings against Detlef.
Detlef had always been in the younger actor's way, keeping him from the leading roles. Years of losing fights and fair maidens and applause to Detlef Sierck had bitten deep into the good humour and big heart of Reinhardt Jessner.
The axe had come apart in his hands, a pretend weapon with no real use, but Detlef was stunned.
Feeling the host's muscles pumping, the Animus lifted Detlef high, preparing to toss him forever from the stage, to break his back on the rows of chairs in the stalls.
A cannonball blow struck Reinhardt in the chest, and he staggered back, dropping Detlef.
The girl who had shot out of the dark on a chain rolled across the stage like an acrobat, and stood up. She had her teeth and claws out.
This was perfect. The Animus could achieve its purpose. Detlef and Genevieve were both here.
Detlef stood up. The Animus slammed Reinhardt's heavy elbow into his face, smashing his nose, knocking him back against the canvas wall of Dr. Zhiekhill's laboratory. He shook his head, spreading blood around him like a dog drying itself, and tried to stand up.
The vampire came for him, and met a fist which sent even her reeling. Reinhardt had been strong, but with the Animus in his mind he was a superman.
Doors were opening in the auditorium, as people were alarmed by the noise. The company was arriving, and crowds were building up outside.
Genevieve scratched through his britches, drawing blood but doing no hurt.
The Animus brought up Reinhardt's knee against the vampire's chin, and shoved her across the stage.
Lights were streaming in.
The Animus came down hard on Genevieve, knee pinning her body. Reinhardt's hands went around her head.
Only silver or fire or a stake through the heart could truly kill a vampire. But having her head wrenched off wouldn't do her health any good.
The Animus twisted, feeling the vampire's strong neck muscles stretch, her bones draw apart. She had her overlapping teeth clenched but her lips drawn back. Her eyes were dots of fire.
Detlef was hammering on his shoulders, as pointlessly as a gnat might bother an ox.
The vampire's head would come off in a moment.
Detlef stepped back, giving the Animus the room to do his bloody business. Genevieve hissed through her teeth, and spat hate up at Reinhardt's mask.
'For the Great Enchanter,' the Animus said, 'Constant'
Something huge and heavy fell on Reinhardt, ropy limbs twisting around his body, hauling him backwards.
XX
The Trapdoor Daemon had made his way across the ceiling, and dropped down onto the stage.
Reinhardt Jessner had gone mad. The way Eva Savinien had gone mad. Malvoisin did not understand, but he realized there was more to the story of Dr. Zhiekhill and Mr. Chaida than an old Kislevite fable. In a sense it was literally true. Something could bring out the Chaida in all men, and that something had afflicted Eva, and now Reinhardt.
He found uses for the limbs of his altered body, constricting Reinhardt's wrists to break his grip on Genevieve's neck. The vampire had shown him a moment of consideration and, for that, he owed her his loyalty.
Reinhardt left Genevieve and stood, turning around in the Trapdoor Daemon's grasp, chopping with his hands at the bases of his tentacles, thumping for the nerves.
The actor was strong, but his body was only human.
Out in the auditorium people were shouting.
A firebrand hurtled through the air, and landed nearby on the stage. Detlef was stamping it out, protesting.
'Look,' someone shouted. 'A monster.'
Yes, the Trapdoor Daemon thought, a monster. Help me fight the monster.
Reinhardt struggled furiously, cold like a machine, methodically trying to throw off Malvoisin.
'Kill the monster,' someone shouted.
A missile bounced off his hide, and Malvoisin realized who the shouters thought was the monster.
'Kill!'
Detlef was confused. Reinhardt had gone mad, and some creature of the depths was wrestling with him all over the stage.
He picked up Genevieve, and tried to get her to run. She was confused, but finally picked up her feet as they descended the steps into the auditorium.
There were actors there, and an officer of the watch, and strangers in from the street. Everyone was shouting. No one knew what was going on. Poppa Fritz was waving a lantern and shouting at the top of his voice.
Genevieve stumbled, but started pulling Detlef away from the stage, towards the exit. She wanted them to run.
Detlef looked back. Reinhardt wore the monster like a cloak now, but was free of its grip. With a flex of his shoulders, the actor shrugged the thing off, and threw it away. It landed with a wet thump, spreading out, and some people cheered.
Reinhardt walked forwards, and stepped off the stage, falling six feet but landing perfectly. He stood up straight, and kept walking, wading through bolted-to-the-floor seats as if the stalls were a wheat-field.
The people started quieting down as Reinhardt's legs crushed through solid wood and upholstery.
The watchman was in the way. Reinhardt smashed his chest with a sideswipe, and bloody foam came from his mouth and nose as he went down, coughing.
Gene was tugging him.
'It's after us,' she said, 'and it won't give up.'
Reinhardt had said something about Drachenfels.
'Is it him? Come back?'
Genevieve spat. 'No, he's in Hell. But he sent something back to fetch us there.'
'Ulric's teeth!'
Reinhardt tore the arm off a man, and tossed it aside, walking calmly through the fountain of blood. He was turned into a golem of force, unstoppable, single-minded, unreasoning, unmerciful.
Detlef and Genevieve ran into the foyer, and found a crowd pressing in. Ticket-holders mostly. The seeds of panic were sprouting. They had to fight forwards.
Reinhardt exploded through the double doors, and everyone started screaming at once. Windows were smashed out in the rush as the crowds tried to back away, and furniture was trampled underfoot.
Detlef and Genevieve were caught by the crowd, and pulled away. Reinhardt just fixed his cold eyes on them, and began killing his way towards them, breaking the backs and necks of the people in his way as if he were a poulterer processing chickens. The foul smells of death×blood, shit and fear×hung in the air.
They were out in the street now, and night was gathering. The crowd was running this way and that. Detlef collided with a matronly woman wearing a Moral Crusade sash and carrying a 'DOWN WITH DETLEF SIERCK' placard. She screamed at his bloody face and fainted. He picked up the placard, and held it like a weapon.
He heard a rattle of hooves and wheels. Some kind of help was coming. Gene still had his hand.
'This won't do any good,' she said. 'We've got to keep running.'
The Animus stood on the pavement, dead bodies all around.
The vampire and the play-actor were scurrying, but they wouldn't escape it.
A carriage got between it and its prey, and men in armour piled out, weapons ready. The Animus recognized the Imperial militia.
'By the order of the Emperor Karl-Franz,' began an officer. 'I demand×'
The Animus took off the officer's head, and squeezed it between flat hands until it burst like a pumpkin.
A subordinate gulped, and ordered an attack.
Crossbow bolts struck the Animus' head but it ignored them. Swords slashed its chest, cutting to the bone. It didn't care.
The vampire and the play-actor were still in its sight. They were scrabbling back into the theatre.
The Animus turned around.
'Fire!'
Pistol balls slammed into its body, making it stagger. It picked up the
headless officer's heavy sabre.
Reinhardt Jessner had been a great swordsman.
Whirling the blade about it, lopping off everything that got in the way, it strode towards the Vargr Breughel Memorial Playhouse, intent on the attainment of its purpose.
A pistolier threw his weapon at the Animus, and it spanged off the flying blade. With a lunge, the Animus split the pistolier's neck, opening a gap under his chin. Drawing the sword out of the already-dead man, it passed the blade across the face of a Moral Crusade protester, making a blood-edged crease of his eyes and the bridge of his nose.
Detlef Sierck was closing the doors of the theatre, drawing the night-bolts. The Animus punched two holes in the doors, where the bolts were, and then kicked its way back into the foyer.
It stepped over the earlier dead.
The prey were not in sight. It fixed its eyes on one side of the room, and then raked its vision across to the other. It was looking for the slightest trace of the fleeing couple.
A trapdoor on the floor was slightly askew, the corner of a carpet flapped around it. Disguised as a flagstone, it would normally not have been noticeable.
It bent down, and pulled up the trapdoor, wrenching it off its hinges.
A gallon bottle, wrapped in rush matting, was lobbed from one side of the foyer, and smashed against its chest, stabbing the skin with tiny shards of glass. A thick, sweet liquid sloshed all over it, soaking the tatters of its clothes, clogging in its hair and beard.
A thin, elderly man was the culprit.
From Reinhardt's memory, the Animus recognized Guglielmo Pentangeli.
The Tilean business manager had a lamp in his hands, a naked flame with the glass off it.
'Brandy?' he asked.
Guglielmo tossed the lamp at the Animus.
There was an explosion, and the Animus was in the middle of a man-shaped statue of flame.
XXI
As people kicked him with heavy boots, shouting, 'Death to the monster,' Malvoisin remembered why he'd spent all these years in his catacombs. Reaching across the stage, the Trapdoor Daemon hauled itself away from his persecutors, shrinking from the light, shrieking through his beak.
He knew where the nearest trapdoor was, and slid through it, feeling a burst of relief as the wood slammed behind him, cutting him off from the chaos out in the upperworld.
The slide took him down towards the waters.
He needed to get his hide wet and he needed to sleep. Here in the dark×in his dark×there was peace.
But he could hear footsteps. And shouts. And fire.
Even here, they came for him. There'd be no peace now, ever.
Genevieve kept running, Detlef at her heels. There were miles of tunnels down here. The thing in Reinhardt might not be able to follow them. They were in one of the main passageways, heading down towards the Trapdoor Daemon's domain. When they found a bolt-hole, they would rest, and think out what to do.
She should have died thirty years ago, on her first wander in the fortress of Drachenfels. That would have saved a lot of trouble, a lot of bloodshed.
Detlef was babbling, but she didn't have time to listen. She could feel a great deal of heat. There was a fire down here. A fire that was growing closer.
A curtain fell in front of them, and she knocked it aside. It was a dusty cobweb, and came apart, leaving filthy scraggles of sticky stuff on her face and clothes. Small animals and large insects scuttled around their feet.
The fire was behind them, back near the trapdoor they'd come through.
She was back to being an animal again, pure instinct and blood-lust, running from a bigger cat, crushing smaller things underfoot. That was her Mr. Chaida, the cruel heart beating inside, ever ready to take over.
They slammed into a wall. Looking round, she realized they were in a magazine. A rack on one wall was loaded with swords and daggers, all angled dangerously outward. They were lucky not to have run straight into them.
She shouldn't have forgotten there were likely to be traps throughout the labyrinth.
'In the floor,' Detlef said, indicating a manhole cover. She was on her knees, tugging at a ring. They heard footsteps, and she pulled harder. The ring came off, with a screech of protest.
'It's bolted from the underside.'
'There must be a trick.'
The footsteps were huge, thumping the ground like giant fists. The tunnels shook. She could smell smoke, and her eyes were watering. In the dark, distant flame flickered.
'It's iron,' she said. 'It leads into the sewers.'
'So? We're in the shit already.'
She shrugged and made awls of her fingers, piercing the metal with agonising slowness. She made fists, and pulled. Pain came alive in her shoulders and elbows.
A walking furnace squeezed into the chamber. A walking furnace with Reinhardt Jessner's face.
Genevieve pulled and heard the bolts breaking. The manhole burst free, and she choked on a gasp of truly foul air. Then, they were all in the middle of an explosion.
Detlef realized that pulling the manhole had let out a cloud of sewer gas. He felt a liquid heat on his face×beard and eyebrows singeing×and was thrown against a hard wall. Even with his eyes screwed shut, the light was brighter than the sun.
He knew something was broken inside him.
Trying to stand up, he realized his left leg wasn't working. He opened his eyes, and saw the explosion had blown itself out. Scraps of cobwebs and detritus were burning, but most of the fire was gone.
Reinhardt had been smashed against a rack of old weapons. His body was blackened with soot and burns, but bright blades shone where they pierced him. Three swordblades stood out of his chest, points glinting. He'd been cooked alive, and now he was spitted. The stench of burned human meat was bitter in Detlef's mouth and nostrils.
Apart from anything else, Reinhardt's head hung wrongly, his neck broken.
Genevieve was on her feet. Her face was sooty, and her clothes were ruined. But she was all right. She was in a better shape than him.
'It's gone,' she said.
She took him in her arms, and checked his wounds. When she touched his knee, pain shot through him.
'How bad?'
She shook her head.
'I don't know. I think it's just a clean break.'
'Sigmar's holy hammer.'
'You can say that again.'
He touched her face, wiping the black grease away from her girl's skin. Her teeth were receding, and the red spark in her irises was dying.
'It's all right,' she said.
Behind her, Reinhardt Jessner's eyes opened wide in his black face, and he lurched forwards, pulling the rack of swords that pierced him away from the wall.
He roared, and Genevieve hugged Detlef hopelessly. If Reinhardt fell on them, they'd be transfixed many times. All three would die down here.
XXII
Malvoisin launched himself at Reinhardt for the second time, bearing him away from Detlef and Genevieve, crashing him against a smoke-smeared wall. Reinhardt broke in several places, and swords tore through his flesh, revealing angry red gashes in his burned-black body.
He had his tentacles around the madman, and was squeezing. The body was already a corpse, but it clung to life. Malvoisin squeezed desperately, using his altered body as he'd never done before. He had grown strong in his lair, he realized. He'd wasted himself loitering in the depths of his own dark.
In the sea, he might have had a chance.
Reinhardt's face came off, and stuck to his own.
The Animus left its ruined host, and latched onto Bruno Malvoisin, burrowing into his altered body, seeking his still-human brain. He must have a core which could be soured, turned against the Animus' prey. A core of bitterness, self-hate, misery.
This would be the final, and most powerful host.
It rose from Reinhardt's body, and stretched out its tentacles, reaching for Genevieve.
The vampire girl stood, wide-eyed. 'Malvoisin?'
; The Animus was about to tell her 'no.' But the Trapdoor Daemon said, 'Yes, I'm still here.'
Angry, the Animus prepared for its final, fatal blows.
The monster came for them, and Detlef offered up his final prayers. He thought of all the parts he'd never take, the plays he'd never write, the actresses he'd never kiss
Tentacles slipped around his broken leg, and latched onto his burned clothes, creeping up his body. Genevieve was entwined too. The Trapdoor Daemon was all around them.
In the centre of its head was a blank white face.
Then the monster froze like an ice statue.
Genevieve gasped, unwanted red tears on her cheeks.
She reached for the mask, but it seemed to elude her fingers, sinking into Malvoisin's hide as if it were disappearing under the surface of a still pond.
The mask was swallowed.
* * * * *
Inside his mind, Malvoisin wrestled the Animus, swallowing the creature of Drachenfels at a gulp.
It was hot inside, and he knew he would not last.
'Salli,' he said, remembering
He had been altered by warpstone, but he had never truly been the Trapdoor Daemon. That was just a theatre superstition. Where it counted, he'd always been Bruno Malvoisin.
He had changed as much as he was going to in his lifetime.
And the Animus wasn't going to change him more.
The Animus didn't even regret its failure as it died. It was a tool that had been broken. That was all.
Malvoisin slumped, the fire burning inside him.
A white tunnel opened in the dark, and a figure appeared. It was Salli Spaak, not old and bent as she'd been when she died, but young again, ripe and beckoning.
'Bruno,' she purred, 'it was always you I loved, always you'
The white tunnel grew and grew until it was all he saw.
Genevieve left Detlef and crawled over to Malvoisin. He was shaking, but he was dead. The thing had gone, forever.
Something about him was changed. The bulk of his body was still the sea creature he had become, but his head was shrunken, whiter. Where the mask-thing had touched was a face. It must have been his original face. It was in repose.
