by Stead, Nick
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Shadow Guide
Rage bubbled up to the surface again as I healed, keeping the grief at bay for the time being. I think a part of me was also in denial, unable to feel that sense of loss because I couldn’t fully accept that the vampire I’d known as ally and travelling companion, teacher and someone I one day hoped to call friend, was truly gone. I also refused to believe that did really mean Amy’s life was also forfeit, even though I knew my failure to save Selina’s sister meant our bargain was over. Maybe she’d still risk everything to save Amy, but if she was anything like Lady Sarah had been, then I held little hope she would do that for an ordinary human with no supernatural gifts. Lady Sarah had always been so very practical when it came to our survival and she would have argued that the life of a mortal was not worth risking our own eternal existence, especially when all mortals are doomed to one day die anyway. It was entirely possible Selina would be of the same mindset. And yet, even knowing that in my head, in my heart I couldn’t accept it. Until I saw my sister’s body lying completely lifeless, I would cling to what little hope there was left.
I turned my attention to my other vampire friend. There was nothing to hear, besides my own heart still pounding with all the strain it had been put under, and the fall of the holy water from behind me. The silence suddenly seemed ominous and I had to wonder if I was going to be too late to help Zee as well.
Placing what was left of Lady Sarah back down on the stone floor, I rose and stalked through the doorway to find myself back in another passage. There was a staircase to the left of me which had to lead down to the exit on the left hand side of the chamber where Zee had been, and I rushed down, wondering if there would be another pool of gore waiting for me at the bottom. I replayed the moment in my head where I’d heard him cry out as I ran. It hadn’t so much been a cry of pain as a noise like he’d been taken by surprise, unless that was just whatever hope I had left distorting my memory. Surely if more holy water had fallen on the other side of the chamber I’d have heard him screaming in agony though. So maybe he’d encountered something else but then, if he wasn’t unconscious or worse, why couldn’t I hear any sounds of him fighting or anything?
“Zee?” I roared, deciding to risk calling out for him. There was no reply.
I emerged back in the left side of the chamber to find – nothing. No apparent danger that might explain the vampire’s absence, no grisly corpse ruined by holy water or anything else, and no sign of where my friend might have gone. I couldn’t believe he would have just left me without good reason after everything we’d been through, so I had to assume he’d gone on ahead. But what was it that had caused him to cry out?
Cursing the overpowering stench, I ran back up to the passage leading on to the next section of dungeon, shouting his name as I went. I strained the only two senses I could rely on for any clue as to what was happening, but it was no use. There was nothing to forewarn me of what might be waiting up ahead.
I didn’t think Zee would have gone too far on without me so I kept calling him, my rage building as I went. Running around blindly was getting really frustrating and I’d had enough of David and his sick game. My bloodlust returned with a vengeance and all I really wanted was to rip into the humans responsible for all the death and suffering in that place. I began to hope Zee’s cry had been caused by an enemy taking him by surprise, because I really wanted another fight then.
The passage seemed to meander on far longer than any other I’d been in, curving round in a clockwise direction until finally I reached a dead end. That only frustrated me more. No doubt there was another hidden door Zee had gone through for reasons I could only begin to guess at, but I didn’t have the patience to search for it. It didn’t matter that I’d already tried and failed to break through the thick stone walls in other areas – anger drove me to attack the stone with claws and fists, gouging several claw marks into it but doing no more in the way of real damage than I had before.
I sank into a crouch, panting from my efforts. My anger receded somewhat and despair began to creep in, when suddenly I heard the sound of another stone panel grinding into action, closely followed by a welcome voice at long last.
“Nick?”
“Zee! Where the fuck have you been?” I growled. “What happened to don’t go too far in case it’s a trap?”
He appeared from further down the passage, sword drawn and eyes wary, but otherwise appearing to be okay.
“I’m sorry, my friend. While you were making your way to Lady Sarah, a beast appeared on my side of the chamber. You sounded to have enough to cope with as it was so I chased it through to this passageway, trying to keep it from running back and into the side you were on. It got away from me, but the good news is I found a hidden passage that leads to your sister and Selina, so you can take Lady Sarah to her sister as promised and save your own. Where is she?”
“She’s dead,” I answered, all anger and relief at his reappearance draining from my voice. Just saying those two words drove all questions I might otherwise have had about the beast and the passage from my mind.
“No,” he said in disbelief.
“Her body was drenched in holy water but even when it had eaten through her skin and down to the bone, she still wouldn’t wake. I got to her as quickly as I could but it was too late…”
“Did you try giving her your blood?”
“For fuck’s sake, just ’cause I heal quicker than a human doesn’t make me a walking blood bank for you guys,” I growled. “But yes, I tried feeding her from my wrist. It didn’t make any difference.”
“Show me.”
“What’s the point, we’ll only be wasting more time. I need to get back to Amy; I’ve been away from her for too long as it is. I have to see if there’s some other way to save her, or if this really is going to be goodbye then I at least want to be there by her side.”
“It’s possible you might have missed something. We will go empty handed to Selina if you wish and you can say your goodbyes to Amy, but if there’s even the slightest chance Lady Sarah can still be brought back do you not want to try that first? I would go and look at the body alone if you’re that desperate to get back to your sister, but I don’t have the blood to heal her if I do find anything left to bring back. Vampires can’t feed on other vampires. It has to be blood from a living body or the recently deceased.”
“Okay, but let’s be quick.”
I wasn’t convinced Zee would think of anything more to try than I’d done already, but I supposed if there was even the slightest chance I had missed something, it made sense for another vampire with centuries of experience to check. The undead pirate had been around long enough to know all the limits and abilities of his curse, and I admitted to myself it was possible he might find new hope where I’d thought there was none. And at least if going back to the corpse only confirmed that she was indeed dead, I could be certain of it, instead of having to live with ‘what if’ for the rest of my life. So I led the way back to where I’d left her.
The grisly scene was no less horrific when my eyes settled on it for the second time. Zee cursed in shock. My brief description of what had happened clearly hadn’t done her death justice. The gore covered bones looked no different to before, no miraculous healing happening after I’d gone to look for Zee, and nothing had moved; her bloody remains lay in the same position I’d placed them in after carrying her out of the holy water. The downpour had stopped while I’d been out in the passage, but otherwise nothing had changed.
Zee sank to his knees beside what little was left of Lady Sarah, his hand shaking when he stretched it out to her bloody bones. I guessed he’d never seen such devastation caused to one of his kind before. If he’d had any hope of finding some way to save her, it had just been washed away much like Lady Sarah’s flesh – I could see it in his face. But still he gently lifted the edge of her dress to peer down at her chest underneath. There was nothing sexual about it – I doubted there was any of
her breasts left for us to leer at, even if we’d wanted to – he merely wanted to examine the extent of the damage beneath the material and check whether her heart was still intact.
“Her heart is still there,” he said, though his voice held no fresh hope.
I knelt down to see for myself, amazed to find it had miraculously survived in the ruins of her chest cavity. The holy water had done some damage, the outer tissue of the organ beginning to liquidise along with the rest of her guts, but it hadn’t been completely destroyed by the acid effect of the liquid.
“I admit, I didn’t check that before. But is it enough? Can she come back from this?”
Zee shook his head. “I don’t know. Her brain needs to have survived as well but the only way for us to check that is to crack her skull open, which I would rather not risk doing. Any more damage to her skeleton and it looks like she might just disintegrate. Seeing her like this, I would say it’s doubtful there’s enough left for your blood to revive. The water could easily have seeped in through her eye sockets or her nasal cavity, or even her ear canals. I hate to say it, but I think you already did everything you could.”
“Then what was the point in coming back?” I snarled, rising back up.
“I know you said the water burnt her right down to the bone, but I had hoped to find more than just a bloody skeleton,” he confessed, his eyes shining with apology. “I thought there would be more flesh on the bones and that perhaps I could find something that was preventing your blood from healing her, or what it was that was keeping her from waking. But now, much as it pains me to say it, I think you were right all along: she really is gone.”
I knew he’d meant well but I was angry he’d wasted valuable minutes that could have been spent with Amy, just as I’d first thought when he’d said he’d wanted to see the body for himself. But there was no sense in letting the rage take over when there was nothing other than my friend to direct it at. I forced it back down to simmer in its dark pit, until I could make use of it.
My gaze shifted to Lady Sarah’s remains, the irrational thought that it was somehow her fault she’d died slithering into my mind. If she’d just had the strength to fight whatever the Slayers had done to her, she could have run from the shower of holy water and saved herself. I knew as soon as I thought it that I was being unfair, but my anger blamed her all the same.
“It’s back,” Zee hissed.
“What?” I growled, turning to see he’d also got back to his feet and was looking through the doorway at something in the passageway beyond, sword drawn.
“The same beast as before.”
Red eyes met mine, glowing from within a black canine face seemingly made of the very darkness itself. Huge paws stood firm on the stone ahead, a muscular form with a physical weight to it blocking our path, very much there despite its ethereal nature. I knew all too well the power in those shadowy limbs and jaws, remembering the last time I’d faced a beast just like it out on the moors, outside Selina’s cottage. Without a scent to determine if it was in fact the same beast, I couldn’t be sure it was Selina’s barghest companion. But I suspected it might be.
“Wait,” I said, aware Zee was readying to charge at the dog. “It could be Selina’s familiar. Did it attack you before?”
“No,” he admitted. “I attacked first, wanting to keep it out of the chamber so it couldn’t cause you problems.”
The dog made no move to attack. It simply stood and waited, and I got the impression it wanted us to follow it.
When Leon had first named it as a barghest, he’d talked about how witches could bind the beasts to their will, which made me think the dog wouldn’t have randomly appeared to us. Either Selina had sent it, or maybe she was in real trouble and it had come to fetch us to help its mistress. And after she’d talked about how the one thing she could try to save Amy would be at great risk, I had a feeling the barghest manifesting for us couldn’t be a good thing.
“If it meant us harm, I think it would have attacked by now. What happened when you chased it before?”
“It ran through the section of the wall where the hidden passageway turned out to be. I lost it after that, even though I went on a little way to make sure it wasn’t going to come back and cause trouble. It was then I picked up the scent of Selina and a human girl who could only be your sister. Then I came back to find you before we ended up being separated, and to show you the way I’d found so you could get back to Selina and Amy as quickly as possible.”
“Then I’m guessing this is the barghest bound to Selina. I think it was leading you down there, back to its mistress, but when you didn’t take me straight to the passageway it showed you, I’m guessing it came back to try and get us to follow it a second time. We should go to them. There’s nothing more that can be done here and I just want to see Amy again now.”
Zee kept his sword drawn, but he at least nodded his agreement. “I can’t say I trust these shadow creatures, but you’re right, we should go to them. Once we’ve done what we can for Amy, we may well need Selina’s help to escape this accursed place.”
“Yeah, with any luck she’ll accept that we did all we could for Lady Sarah and focus her wrath purely on the Slayers,” I said, trying not to think about the fact I might be going back to Amy only to say my last goodbyes.
The barghest did indeed want us to follow it, turning away the moment we started forward and loping along the passageway just ahead of us. I was kind of glad of its presence, even though it may well be the portent of doom humans had believed black dogs to be, at least as far as Selina and Amy were concerned. Its appearance could be a bad sign that something had gone horribly wrong, but at least it would be a strong ally for as long as it remained on our side. I didn’t really expect it to be as protective of us as it would be of its mistress, but I was guessing the fact that it wanted us to help Selina would mean it was in its interests to keep us alive for the time being. The dog might not be the most reliable of allies, but I suspected it would join in any fights David might suddenly spring on us along the way to Selina.
The shadow beast stopped by a nondescript section of the tunnel, disappearing through what I guessed must be the door to the hidden path. It was so well disguised that I hadn’t spotted it when I’d first gone down the passage, and probably would have struggled even if I had been looking for it. Suddenly I had my doubts. It seemed like a hell of a coincidence that the barghest would just happen to turn up and show us the way when David had made this particular secret section of the dungeon especially hard to find. What if the black dog wasn’t bringing us to help its mistress after all; what if it was another complex trap David had prepared to ensnare us in some fresh torment? And yet, there seemed to be no other way back to the chamber where I’d left Amy with Selina, or at least none that I’d found.
I couldn’t just retrace my steps since I’d need a way to reach the trapdoor in the ceiling of the room of spikes, and I’d found no other secret passages that might lead me back up to the section of the dungeon where I’d fallen from. And even if I could find my way back there, I had no guarantees I’d be able to find a way into the room from that side. Zee hadn’t said much about what was behind the hidden door, other than the fact that it did lead to Selina and Amy. But I doubted he would have told me that if he hadn’t been sure it was them. It certainly offered more hope than any other path I might have considered.
I supposed there was the possibility that I might find a way into the main part of the building where the Slayers waited if I went back to the chamber with the dog. Her mutilations had been so fresh, I suspected they’d waited to carry them out until I was drawing close to that section of the dungeon. Then they’d probably disappeared through some bolt hole before I entered the room. If I could locate the hidden door in that area then maybe I’d find another way through to Amy, though whether it would be any safer was debatable. At least a fight with the Slayers wouldn’t be an encounter David had set up, like whatever might be waiting for me on the other side
of the door the barghest wanted us to go through. But it might mean facing a large force all armed with guns. Taking that path would be risky and it would probably take more time than I was willing to spend getting back to Amy. It looked like there was nothing for it but to walk into whatever trap it seemed we were being led into.
“What’s wrong?” Zee said, noting my uneasiness. But he’d already pressed the button to open the panel to the hidden passage.
I was about to voice my doubts when suddenly something hard and slimy crashed into me from behind. I landed heavily on my front, the stone ripping away some of my newly formed skin and my flesh bruising from the impact.
It took me completely by surprise. I’d been so convinced that the danger lay ahead, and I took longer to recover than I otherwise might have done. If Zee hadn’t been there to save me, it may well have all been over then. But he kicked out at this latest adversary, his foot connecting with enough force to send it sprawling off to the side of me. I scrambled back to my feet and turned to face my attacker. Shock froze me to the spot.
Empty, gaping eye sockets looked back at me, completely devoid of all my opponent had once been. There was no face around them, no features left on the grisly skull. But there was no mistaking her identity. Lady Sarah’s body had reanimated at last.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Rebirth
Whether she was truly alive in whatever sense the term meant for vampires was debatable. Her grotesque remains were no closer to being whole, my blood showing no signs of having healed her at all. Those gore streaked bones must have been moving with some unnatural power, since there was no muscle left for her to move them of her own accord. Then she attacked again and I was forced to treat her like any of the other undead opponents I’d faced.
