The door shook again.
Wood splintered.
Shifting her gaze, Tamara glanced at the headless corpse of Simon Cain leaning against the pulpit, his head resting on the platform. McCaw’s shattered body lay to the side of Cain’s, the head missing somewhere at the rear of the altar.
Wood shattered, its cacophony echoing throughout the church.
Turning to face the door Tamara held the shocked gasp within as she stared at a colossal werewolf standing in the aisle. Beyond it, on the church steps, a battle raged between frantic hybrids and feral werewolves, vampires working hand-in-hand with their former enemy to slaughter Tamara’s clan.
The werewolf snarled; its jaws coated with blood, thick pelt sticky with clotting life-fluid.
About to turn and run, movement to her right attracted her attention. A smaller werewolf emerged from the steps leading to the tower, glancing once to its larger colleague in the doorway before focusing its gaze on her.
She couldn’t leave via the main entrance, as the huge lycanthrope advanced down the aisle. The tower wouldn’t have offered a viable escape route anyway but that direction, as a last resort, had now been closed to her.
Tamara hoped to God there was an exit at the rear of the building.
Still gripping the sword, she turned and ran.
* * *
The moment Tamara began to flee, Trace bellowed his anger and sprinted up the aisle in pursuit.
He recognized the smaller werewolf standing near the side wall, Deanna’s lycanthropic form holding a more feminine appearance than the rest of his pack. Her body, even when wolfen in appearance, retained a fraction of the human she once was. That would fade over time and she’d look as monstrous as other werewolves when fully transformed.
Trace barked at her, ordering the werewolf to pursue the fleeing hybrid and corner the bitch. Deanna took heed and sprang from her position, clambering over the pews in a burst of energy that shattered the painted wooden benches and sent seats scrapping noisily across the concrete floor.
Tamara stumbled, the sword catching on one of the pews. She held her balance but the miss-step had slowed her.
Deanna growled, a more intense fury bursting from her emotions. She changed course, abandoning the chase and heading towards what looked like a crudely fashioned pulpit to the side of the altar.
Without breaking stride Trace growled at her but the inferior werewolf was distracted and wouldn’t respond.
Deanna reached the altar and only then did Trace notice what had thrown the female lycanthrope off her mission. The severed head of Simon Cain lay on the floor amid a sea of blood. The hybrid’s headless corpse leaned against the wall. A brief question surfaced in his mind; wondering how the hybrid leader had come to be beheaded. Blood coated Tamara’s sword and it dawned on Trace that maybe the female hybrid had slaughtered her leader to gain control of their clan. Such a mutiny couldn’t have come at a better time.
Trace roared anger at the fleeing hybrid and ran faster.
Deanna threw herself at the head, even though she surely knew the hybrid commander was already dead. Her jaws closed around the deceased face and she wrestled with the skull like a dog playing with a punctured soccer ball.
Trace gained on the escaping hybrid commander.
Tamara leaped onto the altar but her feet slid on the gore-coated surface. She crashed heavily onto her back, clutching at the sword as it slid from her grasp. Legs buckling, she stopped her momentum against the far wall.
Upon her with force, Trace swept his claws across her naked chest, slicing hybrid flesh open into four deep gouges.
Screaming in agony, Tamara scrambled to her feet.
His secure footing gave way on the slick mess and Trace collapsed to his knees.
Deanna continued to tear Cain’s head apart and he barked at her again, hoping she’d hear his order.
On her hands and knees Tamara reached out and grabbed the sword.
Trace lunged for her.
Lashing out, Tamara swept the sword through tense air. Managing to halt his forward motion despite the blood-slick floor Trace arched himself away from the blow. Agony spread over his torso as the blade sliced a line horizontally on his chest.
His blood, warm and sticky, mingled with that shed by his victims.
Tamara hissed, and stabbed forward as a swordsman would in the sport of fencing.
Trace reached out, his huge hand grabbing her wrist. Twisting, he shattered carpal bones and wrenched the weapon from her limp grasp.
Tamara cried out in pain; the sound almost human.
Pouncing forward, his weight driving her to the floor, Trace pinned her to the ground. His feet came up, claws gouging slits in her abdomen as he sought for purchase. She screamed again; in agony, panic, or fear, he couldn’t be sure.
According to information gathered from hybrid memories, Tamara had been embroiled in the war for less than fifteen years. It showed; she was no match against her more experienced foe.
With the final surviving hybrid commander incapacitated beneath him, Trace leaned forward, mouth agape, and closed his jaws around her head.
Her cry became a muffled whimper as cheekbones collapsed under the pressure.
As he prepared to shake his head to tear the hybrid’s face apart, an intense agony flared through his body: something long and hard—metallic—passing through him.
* * *
Forced further to the east, away from the heart of town where the church lay, Anton used all his centuries of experience to win a fight over three particularly determined hybrids. He gasped with expended energy, sword coated with a thick layer of hybrid blood and tissue. With the last of the trio sliced open on the grass, a surreal calm wrapped him. He stood to the rear of a house, the main street and the heart of battle on the opposite side of the building.
Sunlight blazed uncompromisingly upon his leather-clad form, body slick with sweat. A breeze rushed through the valley and for a moment it dispersed the smell of death and replaced it with the crisp tang of fresh air scented with the heady aroma of surrounding pine forests.
Anton glanced over his shoulder. Corpses peppered the field behind him, vampire, werewolf and hybrids alike. Thankfully there were more slain crossbreeds than those fighting his cause, and it seemed the survivors from his group that had begun their charge from the highway had ventured further into town. He had to follow them; to locate the next battle and dispatch this hybrid infection.
Running up the side of the property he sprinted onto a street coated with blood sparkling in late afternoon sunlight. Torn cadavers littered the tarmac, the majority of those being the almost hairless, grotesquely transformed bodies of hybrids.
Almost the instant he emerged from behind the house and noticed the carnage before him, the sounds of a frantic struggle reached his ears.
Two houses down to his left a gigantic werewolf battled bravely against a horde of attacking hybrids. The lycanthrope towered over its assailants, picking off the ones it could but taking multiple wounds to its torso. A werewolf that large could only be one person; the gray streak of fur—like a dyed Mohican along its back—confirmed the identity.
Isaac!
Ordinarily Anton would have ignored the Alpha-Male, might even have stood silently by and watched the giant lycanthrope become overpowered, but the truce he’d countersigned forbade such callous abandonment.
After six hundred years they were once again on the same side.
Without breathing a sound Anton charged towards the garden, sword wielded over his shoulder. With supreme agility he jumped the fence bordering the grounds and without breaking stride advanced on the attacking hybrids. The first swipe of his blade severed one crossbreed in half, its torso falling away from its hips. Before the mass surrounding the werewolf knew what was happening Anton had slaughtered two more. He flung the blade around with great experience and precision, decapitating hybrids and opening the bellies of those who turned to face him.
For one brie
f moment his eyes locked onto the Alpha-Male’s and a bizarre sense of appreciation passed between them. It seemed to energize the supreme lycanthrope as it counter-attacked with more fervor; closing its mouth around hybrid heads, crushing skulls, severing arteries and eviscerating his foes with resolute power.
Anton and Isaac came face to face, both heaving with exertion from the fight. Anton held Isaac’s gaze for a moment, the giant werewolf’s features softening temporarily. Centuries of loathing and fear for each other seemed to evaporate in the hot Austrian sunshine and a new appreciation for the Alpha-Male found a niche in Anton’s emotions. He was certain Isaac felt the same.
Isaac grunted at Anton, as if to confirm it; an acknowledgement of thanks for saving his life.
The werewolf ignored the splattered remains of their enemies and leaped over the fence into the road. Anton followed, recognized a strange sense of camaraderie standing next to the lycanthrope, and stared at the dwindling battle outside the church.
Pockets of hybrid resistance were being overpowered throughout town, but Anton knew where the last vestiges of hybrid hope lay.
He sprinted towards the church and Isaac ran with him.
* * *
Markus pushed the sword all the way in until the crafted hilt pressed into the werewolf’s back. The creature howled in agony and released its grip on the hybrid commander. He withdrew his sword and using his boot, pushed the lycanthrope to one side.
Panicked, terrified, agonizing breaths left Tamara Wyatt in gurgled blasts of air from her shattered face. For some reason the werewolf had not tried to rip out her throat but had clamped its jaws onto her skull, crunching cheekbones and her lower jaw. Her left eye protruded from its broken socket, held in place by the taut optic nerve. The other eye stared wide, gazing up at Markus as he towered over her stricken form.
The werewolf’s talons had raked deep grooves into her torso, but Markus identified the wound in her chest where his sword had passed through the lycanthrope and into her.
He glanced at the werewolf; on its back, clutching the hole in its chest with brutish hands, giant mouth open baring dagger-like incisors. It stared at him and Markus identified its hate.
Judging by the size of the creature he guessed it to be either Trace or Sava, one of Isaac’s sidekicks. Perhaps I should have been more callous and taken the brute’s head off. With any luck the human wolf was struggling to repair a heart sliced in two by his forty-inch saber.
Markus leaned towards the creature and hissed. “This kill is mine!”
No one had followed him into the church, not even Ilanna, and through the open doors the main battle directly outside the citadel had petered-out, its defenders all but slain, the surviving werewolves and vampires mopping up before dispersing into town to find other hybrids to kill.
Glancing beyond the injured werewolf, Markus spotted a mangled head on the wooden floor. A lycanthrope cowered in the corner, watching the proceedings with a nervous stare.
From the pictures he’d seen during those tedious war cabinets with their lycanthropic contemporaries, Markus recognized the face of Simon Cain in spite of the torn remains of the hybrid’s countenance; a pained expression frozen on the severed head, blood coating its skin. He would like to have killed both hybrid commanders but would have to be satisfied with just the one.
Returning his attention to the traumatized woman before him, Markus leaned close to her shattered head. Gore spattered his face as her breath exited through blood pooling in her throat.
“And you thought you could win this war? You thought you could defeat us? Vampires will always rule supreme.”
Stepping to one side Markus raised the blade above his head and brought it down with swift accuracy.
* * *
The pain would not abate but already it had become a throb issued by his body as it started the process of regeneration. Trace considered himself fortunate. Markus could easily have chopped his head off; if his aim had been better—maybe an inch to one side—the blade might have pierced his heart, damaging it in such a way that regeneration would not be possible. Luckily, the ragged hole bisecting his torso would cease bleeding in about an hour, would be completely healed in less than a week.
A sorrowful pant reached his ears and Trace glanced to his right. Deanna, still in her wolfish form, crawled over the altar platform, sliding her body through gore coating the wooden boards. He recognized her moan as one of distress, frightened that he had been mortally wounded. Trace offered her a grunt of reassurance that he’d be okay. Early evening sunlight poured through the windows to reflect in her eyes, the orbs coated with tears of regret. Instead of helping him corner the hybrid she’d noticed the body of Simon Cain and taken her anger out on its lifeless form. Last night, in the lull between their bouts of ferocious lovemaking, Deanna had explained her mortal life to him and made him understand how badly she wanted to see Cain’s death.
He found it ironic that she should be inducted into the pack when she already had a history in this war; found it understandable that her emotions overcame her at a time of inconvenience to him. Trace had no memory of his own parents, their deaths occurring many centuries ago, so could only imagine the level of grief that had still been coursing through Deanna’s emotions.
In a strange way he found comfort from the female lycanthrope curling at his side and licking his face in a display of affection and trust.
He breathed easier, enjoying her attention, and allowed his body to begin knitting torn flesh and muscle from the inside and out.
Glancing beyond Deanna’s comforting body he failed to spot Cain’s head. The hybrid’s torso lay against the pulpit, a mark of disturbed blood coating the floor where the head had once been. He looked left, towards Tamara’s corpse, the tattered remnants of her neck almost lost beneath a thick coating of spilled blood. Her head was missing too.
Excited shouts attracted his attention: a proclamation of victory and self-importance.
Trace looked down the aisle, towards the church’s main entrance. Silhouetted in the open doorway by the rays of a sinking sun, Markus stood with his arms aloft, each fist clenching the strands of hair on a severed head.
A werewolf crouched outside on the church’s forecourt, and a stab of relief rushed through Trace’s emotions as he recognized Isaac’s hateful stare fixed on the vampire Elder. An Eliminator stood beside the Alpha-Male; Anton smiling broadly.
Markus displayed the trophies to the village of Alpbach, urging the warring vampires and werewolves to track down every last hybrid and murder them. Trace was fine with that, but he didn’t like Markus stealing all the glory.
Weakened by the wound sustained from the Elder’s sword, Trace could not confront the vampire.
Markus could gloat and parade all he wanted, Trace knew the depth of the vampire’s secrets, the length of his treachery, and even though Markus didn’t know it yet, there’d be nowhere for him to hide.
The pack’s vengeance would come soon enough.
TWELVE
Santi Quattro Coronati
Rome, Italy
For the first time in the citadel’s one thousand seven hundred year history, werewolves were allowed within its stone walls. Under strict orders not to morph into their wolfen forms, lycanthropes sat at designated tables and gorged themselves on raw meat and alcohol. Their behavior had become raucous and at times out of control, yet for the most part the festivities continued in good spirits.
Two days had passed since the great victory in Austria; forty-eight hours since the conflict with their abominable enemy had come to an end two centuries after it began. The relief of that triumph was plain to see, etched onto the faces of werewolf and vampire alike. The fight had been violent and gory, and those who survived appreciated their fortune. When the battle ceased, troops had been deployed throughout Alpbach to scour the village for pockets of survivors. They rounded up eighty-six hybrids; concealed in cellars and attics, the crossbreeds were hauled from their hideouts and lined up ou
tside the parish church. Each one received an injection of vampire venom, their death quick yet excruciatingly painful. It had taken twenty-four hours to dispose of the remains.
Once the armies returned victorious, this banquet had been arranged to celebrate the end of the Hybrid War.
During those two days following cessation of hostilities against their vanquished foe, neither vampire nor werewolf had mentioned their own immortal struggle and the conflict which had consumed them for the better part of six hundred years . . . Isaac wondered if tonight’s events would snap that fragile truce and plunge both sides into bloody war once more.
He sat at the head table, a guest of honor of Markus; although he knew the vampire Elder did not want him there. Ilanna made an effort to be sociable but her husband kept his attention focused on the surrounding dignitaries. A few of them had spoken upon a pedestal erected in the middle of the building’s Great Hall, the vampire luminaries offering speeches of pride and loyalty towards their Elder. Since the battle in Alpbach Markus had been proclaimed an even bigger hero, announcing that he had slaughtered both the remaining hybrid commanders’ singlehandedly.
Isaac knew different, but for now he kept that information to himself.
Trace sat on the table immediately to his right. The lycanthrope’s loose-fitting shirt failed to conceal the bandages wrapped around his chest. The bleeding had stopped but the werewolf’s body was weakened as it continued to repair the sword wound gouged through his body. Markus claimed he had saved the werewolf’s life, having witnessed the lycanthrope cornered and stabbed through the chest by Tamara’s sword. The vampire Elder told how he had watched the werewolf fall, mortally wounded Markus had feared, before leaping to the lycanthrope’s defense and killing the female hybrid. Markus proudly told of his battle with Simon Cain and how the hybrid’s death had been painful and gruesome.
Of course, Isaac had news to the contrary.
The Last Stand -- Blood War Trilogy Book III Page 13
