Bloodborn (29 page)

‘Vampires! The coach! Stop them! Kill them!’

‘Lock the windows and fix the louvres closed,’ said Gabriella.

Ulrika took one last look out before she complied. There were nearly two score people running after the coach now, and more joining from every workshop they passed. She hooked the window latch, then had to catch herself as the coach hurtled around a corner and she was thrown against the wall. Lotte crashed into her, then clung to her, whimpering.

There was a splintering bang outside as they struck something, and angry cries, then another smash from the other side of the coach. Above them, Uwe cursed.

‘I’m sorry, mistress,’ he called. ‘I’ve gone wrong. It’s too tight here.’

The coach slowed drastically, grinding on both sides, and the sounds of the mob grew loud behind them.

‘It widens out just ahead,’ Uwe said. ‘Hang on!’

The coach ploughed forwards, but too slowly. The shouts and boot thuds of the crowd flowed around them, and cries of ‘Catch the horses!’ and ‘Bring him down!’ were loud outside of the windows.

‘Lotte,’ said Gabriella quietly. ‘Come here. Bare your neck.’

The maid looked at Gabriella fearfully, then reluctantly let go of Ulrika and crossed to Gabriella’s bench, pulling aside the fancy lace that only recently the countess had worn.

The coach shuddered to a stop as Gabriella took the girl in her arms and bit her neck. Lotte moaned and closed her eyes, her arms circling the countess’s waist. Outside, Ulrika could hear Uwe shouting at the mob and lashing with his whip.

‘Stay back, y’jackals!’ he cried. ‘Get away or I’ll shoot!’

Heavy thumps battered the sides of the coach, and harsh voices screamed for the doors to be opened. The door handles rattled, then broke. Uwe’s pistol cracked and a man screamed. Cries of ‘Kill him!’ welled up all around.

Gabriella stood and eased Lotte back onto Ulrika’s bench. The girl was still swooning.

‘Feed,’ the countess said. ‘We may need all our strength.’

Ulrika hesitated unhappily, then extended her fangs and bit where Gabriella had bitten, drinking from Lotte as the girl slumped limp against her, sighing in ecstasy. Gabriella sat down again and began murmuring and weaving her fingers in arcane patterns.

Outside Uwe was shouting. ‘Put me down, you bastards! Put me–’ His words broke off in a gasp, and then a cry of pain, and the sick thuds of wood and iron on soft flesh battered Ulrika’s ears, curdling the warm comfort of Lotte’s blood.

‘Now the coach!’ shouted someone, and the battering on the walls grew even fiercer. A club splintered the louvres. Spearheads of sunlight lanced through the cracks.

‘That’s enough,’ said Gabriella. ‘Now give her to me.’

Ulrika looked up and blinked in surprise. Gabriella was almost invisible, little more than a shadow against the leather bench as she stood. She looked down at herself. She too was translucent.

‘Give her to me,’ Gabriella said. ‘And when I say, open the door, then draw your feet up onto the bench and sit very still. Do you understand me?’

Ulrika swallowed, then nodded and lifted the woozy Lotte to her feet. Gabriella took the maid’s arm and stood her in front of the left-side door. Another club smashed at the louvres. The splinters sprayed all of them. The coach rocked under them. It felt as if it might tip at any moment.

‘Open it,’ said Gabriella.

Ulrika reached for the lock, then paused, frightened of what was to come. It was like opening the door to a wolf pack. She steeled herself and gripped the lock.

Gabriella kissed Lotte on the cheek as Ulrika turned the latch. ‘Thank you for your service, beloved,’ she whispered, then kicked the door open and shoved the girl out into the seething mob. They roared as she landed among them.

Ulrika choked at the suddenness of it, and stared as the crowd pounced upon Lotte and bore her up, tearing at her fancy clothes and beating her with their cudgels and tools.

‘Burn her!’ shouted the boy called Dortman. ‘Burn the vampire!’

The blond boy struck Lotte with his stolen poker, breaking her arm with a snap. The maid shrieked with pain.

‘Lotte!’ Ulrika cried.

‘Sit back, curse you!’ hissed Gabriella. ‘Feet up, and be still!’

Ulrika clenched her fists but did as she was told, pressing back against the bench and drawing her feet up, then tucking her skirts out of the way. Gabriella mirrored her position on the other bench, and they sat there silent as outside the mob raged around Lotte, kicking and beating her and throwing her around like a rag doll on a storm-tossed sea. Frustrated fury boiled in Ulrika’s chest. She wanted to leap out and tear the mob apart as they were tearing apart Lotte. She wanted to push Gabriella out and see her suffer the same fate. It wasn’t fair! It wasn’t right! No one should have to suffer so before death, and particularly not a girl who had been so loyal and sweet in life.

Those on the edges of the crowd, too far from Lotte to join in the savage sport, quickly looked for other fun. A handful of men and women poked their heads into the open coach door and glanced around inside. One saw Gabriella’s fan on the floor and snatched it. Two others seemed to look directly at Ulrika, and she thought for an instant that Gabriella’s spell hadn’t worked, but then they drew back and started to climb up to the roof.

‘Lotsa swag up here!’ called one. ‘Look at all them trunks!’

‘Take the horses!’ shouted another.

Gabriella ground her teeth as the coach rocked and her valises and wardrobes were thrown down to smash on the street. ‘Thieving dogs,’ she growled.

But then came a call that made Ulrika’s blood-warmed stomach go cold again.

‘Smash the coach! Take its wood for the fire!’

She looked over at the translucent Gabriella as the crowd roared their approval at this suggestion, and saw that she too was alarmed. The countess turned to the right-hand door, which remained locked, and cracked open the louvres to peek through as the mob began to rock the coach back and forth.

‘We are against the wall of some sort of workshop,’ Gabriella whispered, clutching her seat. ‘We will go out and into that. Be sure not to bump anyone.’

‘Yes, mistress,’ said Ulrika.

‘And keep your head covered. The illusion is no protection from sunlight.’

Gabriella turned the lock with diaphanous fingers and opened the door slowly, waiting for a reaction. None came, except for the continued cheering and rocking of the coach. She hopped out. Ulrika threw her cloak over her head and followed right behind her, but the coach lurched under her feet just as she jumped, and she fell heavily against a half-timbered wall. Gabriella pulled her up and they froze, pressed against the plaster. There were rioters to the left and right of them, shoving at the sides of the coach and putting their shoulders to the wheels. Ulrika could have reached out and touched them.

Gabriella whispered in her ear. ‘The door is to the right. We will go when it is clear.’

Ulrika nodded. She hoped it would be soon. The sun was gnawing at her through her clothes like she was covered in ants. She looked right. Two wooden steps led up to an open door with a sign in the shape of a stretched cow skin over it – a tannery. A few men in aprons and rolled sleeves stood in the door, staring out at the riot and holding clubs, ready to defend their business if the mob turned its attention their way.

Just then, with a deafening cheer from the crowd, the coach went up and over and smashed down on its side. The rioters ran forwards laughing wildly, and began to smash it and kick it, for all the world like primitive hunters dancing around their kill.

‘Now!’ hissed Gabriella, and led Ulrika towards the door, tiptoeing around the backs of the rioters.

There was just enough room between the three men who stood in the door for a slim person to slip through, but Gabriella and Ulrika, with the layers of crinolines under their dresses, did not have slim silhouettes. Gabriella paused and looked around for another door. There was none. She cursed under her breath then began to gather her skirts about her as tightly as she could.

Ulrika did the same, edging awkwardly away as two women surged towards her, fighting over a bodice from one of Gabriella’s trunks.

Gabriella crept up the steps and edged through the three men, ducking and bending to avoid elbows and the ends of cudgels. Ulrika took a steadying breath and followed. She passed through the first two men without any trouble, but the third stood behind them, peering over their shoulders, and she had to slip sideways almost directly in front of his face. He shifted just as she was about to pass him, and she stepped back, bumping the back of a man she had already passed.

She ducked aside and into the tannery as he turned, scowling at the man behind him.

‘Y’want to go out there, do ye?’ he snapped.

Ulrika inched to Gabriella and they watched, nervous.

‘Not I,’ said the man at the back.

‘Then quit yer shovin’.’

‘I didn’t shove ye.’

Gabriella’s hand curled around Ulrika’s and squeezed, waiting for them to look around, but the man at the front only snorted and turned back to watch the madness outside.

Ulrika and Gabriella let out silent breaths, then Gabriella tugged on Ulrika’s hand and pointed to a stair that rose along a side wall to the left.

‘We will find a place here to wait out the day,’ she said.

Ulrika looked around as they crossed the room to it. The place had a high ceiling with gantries and chains hanging from it, and rows of huge round vats on the floor. From the vats came an overpowering stench of urine and excrement that made Ulrika cringe and gag. She wondered that she hadn’t noticed it before, but she supposed her blind panic and fear of imminent death had blocked it out.

Men were stomping around in the vats, their breeches rolled up above the knee, and pushing raw cow hides down into the muck with long poles. Ulrika shuddered. She couldn’t imagine a worse job. They must have no sense of smell whatsoever.

Gabriella led her up the stairs to the first floor. This was a large loft with wide open windows. Wooden frames with cured skins stretched across them were stacked to the ceiling. Some workers were stretching more hides in one corner, but most were at the windows, looking down at the street and talking amongst themselves.

Gabriella shook her head. ‘This won’t do,’ she murmured, and turned to a second flight of stairs.

At the top was a dark corridor lined with doors covered with leather curtains. Gabriella and Ulrika crossed to one and looked through it. Inside was a dark room piled high with finished hides. Ulrika looked into another. It was the same, only the hides were dyed a different colour.

‘This is better,’ said Gabriella, and held aside a curtain. ‘Come.’

Ulrika ducked into the room. It was long and narrow, with the skins piled on either side of a narrow path. At the far end was a shuttered window, and from it came the cheers and jeers of the mob. Ulrika walked towards it. She didn’t want to look, but she couldn’t stop herself. She climbed over a pile of skins at the end of the row and put her eyes to the cracks in the shutter.

Down below her in the street the crowd was swirling like a whirlpool around a bright central vortex. A pyre, made from timber torn from the coach, had been built where the narrow street widened out into a small square, and flame was beginning to lick the edges of the wood. In the centre of it knelt Lotte, bruised and naked, with her arms tied around the circumference of an empty wooden barrel as if she was a drunk hugging a keg of beer, and though she was beaten and helpless, the crowd still pelted her with rocks and filth, and shouted curses at her.

And still through all the noise Ulrika could hear a pitiful little voice moaning over and over, ‘Mistress. Mistress, help me. Help me.’

Ulrika turned away as the flames crept closer, wishing for the first time that her inhuman hearing wasn’t so acute. Gabriella was looking at her with sad eyes. She had become solid and opaque again.

‘I’m sorry, child,’ she said.

Ulrika lowered her head. ‘Must we be so cruel?’

‘We must survive,’ said Gabriella, then stepped forwards and took Ulrika in her arms. ‘We may try our best to do so without causing unnecessary pain to our swains and servants, but when it is a choice between us and them, there is no question.’ She sighed. ‘If I could, I would go down there and give Lotte a swift end to her suffering, but I cannot.’

‘But is there no spell?’ Ulrika asked. ‘Surely you could kill her from here.’

Gabriella hesitated then shook her head. ‘I could, but I will not. Sorcery is dangerous. I use it only when I myself am in peril. To do otherwise would be to risk mishap or discovery.’

Ulrika tensed and made to speak, but Gabriella shushed her, stroking her hair. ‘We must be selfish, beloved. The world wants us dead. Nature itself abhors us. We cannot allow anything to threaten the fragile thread that holds us to this world, not even kindness.’

Ulrika butted her head against Gabriella’s shoulder, angry and wishing she could weep. ‘I wish you had killed me. This is no way to live.’

Gabriella lifted Ulrika’s chin and looked her levelly in the eye. ‘I told you once before that you had only to walk in the sun to end it. I will not stop you if you wish to go down and die to spare Lotte her pain.’ She stepped back. ‘Is that what you wish?’