The Geomancer (42 page)

The thuds of new explosions sounded from across the river. They were smaller blasts than the big guns of the last week, but closer. The popping of rifles filled the air too. The clan lords began to show alarm at the smoke rising across the river. Some in the crowd slipped away.

From high overhead came the high-pitched whine of incoming artillery. Smoking canisters arced through the blue sky from the south, flying for different parts of the city. Several descended toward the Place de la Concorde. Vampires scattered as the canisters crashed on the cobblestones. They didn't explode, but smashed into pieces. Dull grey metal balls skittered wildly through the feet of the confused vampires. The spheres burst open with brain-stabbing squeals. Shriekers.

The square erupted in chaos. Vampires clutched their ears. Others launched themselves into the air, trying to escape. Honore doubled over from pain. Hallow put a hand to her head and staggered.

The mercenaries holding Caterina loosened their grip. The queen pulled her arms free. She felt a blow to her back and she fell to her knees. Her head was jerked up hard.

“Enough of this.” Flay towered over Caterina with eyes narrowed against the shriekers.

Honore grabbed her around the waist and pulled her away from the queen. “Take your hands off her! You dare hurt my mother? I'll have you execu—”

The prince stiffened as Flay spun in his grip. She grinned as her claws grasped him by the throat and tore. A wash of his blood covered her. The Dauphin stumbled and fell to the scaffold.

Caterina's scream broke through the fading wail of the shriekers. She fought to rise. Something grabbed her arm. She turned to strike and saw Lothaire. Others raced past them and closed on Flay, with Nadzia shouting, “Take the queen and run!”

“Honore!” Caterina tried to pull away from her husband. She wanted to touch Honore's hand that lay on the wooden planks, stretched out toward her.

“Come!” the king yelled. “Honore is dead.”

One of the mercenaries gathered his wits and reached for Caterina. Lothaire seized him with the sound of snapping bones. He clawed the brute's face and kicked him aside.

“Can you fly?” he asked. “Caterina! Can you fly?”

The queen lifted off the platform and he followed.

Hallow stayed on her feet with great effort. “Flay! The king!”

Flay looked up at the royal couple rising away through the chaotic swarm over the square. She then regarded the rebels who had surrounded her. Claws came out. Flay ducked multiple strikes. She spun and raked. Dodged. Snapped a neck. Crushed a rib cage. Shattered knees. Sliced open muscles.

Nadzia weaved through Flay's blows and struck her. The war chief immediately stepped up, expecting the girl to retreat. Instead Nadzia closed in and ripped Flay again. Flay fell back with her hand covering a bloody wound just as a rocket slammed into the square, sending fire and shrapnel everywhere. Staggered, she looked around for the young female who had hurt her, but she and her last comrade were gone. Eight rebels lay dead on the scaffold.

Hallow stumbled to Flay's side with blood dribbling from her ears. “You must find the king and queen and kill them.”

In the distance to the south, human screams echoed. The weapons' fire grew more ragged and disordered.

Flay grinned. “And it begins. The Witchfinder strikes.”

Panic filled Hallow's porcelain features. Her pristine veneer cracked. “We can save this situation. Call your mercenaries. After you kill Lothaire and Caterina, find Isolde. We need an heir to put on the throne. Do as I say!”

Flay laughed. “Your day is over, Hallow. The queen is right. Your schemes and plans are pointless. I'd advise you to hide, because when I come back I'll kill you.” She raised her head and screeched a call to war. As she lifted into the air, vampires rose around her. Most of them were her mercenaries, but there were Parisians and other French clan members who came to join her. They had no one else to follow.

Flay and her new pack drifted south toward the battle that raged in the ivy-cloaked suburbs and into the toppled edges of the city. Through the frantic bodies of diving vampires and the thick haze of gun smoke, the khaki hordes of Equatoria dropped in their tracks. Rank after rank staggered and fell. The thundering lines of steel Galahads ground to a halt and tilted uselessly to the side, venting steam. Over the faltering clatter of gunfire came more human screams, even from the distance where the vampire packs had not yet struck.

The scale of death she witnessed below unnerved even Flay. No one should have such power, certainly no human.

C
HAPTER 41

All-encompassing black surrounded Adele and drowned the chatter of gunfire from the south. She drew her khukri and beat back the ebony maw with its green chemical burn. They were inside an old sewer pipe. Water from the spring thaw sloshed around their feet. Her steps were slow and measured, as if she were struggling through a black mire.

Gareth led them to a crack in the curving wall. He pulled more of the bricks aside, letting them tumble to the wet floor. Kasteel and the others moved forward to help. Soon the crack widened to a hole big enough for Gareth to wriggle through. He disappeared inside and Adele had to fight down her terror as she squeezed in after him. She held her blade aloft, but its light didn't quell the rising dread inside her as she inched through a long passageway. It didn't help that she knew vampires crawled right behind her. Old fears died hard.

Gareth dropped from her line of sight and then his hand reached back for her. She tumbled into a cavern with a low ceiling. It looked like a pile of dirt at first, but then she noticed exposed tiles and a brick arch.

“How did you find this place?” Kasteel emerged from the crevice.

“Lothaire and I used to explore the underground.” Gareth gave the young rebel a purposeful glance. “When we lived in holes in the ground.”

Kasteel laughed nervously.

“Does it connect to the cathedral?” Adele was already pushing forward despite the darkness.

“We're in front of the cathedral, but these halls stretch to it. I used to think they were the crypts of the old church.”

On they went through the lost city. Despite the crumbled debris, many rooms were intact. Occasionally they had to use their hands to claw open a wider entrance, but the group of vampires worked in tandem. It didn't take long to clear a path.

Finally, Gareth looked upward as if searching. His fingers dug into the low ceiling and a rain of dirt fell over them all. Gareth stood and the top of his head cracked against a barrier. His hands pressed into the underside of something solid. A flat stone. Gareth braced and pushed. It didn't give. Kasteel joined him, imitating his mentor, and the stone shifted slightly. The two vampires drove against it, pushing upward with their legs. They gained a few more inches of space. The stone tilted. Gareth bowed his back, holding the heavy object in place. Together, he and Kasteel forced it to the side.

Gareth went up silently and, a moment later, Kasteel followed. Adele looked up into a vaulted ceiling stretching far above her. Gareth reached down and pulled her up. The rest of the rebels emerged from the hole into Notre Dame.

The echoes of clattering machine gun fire from across the river had grown more sporadic, so the envelope of silence inside the vast chamber shouted their arrival to the rafters. Shadows shrouded the ceiling. And the shadows moved, writhing like rats in the hold of a ship when a hatch is opened. Adele stifled a cry, pointing up. The shadows fell toward them.

Kasteel stepped in front. “Go! Find your Witchfinder!” The rebels flew up to meet the incoming vampires.

Gareth and Adele ran up the nave, across the open marble floor. The sounds of battle filled the church with screeching, the rending of flesh, and the ring of claws.

More vampires appeared in the shattered stained glass windows. They crawled inside and launched themselves. Three slammed into Gareth, smashing him against the wall. One turned to Adele, but Gareth pushed free and laid a hand on him, yanking him back. “Keep going!”

Adele didn't hesitate, racing for the choir. She had no idea where Goronwy was, but the church was surprisingly small, and he had to be in contact with the ground. That left only the eastern end of the church. Racing past the painted figures of holy men, Adele prayed she was in time. All she could think about were the men dying on the battlefield. Were any alive to save?

She rounded the altar sanctuary and had to shield her eyes from sudden brightness. The Witchfinder knelt in the midst of a vast field of crystals. He was adjusting his scrying sextant. Needles of light shot through each of the crystals, sending color slicing through the dusty air. As the web sparkled, Adele saw that the crystals were not just on the floor but were set into the walls too, like vibrant stars. The intense glare sent spikes of vertigo through Adele and she had to clutch the wall, gasping to catch her breath.

Goronwy looked up at her. His lips held a smile. In his right hand, he clutched the Tear of Death.

“Ah, Empress. I'm glad you got to see this.” Goronwy let the scryer fall on its long strap around his neck. He casually reached into his pocket and pulled out two crystals. He tightened his fingers around them so there was a brief flash of light and then he carelessly tossed them aside. He stepped over a small array of blue crystals set near the center of his sprawling indecipherable quincunx. “Flay assured me you'd come. She was quite worried about it. That's why I had to block you from the Earth, which I'm sure you've noticed. She was worried you would just slaughter all of Paris as you did in Britain. She claims that's your catch-all for solving problems. No matter now.” He held up a finger. “Do you hear that? Nothing. The gunfire has stopped. Your army is dead. I've already won the Battle of Paris.”

Adele fought down nausea, focusing on the figure of the old man before her. The deathly quiet from outside chilled her. She summoned her courage again. “I'll kill you.”

Goronwy frowned in disappointment. “That's all you can say with this miracle around you? Flay was right. Look at this. I was somewhat limited in space so I anchored crystals on the walls and on the ceiling. As long as they're tied to lodestones fused to the rift, they function admirably.” He pointed with the phurba to several stones on a column. “I believe those stones correspond to the rifts through Alexandria. The Tear of Death is remarkable. I can feel it working through me even now. I thought I had exercised power before, but I was wrong. I'm not absolutely sure how fast it will move, but its
influence
is already traveling down the rifts I've mapped, southward through the territory your armies have occupied. It will cover the Rhone Valley, through Marseilles, and into the Mediterranean. It should reach North Africa by tonight. When the people in your empire wake up to find everyone in the capital dead, well, it should give them pause before continuing this war.”

Adele stopped studying the crystal alignments all around her and shifted as if to come toward him. From an alcove behind the Witchfinder, red eyes stabbed through the shadows. Adele's gut plummeted. Snarls and the rattle of chains reached her ears. Something lurched forward until a chain snapped taut. The limited light showed an inhuman face, bleached near white and hairless. A feral vampire. No, two of them. Savage throwbacks that even vampires feared. Flay had always used them as hunting hounds. Swallowing bile, Adele rushed forward.

Goronwy stumbled away, scrambling to the alcove holding the ferals. Adele paid him no heed and ran to the edge of the map. She kicked out to dislodge the crystals, but they didn't move. The stones were not simply lying on the floor; they had been fused to the Earth.

Adele heard a sharp click. Goronwy pulled a large iron pin from a bracket on the wall where chains were secured. The chains crashed limp to the floor.

“Kill her!” the Witchfinder shouted.

The lithe muscular forms of the ferals sprang for Adele. The naked creatures moved like lightning. She barely dodged the first, slicing the second with her khukri as it went by, eliciting a satisfying screech of pain. Nails scraped stones and the creatures both slid to a stop beyond her, their claws and fangs elongated more so than normal vampires. These hunters knew nothing but slaughter. She dove for the small arrangement of blue crystals just like the ones in the vampires' talismans. They had to be what was silencing the Earth around her.

A bony long-fingered hand clutched her leg and dragged her back, claws digging into her calves like needles. She spun around, her blade flashing for the creature's throat. It anticipated her move and ducked its head. She flipped the khukri in her hand and stabbed downward, striking its exposed chest. The feral howled and released her.

The other creature clamped down behind Adele, its teeth latching onto her shoulder. She felt its mouth begin to drain her blood. She flung herself backward, looping a leg behind its knee, hoping to drive it to the ground under her. The starving creature was so focused on its meal that it didn't realize what she was doing. It stumbled and fell back onto the crystal map on the floor, but it still didn't relinquish its hold.

Adele struggled to free herself, but the clawed hands held her tight. A scream left her throat as her flesh tore and more blood gushed into the vampire's mouth. It would not end like this! Across the room, the other creature rose to its splayed feet, blood dripping from the wound in its chest that glowed with residue from the Fahrenheit chemical.

The feral under Adele made horrible, contented noises as if suckling at its mother's breast. This only goaded Adele more. She stabbed downward and behind her. The angle was awkward, but she was desperate. The thing bellowed as the blade seared through its flesh. Its mouth ripped from her shoulder in a spray of blood.

With a cry of her own, a mix of pain and rage, she rolled off it. Slipping on the slick floor, Adele struggled to get back to the blue crystal pattern only inches away. A feral leapt onto her, sending them both skidding. One of the sparkling blue crystals was torn from the floor by furious claws struggling to recover from their slide.