Bloodborn (39 page)

‘Run!’ cried Gabriella.

They turned and fled down the hall. There were two doors on the left, and one on the right. Ulrika tried the left-hand ones, but they were both locked. Gabriella turned the latch of the right-hand one and it opened.

‘In! In!’ she cried, then dashed through it.

Mathilda and Rodrik dived after her. Ulrika looked back, then ducked as the Strigoi hurled the length of rail at her like a bolt from a ballista. It glanced off her shoulder and clattered down the hall. She threw herself through the door, wincing in pain. Gabriella slammed and locked it behind her.

Almost instantly they heard the Strigoi beating and clawing at it.

‘That won’t hold him for long,’ said Gabriella.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Mathilda. ‘We’ll get the ungainly bastard as he squeezes through.’

Ulrika got to her feet and looked around. They were in a small, powder-blue boudoir, filled with curved-back chairs, lace pillows and delicate little tables set with porcelain vases from Cathay. There were doors on the side walls and a painted sun on the ceiling. She grimaced. Hermione really did have the most execrable taste.

Gabriella drew a dagger from her bodice and handed it to Ulrika. It was the one with the silvered blade. ‘Use this,’ she said. ‘My hands will be busy with spells.’

Ulrika took the thing warily in her off hand. ‘Y-yes, mistress.’

‘Give it to me!’ said Rodrik, raising his voice to be heard over the Strigoi’s thumping. ‘I don’t fear it.’

‘No,’ sniffed Gabriella. ‘I don’t give silver to those I don’t trust.’

Rodrik’s face fell, but he said nothing, only turned to the door and readied himself as Gabriella started murmuring incantations behind him.

Ulrika went on guard as well, then looked over at Mathilda, a sudden thought coming to her. ‘Where is your gang? Surely you didn’t come here unescorted.’

Mathilda curled her lip. ‘They’re locked in the cellar, and a fat lot of good they’re doing down there.’ She shot a look at Rodrik. ‘Sir knight and the other “gentlemen” ambushed us as they waved us through the gate. Pistols and bolts of silver.’

Ulrika nodded. ‘They had me the same way.’

A crack appeared in the door, and it bent inwards in the centre. Mathilda growled and tore off the remains of her clothes, then dropped to all fours, a wolf again before her front paws touched the ground.

Another shattering impact and the Strigoi’s malformed head, shoulders and arms burst through into the room in an explosion of splinters and flying timber. Ulrika, Rodrik and Mathilda leapt at it as one, swords and claws and teeth flashing, while from behind them, a column of black flames hit it in the chest and enveloped it.

The Strigoi roared in pain and frustration, flailing blindly. It blocked Ulrika’s rapier with a hardened forearm, but she jabbed it in the shoulder with the silvered dagger. Its roar turned into a shriek, and it jerked back violently, trying to retreat out of the door.

‘Good!’ called Gabriella. ‘Press him! Kill him!’

Ulrika pushed forwards, looking for another opening for the dagger. Mathilda hung from its left arm by her teeth, trying to hold it in the door, while Rodrik stabbed over her head, aiming for the Strigoi’s eyes.

Then a sharp voice in the hallway cried out strange, barbaric words and, like black waves surging around a rock, a flood of writhing shadows poured over the retreating Strigoi’s shoulders and around its sides. The shadows splashed over Ulrika and the others, and where they touched they burned, a stinging, biting pain, like bathing in lye. Ulrika staggered back, covering her face as her eyes burned and dried. She crashed against a chair and fell across it. Mathilda yelped and rolled on the floor, while Rodrik slashed dangerously around with his sword, shouting, ‘Get them off! Get them off!’

Gabriella rasped out a new incantation and the shadows lessened, as did the burning, but they had done their job. The Strigoi was through the door, and a round little man in black robes followed it, more weird words spilling from his lips. Ulrika snarled at the sight of him. Her nemesis! The warlock!

Gabriella hauled her up and pulled her towards the door on the left-hand wall. ‘Back!’ she cried. ‘Hurry!’

She threw open the door and pushed Ulrika through it as the Strigoi advanced and an unnatural blackness began to spread from the warlock’s pudgy hands and filled the boudoir. Rodrik rushed through with them, cursing, and the she-wolf bounded after him, inches ahead of the monster’s claws.

Gabriella slammed the door in the Strigoi’s face and threw the lock. The door shook and splintered as it slammed into it, but stayed closed.

‘I wondered where his keeper was,’ said the countess, backing away. ‘Well, I am prepared this time.’

There came another smash on the door, and black tendrils began to snake around the edges of it. Ulrika looked behind her, seeking escape or advantage. They were in a huge and lavish bedroom – Hermione’s, without a doubt – with curtained windows on two walls, and a pair of tall, glass-panelled doors that led out to a balcony to her right. A swagged and canopied four-poster bed sat against the left wall like some elephantine duchess, while a scattering of frilly chairs and tables and chests of drawers served it for courtiers. Above them, the curving arms of an enormous chandelier spread like a gold and crystal jellyfish, and there was a circular tower room in the far corner in which hung a delicately made golden birdcage, big enough to hold a man. Ulrika sighed sadly when she saw it. If only it had been silver, and big enough to hold a monster.

Another smash and the door buckled. The black tendrils poured through the cracks.

‘I will hold back that infernal darkness,’ said Gabriella as she began to move her hands in arcane patterns, ‘and keep the sorcerer in check. But it will take all my concentration. You will have to deal with the Strigoi.’

‘Aye, mistress,’ said Ulrika, not taking her eyes from the door.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Rodrik. ‘I have his measure now.’

The she-wolf only growled and lowered her shaggy black head.

Then from behind them came the bright tinkle of breaking glass. Ulrika shot a glance over her shoulder. A clawed white hand was tearing the pane out of a broken window. Another hand punched through another window, a foot kicked through a third.

Rodrik turned. ‘What is that?’

The glass in the balcony doors smashed in and three hunched, half-naked forms crawled through the gaps. Ghouls! More were climbing through every window in the room.

‘Ursun’s teeth and claws,’ cursed Ulrika.

Rodrik and the she-wolf edged back towards the left-hand wall, trying to keep all threats in front of them. Ulrika took Gabriella’s arm and drew her back with them.

‘Mistress,’ she said. ‘Come away from the–’

With a final shattering crash, the door from the boudoir exploded inwards and the huge Strigoi bulled through it, surrounded by a spreading fog of impenetrable black. It came forwards, splinters raining from its sloping shoulders, as its deformed followers pulled themselves through the broken windows and closed in from every corner of the room.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CRIMSON AND SILVER

With a final tearing syllable, Gabriella completed her incantation and shot out her hands. The black billows of sorcerous darkness retreated like smoke before a strong wind, but the ghouls and the Strigoi came on, and in the broken door appeared the sorcerer, his bland round face a mask of concentration as he struggled against the countess’s wards.

‘Murnau! Kill the sorceress!’ he rasped. ‘The others will be blind without her spells.’

‘Kill the Strigoi!’ hissed Gabriella through clenched teeth. ‘The ghouls will flee with its death.’

‘I’ll kill it!’ barked Ulrika, waving Rodrik and the she-wolf back. ‘You two keep the ghouls at bay!’

‘But–’ began Rodrik, but Gabriella cut him off.

‘Do as she says!’ she snapped. ‘She has the silver!’

There was no more time for argument. The ghouls surged in from all sides, and the Strigoi launched itself at Gabriella, claws raised. As the she-wolf and Rodrik met the scabrous horde head on, Ulrika leapt into the monster’s path, slashing wildly with her rapier while cupping the silvered dagger for a hidden strike. But the thing the sorcerer had called Murnau had learned its lesson. It ignored her sword, letting it chop into its hip to the bone though its knees buckled in agony, and struck instead only at her off hand.

Its blow hurt like a hammer fall, knocking the dagger from Ulrika’s grasp and tearing red trenches in her wrist. She tried to snatch the little blade as it skittered across the wooden floor, but Murnau’s other hand smashed her between the shoulders, sending her flying across the room to slam headfirst into the wall.

Her skull dented the plaster as she hit, and she crumpled to the floor, her vision dimming and the room spinning in dizzy circles. The Strigoi was down too, struggling to rise as it clutched its bloody, butchered hip. If she could find the dagger again she could finish it. She searched the floor. There. It had come to rest at the sorcerer’s feet. But as she started to crawl for it, the little man snatched it up, laughing in triumph.

His laugh became a shriek of pain as Gabriella made him pay for his break in concentration and blasted him with a column of black fire. He staggered back into the doorway, his clothes smoking, but then recovered and thrust out his hands in a shielding gesture. Gabriella’s flames stopped as if they had struck a wall, then turned back towards her, reaching for her with licking fingers. She held them off with difficulty, murmuring furiously under her breath.

The Strigoi rose and limped towards her again but, frozen in her duel with the warlock, she could do nothing except inch back towards the wall.

‘Mistress!’

Ulrika flailed to her feet, and almost fell over again as her head spun. She wasn’t going to reach the Strigoi in time, and Rodrik and the she-wolf were surrounded by ghouls. They could not break away. Murnau limped under the chandelier, slashing at Gabriella as she stumbled back, still trying to hold the warlock’s spells at bay.

The death of her blood father, Adolphus Krieger, suddenly flashed through Ulrika’s mind. The trollslayer Snorri Nosebiter had killed the vampire by dropping a massive iron chandelier on him! Ulrika’s eyes followed the chain that raised and lowered the chandelier, and saw that its winch was bolted to the wall only two steps from her. She threw herself towards it, raising her rapier and swung a clumsy blow at the chain.

It was enough. With a ringing clash, the chain parted and whirred through its pulleys. The heavy gold chandelier dropped like a stone, smashing down on the Strigoi in an explosion of crystal and flying candles, and crushing it to the floor. Unfortunately, it also knocked the she-wolf flat, and sent Rodrik and Countess Gabriella staggering.

The ghouls pounced on them.

Ulrika shouted in dismay and staggered forwards, weaving like a drunk, and hacked around at the hunched fiends, stabbing their sunken eyes and chopping through their albino fingers and wrists to drive them away. The horde shrank back at the fury of her onslaught, but before she could reach Gabriella, Murnau surged up, lifting the heavy golden wheel of the chandelier over its bloody head and roaring with rage. Ulrika cursed. So much for killing the Strigoi the way Krieger had died. It wasn’t even stunned.

The ghouls scattered for the corners of the room as Murnau turned blazing red eyes on Ulrika and made to hurl the chandelier at her. She turned and ran, then dived through the curtains of Hermione’s four-poster bed and bounced down on the far side as the massive metal fixture sailed over her head, crashing through the canopy and smashing into the fireplace behind her, dragging bunting and curtains and broken bedposts with it.

‘Pesky fly!’ bellowed the Strigoi. ‘Stand and face me!’

Ulrika looked over the edge of the bed and saw it limping towards her. Could nothing stop the monster? Its scalp was split to the bone, it had deep gashes in its arms and neck, jagged crystal shards buried in its shoulders, and still it came. At least she had distracted it from Gabriella, who was recovering and resuming her duel with the warlock, while Rodrik and the she-wolf were up and cutting down ghouls again, but how could she kill it without the silvered dagger?

The smell of smoke made her look behind her. The curtains and canopy that had snagged on the chandelier were starting to burn in the fireplace. Fire! That was the way! Fire could stop it!