Authors: Scott G. Mariani
The Cross (33 page)
Joel sprinted out of the chalet and hollered Alex’s name. The only reply was the echo of his own voice ringing off the mountainside. To his right, he could see the distant figures of Gabriel Stone and his three companions winding their way up the slope.
‘Alex!’ he shouted again. He was sure he could smell burning. Glancing back at the chalet, he saw thick smoke drifting in the wind.
Then, out of the darkness, a running figure streaked towards him. Joel’s first panicked thought was that it might be one of the goblins, and his grip tightened on his sword; but no, it was a tall female figure. With a mixture of extreme relief and bitter disappointment, he recognised her as one of the sexy she-vampires that had turned up with Baxter Burnett.
‘Quick!’ Sonia hissed, half-demented with terror. ‘We have to run! The cross . . . the man . . .
he’s coming!
’ The fight-or-flight instinct had made her fangs extend – Joel could see them behind her lips as she spoke. He instinctively felt for his own, still holding on to some vain hope that they might not be there. They were. But there was no time for those kinds of concerns now.
‘Have you seen Alex?’ he asked as they ran.
‘Who?’
‘My friend who was with me before,’ he explained frantically.
‘I don’t know,’ Sonia babbled. ‘I don’t know. I think she was destroyed.’
Joel was still reeling from her words when the attack came out of nowhere. A leaping dark shape beat him down violently against the rocks, twisting the sword out of his grip, pinning him with its weight. He felt little clawed hands grasping at his ankles, stopping him from kicking out.
Sonia screamed as they took her down. For a moment she disappeared under a scrum of little bodies. When Joel caught sight of her again she was spread-eagled among the rocks, a goblin hanging tightly to each wrist and ankle. One reached into the folds of its habit and took out a little round glass ball, the size of a large marble. It jerked Sonia’s head back by the hair, forcing her mouth open with its thumbs. She bit savagely. The goblins twittered in mirth.
These things are just playing with us
, Joel thought. He twisted and fought, but the goblin sitting on his chest was holding him tightly down. All he could do was watch as the creature with the hollow glass marble forced it very deliberately between Sonia’s fangs and shoved it down her throat with the handle of its knife. It watched intently as she swallowed it with a choking splutter, then lashed out with the knife handle, crushing the glass while it was still inside her throat.
Vampire blood and black poison bubbled out of her mouth and spilled down her cheeks. Sonia struggled wildly for a few seconds and then went limp as the paralysing agent took effect.
Then, tugging her in opposite directions, the goblins unhurriedly tore her apart. The left arm was first to rip from its shoulder joint, trailing sinews and muscle. Then the right leg. The goblin clutching the ankle hurled the limb away and it flopped across the rocks and landed next to Joel. The most horrific thing wasn’t seeing Sonia being torn apart – it was that she couldn’t make a sound or lift a finger in resistance.
And now, from the way the little bastards were turning towards him, Joel got the feeling it was going to be his turn next.
As he twisted his head from side to side in desperation, something caught his eye: the little silver dagger that Sonia wore in her garter belt, still attached to her severed thigh.
Finally, with a desperate heave, Joel managed to dislodge the dead weight of the goblin from off his chest. He threw out his arm. Plucked the dagger from Sonia’s garter belt. Slashing the throat of the nearest goblin, he brought the silver hilt down with a vicious skull-cracking blow on the head of another. Then he was free and springing up onto his feet, and his fallen katana was back in his hand, the long curved blade hissing through the air. Blood hit the snow. Five goblins were reduced to twitching body parts before the rest went fleeing over the rocks.
Joel stepped towards the dismembered trunk that had been the beautiful Sonia. He couldn’t leave her like this, doomed to the worst possible fate a vampire could face.
He raised the sword. The last look in her eyes was one of profound gratitude.
When it was done, Joel bent double, retching and wheezing up the few drops of Errol Knightly’s blood that were still in his system.
At that moment, he thought he heard a voice call his name.
The smoke was pouring thickly out of the boarding station now and through it the flicker of flames was getting brighter. Chloe could feel the heat of the spreading fire and hear its crackle as she tried to gain a handhold on the slippery rocks and pull herself up to the platform.
‘Dec! Where are you?’
No reply. As she called his name again, a gust of wind enveloped her in thick hot smoke and she fell into a fit of coughing. She couldn’t see the cable car any more.
Suddenly there was a figure standing next to her on the ledge. Chloe backed away in dread, reaching for her pistol – but as the figure stepped towards her through the swirling smoke, she saw it wasn’t Ash, but the vampire called Yuri.
‘Come with me,’ he croaked in his thick accent. ‘Quickly!’ Yuri let out a cry as pain racked his body. Chloe took his hand, and felt herself being lifted up towards the platform as though she weighed nothing. The smoke was blinding. The fire was everywhere, its heat unbearable. Then Yuri’s hand was guiding her firmly through the middle of the leaping flames.
‘Why are you doing this?’ she gasped.
‘Your friend save me. Now I save you. Move, move. There is no time.’
‘Dec!’ Chloe yelled. There he was, dragged free of the fire, sitting propped against the wall, groggy but alive, his face blackened by the smoke. His eyes widened as he saw Chloe. He swayed up to his feet, staggered towards her and held her by the arms. ‘Where’s Ash?’ he coughed.
Yuri glanced back in terror in the direction of the cable car. His body suddenly twisted into a violent agonised convulsion. He screwed his eyes shut, opened his mouth to scream . . . and blackened and burst apart into charred nothingness.
‘Ash is here,’ Chloe breathed.
They turned to see him striding towards them through the fire. The flames flickered in his eyes and gleamed on his teeth. In his right hand he clutched the cross. The left arm hung limply, blood still dripping from the stump where his hand had been. His face twisted in hate as his eyes locked on Chloe and Dec.
Chloe wrenched the pistol from her jeans and took aim. She couldn’t possibly miss him this time.
Ash took another step closer. He bared his teeth.
Chloe braced herself and squeezed the trigger.
Nothing happened. The trigger wouldn’t move.
Safety catch!
Chloe feverishly felt for it, in case it had been accidentally switched to the safe position. But it hadn’t. As if in a nightmare, she squeezed the trigger with all the strength in her hands. Still nothing happened.
Ash kept coming, the jagged smile on his face broadening as Chloe struggled with the gun. He dropped the cross into the case at his side and reached for the hilt of his sword.
But before the blade was clear of the scabbard, Dec was charging at him like a man possessed, yelling at the top of his voice. Dec was half Ash’s weight but he hurled himself at him with such force that they both fell back into the fire. All Chloe could see through the flames was a sprawling tangle of limbs, kicking and punching and gouging. One instant, Dec was on top, pummelling Ash’s face with his fists – the next, Ash had flung Dec off him with a savage blow and was leaping back on his feet. His clothes were singed and the strap around his shoulders was on fire. He ran at Chloe, ripping the sword from its scabbard and raising it for a massive downward cut.
Then a loud meaty clang resounded off the back of Ash’s skull and he fell forward, stunned. The sword spun away into the flames. The burning strap around his shoulders snapped, and the case slithered across the floor to Chloe’s feet.
Dec emerged from the smoke, his face half-covered in blood from an ugly gash over his eye. He tossed away the large wrench he’d used as a club.
Not hard enough. Ash was already getting back up.
‘Let’s go!’ Dec yelled to Chloe. Spotting the case on the floor, he snatched it up by its charred strap and they ran out of the burning room.
Ash roared with fury and raced after them.
Joel hadn’t imagined it – the sound of Alex’s voice on the wind, calling his name. There it was again . . . It was coming from further up the mountainside.
He ran, leaping over rocks, stumbling through deep snow. As the slope steepened, he clamped the katana blade between his teeth and climbed like he’d never climbed before.
‘Joel!’ It came out as a scream this time, just the other side of a rocky overhang a few yards up the slope. He launched himself over it and saw her.
Alex was surrounded by a whole pack of goblins, desperately beating them off with a gnarled old tree root in one hand and a jagged lump of stone in the other as they attacked her from all sides.
In an instant he was there with her. One of the creatures that hurled itself at Alex fell back, headless. Joel’s blade rose and fell. He killed another, then another, striking again and again with all the energy that was left in him, left and right, screaming with fury and hitting and slicing until he was standing knee-deep in the middle of a slaughterer’s yard of dead or dying goblins.
Still they kept on coming. So many of them, swarming in from everywhere, their number growing faster than Alex and Joel could kill them.
And now the strength was beginning to ebb out of Joel’s body, drained to such a low ebb that he could barely swing the sword or even stand upright. He dropped to his knees and looked at Alex. ‘I’m sorry,’ he groaned.
Alex shook her head. ‘I’m not. At least this way, I don’t have to lose you a second time. Better we go out together, Joel.’
He didn’t know what to say.
‘You know, I love you,’ she whispered.
The goblins gathered around them.
‘Where’s Lillith?’ Zachary shouted from behind the rocks.
‘I don’t see her,’ Gabriel shouted back from the other side of the mountain path, where he and Kali had taken cover from the flying arrows. The shooting seemed to have abruptly died away. Gabriel craned his neck out a little further from behind the boulder. ‘No,’ he groaned. ‘Oh, no, no.’
Lillith was still on the path, a few yards away. She was lying on her face in the snow, her arms outflung. Black against the snow, the shaft of a goblin arrow was sticking vertically from her shoulder. Gabriel shouted her name again. There was no movement.
And now the pause in the shooting was explained. Dark shapes came scurrying down the mountainside. As Gabriel stared in anguish, the first goblins reached her and began dragging her away by the wrists. Others stood by, their hooded little heads jerking this way and that as they scanned the rocks. The nearest of the creatures plucked a fresh arrow from the quiver at its side. Two others had their bows already at full draw, waiting for a target to appear. Lillith’s body was out of sight now behind the rocks. There was the scrape of steel on stone, as if a blade was being sharpened.
Gabriel was fully aware of what was happening. The Masters had trained their little hunters well. They were using her as bait to draw the rest of them out. ‘I swear that if I survive this day,’ he murmured through clenched teeth, ‘I will strike back at the Übervampyr for what they have done to me.’ He lashed out his fist in anger, and a rock next to him split in two.
‘Let her go, Gabriel,’ Kali said, clutching at his hand. ‘She’s only your sister.’
Gabriel turned to her with a terrible look. ‘I have walked with Lillith since before you were born a human.’ He sucked in a long breath. He couldn’t stand it any longer. With a shout of rage, he tore away from Kali’s grip and leaped out from behind the boulder, charging wildly at the goblins.
A twang of a bowstring; he felt something rip through his shirt and scrape his side. Zachary was right behind him, his roar of fury filling the air. They could fire a hundred arrows into that huge body and he’d still be on his feet long enough to rip every one of them limb from limb with his bare hands.
At the sight of him, the goblins threw down their bows and ran. Gabriel hurdled a rock to see five of them clustered around Lillith’s prone body. A blade glinted in the dull moonlight as it rose and began to fall. Gabriel grabbed up a fist-sized rock and hurled it savagely. As the blade spun out of the goblin’s little grey hand, he was already on the creature, ripping back its hood and pounding his fists into its face with a ferocious violence that crushed the skull in like a seashell. Zachary dodged a flying glass ball and dashed two goblin heads together, broke the neck of a third with a flying kick and sent a fourth tumbling to its death down the mountainside.
By the time Kali had joined them, the remaining goblins had fled and Gabriel and Zachary were kneeling by Lillith’s side in the snow. Zachary was sobbing as he cradled her.
Kali stood over them with her fists on her hips, head cocked to one side, watching impassively.
‘Let me attend to her, Zachary.’ Gabriel gathered Lillith in his arms and rested her head on his knee. Her eyes seemed not to see him. Ripping the seam of her leather outfit at the shoulder, he grasped the base of the arrow shaft where it met the flesh and gave a hard tug. Black venom oozed from the wound as the arrow came out. Tossing it away, Gabriel pressed his mouth to the hole and sucked hard. He spat black on the snow, then sucked again; he kept on doing it until he tasted the sweet flavour of vampire blood on his lips.
‘I have drawn what I could from the wound,’ he said, laying her limp body back down on the snow. ‘I can only hope that it was not too late.’ He gazed down at her. ‘I cannot envisage eternity without her at my side.’
Kali’s eyes had narrowed and her lips were tight. Gabriel paid her no attention.
Lillith’s hand was dwarfed in Zachary’s great fists as he clenched it tight. ‘Come on, Lil,’ he pleaded. ‘Wake up. Come on, Lil . . . Wake up . . .’