Bloodforged (18 page)

The freed girls huddled in a terrified clump and backed away as she approached, looking more afraid of her than they had been of their captors. She didn’t blame them.

‘What are you waiting for?’ she snarled as she passed them. ‘Go! Run!’

They ran, stumbling up the ramp as she crossed to the leader of the ceremony, who lay panting and limp in the circle, his hand still spiked to the ground. At least she’d had the forethought to put him aside before her madness had consumed her. She could still question him.

He raised his hooded head as she approached, then struggled, only to shriek as he tugged on his pinned hand. ‘Lord of Pleasure protect me!’ he wailed. ‘You are impossible. You can’t–’

She knelt on his chest, cutting off his babble, then tore off his hood and veil. He was surprisingly ordinary – a balding, middle-aged man with the look of a prosperous shopkeeper. He stared up at her with wide eyes, sweating and grey with fear.

‘Who are you?’ he whimpered. ‘What do you want?’

‘Tell me of your mistress,’ she said. ‘She who means to claim Praag for her own. Who is she? What is this awakening you spoke of?’

The man shook his head. ‘I will not speak. There is nothing you can do that will make me betray the cause.’

Ulrika smiled. ‘Is that a challenge?’ She pinned his free hand with her other knee, then caught up the hammer and another spike.

‘No!’ the man cried. ‘No, no, please!’

‘Then tell me,’ she said.

‘I cannot!’ he wailed. ‘I dare not!’

Ulrika put the spike to his wrist, and raised the hammer. The man shut his eyes, but kept his mouth clamped shut. She hesitated, but though he continued to cringe, he still said nothing. She cursed under her breath. He was willing to take the pain. He might be willing to die from it before he talked. She had no compunction against torture, if it worked, but the man seemed a true fanatic. Even in fear and pain he would not talk.

The twitch of the vein in his neck as he turned his head away drew her eye. Perhaps there was another way.

She put down the hammer and spike and stroked his throat. He blinked at the unexpected contact, and turned white-rimmed eyes to stare at her.

‘What are you doing?’ he bleated.

‘I have been cruel to you,’ she murmured, bending low over him. ‘I have given you great pain, and I am sorry for it. Now I will sooth you.’

He shrieked as she opened her mouth and extended her fangs. ‘No! What are you? Stop!’

She lowered her lips to his neck and bit into his flesh as gently as if she were kissing an infant. He spasmed and thrashed, but then, as she began to suck at the vein he froze like a rabbit, and after a minute, relaxed with a sigh. She had been afraid his blood would be tainted like that of the Norse marauder she had blooded during the attack on the caravan, but the cultist was apparently not so far gone as that. His blood tasted like any other man’s. She closed her eyes as the sweet salt savour of it poured down her throat and filled her with soothing warmth, but she could not lose herself. She could not feed for the enjoyment of it. She took another pull, then drew away, licking her lips.

This time when he looked up at her, his eyes were heavy-lidded with desire. He reached his free hand up to her. It shook.

‘Again,’ he said. ‘Again.’

‘Answer me first,’ she said. ‘Your mistress?’

‘I cannot,’ he whined. ‘I will never betray her.‘

Her lips drifted back to his neck, brushing it lightly. She licked at the blood that welled from the wound. ‘Never?’

He shivered with lust, but then shook his head. ‘Never.’

‘We shall see.’ She drank again, deeper this time, and longer. His pawings got weaker the more she drew from him, and his moans became mere whispers.

She pulled away and looked at him again. His skin was pallid from lack of blood, and his lips blue. She turned his head and fixed him with her gaze.

‘Your mistress?’

‘I… I can’t think.’

‘Tell me,’ she said, hoping she hadn’t taken too much. He was barely conscious now. ‘Tell me and I will give you more.’

His face twisted with confusion and fear. ‘She… she is a champion of our god,’ he murmured at last. ‘A mighty warrior of the north, chosen to lead us to glory.’

This sounded unsettlingly like the warlord of whom Chesnekov had spoken – the thing, neither man nor woman, that hid in the nearby hills. ‘And her plans for Praag?’

‘We will open its gates to her… after – after the awakening,’ he said, reaching towards her with a slack hand. ‘She will be its queen, and we her consorts. Now, please…’

Ulrika frowned. Could a few lunatics in a basement truly conquer Praag from within? With outside help, perhaps. ‘Where is she now?’ she asked. ‘And what is this awakening?’

The cultist shook his head. ‘I don’t know. I swear to you. Only the master knows. We… are not trusted with such things. Now, please, kiss me again. Please…’

‘Who is the master?’

‘I have never seen him,’ moaned the man. ‘He speaks through… intermediaries. Please, you must not deny me.’

She nuzzled his neck. ‘It is a terrible thing, is it not, to be a slave to pleasure? Tell me where I may find one of these intermediaries, and I will give you what you wish.’

He hesitated, then sobbed and looked away from her. ‘I dare not,’ he moaned. ‘They will damn me. I will be condemned to eternal… torment.’

A thought came to her at this. She smiled at him. ‘But I can save you from that. I can give you eternal pleasure. You could serve a different mistress.’

The man’s eyes grew wide. ‘You… you…?’

Ulrika nodded, holding his eyes like a snake mesmerising a mouse. ‘You know what I am. You know what is within my power to grant. I would keep you at my side forever.’

The man swallowed, staring at her. ‘Forever? You swear this?’

‘On my father’s grave,’ she said.

The man hesitated, then closed his eyes. ‘I know not his name, nor his face, but he lives on the Street of Jewellers, in apartments above the shop of Gurdjieff, the silversmith. Six long knocks is the signal. He will let you in. Now please… please,’ he said, turning his head to show the wound in his neck. ‘Give me what you promised.’

Ulrika bent low over him again, then whispered in his ear. ‘My father was never buried. He was burned on a pyre.’

‘What!’ The man tried to turn his head, but she held it still with the heel of her hand, then tore his throat out with her teeth.

She rose to her feet as he clutched at his neck with his free hand, trying to press closed the gouting hole while he drowned in his own blood.

‘May your gods give you the welcome you deserve,’ she said.

She smiled as she walked back to the cage to collect the sack with her things in it. That was the way it should be done – calmly and neatly, without savagery. She had won the information she required, had hurt no one except her intended victim, had begun the healing of her leg with the blood she had taken from him and had maintained control at all times. This was the way she would be from now on.

In the cage, she tore off her soaking shirt, emptied the burlap sack and used it to mop the blood from herself, then threw it away and pulled on her doublet and cloak. She no doubt still looked a mess, but it would have to do. There was no time for primping.

A noise from the chamber as she tugged on her boots brought her head up. She hopped awkwardly to the bars on one foot and looked around. The shadow of a limping man was disappearing up the ramp.

Ulrika cursed. One of the cultists hadn’t been as close to death as she had thought. Had he heard her talking to his leader? Did he know he had betrayed his superior? She stamped her heels down into her boots, then ducked through the gap in the cage and ran for the ramp.

The man heard her and limped faster, lurching through the open arch at the top of the ramp and into the night. Ulrika jogged after him, ripping the iron bar from the ribs of the corpse she had left it in on her way. She had the man’s scent now. She could hear his pulse. He would not escape her.

She ran out into the yard of the demolished distillery and saw her prey stumbling towards a ruined gate. She started after him, then slowed as something incongruous caught her eye. There was a richly furnished black coach standing in the middle of the rubble, its driver watching her, its horses blowing steam in the cold night air.

‘Stand where you are,’ said a voice behind her.

Ulrika turned. A lean blonde woman in a long coat and fur hat was stepping out of the shadows of the distillery. She wore daggers tucked into a piratical red sash wrapped around her waist, and held a Kossar sabre in her hand.

The sound of the coach door opening made Ulrika turn again. Two women in fur cloaks and rich dresses of antique cut were stepping down from it. One was tall – nearly as tall as Ulrika – with a cold, proud face and the carriage of a queen, while the other was a tiny withered redhead, as dead-eyed as a porcelain doll. They glided between her and the gate, through which the fleeing cultist was just vanishing.

A dread foreboding prickled Ulrika’s skin as she saw the women, but whoever they were, they would have to wait. The cultist came first. She made to dart between them, but the tall one caught her arm in an iron grip and held her back.

‘Stop,’ she said.

Ulrika wrenched free. ‘Let me pass!’

The woman in the long coat stepped in and put the tip of her sabre to Ulrika’s throat as the other two hemmed her in.

‘Not yet,’ said the tall one. ‘We would speak to you first,
sister
.’

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

THE ANCIENT REGIME

Sister.

With that single word, Ulrika knew her suspicions had been correct. The shadows that had followed her all night had coalesced at last, revealing themselves to be Lahmians. She looked around for the male vampire who had watched her earlier, but he was nowhere to be seen. Was he their scout? Their dog? Their assassin?

‘Let me go,’ she said. ‘I must stop that man.’

‘You must do nothing until I allow it,’ said the tall vampiress. She pointed at Ulrika with an ivory fan. ‘Who are you? Of what bloodline? Why have you come to Praag?’

Ulrika didn’t like her tone. ‘What business is that of yours?’

The woman drew herself up. Close to, her face was a map of tiny dry wrinkles, covered, but not hidden, by thick white make-up. Her eyebrows were painted on. ‘Everything that occurs in Praag is my business,’ she said. ‘I am Boyarina Evgena Boradin. I rule here by order of the Queen of the Silver Mountain, and all of the blood who abide here do so at my sufferance. I will have my answers, or Raiza will have your head.’

Ulrika flicked her eyes to the woman who held the sabre. She was a hard, hawk-nosed warrior, her lank blonde hair hanging from under her fur hat like a curtain. She looked more than capable of taking Ulrika’s head off.

‘But he’s getting away,’ Ulrika rasped.

‘There are other mice,’ said the little doll, giggling. ‘One is not so important.’ She too was wrinkled and painted, and Ulrika could see that her cascading mass of red hair was a wig which seemed too big for her head.

‘You don’t understand,’ said Ulrika. ‘He goes to warn his leaders of my coming. They will vanish. I will lose them!’

The ancient boyarina looked entirely unmoved. ‘You are correct. I do not understand. You seem to be conducting some vendetta on my lands, and sowing slaughter at every turn without thought to consequence. We cannot have rumours of men drained of blood whispered in Praag. We cannot have tales of man-sized bats. You threaten our safety with these foolish antics. The chekist are already asking questions. Now speak. Who are you?’

Ulrika ground her teeth in frustration. ‘My name is Ulrika Magdova Straghov, and I have come to Praag to defend it against the hordes of Chaos.’

The shrivelled redhead laughed. ‘You are late for that.’

‘Hush, Galiana,’ said Boyarina Evgena, without looking away from Ulrika. ‘And your bloodline?’

Ulrika hesitated. It didn’t seem wise to mention her true parentage here. They were suspicious enough already. Telling them her sire had von Carstein blood would not ease their minds. ‘My mistress was Gabriella von Nachthafen,’ she said. ‘A Lahmian like yourselves, but I serve no one now, and acknowledge no line.’