Abomination (44 page)

Each man felt his stomach drop as the beast’s groping claw found the key, still in the gate’s lock, and turned it. The mechanism clicked, and the gate swung slowly open, the beast’s low growl echoing along the walls. Whether real or just a trick of the shadows, the beast appeared to grow larger as it stepped out from inside the cell, its monstrous size taking up all of the narrow hallway. It lumbered toward them, carapace scraping against the low stone ceiling, its mouth yawning open and drooling saliva that landed in hissing droplets on the floor.

One of the two men had the presence of mind to draw his sword.

The beast stopped.

Its great black cluster of eyes blinked as it cocked its head, regarding the blade with apparent curiosity. And then it spat out a great gob of venom that struck the blade with force enough to knock it from the soldier’s hand. Before it even clattered to the floor, half of its steel had been dissolved. As the acid ate away at what remained, down to the hilt, the two men turned and ran. The beast made no attempt to pursue, just watched as they fought each other to be the first up the stairs.

There was a dazed groan and the beast looked to the ground. The guard who had been thrown clear of the bars was lying at its
feet, slowly coming around. As the man’s eyes fluttered open, he saw the monster standing over him. Panic took him and he tried to scramble away, then he cried out at the sharp pain lancing along his leg. Broken. He could not move, or do anything but gaze up in terror at the hideous thing that was looking down on him as a cat might a wounded and cornered rat.

The monster considered the injured guard a moment longer, then stepped over him and left him behind as it made its way down the hall. The downed man watched, amazed to still be alive, as the great thing squeezed its body into the spiral staircase and lurched its way upward.

She paced back and forth in her room. Would the magick work? How much longer would she have to wait to know? She so desperately wanted to go and find answers, but Edgard had placed a second guard outside her room last night after learning of her brief escape earlier that day—though thankfully not the purpose of it—and now she couldn’t get out without causing a commotion that might upset everything.

Be patient. Stick to the plan
. But what if the plan hadn’t worked? What then? Her father would be doomed, and all because she herself had delivered him into Edgard’s hands.
Because you didn’t think. Stupid girl. Stupid, stupid—

She heard the peal of bells outside. An alarm. As she ran to the door, she heard more bells being rung, all over the cathedral. It could only mean one thing.

Now
.

She hammered on the door. “What’s going on out there?”

A gruff voice from outside: “Nothing. Be quiet!” The man sounded nervous. She kept on hammering, harder than before.

“I want to know what’s happening! Open this door!”

She heard the turning of a key in the lock and gently took the door by the handle. It opened just enough for her guard to push his head inside, but she could see armed men rushing past him along the hallway.

“I won’t tell you again, shut up and stay—”

She yanked on the door as hard as she could, dragging it open wide and pulling the guard, still gripping the handle, inside with it. As he stumbled toward her she thrust her knee up and caught him where it mattered most. He released a soundless breath as he collapsed to the floor.

The second guard rushed into the room and went for his sword. To his credit, his hand had almost made it to the hilt when her fist landed in his gut. He bent forward with a gasp. He was still fumbling for his sword though, still a threat, so she grabbed him by the collar and yanked his nose down to meet her forehead hard. He flew backward and landed on the stone floor of the hallway outside, limbs splayed. She stepped across the threshold, drew the sword from his belt—then stopped and turned back to her room. The man curled up on the ground there was conscious but could do nothing with his hands but cup them between his legs as he groaned quietly. He offered no resistance as she disarmed him, and she strode back out into the hallway with a sword in each hand. One was good, but two was better.

Edgard bellowed orders as his men flowed into the armory to equip themselves with every heavy weapon they could carry. Pikes, axes, swords, crossbows. They strapped armor plate onto their bodies, pieces that had been specially forged and treated to resist the corrosive spittle that many abominations were known to possess. Though Edgard knew the armor had been proven to have little effect, many of the men did not, and if it emboldened them in battle, then that was enough.

“I want it taken alive!” he barked as men fumbled nervously to buckle leather straps and fasten scabbards. “Any man who kills it will answer to me. We corral it back underground and seal it there.”

The clamor of bells was near deafening, but above them all, Edgard could hear men shouting and screaming somewhere not far from here. The sounds of fear and panic—from hardened soldiers, trained to deal with just such a threat as this. It did not bode well. He looked at the faces of his men as they armed themselves, and wondered if they would be enough. Then he looked around for some sign of Cuthbert, who was nowhere to be found.

Thinking on it now, Edgard realized that he had not seen the man since late yesterday.

“Somebody find me the priest! Now!”

The beast made its way along the broad central aisle of the nave. Armed men rushed to meet it, and were flung left and right by sweeping blows from its great clawed limbs, their bodies thrown against the walls. When there were too many to cast aside one at a time, the beast lowered its head and went at them headlong like a bull. Those that did not scatter were knocked to the ground and sent crashing into pews. The beast was almost to the open doorway to the outer courtyard when still more men flooded inside and closed the heavy doors, barring them and forming a defensive screen, pikes and swords held outward.

The beast paused and let out a hot snort of breath. Each man bravely held his ground, knowing full well that the abomination would charge in a senseless frenzy—for that was all abominations knew—and that some of them would die.

But it did not charge. Instead it turned and moved away from them, smashing pews and supply crates into matchwood as it cleared a path toward an archway that led to a side passage. As
it disappeared through the arch, the men at the door first slackened their posture in a mixture of relief and confusion, then ran in pursuit.

The beast lumbered along the stone-walled passage until it found its way into a small rotunda where several similar hallways met. Each looked much the same. The beast stood at the center of the room and circled slowly in place, turning its head this way and that. Lost. When it heard sounds behind it, it turned back, too slow. Six men appeared in the archway there, grouped in a tight phalanx, shields locked together before them, and charged.

They crashed into the beast as a single wall of steel, their combined weight knocking it off its feet and into the wall on the far side. It now rested sidelong against the wall, its soft, beating underbelly exposed as it struggled desperately to right itself.

The phalanx broke apart and the six men spread out around the beast, swords and pikes held ready. One of the men, zealous, lunged forward and drove the point of his pike into the beast’s belly. It gave a hideous shriek. Black blood seeped from the wound and trickled onto the floor.

“Edgard wants it alive!” said one of the other pikemen.

“Bollocks to him,” said the one who had stuck the beast. He stepped back and watched its blood run down his pike. “There’s only a few of them left, and this one’s mine.” He drew back his arm, as if to hurl the pike like a javelin—then sank to his knees and toppled forward, the pike slipping from his hand and skittering away as he hit the tiled floor facedown, a sword buried deep in his back.

His comrades looked through the archway behind the fallen man and saw the girl barreling toward them, her other sword in both hands. As they came into contact, her blade flashed, opening the throat of one man from ear to ear and taking the arm of another at the elbow. Two bodies fell aside, and the others quickly withdrew into the rotunda, fanning out into a better defensive position.

She saw the beast against the wall behind them, whimpering as its blood pooled on the floor, and she flushed red. She reached down and pulled the sword from the first man she had killed, then looked at the three men standing before her.

“You all know me. Any of you who doubt that I can and will kill every one of you here and now, remain where you are. All others, go.”

The men hesitated, exchanging uncertain glances. Then they scattered, each of them down a different hallway.

She rushed to the beast’s side. “Can you move?”

The beast made a sound, but what it meant, or if there was meaning behind it at all, she could not know.

“Hold on.” She put down her swords and pressed herself between the beast and the wall it leaned against. Putting her back against the beast’s and her boot to the wall, she strained with all her might to get it back onto its feet. It was like trying to right an overturned wagon. At first it seemed hopeless; the thing was simply too heavy. But she would not quit, and as she continued to push, she at last felt the beast begin to move. With one final effort she heaved, and then the beast’s own weight did the rest and it keeled over onto its belly. It tried to regain its footing there, but the wound had weakened it and there was little purchase to be found on the floor, slick with the beast’s own blood.

“Come on,” she said, hearing the echoes of footsteps fast approaching, though from which direction she could not tell. “We have to go, now!” She looked around. Any one of the archways could lead to freedom, or to their capture. What were they to—

“Is this your father or your pet? It must be very confusing.”

Her heart sank even as she turned to see Edgard, a dozen knights behind him. Then each of the other exits was depositing more men into the rotunda, and she realized that the reason the footsteps had sounded like they could be coming from anywhere was because they had been coming from everywhere.

Thirty, thirty-five men, by her rough count. So many that some of them were backed up in the hallways leading into the rotunda. On instinct she picked up her swords, though she knew that against these odds they were useless.

Edgard shook his head. “Indra, please. Enough blood has been spilled already today, and it’s still morning. Step away from that thing and come to me. I promise, you will be in no trouble if you end this foolishness now.”

She weighed the swords in her hands, gauging the distance, wondering if she could get a blade to his throat before his men stopped her. She doubted it, but thought it worth a try nonetheless. She had surprise on her side, after all. Edgard would not expect it, because even after all these years, he had never truly understood just how much she had come to hate him.

In a few seconds he would know, and it would be the last thing that he would ever know.

She coiled her muscles, preparing to throw herself at him. Then she sensed movement behind her and saw Edgard’s men edge backward, tense. She glanced over her shoulder to see the beast rising slowly to its feet. It could move, but even at its best it had little chance against this many armed men. What could it hope to do?