Bloodborn (11 page)

Thirty paces ahead of her was a further intersection of alleys, but the man was already out of sight. She sprinted for the junction, not slowing to wonder which way he had turned. She knew. He had left footprints in the slush, and a trail of stench like the tail of a comet – not the rotten, earthy odour, though that was present too – but an ordinary human stink; a mix of sweat, food and fear – and also cloves!

She banked round the corner, jumping a slumbering beggar, and saw him, a scrambling, puffing little man, with too much belly to be running so hard. She loped after him easily, her long legs and inhuman strength easily closing the gap between them.

He took another corner, this time onto a street. She laughed as she bounded on. Poor little mouse. His attempts at escape were pathetic.

She rounded onto the street and skidded to a stop. The mouse was gone – vanished as if he had never been. Then she saw a sewer grating that had been pulled aside, revealing a square black opening in the gutter. The mouse had found a hole.

She ran towards it, then paused at the lip. Was it a trap? Surely the little man could not have lifted the grate himself. He must have had accomplices. She inhaled. The death reek was strong here, overpowering the little man’s stink of sweat and cloves. Had some undead monster moved the grate? Was it still down there?

She looked down into the hole. She could see nothing but brickwork and an iron ladder and the greasy glint of sewage moving through the sewer channel below. Furtive assailants could be hiding just out of sight. She might be dropping into an ambush.

She sneered. Good. Her blood was up. After so much sitting and talking, she wanted a fight. And when she was done she would drag the mouse back to Gabriella and let her play with him.

With a snarl she leapt into the hole, her hands and feet barely touching the rungs of the ladder as she flashed down it, then landed on guard on the slick narrow ledge that flanked the sewage channel. There was no ambush. She was alone, and the overpowering stench of sewage hid the man’s subtler scent. She looked left and right. The curve of the arched brick tunnel hid the distance, but to her left she heard the slapping of flat feet echoing away. She turned and sped silently after them.

As she rounded the curve, her night vision picked out the little man’s paunchy form fleeing into the underground murk. He was limping now, as if he had a stitch in his side, and she could hear him wheezing like a bellows. She grinned, baring her fangs. Little mouse, she thought, you have only trapped yourself in a smaller maze.

He crossed a narrow bridge over the muck and staggered on towards an intersection of six tunnels, a great arched hexagon surrounding a wide basin of sludge more than twenty paces across. She raced after him. The little man looked back, then started waving his hands and arms as he stumbled on. Ulrika wondered if he was having some sort of seizure, and ran faster, hoping he wouldn’t die, or worse, collapse into the lake of sewage. She wanted to question him, and didn’t want to have to pull him out of the stew to do it.

He stumbled into the junction only ten paces ahead of her, but then, rather than take another corner in a vain attempt to elude her, he stopped, drew a great ragged breath and shouted a strange phrase.

Ulrika shielded her eyes as an explosion of blinding red light erupted into being around him. She skidded to a stop at the very edge of a ledge and went on guard, afraid it was some sort of attack, but nothing happened. She felt no magical sting, no tearing at her mind or soul.

She blinked and squinted as the light faded, looking around, then cursed. The mouse had gone. But where? She rose from her crouch and peered at the lake of muck, wondering if he had dived in, but she could see no bubbles or ripples. She crept to the intersection, sniffing and listening.

Again, the sewer stink hid his smell, but she thought she heard the tread of stealthy feet down the next tunnel to the left. She stepped to the mouth of it to look and listen. She had been right, there were definitely limping footsteps receding down it, but she could not see the man. She paused. It wasn’t the darkness. She could see a hundred yards down the tunnel, and it appeared empty, but the footsteps were closer than that. Had he turned himself invisible? There seemed no other explanation. She growled in her throat. So he was going to make it difficult. No matter. She still had her ears. And they heard better than any human’s.

A noise from behind her brought her head around – the scuff of shoe leather on brick. There was lantern light coming from another tunnel on the far side of the intersection. A silhouetted figure in a long coat and broad-brimmed hat appeared at its mouth, as tall and straight as the little man had been hunched and squat. It held a torch and a pistol in its gauntleted hands.

‘Halt, bloodsucker!’ it cried in stentorian tones. ‘My bullets are silvered!’

CHAPTER SEVEN

HUNTERS IN THE DARK

Ulrika edged back against the wall. The man was peering across the lake of muck, holding his lantern high and aiming his pistol at her. A shiver of fear shot up her spine. A witch hunter! And he knew what she was!

‘Stay where you are, monster!’

Her first instinct was to flee, for she didn’t want to lose her invisible quarry, but she also didn’t want to get a silvered pistol ball in the back. Her second instinct was to kill him and kick him into the sludge, or better yet, drain him, then kill him and kick him into the sludge – for the thrill of the hunt had stirred her hunger, and she was aching to feed.

Then she remembered Countess Gabriella’s admonition not to kill unless she was in mortal danger, and not to feed until she returned home. It would also not be very wise to drain and kill a witch hunter when the city was in the middle of a vampire panic. Even if he weren’t found, he would be missed, and suspicions raised. No. She could not kill him, and she could not flee. But what else was there? If he already knew she was a vampire, he could not be allowed to live.

But did he?

The man was making his way slowly across the narrow bridges that arched over the channels at the mouth of each tunnel, holding out the lantern to guide his steps. If he could barely see to walk, could he truly have identified her for what she was? Perhaps he was only making a guess.

With an effort, Ulrika forced her animal instincts down and retracted her claws and fangs. Perhaps this was an occasion where Countess Gabriella’s beguiling tactics would work better, where she could attempt to do things the Lahmian way. She winced, imagining herself cooing and showing her cleavage like some harlot. She had never won a lover like that. It was not in her nature. Why, hadn’t she wooed Felix with swordplay and forthright words?

The witch hunter crossed the last bridge and held up his lantern to look at her, all the while keeping his pistol trained on her heart. ‘A woman!’ he cried, then glared suspiciously. ‘Or a female fiend. Show me your teeth, wretch!’

‘Sir, I assure you–’ Ulrika began, but he aimed his pistol at her head.

‘Your teeth!’

With a sigh, Ulrika smiled as wide as she was able, showing her retracted canines. ‘Are… are you a vampire hunter, sir?’ she asked through her teeth.

‘I will ask the questions!’ he snapped, leaning in to squint into her mouth.

Close up, Ulrika could see that he was young – only a year or two past twenty at the most – and handsome in a hard, stern way, with fierce grey eyes and a strong, square jaw. Six rowan-wood stakes and a hammer were slung through his broad, brass-buckled belt, as well as another pistol and a heavy, basket-hilted sword, while bandoliers hung with glass vials of she-knew-not-what criss-crossed his broad chest and a silver hammer of Sigmar glittered on a chain at his throat.

‘What do you do here in the sewers?’ he asked. ‘And without a lamp? Do you see in the dark, then, fiend?’

Ulrika, swallowed, thinking fast. The lack of a light was indeed damning. What story could she tell? She thought back to the wooing of Felix. Swordplay and forthright words. It was worth a try.

‘I think we are here for the same purpose, sir,’ she said, showing him her drawn sabre. ‘I hunt a vampire too. Indeed, I was just now grappling with him. Did you see a bright light?’

‘Aye,’ said the witch hunter cautiously.

‘My lantern. It fell into the channel as we struggled. I thought I was next to fall, but your words and the light from your torch sent the monster fleeing. I thank you for it. You likely saved my life.’ She looked down the tunnel that the little man had disappeared into. ‘We may still catch him if you help me.’ She started towards the tunnel, beckoning behind her. ‘Come. Hurry.’

‘Stand where you are!’ the witch hunter barked. ‘Face me.’

Ulrika froze, then turned slowly. The witch hunter stepped closer to her, examining her from head to foot, his lip curled.

‘A female vampire hunter?’ he said. ‘I have never heard of such a thing. Why do you wear men’s clothes? How do you come to this profession?’

‘Sir, our quarry is slipping away,’ Ulrika said. ‘Perhaps we could talk on the way–’

‘Answer the question!’

Ulrika sighed, buying time to craft a reply, then spoke. ‘I wear men’s clothing because hunting is impossible in skirts, and I did not choose this profession, it chose me. I hunt because…’ She paused, as if choked up and, truth to tell, an unexpected surge of emotion did well up in her as she imagined a tale that was almost but not quite her own. ‘Because my sister was seduced by a vampire, and given the curse of unlife against her will. The thing stole her from the man she loved, from the country she adored, from her friends and father, then made her into a monster and abandoned her in a cold, evil place.’ She raised her chin. ‘I have sworn vengeance upon all his kind ever since.’

The witch hunter’s face lost some of its anger as he listened to her story, becoming sad and cold. ‘And did you kill your sister?’ he asked.

Ulrika swallowed, remembering Countess Gabriella pointing through the open window of her tower room to the bright dawn beyond and telling her that she might walk in the sun at any time. She hung her head. ‘I had a chance once. I failed to take it.’ Then she bared her teeth. ‘But the vampire who turned her is dead.’

The witch hunter hesitated, then lowered his pistol. ‘You should not have flinched,’ he said. ‘Sparing your sister was a false mercy. She was already dead and her soul long lost. You would only have put her out of her misery.’

‘Aye,’ she said, hiding a wince. ‘I know.’ She wished now she had told a different story, one that had not reminded her of her cowardice. At least it seemed to have convinced him. She had achieved a Lahmian victory. It hadn’t been nearly as enjoyable as a fight.

She looked up, trying to think of some way to bid him adieu and hurry after the little man, but she couldn’t think of a way to explain how she could continue hunting without a lamp in the dark. ‘Will you help me now? I have no light, and the fiend is escaping while we talk.’

The witch hunter frowned at her, considering. ‘I dislike leading a woman into such a business.’

‘But if you take me back to the surface you will never find him again.’

‘Aye,’ he said, then grunted unhappily. ‘Very well, but stay back.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Ulrika, grinding her teeth. She pointed down the correct tunnel. ‘He went that way.’

The witch hunter nodded and started into the tunnel, his spurs ringing as he stomped ahead in heavy riding boots. Ulrika followed, cursing his plodding speed. They would never catch the little man at this rate, but perhaps they could at least follow his trail to his lair. His footprints showed clear enough in the slime that filmed the ledge.

‘What is your name, fraulein?’ the witch hunter asked as they trotted along.

‘Ulrika Straghov of Kislev,’ she said without thinking, and then immediately wondered if she should have given a false name. It was too late now. ‘And yours, mein herr?’

‘Templar Friedrich Holmann,’ he said, bowing curtly. ‘A witch hunter of the Holy Order of Sigmar.’

‘I am honoured,’ said Ulrika, though terrified was closer to the truth. She seemed to have won his trust for the moment, but she knew that the slightest slip of the tongue or lapse in her masquerade would bring his suspicious witch hunter nature to the fore again. She felt she was treading on eggshells every moment she was at his side.

They jogged on in silence for a moment, then Holmann coughed. ‘I know how difficult it is to be strong in the face of corruption, fraulein,’ he said. ‘Particularly when you discover it within your own family, but it must be done. I killed my own parents when I discovered they were mutants.’