Underworld: Blood Enemy (11 page)

The sarcophagus slid on its tracks into the bath, so that Viktor’s body lay half submerged within the gore. His thirsty body absorbed the crimson fluid like a sponge, drawing new life from the abundant blood. Brilliant blue eyes snapped open, looking out at the world for the first time in two centuries. A hoarse whisper issued from his throat.

“Ilona… dead?”

Sonja fought back a sob. Marcus’s blood had indeed conveyed the hideous truth to her father.

“Yes, my friend,” Marcus said, leaning over the submerged bier. “I fear it is so.”

The Elder turned toward Sonja, who stood nervously at the foot of the blood bath. “Leave us now, child. Your father and I have much to discuss.”

Sonja paced back and forth within the frigid crypt. She gazed at the sealed doors of the infirmary, waiting for Marcus to emerge. Although anxious to converse with her father once more, she was apprehensive as well. Who knew how he was going to react to her mother’s death? As far as she knew, they had been devoted to each other for almost six hundred years.

May fate grant that I someday know a love such as theirs,
she thought wistfully. Beneath her feet, a bronze disk sealed her fathers now-empty tomb. Sonja found herself alone in the silent crypt, save for the sleeping form of Amelia, still residing undisturbed beneath her bronze marker. The lonely sepulcher instilled a sort of melancholy in her, and she wished that Lucian were there to keep her company.
Was this how my mother felt,
she wondered,
whenever Father spent two centuries
within his tomb?

At last, the oak doors swung open, and Marcus exited the infirmary. “Your father will see you now,” he informed her, heading for the arched doorway at the opposite end of the crypt. “I will leave you to your reunion, while I go to prepare for my own internment.”

By tradition, Marcus’s burial would take place the next night, after Viktor had a full day in which to recover his strength. During that time, Marcus would remain sequestered in his chambers unless an emergency arose, so as to provide for an orderly transition of power as laid out in the Covenant.

“Farewell, my lord,” Sonja said dutifully. “May your meditations be fruitful.”

Sonja watched the ageless Elder depart, then hurried toward the door to the infirmary. “Father?”

she called out. “It is I, Sonja.”

“Enter, daughter,” a raspy voice croaked from the chamber beyond. Although rough from disuse, the voice was unmistakably her father’s. “My thirsty eyes long to look upon your face once more.”

Stepping inside, Sonja found her father seated on a marble throne at the opposite end of the pool of blood. His feet were still immersed in the crimson waters, like the roots of a mighty tree drawing strength from moist earth.

Although he remained as gray and wizened as a corpse, he had already regained much of his vitality. Azure eyes, alert and penetrating, stared out from sunken sockets. Strength and authority radiated from his commanding presence. Sonja detected no trace of infirmity in his manner, aside from his grotesque appearance.

“Greetings, Father,” she said. “How fares your recovery?”

Viktor dismissed his emaciated state with a wave of his hand. “My vigor returns forthwith.” He gazed at her, and a gentle smile softened his fearsome visage. “Ah, my beautiful Sonja… look at you! When I last went into the earth, you were but a mere slip of a girl. Now I find you transformed into a fetching young woman!”

His loving words brought joy to her heart, and she hurried around the edge of the blood bath to kneel beside his throne. She clasped her hand over his own skeletal claw. “Oh, Father!” she exclaimed. “I have missed you so!”

“You and your dear mother were ever in my dreams,” he assured her. He stroked her flaxen hair with his free hand and looked down at her with great affection. “Imagine my dismay to discover what dreadful fate had befallen my beloved wife.” He gnashed his fangs in frustration. “If only I had been there to defend you both from that mortal rabble, not buried impotently beneath the earth when you needed me most!”

“Please, sire, do not torment yourself thus!” Sonja pleaded. “Who could have guessed what fate had in store for us?” Tearful eyes beseeched him. “Voice your grief as you surely must, but I beg of you, do not blame yourself for events no civilized being could have ever foreseen. We were taken unaware at dawn; there was naught you could have done!”

“We are not all quite as civilized as you,” Viktor said ominously, “but you are correct. Now is not the time for recriminations.” His rueful gaze drifted between their matching pendants. “I should be thankful that you at least survive, to continue our bloodline. You are my greatest treasure, Sonja.

Never forget that.”

“I shall not, Father.” A look of relief came over her face. Guilt would only prolong her sire’s suffering. “Nor shall I consider myself without family as long as I can call you Father.”

“Which will be for all eternity,” he assured her. “We shall always be together, no matter what fate has in store for us. Nothing will ever come between us.”

A knock on the door disturbed their tender moment. Soren’s gruff voice invaded the infirmary.

“You asked to see me, Lord Viktor?”

The Elders face hardened. Sonja rose from her father’s side and stepped quietly behind his throne. “Enter,” Viktor instructed.

The overseer came into the chamber. His dark eyes briefly registered Sonja’s presence before turning their full attention to the seated Elder. He gave no reaction to Viktor’s debilitated appearance, but Sonja sensed a degree of apprehension beneath Soren’s stoic expression.

“Yes, milord?” he said.

“I understand that you were present when the Lady Ilona’s procession was waylaid at the keep,”

Viktor said severely. “And yet you failed to prevent my lady wife’s brutal murder and, furthermore, left my only daughter for dead.” He shook his skull-like head in disappointment. “I am sorely disappointed in you, Soren.”

The overseer’s face blanched behind his beard. “Forgive me, milord! It will not happen again.”

Viktor looked unconvinced. “Your repentance will not restore my lady wife to immortality. No amount of apology can ever atone for my loss.”

“But I have served you faithfully for nearly four hundred years!” Soren protested, and Sonja thought she detected a tinge of resentment in his voice. “I have fought at your side!”

“True enough,” Viktor admitted. “We have a long history, you and I.”

“I beg of you, milord. Do not condemn me. ’Twas the wretched mortals who slew Lady Ilona, not I!” Soren fixed his gaze on Sonja as she stood silently behind her father’s throne. “I swear that henceforth I will watch over your daughter with the greatest of care, so that nothing ill will ever befall her again!”

A shiver went through Sonja at the prospect of the brutal overseer serving as her self-appointed guardian.
I would have chosen another protector.

Lucian, perhaps.

His fervent oath appeared to satisfy her father, though. “See that you do,” Viktor charged him.

The Elder’s mummified face settled into a fearsome scowl. “You are correct in one respect. It is the mortals who are ultimately to blame for my poor wife’s death.” Bony fists clenched atop the marble arms of his throne. “But their treachery will not go unpunished. I swear upon my immortal blood that ere long, I shall wreak unholy vengeance upon all who are responsible.”

The unalloyed hatred in his voice, so very different from the loving tones she was accustomed to, frightened Sonja. She had never seen her father so angry before… like a demon made flesh.

“They shall rue the day they dared to rise up against their betters—before I cast them screaming down to hell!”

Chapter Nine

STRASBA

Strasba wasn’t much of a village. Nestled in a secluded valley, the tiny hamlet consisted of perhaps a dozen shops and a score of crude peasant huts. The two-story wooden shops occupied the head of the village, facing an unpaved road lined with thatch-roofed hovels. A modest stone church resided at the opposite end of the road, as though the town’s founders had been determined to place as much distance as possible between God and Mammon.

The village slumbered beneath the light of a full moon, its narrow streets dark and deserted.

Sunset had long since come and gone, so all of Strasba had retired for the night. Doors were bolted, windows shuttered, and every light extinguished. The hanging signs of the tradesmen blew in the cold winter wind. Only the faint glow of the night watchman’s lantern disturbed the shadows draped over the unsuspecting hamlet.

They have no idea what awaits them,
Lucian thought.

In wolfen form, he looked down upon Strasba from the western slope of the valley. It was February, a full month since Marcus’s internment, and the moon had once more liberated his bestial alter ego. Bristling black fur covered his towering form. Claws like daggers extended from his hands and feet.

A company of mounted Death Dealers, led by Viktor himself, also gazed down upon the village.

The silver hooves of their mounts pawed the earth impatiently, and steam jetted from the chargers’

nostrils, as the armored vampires awaited the Elder’s command. Drawn swords and lances gleamed in the moonlight.

“Is that the place?” Nicolae asked archly. Like the other warriors, he wore a crimson surcoat over his chain mail. Unlike them, he wore rings of precious gemstones over his gloves. He drew his horse up beside Viktor’s. “Why, it hardly seems worth sacking.”

“My informants tell me otherwise,” Viktor replied. Now fully restored to his prime, the regal Elder sat astride a coal-black charger named Hades. Fierce blue eyes glowed through the slits of his Corinthian-style helmet. Molded batwings formed a crest upon the helm. A heraldic dragon adorned the front of his surcoat. “The one we seek lies below.”

He leaned in his saddle to address Lucian. “Stay close to me, werewolf. I shall need you anon.”

Unable to do more than growl, Lucian nodded in assent. Once again, he was the only werewolf in the company, which also numbered Kraven among its warriors. Not Soren, though; he had been left behind to guard the castle and the princess, much to the overseer’s obvious irritation—and Lucian’s amusement.
It will do Soren good to be humbled,
he thought,
and it is no less than he
deserves for leaving us behind at the keep.

Viktor raised his mighty broadsword, easily holding it aloft with one hand. The swords silver pommel bore the same capital V that marked the flesh beneath Lucian’s fur. Celtic runes were inscribed on the blades brightly polished guard. Viktor’s imperious voice rang out in the night. “Death Dealers, ride now for vengeance!”

Racing hooves thundered down the slope into the muddy streets of Strasba. War cries trumpeted from the bloodthirsty throats of the vampires. Lucian loped alongside the horses, racing to keep up with the mounted Elder. His hot breath fogged the cold night air. Foam dripped from his panting jaws.

The nightmarish clamor woke Strasba from its peaceful repose. Candles flared to life behind the second-story windows of the shops, where the craftsmen and their families dwelt. Muffled voices cried out in alarm. Wooden shutters opened briefly, then slammed shut again as shocked villagers glimpsed the fearsome war party riding into their town. “God preserve us!” a frightened housewife exclaimed. “It is the undying ones!”

Viktor came to a halt in the market square before the row of shops. The upper stories of the wooden structures jutted out over the storefronts below, obscuring the sky. Cloves of garlic hung from the rough-hewn crosses nailed to every door.

As if that will save them,
Lucian thought scornfully. It amazed him that the ignorant humans still placed their faith in such talismans.
Old myths die hard, it seems.

“Who goes there?” A grizzled night watchman, possessing more duty than sense, came running toward them, raising his lantern before him. A kettle helmet surmounted his head, and he clutched a pike in one hand. Iron, not silver, tipped the point of the pike.

“I said, who goes—” The watchman’s voice fell silent as he got a better look at the armored horsemen and the monstrous werewolf at their side. The color drained from his face as he squinted up at the pale faces of the riders, with their luminous blue eyes and flashing fangs. “Holy Mother of God!”

His pike and lantern crashed to the ground, sending up a geyser of sparks. Abandoning his post, the panicked watchman turned and ran for his life.

Nicolae laughed merrily. “Permit me, Lord Viktor,” he volunteered, spurring his horse forward.

He raised his lance and charged after the hapless mortal, who did not even make it to the end of the road before being impaled on the point of Nicolae’s lance. The vampire prince tilted the lance upward, inspecting the skewered human as he might a morsel of meat at a banquet. “If this wretch is what passes for a soldier around here,” Nicolae remarked, “then tonight’s outing is going to be even more of a slaughter than I imagined.”

He casually tossed the lance, along with its victim, into the dirt before him. Whimpers of pain reached Lucian’s tufted ears, suggesting that the dying watchman still clung to life.

More fool he.

Nicolae was clearly having a grand time, but Viktor’s voice was all seriousness as he addressed the company. “By their perfidy, the mortals of this village have forfeited their protection under the Covenant. Tonight—and only tonight—the prohibition on slaying humans is lifted. Feast as you will, Death Dealers. Slake your thirst with the lifeblood of these unworthy mortals. Only remember this: the monk is mine!”

With an enthusiastic cheer, the other vampires leaped from their mounts, handing over the reins to a lowly squire, only recently initiated into the coven. Swords drawn, the Death Dealers invaded the shops and residences, battering down doors and charging up stairs. Within moments, bloodcurdling screams erupted from behind the shuttered windows. Lucian heard the crash of toppled furniture and the sounds of short, unequal struggles. The high-pitched shrieks of men, women, and children blended into a cacophony of fear and torment.

A heavy body came smashing through the shutters above a bakery, as though flung by a catapult.

The body, which belonged to that of a portly human roughly forty years of age, arced through the air before crashing to earth not far from Lucian. The man’s heart was missing, and his lifeless face was frozen in a look of utter agony. Broken ribs protruded from the gaping hole in his chest.

A moment later, Nicolae appeared in the very window through which the dead baker had been propelled. The un-dead prince had discarded his helmet, revealing his flowing golden ringlets. Blood streaked his chin, spilling over onto his crimson surcoat. Unholy mirth set his azure eyes aglow as he effortlessly leaped from the upper story to the street below.

A trophy of sorts dangled from his grip: the severed head of a young woman, whose auburn locks were wrapped around Nicolae’s fist. “Look what I found in the baker’s bed,” he quipped, holding up the head for all to see. “She’s far too pretty, don’t you think, for that fat bag of suet?” He kissed the maid’s dead lips, then flung the head over his shoulder into the muck. “Hail and farewell, my sweet!”

Nicolae obviously regarded the raid as a rare lark. No doubt, Lucian surmised, the jaded prince saw massacring humans as merely another form of hedonistic indulgence, like hawking or whoring.

But he was hardly the only Death Dealer living up to the name tonight. More bodies came flying out of the windows above, raining down on the rutted dirt roads like slop from a chamber pot.

“Gardy loo!” Vayer shouted from another window before hurling someone’s elderly grandmother to her death. The old woman’s dying wail terminated abruptly as she hit the ground headfirst. Lucian guessed that the crone’s aged blood had been too thin and feeble to tempt Vayer, not when younger and more potent vintages were free for the taking.

Other mortals attempted to escape the invading vampires, fleeing out into the road in various states of dishabille. Frantic mothers clutched their babies to their chests, only to be ravished in the street by Kraven and his fellow soldiers. Lucian saw two vampires feast simultaneously on a single plump townswoman, their fangs embedded in her throat and breast, while a squalling infant flailed in the mud only a few feet away. A moment later, a third vampire snatched the babe up by its arm and crunched its tiny neck between her jaws. The thirsty Death Dealer sucked the blood from the infant’s body in a single gulp, then tossed the lifeless body aside like an empty wineskin. Unsated, the vampire dashed into the nearest hut, looking for yet another unwilling donor.

Lucian watched the carnage from the Elder’s side. Part of him was tempted to join in the bloodletting, tantalized by so much fresh human meat and marrow waiting to be devoured, but his more civilized instincts were troubled by the rampant butchery going on all around him. He thought he recognized a few faces and scents from the ambush at the keep, but it was difficult to be certain.

Could any crime, no matter how heinous, justify such an atrocity?

Doubt plagued him, until he recalled more fully the recent attacks on both the castle and the caravan. He saw again Nasir’s throat speared by a peasant’s arrow, saw Lady Ilona dragged from her horse and beheaded by a mob of wild-eyed humans. He remembered Sonja spread-eagled upon the ground, only moments away from decapitation herself, and his pity for the terrified villagers evaporated completely.

These are but mortals after all,
he thought. What did their mayfly existences matter compared with the security of the coven? The Elder knew what he was doing.
Sonja will never be truly safe
unless this village is made an example of.

“Goddamn monsters! You’ll pay for your deviltry!”

Lucian turned to see a strapping male villager come charging out of the door of a butcher’s shop.

A bloodstained cleaver was clutched in his hand, and madness blazed in his eyes. “Demons!” he roared. “You slew my Anna!”

The werewolf knew not who Anna was, nor did he care. All that mattered to him was the memory of Sonja lying in her mother’s blood, while humans like this one sought to sever her lovely head from her body. A snarl burst from Lucian’s snout as he pounced forward to meet the oncoming butcher. His forepaws hit the villager head-on, knocking the brawny mortal onto his back. Lucian crouched atop the downed butcher. His claws raked the man’s bare chest, digging bloody gashes in the fragile flesh of the human, who hacked at Lucian with his cleaver in desperation.

The edged steel bit into the werewolf’s shoulder, but Lucian barely felt the pain. His powerful jaws chomped down on the butcher’s wrist, and the cleaver went flying away, taking the man’s right hand with it. An agonized scream tore itself free from the villager’s lungs right before Lucian disemboweled him with a single swipe of his claws. The heap of steaming entrails was too savory to resist, and Lucian dug his snout into the spilled viscera, gulping down the man’s organs with rapacious zeal. The hot, fresh, bloody meat was infinitely tastier than the cold, uncooked mutton that was his usual fare back at the castle. He could not help wondering if Brother Ambroses fellow monks had tasted half so delectable.

Small wonder the renegades clung to their predatory habits with such fervor.

“That’s enough, werewolf,” Viktor commanded, calling Lucian back to his side. The Elder remained astride his horse, observing the slaughter with icy detachment. “You there,” he called out to the nearest Death Dealer, whom Lucian recognized as Kraven. Blood trickled from the corners of the Englishman’s mouth as he lapped at the neck of the half-dead maiden he was holding in his arms.

“Attend me.”

Kraven dropped the chalky white body onto the ground. “Yes, your lordship!” he said promptly, hurrying over to Viktor’s side. His eagerness to curry the Elder’s favor was almost comically obvious. “How might I serve you, Elder?”

“Fetch me a living tongue,” Viktor instructed, “while there is still one to be had.” Impatience colored his voice, as though the sacking of the village had not yet appeased him. “There are questions that require answers.”

“At once, Lord Viktor!” Kraven exclaimed. All thought of his nubile prey forgotten, he darted into a nearby hovel, only to emerge moments later dragging a whimpering peasant by the collar. He threw the wretch onto the ground in front of Viktor’s steed. “Kneel, varlet!”

Viktor nodded in approval. “Tell me, swine,” he addressed the cowering mortal. “Where is the monk, Brother Ambrose?”

The peasant ignored the Elder’s query. Clutching a string of rosary beads, he prayed frantically instead. “Holy Father, deliver me from the demons of darkness, deliver me, deliver me, deliver me…!”

“Answer the Elder, knave!” Kraven snapped at the man. He reached down and yanked a fistful of hair from the man’s scalp. His nails dug painfully into the man’s shoulder. “Answer the question, or I swear that hell will be a blessed relief by comparison!”

“The church!” the peasant blurted. Blood from his torn scalp dripped down his face. “God forgive me… the holy brother is in the church!”

“How predictable,” Viktor observed. He nodded at Kraven. “Dispose of the blackguard.”

Kraven obliged by twisting the mortal’s head until his neck snapped. The dead peasant fell face-forward into the mud. “Done, your lordship,” Kraven boasted as he blithely wiped the mortal’s stink from his hands. “Your wish is my command!”

“As well it should be,” Viktor replied drily.

He turned Hades toward the church at the other end of the village’s main road. The horse reared up on his hind legs as the Elder exhorted the Death Dealers to continue their pillaging. “Kill them all!”