by Jack Yeovil
Rudiger was ahead again, and they were behind. This was going round and round, hunting the hunter hunting the hunter and being in turn hunted. Genevieve wanted it finished.
The tunnel sloped downwards, deeper into the earth. She hoped the engineers had built to last. Nearer the surface, things were falling apart.
These workings had been abandoned since the time of Sigmar. None of the higher races had set foot here for centuries.
'There's light ahead,' she said, feeling it in her eyes.
'That's impossible,' Rudiger snorted.
Doremus covered the candleflame, and they all saw it.
'Evidently not,' the graf admitted. 'My apologies.'
The mare had headed for the light.
It was cold down here, and wet. Water trickled down the walls and around their boots.
Their way was barred by a sparkling curtain, and the drumming of water was loud in their ears.
'We're behind the waterfall,' Doremus said.
It was true. Genevieve stepped forwards, and put her hand in the icy curtain, feeling the water splash onto her arm and face.
'The mare must have plunged through,' Rudiger said.
It was a pretty sight.
'Come on,' the graf grunted, holding his nose and throwing himself into the water.
For an instant, he was visible in the water like a bug frozen in ice, then he was swept away.
Doremus was startled.
'There must be a way through to the Cleft,' Genevieve said. 'He should come out with the mare.'
Balthus leaped after his master.
'Are you the kind that doesn't like running water?' Doremus asked.
'I didn't think I was yesterday.'
Still, neither of them made a move to the curtain.
'Can you hear the voice in the water?'
Genevieve listened, and thought she could hear something frail and pleading in the rush of the fall.
'I've been hearing that all day.'
'It must come from around here somewhere.'
Genevieve looked about. To a human, this would be almost as dark as night. To her, it was almost as bright as day.
'Douse the candle, I'll see better,' she said.
Doremus complied.
The rock chamber behind the waterfall became plainer. There were murals carved into the walls, depicting Sigmar wielding his hammer against the goblins. It was indifferent as art, but showed some dwarfish enthusiasm.
The noise was a mewling, singing, crying
They found her in an alcove, mossy blankets pulled around her, face pale and thin, almost elfin.
'Sylvana?'
The woman didn't answer her name.
'She must be dead,' Doremus said, 'I saw father shoot two arrows.'
Genevieve knelt by the woman, and saw how changed she was. The arrows were still in her flesh, but they had sprouted, grown. Green shoots emerged from the wood, and the fletches were heavy with blossom. Her face was changed too, supple as young bark with a green undertone, her hair was the consistency and colour of moss, her thin arms were wrapped around her soft, pulpy body. She had taken root where she lay, been absorbed into the nook. Where she was, she had water and light.
Genevieve had heard that these waters had properties. As she looked at Sylvana, flowers blossomed around her face.
'Doremus,' Sylvana whispered, her voice coming not from her filmed over mouth but from her breathing nostrils, 'Doremus'
The young man didn't want to get near the changing woman. But she had something to tell him.
Her head raised, neck growing like a branch beneath it.
'Rudiger killed your mother,' she said.
Doremus nodded, accepting what Sylvana told him. Obviously, that had occurred to him.
'And he killed your father too,' Genevieve added.
Doremus' eyes went wide with incomprehension.
* * *
XIV
'Clever, clever,' a voice said behind them.
Rudiger stood, dripping, before the waterfall, his knife out, its blade glistening.
'Doremus,' he said, 'to my side. I have kills to claim.'
Doremus froze, not knowing what to do.
'Serafina?' he said. 'Mother?'
'A whore, like all women,' Rudiger shrugged. 'You did well to grow up without her warping you with her fussing and fiddling.'
The vampire stood up, slowly. In the dark, her eyes seemed to shine red.
'I waited for you outside, but only the faithful dog came.'
The thing that had been Sylvana shrank, her head sinking into its bed of greenery.
'So I returned.' He beckoned with his knife.
'That's a poor thing, graf,' Genevieve said. 'Where's your other weapon?'
Rudiger laughed, as he did at the height of the chase. He tapped his quiver.
'In with the arrows.'
'Father,' Doremus said. 'What does this mean?'
'You don't have to call me that anymore.'
'It was Magnus,' Genevieve told him. 'I saw it in his face. You have his face.'
Suddenly, Doremus understood his 'uncle,' understood the care he had always bestowed on him, understood the glances he had always given Serafina's portrait.
'He was a good friend, and no more to blame for the betrayal than that fat fool last night,' Rudiger said. 'It was the harlot I married, that was all.'
Genevieve had been creeping nearer to Rudiger, by inches, whenever the graf was paying attention to Doremus. He didn't know which one to help.
'Vampire,' Rudiger said. 'Keep your distance.'
Genevieve stood still.
'How did you know I killed Magnus?' he asked.
'The count was killed with a horn. The mare would have used her hooves as well.'
Rudiger smiled. 'Ah, that's a hunter's observation.'
From his quiver, he pulled out his grandfather's trophy.
'So pretty, so sharp, so dangerous,' he said, looking at Genevieve.
The horn was still red with Magnus' blood.
'I couldn't let him take my heir away,' Rudiger explained. 'The name of von Unheimlich must continue, even if the bloodline is interrupted. Honour is more important even than blood.'
Doremus knew the count had been trying to declare himself as his father. When Magnus was wounded, he had wanted him to know, had wanted him to carry the memory.
'It was eating him inside,' Rudiger continued. 'He would have spoken out in public, taken you away, taken you for his heir. Now, the threat is gone. The family is whole.'
Doremus turned away from the graf, and cried for his father.
* * *
XV
Genevieve went for Rudiger, and collided with him, arms going around him, pushing aside the deadly horn.
Together, they hit the curtain of water.
She clung tight as they plunged down, deep into the lake at the bottom of Khorne's Cleft. Under the surface, it was quiet, all sound muffled.
She could stay under longer than the graf.
She could drown him. But he was struggling, fighting her.
Underwater, he was strong, pushing her away. She felt the point of the horn scrape across her thigh, the silver stinging like a lashworm eating in the wound.
They broke the surface, and the noise was unbearable. Rudiger was shouting, and the water was hammering down around her.
Her blood was all around her.
Rudiger ducked under, and she saw his boots kick the air as he went down. She trod water, paddling with her arms.
Rudiger rose from the waters, horn held in both hands like a heavy sword, angling down at her.
She knifed her legs, and twisted out of the way, and the horn stabbed the unresisting water.
Making a fist, she punched Rudiger in the side, feeling but not hearing his ribs give way. He turned like a wounded fish, and stabbed out, forcing her back. A wave hit her, and she had to keep her balance. The horn came for her again, and she swam back.
She found rock behin
d her, and the waterfall pressed her down.
Slowly, thinking her pinned down, Rudiger came for her, horn ready for her heart.
'Die, vampire bitch,' he snarled.
The horn jumped, and she let herself be sucked down.
Rudiger stabbed the stone, and she shot out her hand, latching onto his throat, feeling his stiff wet beard in her grip.
The horn broke and she hurled her whole bodyweight at the graf.
She slammed against him and he lost his fragment of horn, his hands grabbing for her hair.
She had lost her cap, and her hair was loose.
Genevieve ignored the pain in her scalp, as Rudiger wrenched. He was under her, and as she swam for the mouth of the culvert, she kept pushing the graf under the surface. He gulped down icy water, and choked out bubbles of air.
There was hard rock under her feet now, and she scraped the graf across it.
At the edge of Khorne's Cleft, the water flowed into a stream, and there was firm ground she could strike for.
Her eyeteeth were points of pain in her mouth, and she felt the red rage again.
She could hear the graf's heartbeat, feel the blood pounding in his throat. Her nails had dug in, and the beaten man was bleeding.
The waterfall had worn a bowl-like indentation in the rock, and at the edge of the culvert there was a ridge that almost breached the surface.
Genevieve slammed Rudiger against the ridge, cracking his spine.
She stood up, the water pouring out of her clothes, and looked down at her quarry.
He was still kicking, but he couldn't hurt her anymore.
The graf's warbow and quiver were washed away, floating down the stream. His knife was at the bottom of the lake. His grandfather's ivory trophy was broken and gone. The fight was out of him.
Behind her, Doremus emerged from the waterfall.
The need was in her throat, her heart, her stomach, and her loins.
She fell upon the graf like a beast, nuzzling his neckwounds with her mouth, and tearing through the skin, chewing into the veins with her sharp teeth.
The blood, iced cold by the water flowing around, gushed into her mouth, and she swallowed greedily.
This was not loving, this was preying.
She drank long, sucking the wounds dry, opening fresh ones, and sucking them too. She tore the graf's clothes, and ripped his flesh. She felt him shrinking inside her, sniffed his passions as they were extinguished, swallowed him whole and digested him completely.
She heard his heartbeat slow to a halt, felt his waterlogged lungs collapse, sensed his blood slowing
At once, she had dead blood in her mouth, and it tasted of ashes. She spat it out and stood up.
Graf Rudiger von Unheimlich was beyond the healing of the waters of Khorne's Cleft.
At the bank of the stream, the unicorn mare stood, amber eyes fixed upon the predator.
Genevieve felt the last of Rudiger's blood rush through her heart, and she strode through the water, kicking waves around her. The mare waited for her.
Wading ashore, she walked up to the unicorn.
They both knew the hunt was over.
She placed her arms around the mare's neck, and rested her head next to the unicorn's, feeling the fur rise against her cheek.
She sensed that the mare was as old as she, that she had known the last of her stallions, that this was the last hunt
Looking into the mare's eye, Genevieve knew it must all be over. With a sudden wrench, she turned the beast's head around, hearing its neck break like the crack of a gun.
The old mare went down to her knees, and died in peace.
There was a final reward.
She grasped the horn, feeling the nasty tingle of its silver threads, and plucked it from the mare's forehead. It came loose as easily as a ripe fruit is freed from the bough.
The red rage passed from her like a cloud.
* * *
XVI
'Here, Master Doremus,' Genevieve said, handing him the ivory. 'A present. A replacement for the trophy that was lost.'
He was shivering, his clothes heavy with water.
Balthus, almost completely a dog, was crouched by the dead mare. He bared his teeth, and worried the unicorn's belly.
Genevieve kicked him away, and he slipped, yapping, into the woods. He was part of the wild now, like Sylvana. The Drak Wald was well known for claiming its own.
The vampire stood between her kills, between the unicorn mare and the Graf von Unheimlich.
'This is what hunters are for,' she said, 'for killing the things that need killing, the things that have outlived their time, have gone beyond their glory.'
The ivory felt smooth and beautiful in his hands.
'Go home, Doremus,' Genevieve said, 'and bury your father. Bury him with honour. Take his name, if you want. Or Count Magnus'. Use your position to harry Mornan Tybalt, whatever'
He was still confused about all this.
'And as for him,' she said, nodding at the graf, who lay face up in the water, mouth open. 'Forget that he killed Count Magnus. Remember that he knew what he knew but let him live as long as he did. That must mean something.'
The vampire girl was different, now. Commanding, strong, confident. She didn't disgust him anymore. She was old, but she looked younger now than ever before.
'And you?' he said.
She looked thoughtful a moment. 'I'll stay here a while, and lose myself in the forests. I'm a wild thing, too.'
Genevieve reached up and kissed him, her cold lips against his. Doremus felt a thrill course through him.
'Be the man your father would have had you be,' she said.
He left her there, and made his way down, past the stream.
When he was out of her sight, he took one last look at the ivory and tossed it into the water. It sparkled on the streambed, the current flowing over it. That was a better background for the trophy than any dusty wall.
Nearing the lodge, Doremus realized the saying was true: One comes home and he alone.
Table of Contents
PART ONE
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
XIX
XX
XXI
XXII
XXIII
PART TWO
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
XX
XXI
XXII
XXIII
XXIV
XXV
XXVI
XXVII
XXVIII
XXIX
PART THREE
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
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