Bloodborn (5 page)

Ulrika knew then that she would be able to last the rest of the hour, or two hours if that was what the countess wished. She had found the key that would give her the will to maintain control, a key more powerful even than Gabriella’s threat of death if she failed. All she had to do was call up the image of herself naked and quaking on all fours, heaving out her guts, and her veins filled with cold Kislev ice. She would never let that happen again.

When the last grains of sand trickled through the neck of the glass, Ulrika stood and turned to Quentin, perfectly composed.

‘It is time,’ she said.

‘Yes, mistress. Thank you, mistress.’ The knight stood and undid the points of his collar, then bared his oft-scarred neck and tipped his head as she crossed to him. He showed no fear now, only arousal – his breathing quick and sweat on his lip. It was clear he had done this many times before, and relished it. He stretched out his arms to her, hands trembling. ‘Please, mistress.’

She stepped into his embrace and pulled him close, lowering her head to his neck to inhale him. Now it was her turn to tremble. The blood was so close, and she was so hungry. She would wait no more. With a snort she shot out her fangs. Quentin flinched, frightened again. She snarled and clamped her hands tight around his arms. He shoved away from her, panic giving him strength, and stumbled back.

‘Please, mistress!’

She leapt on him with a growl and slammed him down onto the bed. He thrashed under her.

‘Please, mistress, don’t kill me!’

Ulrika twisted his head aside and opened her mouth, then froze as thought finally caught up with instinct. She cursed. After just promising herself that she would not give in to the beast, she had nearly done it again at the smallest of provocations. A single frightened flinch had roused the animal within her, and drove her to an inch of tearing Quentin’s throat out.

She sighed and relaxed her grip on him. ‘I am sorry, Quentin. Here, I will do it properly. Only, lie still. It is difficult to resist playing cat if you act like a mouse.’

The young knight nodded. ‘Yes, mistress.’ And he lay still, arms at his sides, as rigid as a corpse. She lay down beside him, draping an arm across his heaving chest, and nestled against his neck. The urge to rend and tear was still there, but she forced it back and let out her fangs slowly, then kissed his neck. It was salty with panic sweat. She bared her teeth, bit gently, not yet piercing the skin.

Quentin groaned and some of the tension went out of him. She found the vein in his neck and bit harder. Her knife-sharp fangs pierced it smoothly as Quentin gasped, and rich red blood welled up into her mouth. A shiver of pleasure went through her, and with it another surge of bestial frenzy. She had to force herself not to bite and pull, not to dig her claws into his chest. Instead she only pulled him tighter and drank deeper, letting the warmth of his heart-fire spill down her throat and spread from her stomach through her aching empty veins. The feeling was delicious, intoxicating, stronger than kvas, sweeter than brandy, more comforting than hot broth on a cold Kislev night.

Quentin moaned beneath her and she caressed him absently as she closed her eyes and lost herself in a salty sea of sensation, a soft pulsing susurrus of sound and rapturous fulfilment.

‘Mistress,’ murmured Quentin. ‘Mistress, stop.’

She didn’t understand the words – hardly heard them. They were only faint discordant notes hidden behind a soaring crimson melody.

‘Mistress…’

A loud noise behind her brought Ulrika’s head up with a snarl. She looked around. Countess Gabriella stood in the door, Rodrik at her shoulder.

‘That is enough,’ she said.

Ulrika stifled a growl and looked down at Quentin. He was deathly pale, except for a stain of red at his neck, and glazed with sweat. He barely had the strength to open his eyes.

‘You did well restraining your more savage instincts,’ said the countess as she entered the room. ‘And I applaud you for it. Now you must learn moderation.’

Rodrik crossed to the bed and swore under his breath as he looked down at the boy. ‘Blast her, he won’t recover for days!’

Gabriella ignored him and held out a hand to Ulrika, then raised her from the bed. ‘Congratulations, child. You are well on your way.’

Ulrika swayed slightly, drunk from the blood, then curtseyed. ‘Thank you, mistress. Though I fear I nearly failed again.’

‘You are learning,’ said Gabriella. ‘I am proud of you.’

Ulrika’s chest swelled. She was proud of herself too. Though it had been strong, she had conquered the beast within her. She had proven that her will was stronger than her nature. But another glance at Quentin twisted her stomach and made her feel unclean. Was it right to be proud of doing that to a man?

His eyes fluttered and he reached up to clutch at her hand with weak fingers. ‘Mistress,’ he whispered. ‘I am yours, always.’

She turned away, sickened, and withdrew her hand. It was offensive to her to see a strong man so weakened and enthralled – and
she
had done it to him. She suddenly felt nothing but contempt for him, and for herself. Or perhaps she had only drunk too much blood.

‘And if this same duke were to grab your bosom?’ asked Countess Gabriella. ‘Or pinch your behind?’

‘I would slap his face,’ said Ulrika. ‘If he did it again I would challenge him to a duel.’

The countess sighed. ‘No, my dear. You would not. You would at most slap his hand with your fan, but you would do it while smiling and looking at him from beneath lowered lashes.’

‘Ursun’s teeth, I’ll be damned if I would!’ said Ulrika. ‘I don’t even have a fan.’

She and the countess were again travelling in the shuttered coach as it raced through the snow-covered countryside. They sat together on one bench while Lotte tended to the prostrate Quentin on the opposite bench and fed him hearty soup. It was the night after their daylight stay at the inn. They were to pass out of Sylvania and into Stirland sometime after moonrise, then continue on their way to Eicheshatten to meet the riverboat that would carry them down the Aver to Nuln.

‘Then you must learn to wield one,’ said the countess, ‘and as deftly as ever you wielded a sword.’ She snapped open her own fan as if to illustrate her point, and fluttered it before her. ‘A noblewoman you may be, but the manners of a daughter of a Troll Country boyar are a far cry from those of a courtier at the court of Countess Emanuelle von Liebwitz, the ruler of Nuln. You must learn to flirt and flatter, to listen while making small talk, to kill with a compliment, and to earn trust while trusting no one. In short, you must learn to be a woman.’

Ulrika made a face. ‘I despise all that nonsense.’

Gabriella pursed her lips. ‘That is unfortunate, for such nonsense is the way of the Lahmians. Our strength lies in appearing to be weak. We get our way by appearing to acquiesce, and win with a smile what cannot be won with a sword.’

Ulrika sighed and looked away. ‘Then perhaps I’m not a Lahmian.’

The countess was silent at that for a long moment, and Ulrika was afraid she had said something to anger her, but when she looked up, Gabriella’s eyes were faraway.

‘You are not,’ she said at last. ‘Not entirely. None of us are, really, except the very first.’

Ulrika frowned at that. ‘I don’t understand. The book you gave me explained how the five branches of vampire-kind descended from the court of Neferata and–’

Gabriella waved her silent. ‘The book is useful as a history, but many of the things it says about the bloodlines, and what they mean… Well, let us just say that the vampire who wrote it had his own reasons for wanting the rest of us to believe that his blood was pure and his claim to rulership unimpeachable. The truth is… cloudier – like our blood.’

‘What do you mean, mistress?’

Gabriella leaned back against the padded bench, folding her hands across her torso. ‘It is the common conception, even among our own kind, that the founders of the five bloodlines somehow left their stamp upon their blood, and that any who receive it will share their personalities and predilections – they of the blood of Abhorash will become mighty warriors, the daughters of Neferata will be seductresses, the descendants of W’soran will wield powerful sorcery, the get of Ushoran will be mindless beasts and the sons of Vashanesh will burn with unbridled ambition – and to a certain extent, this is true. But it is not that simple.’

‘How so?’ asked Ulrika.

‘The mysteries of our forebears’ blood and the elixir that gave it its fell power cannot be charted out like some alchemist’s formula. There is no precise “if A is added to B then C will occur”. The blood affects each who receive it in different ways, and who they were in life has as much to do with who they become in undeath as whose blood they inherited.’ She raised a gloved finger. ‘Also, there are very few vampires existing today whose blood comes entirely from one line.’

Ulrika frowned. This seemed to go against everything she had read in
The Nehekharan Diaspora
. ‘But how is that possible? Vampires do not breed. Their children are not the result of two parents, but only one. How could the blood become mixed?’

Gabriella smiled. ‘We do not breed, no,’ she said. ‘But we do sometimes mate. And we do not always find love within our own families. Sometimes a son of Vashanesh will fall for a daughter of Neferata. Sometimes a daughter of Abhorash will lose herself in the wild animal embrace of a son of Ushoran. And when they do, blood is exchanged – and mixed – and any progeny that either of them birth may have the traits of one or both.’ She tapped her breast. ‘I am a blood-daughter of a woman who had the blood of both Vashanesh and Neferata within her veins. It was one of the reasons I was asked to be my queen’s eyes in Sylvania, for I could pass as a von Carstein. It is also the reason that my “son” – your blood-father, Adolphus Krieger – joined Mannfred’s cause and hoped to bring back the Golden Age. It was in his blood. He was as much a son of Vashanesh as he was of Neferata – perhaps more so in the end, for Mannfred surely blooded him at some point, if only to ensure his loyalty.’

‘So…’ said Ulrika slowly as she tried to work it all out. ‘So, I am both Lahmian and von Carstein?’

Gabriella shrugged. ‘And probably much more besides. But as I said before, who you were in life has as much to do with who you become in undeath as whose blood you happened to inherit. What aspect of yourself you choose to allow to dominate is up to you.’ She raised her head and looked Ulrika in the eye. ‘I hope you choose wisely.’

Ulrika nodded, more than a little overwhelmed. She hoped so too.

Just then there was a loud bang and a shout from outside, and Ulrika and the countess were thrown forwards as the coach slowed sharply, slewing left and right. Lotte shrieked and clutched at Quentin. The coach juddered to a stop with the neighing of horses, the cursing of drivers and the angry cries of Rodrik and his knights. Then a commanding voice rose over all.

‘Stand and deliver, gentles, and y’won’t be hurt!’

‘Back off, dogs!’ growled Rodrik’s voice. ‘Dare you attack a noble lady? You’ll lose your heads for this!’

‘Not before y’lose yers, sir knight,’ said the commanding voice. ‘I have ten guns pointed at ye and yer men. It would be a shame t’ruin all that fine filigreed plate to stop ye, but I’ll do it if I must.’

Countess Gabriella cursed in a most unladylike fashion as she resumed her seat. ‘We must be out of Sylvania,’ she said. ‘Sylvanian bandits know better than to stop a black coach.’

She began weaving her hands in a complicated pattern while muttering strange foreign words under her breath. Ulrika edged back as curls of shadow began licking around the countess’s fingers like black worms.

‘Fire, then,’ Rodrik was shouting. ‘Your bullets won’t stop me before I ride you down.’

Ulrika opened the louvres of her window and looked out into the night. Even with the ability to see in the dark that Krieger’s gift of blood had granted her, she could see little. There was a bright glare off the snow on the ground, but the trees were too thick on either side of the road to see into. There might have been no one within them. There might have been an army. She wanted to leap out and hunt them down, however many there were.

‘Restrain yourself,’ said Gabriella. ‘Rodrik and I will handle the situation.’

Ulrika turned back. The countess’s hands were now hidden in a ball of writhing shadows.

‘But they will shoot him,’ she said.

‘They will not,’ said Gabriella, and then flung her arms apart. The sphere of shadows shredded into darting tatters of black that wiggled out through the cracks in the doors of the coach and vanished.

‘Ye asked for it!’ said the commanding voice. ‘All right, lads! Ready? Fire!’

A second later the night was filled with hissing and soft pops – but no explosions.

‘Fire, I said!’ cried the commanding voice.

‘My powder’s fizzled,’ came a second voice.

‘Something wrong with my gun,’ said a third.

The countess smiled. ‘So unreliable, these modern weapons.’

‘Charge!’ roared Rodrik, and Ulrika listened, her hands gripping the bench, to the sounds of thundering hooves and clashing steel and the hoarse cries of combat.

She turned to the countess, pleading. ‘Please, mistress. Let me defend you!’