Bloodborn (38 page)

Hermione winced and shook her head, then found her feet and looked around, her eyes wide, and paler than Ulrika had ever seen her. ‘My wards. The defences of the house,’ she said. ‘They are all broken. Something has shattered them.’

Rodrik and von Zechlin and the rest of the gentlemen drew their swords and turned in uneasy circles, not sure where the threat would come from.

On the floor at their feet, Otilia laughed, high and harsh. ‘He is coming!’ she cried. ‘He is bringing your doom, mistress!’

Hermione snarled and wrenched her up off the floor again. ‘Who!’ she croaked. ‘Who has done this?’

With a deafening crash, the glass doors to the garden exploded inwards and a huge form erupted through them, flaring enormous bat wings as it landed in the middle of the room. It glared at them with hooded red eyes and dropped into a hunchbacked crouch, wet, crimsoned claws extending like scythe blades from its massive hands as its wings shrank and shrivelled into the skin of its long, dead-white arms.

‘Vengeance!’ it rasped in a voice like gravel between mill stones. ‘Vengeance on my tormentors!’

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

THE BEAST

The whole room stared, frozen, as the thing stepped forwards and roared. Ulrika had thought it frightening when she had fought it blind. It was even more horrifying revealed – a twisted, towering, misshapen thing, both hulking and gaunt, powerful and crippled, terrifying and pitiful at the same time.

Its naked arms and legs were striated with muscle, but also bent and deformed, as if broken and poorly set, and its chest was sunken and scarred with a thousand old wounds. But hardest to look at was its head, which looked like a broken egg – bald and white and shattered. The left half of its hollow-cheeked face was lower than the right, and the left sphere of its skull was crushed and flat and thinly covered in a lumpy network of scar-tissue. Its jaw too had been broken at some point, and angled off to the right so that its teeth did not meet neatly with each other when it closed its mouth.

‘A Strigoi,’ murmured Gabriella from where she lay. ‘I should have guessed.’

Hermione choked and dropped Otilia to clap her hands over her mouth and nose as the monster’s rancid corpse stench enveloped them all. Famke choked awake, sputtering and retching at the smell. Von Zechlin and Rodrik and the other gentlemen coughed and cursed and staggered back, and Ulrika, Gabriella and Mathilda, who could not bring their hands to their faces because of their chains, tried to bury their noses against their shoulders.

‘What do you want with us, monster!’ cried Hermione, grimacing and edging backwards as she waved her men forwards. ‘Why do you prey upon us!’

‘You know why!’ roared the beast. ‘It was you who sent the soldiers! It was you who made them break me!’

‘What?’ Hermione said as her men spread out to encircle the thing. ‘What soldiers? What are you talking about!’

‘A hundred years!’ it bellowed, stepping forwards and gusting more stench at them. ‘A hundred years I lay in that pit, broken with the boulders the soldiers threw down on me! A hundred years without knowing who had sent them. Now I know. It was you! The bitches of Nuln! You are my tormentors!’

‘Who has been telling you these lies!’ cried Hermione. ‘I never sent soldiers against you. I don’t know you! I’ve never seen you before!’

‘The voice does not lie!’ cried the Strigoi. ‘The voice said it was you! It said I would be renewed when I killed you! Reformed!’

‘A voice?’ Mathilda barked a laugh. ‘You hear voices? You’re mad!’

‘Mad?’ the Strigoi shrieked. ‘Yes, I am mad! You broke my head!’

And with that it pounced, smashing through Hermione’s gentlemen as if they weren’t there to lunge at her, its bloody claws slashing.

Hermione shrieked and ducked away from it to flee for the heavy door which led to the stone keep – the oldest and strongest part of the house.

‘Protect me!’ she screamed over her shoulder. ‘Don’t let it get me!’

Von Zechlin and Rodrik and the others recovered themselves and charged it as it turned after her. It backhanded them, hooked claws extended, and three flew back, chests crushed and guts spilling onto the carpet, but the others hemmed it in within a circle of flashing blades.

Otilia backed away as the battle raged, clutching her bruised throat and laughing at Hermione. ‘Here is your killer, mistress!’ she cried. ‘And even if you kill him, you still die, for there is more doom to come! I go to fetch it!’ And with that, she turned and fled out the door.

‘This is doom enough, I think,’ Gabriella muttered, lying on her side and struggling to break her chains.

Ulrika did the same, knowing the Strigoi was coming for them as soon as it finished with the men, but with her arms behind her it was impossible. She dropped onto her back and started pulling them up under her legs.

‘Sister, wait! Gabriella shouted as Hermione unlocked the heavy door. ‘Don’t leave us chained! Free us!’

Hermione ignored her and threw open the door. She turned and held out a hand to Famke. ‘Famke! Come quickly!’

‘No, Famke!’ called Ulrika, wrenching her chained arms past her feet. ‘Help us! Help us break our chains!’

Famke looked from Hermione to Ulrika and back, frozen with indecision, as two more men died and the Strigoi threw a third across the room to crash through a table.

‘What you two need is thinner arms,’ laughed Mathilda, then with a howl of pain and a grinding of bone on bone, her form twisted and changed and fur sprouted from her skin. Her jaw and nose extended into a long, fanged snout, and the hair on her head shrank down to thick black fur, revealing pointed ears. The shackles dropped from her skinny forelegs as her wolfish transformation became complete, and she bounded towards the Strigoi, snarling and snapping, her human clothes bagging around her.

‘Famke!’ Hermione shrilled. ‘Come here this minute!’

But Famke had made up her mind the other way. She dodged around the swirling melee in the centre of the room just as Ulrika lurched to her knees again.

‘Thank you,’ Ulrika said.

Famke said nothing, only knelt beside her and pushed against one of her manacles while pulling the other towards her. Ulrika added her strength too, pulling her arms apart as hard as she could. The iron of the manacles cut into her flesh and bruised her bones, but she only pulled harder. She would be no one’s sitting duck.

Over Famke’s heaving shoulders, Ulrika saw the Strigoi knock Rodrik over a chair and backhand Mathilda’s wolf form into a wall, then pick up von Zechlin in one huge hand. The wounded champion struggled in its grip and stabbed into its shoulder with his sword. The Strigoi howled and tore von Zechlin’s sword arm off at the shoulder, flinging it across the room, then crushed his chest like it was a bird’s nest.

The huge she-wolf leapt on the Strigoi’s back and bit the scruff of its neck. It roared and caught her with both hands then threw her off, slamming her into a wall.

The Strigoi’s angry red eyes turned on Ulrika, Famke and Gabriella, and it stepped towards them through the bodies of the gentlemen that all lay broken and dying at his feet.

‘Hurry, children,’ said Gabriella quietly.

Ulrika looked down. The links between her manacles were stretching, but were not yet broken. She strained harder.

‘Famke!’ shrieked Hermione from the door. ‘Get away!’

‘You,’ rumbled the Strigoi, pointing at Gabriella. ‘You burned me with silver. You die first.’

It shambled forwards, lurching with each step, and reached out for her.

With a snap like a whip-crack, the chain between Ulrika’s manacles broke. She lunged forwards and pulled Gabriella away just as the Strigoi’s claws started to close around her, then snatched up a poker from the fireplace and stabbed it into the beast’s right eye.

The Strigoi fell back, screaming and clutching at its face, wrenching the poker from Ulrika’s hands. She cursed the loss of the weapon, then hauled Famke up and pushed her in the direction of the door.

‘Go!’ she shouted. ‘Go!’

But as the girl galumphed for Hermione, the Strigoi tore the poker from its broken socket and flung it blindly. By sheer accident, it cracked Famke on the back of the head and she crashed face-first to the floor.

From the door, Hermione shrieked. ‘No!’ and ran out to help her.

By the fireplace, Ulrika turned to Gabriella, sprawled beside her on the rug, and grabbed her manacles, which were still behind her back. In front of them, the Strigoi was getting to its knees and mewling as it pawed at its ruined eye.

‘Sorry, mistress,’ she said. ‘This will hurt.’

‘Just do it,’ hissed Gabriella.

Ulrika knelt on one manacle, pressing it hard against the floor, then jerked up on the other using both hands. Gabriella grunted with pain as her arms twisted in her sockets, but did not otherwise complain.

The Strigoi felt around it, then caught up one of the wounded gentlemen. With a roar, it bit into the man’s neck and shoulder, crushing his clavicle with its powerful jaws and drinking deep. The man screamed in pain. Beyond the beast, Hermione was carrying the unconscious Famke back towards the heavy door.

Ulrika jerked on the chain once more and it popped, slapping her in the face with a broken link. She staggered up, pulling Gabriella with her, then both immediately dived aside, for the Strigoi was charging them, its eye half-restored beneath a mask of blood.

‘That way!’ shouted Gabriella, pointing to where Hermione was carrying Famke through the heavy door.

Ulrika ran with the countess as the Strigoi skidded to a stop, inches from the fire, then reversed course. Rodrik and Mathilda — back to human form and mostly naked — lurched up from where the beast had thrown them and stumbled after them. But just as they reached the door, Hermione heaved Famke through it, then turned and slammed it in their faces.

Gabriella crashed into the thick oak planks, then pounded on them. ‘Hermione! Open the door!’

‘M’lady, please!’ cried Rodrik.

They heard the lock clack shut.

Mathilda kicked it. ‘Selfish bitch!’

Gabriella sneered at Rodrik as they turned to face the oncoming Strigoi. ‘Such concern your new mistress shows for you.’

She clutched Ulrika’s arm. ‘Up the stairs! Quick!’

Ulrika dodged around the newel post and started up the stairs with the countess as Mathilda and Rodrik scrambled behind. The Strigoi thundered after them, bawling slurred curses. Halfway up the first flight, Ulrika almost tripped over von Zechlin’s unsocketed arm, which still held his exquisite rapier. She grabbed for the sword as she ran. The arm came with it. She took both. There was no time to separate them.

There was another heavy door to the right of the stairs at the top, and Ulrika realised that it too must lead to the stone keep. It was ajar! She and Gabriella ran for it but, as they reached it, it slammed shut and the lock shot home, just as had happened below.

‘You commit murder, sister!’ shouted Gabriella. ‘The queen will hear of this!’

‘Unless
we’re
murdered,’ growled Mathilda.

They turned to the stairs, which shook and boomed under the Strigoi’s heavy tread. It was clambering up from the turning on its hands and feet, so huge that it couldn’t stand upright in the well.

‘Come,’ said Gabriella. ‘We can hold it here!’

Ulrika pried the dead fingers of von Zechlin’s arm from his rapier and threw the grisly thing at the monster, then joined Rodrik and Mathilda as they lined up at the top of the stairs. They rained blows down upon the Strigoi as it lashed up at them with its claws and tried to catch their legs.

‘Brother, please! Sheath your claws!’ called Gabriella. ‘We are not your enemies! We did not hurt you!’

‘Liar!’ it roared. ‘You broke my bones! Now I will mend them with your blood!’

The thing caught Mathilda’s foot and she fell, but Ulrika slashed down at its wrist and it let go before it could pull her down the stairs. Mathilda jumped back to her feet, hissing and barking.

‘Fool!’ Gabriella cried. ‘Our blood will not heal you! You have been tricked!’

‘No!’ the Strigoi bellowed. ‘It is true! The voice told me so! The voice does not lie!’

It surged up, tearing the railing from the stairs and swinging it at them like a pole arm. Ulrika and the others danced back as the length of rail swept at their knees. The monster charged up behind it, its words becoming a gibbering, incomprehensible screech.