by Stead, Nick
The thing that had once been Lady Sarah still moved with supernatural speed and strength, and she charged me with enough force to send us crashing back to the floor. Her skeletal fingers scratched and carved fresh marks in my flesh, her bony jaws snapping at my throat and trying to find a vein or artery to sink her fangs into. I didn’t know if that was instinct driving her to feed or if David was using the same method to control her as he had with Zee. Either way, it was a struggle to hold her skull off my neck, my muscles straining against her with everything I had left. But it wasn’t enough; her teeth were moving ever closer to my flesh and there was nothing I could do to stop her.
Zee lashed out and sent her sprawling a second time. I scrabbled to my feet, heart pounding and adrenaline pumping. She turned to face him, those empty eye sockets locking onto their target as if she still had some ability to see. The pirate dropped his cutlass and raised his fists.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I roared.
He didn’t have time to answer, Lady Sarah rushing him like she had me. But with his greater vampiric speed, he dodged the attack and she went charging past him, her jaws gaping as she turned and attacked again. Zee danced around his opponent, frustrating her at every turn and keeping her busy, long enough for me to pounce and try to clamp my own jaws around her skull. If she’d been a weaker enemy I’d have succeeded in making the kill, but there was enough supernatural strength in those bones to throw me off. I smashed into the wall with a yelp and before I knew it the tables were turned and she was back on top of me, biting at my throat once again.
Something black and powerful lunged at her, the two creatures rolling in a tangle of teeth and claws. I picked myself up to find the barghest had returned, joining the fight just as I’d hoped it might.
Zee took advantage of the moment to answer my previous question.
“I think we may have a chance to save her after all, but I daren’t risk cutting through those bones and causing any more damage.”
“Then why hasn’t she healed already?” I panted, keeping my eyes on Lady Sarah. She was still focused on the barghest but it seemed only a matter of time before the two broke apart and she came at us again.
“The Slayers’ necromancer must be controlling her as he controlled me. It’s the only explanation.”
“They can do that?”
“I have heard of such things before, though this kind of necromancy is rare. It takes far more power to control a vampire than it does to reanimate and enslave a corpse but then, what are we corporeal types of undead if not reanimated corpses ourselves? Except for you werewolves of course. The fact you still have a living body means the necromancer can’t touch you, from what I understand of such things.”
“And necromancy can keep you from healing as well? Are you sure we’re not just finding more false hope when we should be accepting she’s really gone and dealing with this thing the necromancer’s turned her into?”
“I can’t be certain,” he admitted. “But her heart hasn’t yet been destroyed. It’s possible there’s just enough left for your blood to bring her back and it’s the necromancer’s power interfering with the normal healing process. Hacking what’s left to pieces will almost certainly render her truly dead though.”
“It’s a risk but I suppose it’s one we have to take. How the hell do we free her of the necromancer’s control and get my blood into what’s left of her, then?”
Zee wasn’t given chance to answer that. With a silent scream, Lady Sarah broke free of the barghest and made another charge at us. Somehow she seemed to have escaped further damage from the black dog’s jaws, though I supposed its ties to Selina might extend to her family, preventing it from doing any real damage. If that was the case, I wondered why the barghest had joined the fight at all, unless it was intelligent enough to recognise that we remained the best hope for saving Selina and that keeping Lady Sarah at bay was in its mistress’s best interests. I didn’t have long to dwell on it before she was on us again, raking bony fingers across Zee’s face. He was too slow to dodge completely but it was never meant to be more than a flesh wound, nothing more than a distraction to give her another chance at her real target – me. In those seconds Zee stumbled backwards, I found myself pinned against the wall. And again I struggled to keep her from biting into my throat.
“Zee, if you have a plan, now would be the time to say something!” I shouted to him.
Personally, I couldn’t see how to free her from the necromancer’s clutches. With Zee, I’d counted on the hunger overpowering the dark magic if it grew strong enough, but Lady Sarah had gone far beyond merely bleeding out to the point of starvation. Her hunger should already have been at its most powerful, urging her to feed and allow the blood to fuel the regenerative powers of her vampirism until her flesh was completely restored. Then again, she was fixating on me and my throat so perhaps the hunger was driving her to some extent. But I didn’t think it was the sole driving force or I was sure she’d have completely ignored the other two. The fact that she had gone for Zee and wrestled with the barghest suggested the necromancer was still very much in control, and that her orders were simply to attack (and possibly kill) all three of us.
I was fighting another losing battle, her skull moving closer and closer to my neck. Her fangs were only inches from penetrating my skin and again I shouted “Zee!”
He paused before replying and for a brief moment I didn’t think he would answer at all. I couldn’t see either of my allies in my peripheral vision and I didn’t dare take my eyes from the gruesome skeleton I was wrestling with. But as that horrific mess of gore and bone drew ever nearer, I began to fear they’d both abandoned me.
Finally Zee said “Stop fighting her, Nick.”
“What?”
“It’s the only way. Stop fighting and let her feed again.”
“Are you insane? She’ll rip my throat out in this state!”
“I’ll pull her off if I think you’re in any real danger, but now that she’s conscious I think your blood will bring her hunger to the surface. It should make it powerful enough to beat the necromancer’s hold over her, with any luck. And it’s not like you’re a mortal; you can heal the damage before you bleed out.”
I wasn’t convinced the transformation could keep up with the damage the crazed vampire would do to me. But Zee made no move to help and the barghest was hanging back as well, leaving me with no choice. Even reduced to little more than bloody bones, Lady Sarah was just too strong for me to hold off for long.
Her superior strength brought her jaws within reach of my flesh and her fangs slid past my fur and into my skin. Down they went, into the layer of tissue where my jugular hid with its cache of crimson treasure. I knew then it was all over. Either Zee or the barghest would come to my rescue and succeed in pulling her away before she drained me dry, or I would bleed out that time. I wouldn’t have the strength to push her off myself.
Defeated, I let my clawed hands fall to my sides, and surrendered myself to the vampires.
That feeling of losing too much blood was becoming far too familiar. Lady Sarah didn’t need to suck on my vein – the liquid was gushing freely, and she gulped it down like a thirsty human drinking from a water fountain. I tried to look for any signs my latest sacrifice was at least having the desired healing effect this time, but my head was tilted too far back. My eyes wouldn’t roll far enough in my skull and she remained just out of my line of vision.
I felt myself teetering on the edge of consciousness when finally the fangs withdrew and I fell to all fours, limbs shaking with the struggle to support my weight. The simple act of lifting my head was almost beyond me.
I could just make out Zee wrestling with the skeleton and my heart fell. In spite of everything, it seemed healing her still hadn’t worked. The necromancer hadn’t interfered with the process after all; her brain must have been destroyed, meaning there was no coming back from this.
My mind turned to our next problem – how the hell were w
e supposed to kill her? If she had effectively become a zombie, that meant only flames would destroy her, and it wasn’t like any of us possessed the power to conjure fire from nothing. Unless Selina could create one through witchcraft. Could we reach her with the skeleton harrying us the entire way though?
My vision grew clearer as I allowed my flesh to heal and plug the leak in my blood vessels. I decided our only option was for me to go on ahead and speak to Selina. Zee was better matched for fighting Lady Sarah and we probably wouldn’t make it if we both tried to flee. And if I was the one left behind to fight, I didn’t fancy my chances. So I rallied what strength hadn’t already been taken from me and prepared to sprint the length of the passage, when a shrill scream sounded from the direction of the vampires, physically painful to my sensitive lupine ears.
I looked back to see Lady Sarah writhing on the floor. Zee was on top of her, holding her down. But something had changed.
New, healthy flesh crept across her bones. Cartilage had already formed round the vertebrae in her neck and that horrible sound was coming from her new voice box in a gruesome display of biology, the grisly structure vibrating with the agony given sound. I couldn’t see what was happening in her chest cavity with her dress still covering it, but I imagined her organs had reformed, her lungs whole once more and swelling with the air needed to produce that terrible scream.
A new tongue was visible between her jaws but her eyes and nose hadn’t regenerated. She hadn’t even grown all the muscles back on her skull, let alone her skin.
Limbs remained similarly bare and skeletal – some new tissue had definitely begun to form around them but it was still not enough to allow movement without the aid of the necromancer’s power. After fearing the worst when the healing hadn’t immediately kicked in, I was stunned to see her body beginning to repair itself at long last. But something was wrong.
“It’s working!” Zee managed to shout, still struggling to hold her down.
“I can see that. But why’s it taking so long?”
When Leon’s face had been washed away by holy water, the moment he had fresh blood in his system it had reformed almost instantly. The healing I’d witnessed had been a smooth process, one that couldn’t have taken any more than a minute. Lady Sarah’s flesh was reforming at a snail’s pace. In fact, it might even have stopped again.
“I don’t know,” Zee admitted. “It could be that she hasn’t had enough blood or maybe the necromancer’s power is still interfering with the process. Or it could be a bit of both. I’ve never seen any of us suffer this level of damage before and survive.”
“Well she’s not getting any more of my blood. At this rate, I’m going to be useless in here. I don’t know how much more blood loss I can take before my body reaches its limits, even with my greater healing.”
“We could ask Selina to donate some. She has a living body same as you – her blood should suffice.”
“Good idea, plus it’s her sister. I’ll go get her.”
With that, I tore my eyes from the macabre show and ran for Selina’s chamber. I realised the barghest had disappeared and there was no sign of it as I bounded down the passage it had been so desperate for us to follow it into. Something else barred my path though.
“You,” I snarled, narrowing my eyes as I came to a stop in front of the mysterious being I’d been unable to fathom since we’d first encountered him.
“Woah there, fluffy. Hold on before you bite my head off,” Gwyn said. He was in human form, hands held up to show he was unarmed. “Huh, now that I think of it, for you I guess that saying is just as literal as it is metaphorical.”
I was in no mood for games or to hear him out. My first instinct was to lash out at him, but a better idea came to me. He looked and smelled human in his physical form which suggested he bled just the same as any other undead with a living body. And using him as a donor for Lady Sarah felt much more appealing than asking Selina to give up some of her blood. After all, the Welsh undead had yet to prove any real worth to us or even if he could truly be trusted. As far as I was concerned, he was expendable, while Selina most certainly wasn’t. We would probably have need of her witchcraft to combat the supernatural powers being used against us and that felt like a much more valuable resource than Gwyn’s spirit form, especially as he seemed to need darkness to reveal his true strength.
“Then you’ll be pleased to know I’ve just thought of a better use for you,” I growled. “You can come with me willingly, or I can drag you back down here with me. What’s it to be?”
His face lit up. “Aw see, I knew you’d warm to me eventually.”
Irritated, I made a move to grab him. He seemed to guess what my response would be and just managed to dodge my clawed hand.
“All right, chummer, you win. Lead on.”
I could have gone for him again but as long as we were in the light, I didn’t think he could really go anywhere other than back towards the chamber where Selina and Amy were. And he had to know I’d be on him before he could get inside and seal himself in, if there was even a way to do that. I felt I could trust him to follow me in the circumstances.
It might only have been because he didn’t have much option, but the Welsh undead did at least walk with me back to the two vampires. Zee didn’t say anything about the apparent change of plans but he flashed me a quick grin of approval. Then his gaze returned to Lady Sarah and his features settled into a grimace. Her limbs thrashed in his firm grip and I could practically feel the strain in his muscles to keep her there.
Gwyn gave a mock shiver when he saw them. “Now that’s enough to give anyone nightmares.”
“Give me your wrist,” I growled. “She needs blood.”
“Ah and it’s Gwyn on the menu. What makes you think my blood will work?” he asked, but he complied, holding out his arm.
“You’re human enough like this. If she can feed on my blood, I’m sure she can feed on yours.”
“And there I was thinking you were just an angry mutt. Well done, fluffy,” he said as I ran a claw across his skin. Blood welled up in the slit I made, just like in a mortal man.
He knelt down without having to be asked and placed his wrist to Lady Sarah’s jaws. She’d been straining to reach the crimson liquid as if she could sense it, her newly formed tongue stretching out like a snake dancing up towards its charmer. A weird mewling took the place of her screams.
The moment the blood touched her taste buds, her fangs plunged into Gwyn’s flesh and her jaws closed around his limb. It reminded me of the way my old pet snake would grab hold of the dead mice I fed him, using his teeth to keep the prey from escaping while he squeezed the ‘life’ out. Then she set about draining this latest meal.
Gwyn was uncharacteristically silent while she fed. But he couldn’t keep the pain from his face, and it gave me a secret pleasure to see him wincing with discomfort.
Zee continued to hold Lady Sarah down, though she seemed to be fairly placid once the blood she needed began to enter her system. Her limbs had ceased their thrashing and the only sound she made was the swallowing of her newly formed throat structures.
Mostly I was relieved to see our plan seemed to be working. The tissue which had already begun to creep along her bones resumed its growth, slimy red vines snaking along her skeleton as muscle began to reform at last. Her nasal bone seemed to extend as the cartilage regenerated and those gaping eye sockets refilled with the jelly-like substance of her eyeballs, looking unnaturally large again at first. Then the muscle moulded itself around them and her appearance became less of a dead skull and more of a living face, albeit one without skin.
Gwyn was becoming more like his namesake by the minute, losing all his colour as the vampire drained him of his blood. When he looked to be on the verge of passing out, Zee grabbed Lady Sarah’s head and wrenched it from his wrist. A large chunk of flesh ripped off when she refused to let go, caught between her fangs like a mouse in a trap. Blood dripped from the gruesome morsel and she s
wallowed that too, her eyes on her prey and her hands reaching for more.
The healing stopped the moment she was cut off from the flow of blood. Her unearthly scream resumed, but the organ it came from was less visible now. Muscle covered most of the cartilage. It was just the skin missing from her throat as far as I could see.
Those newly formed features twisted into an expression of unmistakable agony. Her eyes had become windows to a world of suffering, dull blue and not focused on anything in particular, as though she were trapped in the pain of her bare flesh. My nerves stung with the memory of a similar pain, remembering the time my own body had been stripped of its skin during the battle for my hometown. I could sympathise with Lady Sarah’s plight, and my anger reared up again.
I turned on Zee with a snarl. “What did you do that for?”
Zee gestured at Gwyn with a hint of his own anger, his eyes defensive. “Look at him. She would have drained him dry, and I’m still not sure that would be enough to fully heal her. He might be a less valuable ally than Selina and her witchcraft, but he is still an ally.”
“Don’t worry about me or anything, I’ll just keep on bleeding out,” Gwyn interjected, collapsing to the floor where he fought to remain conscious. The open wound on his wrist continued to spew crimson, showing no signs of any supernatural healing.
I ignored him and addressed Zee again. “Well we can’t just leave Lady Sarah in that state and I’m not convinced he really is our ally. What else are we gonna do, go back to the original plan and risk using Selina’s blood as well?”
“You might find that a tad difficult,” Gwyn said weakly.
“What do you mean?” I growled, rounding on him.
“Let’s just say she’s in no shape to be a blood donor at present.”
“What did you do to her?” Rage was taking over again, and it came out as a roar.
“Not me. She’s busy trying to save your sister.”
