DEVIL’S ROW Read online

  Elisabeth struggled to catch her breath behind the stinging gunshots. The pain wasn’t anything worse than a surface pinprick, but the silver closed her throat and lungs like the worst kind of allergy. Aetius wouldn’t have to worry about that. He would be dead if their ammunition pierced him.

  She hoped that they had squandered most of it on her army of pups. A comfortless, yet practical thought as the silver pellets poisoned her bloodstream. Her breathing turned into a labored struggle while her nostrils burned.

  Time to get out in front of the action. She trotted up beside Aetius to draw their fire. Once those guns clicked empty, they would not have the opportunity to reload.

  The male wolf growled in protest, outraged by this tenacity. Elisabeth would’ve scoffed at his useless display of chivalry if there were time, pushing forward, knowing full well that she was the faster beast.

  Another shot fired and then another. Elisabeth was nearly upon the familiar one when a silver pellet crashed through her chest. If the new wound brought fresh pain, she was numb and ignorant to it.

  Other men had guns too. A series of sparks bathed the clearing in whitish-yellow. Aetius allowed her to become the center of attention, understanding his fatal vulnerability to these weapons. He trotted around the clearing’s outer circle to ensure they couldn't hit a moving target while another shot pegged her through the loin. In the flashing sky, her coat was wet with blood.

  The guns were at last empty, and the fight was fair.

  She lunged for the familiar one, but the crusader ducked beneath her reach and tumbled through the dirt. She hoped Aetius would be there to scoop him up and tear his head off. No time to check as the others divided their focus between the wolves.

  Aetius’ jaws closed around the arm of an attacker and snapped the bone clear. It was not Him, but any dead man would do when there were this many to choose from.

  The others glanced at their fallen companion, and Elisabeth used this pause to drop her mouth low. With a lunge, her razor smile raked across an exposed neckline. The throat offered a wet crunch as she tore it free and swallowed it whole. She had no time to savor the juices spilling down her gullet.

  Two maimed and dying men dropped to now-sodden earth, and Elisabeth tasted the earliest hints of victory through the blood. Repelling them was easier than expected, and Nightfall would soon be housed upon their shallow graves.

  Neither wolf noticed the three additional men advancing from the forest behind them. She turned in time to catch a glimpse of bloodied wolf pelts sliding off their shoulders. That was how they evaded their delicate wolf senses.

  Cunning.

  They would've marched the mountain path single file, for it was too narrow to do anything else, while masking their scent in the blood and fur of wolves.

  That made her angrier.

  Elisabeth pushed her midnight mane against the back of her lover’s. Instinct allowed a hasty survey of the arena, aware that any more procrastination would result in bodily harm or worse. The crusaders closed a semi-circle around them. Two went on bended knees as their trembling hands readied crossbows. A third sprung forward, slashing his sword through the balmy night.

  Her reflexes anticipated this and parried the blade without effort.

  Aetius’ powerful joints bent for maximum spring in his pounce. He cleared the distance to the swordsman before Elisabeth could, toppling him in a flurry of angry claws.

  A marksman’s arrow whizzed past; a shot successful in attracting Aetius’ attention. He soared from the gurgling corpse and toppled the bowmen with outstretched talons. His nails smashed through their faces with a thunder crack. The thrashing bodies required an extra moment to realize their brains were destroyed before falling limp around the entrenched nails.

  Elisabeth focused on the remaining men as Aetius struggled to retract his paws from the broken faces. She flashed her teeth and snarled one final warning. Leave now, she tried to tell them, because maybe then they would be spared.

  They would never be that, but they were certainly free to think it.

  Her warning prompted caution in the killers, their own mortality never so obvious. The situation boiled to an impasse. The hunters looked reluctant to move against the black wolf. They watched both animals as Aetius brushed the bowmens' bodies through the dirt, arms finally free.

  Fresh blood was an aroma that got Elisabeth salivating. Thick strands of drool rushed down the rivet at the center of her tongue. Bloody spittle dangled off her jaws. She couldn't wait to feast.

  Aetius was done slaughtering the marksmen, and now it was two versus three. This fight was against madmen who surely believed themselves instruments of God, and that stoked her motivation further. In this age of enlightened thinking, when skepticism and atheism rose against the church’s reach, this mindset—blind devotion—was both archaic and bothersome.

  Elisabeth wished that she could return to her human guise long enough to tell them that their Lord and savior had abandoned them. It was knowledge that wouldn't matter to converted men, and they would never consider words flung from the mouth of a foul thing. Their destructive ignorance was entrenched, and made them worthy victims.

  Her eyes bounced between them, searching out signs of weakness. The softest among them was to be kept alive for torment and the familiar man would die, his time long past. Only he did not look ready to go. He stood ahead of the others, shoulders rising and falling in excitement. She sensed stimulation, unfettered resolve, perhaps, while eyeing the silver blade in his fist. A weapon poised to strike at just the right moment.

  He’s scared. The pressure eats him and he threatens to buckle beneath it.

  She tasted it from here—a sticky sweet stain on her huffing tongue. She wanted that delectable treat and shuffled her paws forward in order to claim it. His fear delighted what remained of Elisabeth’s humanity. Misguided men like him were commonplace, and had been since her turning. Nevertheless, they always died the same, with last-minute prayers to deaf, heavenly ears. Frantic cries that only incentivized her aggression. Gruesome bloodletting was almost never enough because her hatred for them was like nothing else.

  God’s love was a lie propagated by savvy clergymen for political gain. She supposed they would discover this nugget on their own soon, and that would have to be satisfaction enough. Elisabeth admired humanity’s willingness to exploit the goodwill of its own, and thought that nonbelievers were smart to turn their backs on such philosophies. God held no love for miscreants like these. How could he when so many atrocities were executed “in the name of Christ,” including one that saw a young girl hauled away from her ailing mother.

  That distant and foggy memory echoed like an old war wound and became another motivator in this fight. Her claws raked the earth for traction, readying a death charge.

  A pike exploded through the front of her chest.

  White-hot pain hit her in a violent spasm. Her back arched and she cried out as the blade obliterated her rib cage. A geyser of blood vaulted through the air, coating the frock coats of the front-facing killers.

  Her breathing collapsed and her knees gave out. She hurtled toward the dirt.

  Above and behind, the pike jostled upward with a grunt that prevented her fall. Her claws scraped at the slick blade jutting from between her breasts. Her body regressed into human form and her hands slipped off the wet silver, making anything beyond a fleeting grip hopeless.

  An armor-encrusted arm looped around her neck and hoisted her out of horizontal free fall. The pike jiggled from side to side and widened the wound while increasing the pain.

  All she could do about it was scream.

  “Here is how you die, filthy whore. Like the dog you are.”

  The pike tore straight down through her innards until the blade bounced off her pelvic bone and knifed back up, cutting a larger swatch through her organs. A shark’s fin sliding through a meaty ocean. It fell out her back and clattered. She dropped with it.

  Her vision blurred then. Disbe
lieving fingers grabbed at the vertical slit that ran down her length.

  “Take her head!” A voice called from above.

  Elisabeth dug her fingers into the dirt and closed them, pulling along like a dying dog.

  The men exchanged cruel laughter as a boot heel swung between her legs, but she was too numb to feel anything more than the general landing. Hands took her shoulders and spun her. Bloody hunks of earth flew past her lips in a cough while another boot stomped straight down onto her face and broke her nose with a crack.

  “Back to hell, bitch!” The broadsword sliced through the air and hacked the side of her face. Her jaw exploded, sending tiny bone fragments flying.

  The sword fell again, dropping in between boot stomps that trounced her into submission. The blade chopped through her neck with a fleshy explosion so loud she was certain that her head had been severed. Blind, she used the balls of her feet to push against the ground. A pile of flesh and bones moving on instinct, and to nowhere in particular.

  She heard Aetius in the distance, buried beneath a cluster of hacking swords. One final shred of attention that lingered just long enough to register somewhere in her dissipated mind, then it was as lost as every other thought.

  Elisabeth slugged on, her head dragging. Her vision waned, but cloudy eyesight caught a glimpse of wolfen limbs flailing as blood streams shot high into the night. For a moment, it looked like they had stained the moon.

  An image that signaled an end to the dream of Nightfall, for there was no way of getting to him.

  And no way to escape.

  Only thing left was to die. Succumb to these wounds and meet Aetius in the beyond. Anything was better than this. Two hundred years ago, she might have thanked these men for breaking her curse, but without him—

  Queen Alina expected her huntress to perform certain duties. Duties that Elisabeth had once savored: bearing daughters and sons for the queen’s kingdom. Not through her loins, but through her bite. Time spent in the arms of her lover had fostered resentment for that role—a position to which she had no desire to return. Dying with Aetius meant leaving Alina’s world with a guilt-free conscience. It was not rebellion if you were dead. At this point, dying would be just fine.

  Except that you cannot.

  Elisabeth pushed her legs up and down and slid across the clearing. A few remaining embers from tonight’s fire popped in the pit beside their bedrolls. Hours ago, she had made love there and then lapsed into a confident sleep, certain that nothing could hurt them.

  The tear down her chest, the bullets lodged in organs, and damaged jawline begged to differ.

  She couldn’t see the cliff side in the dark with failing eyesight, but knew that she needed to reach it. Her killer called out from somewhere out of sight, an airy taunt that sent her into a scurry. It was impossible to tell what was being said. She was too far gone for that. The only hope was losing them, and that felt unlikelier with every passing moment.

  Think about the rage.

  It was a welcome distraction from the pain and she embraced it. Driving anger that recalled those rehabilitative nights in an Inquisition prison two centuries earlier. She had wanted nothing more than to break out and destroy those who had gleefully violated her then, and that hatred flooded back as if it had never left.

  Elisabeth’s retreat took her between two rocks and her hands coiled around the cliff. The night winds rustled her hair as she attempted a deep breath, catching only a tired wheeze of relief. Beneath her was the only clear path up and down the mountain. The walk would be arduous even without fatal injuries and eager murderers on her heels.

  Far below, the watery ravine was little more than a blur.

  A wolf’s whimper came from somewhere behind, severed by a blunt chop. Aetius was gone and the night was quiet.

  Then hurried feet dashed toward her.

  They probably thought this was justice.

  “Kill her before she drops!” The scream was desperate.

  “Kill her?” That voice belonged to the stealthy one who had run her through. “I'll take that bloody cunt for a victory fuck…always wanted to screw one of these things.”

  Elisabeth pushed off over the edge and slid down the sheer rock wall. It chewed her already mutilated face and the tumble threw her onto a dirt path, knocking out what little wind her lungs held. No time to recover. She crawled to the precipice and rolled off.

  Then she was falling.

  The wind chapped her during the plummet. She hit the water so hard that she was certain she’d missed the lake entirely and splattered on the rock basin beside it. But her arms cracked back, dangling like noodles. She drifted atop cool water, her head slipping beneath the surface while her body teetered on the brink of functionality.

  She slipped beneath the lake and drifted to the bottom. Her back raked across the rocky floor and her eyes fluttered.

  Drown now and Aetius died for nothing.

  Elisabeth couldn’t truly drown. Such was her ‘gift.’ But no varcolac could recover in duress, so she struggled to her side and kept watery groans pent as she fought to reach the surface. At last, her head broke the water and she sucked the open air as best she could.

  Her hands slipped through the wet dirt while she tried to climb far enough onto shore to stop from sinking once more. The mud felt oddly soothing and cool on her torn body and broken face. Despite the ragdoll tumble from the heavens, she remained intact.

  She had to get up and keep moving, but there was no chance of that happening. The killers had not come this far to leave her fate to chance. No, the familiar one would find her and finish the job.

  She had only delayed the inevitable.

  It would take them the rest of the night to descend the mountain. It took a varcolac more time than that to recover from less injury. Still, if she could regain just enough strength to slip away.

  To do that, she needed to sleep.

  So she did.

  ***

  The animal’s roar rolled off the mountain and blasted across the treetops like a ferocious wind gust. A growl that scattered all living things in the area.

  But Codrin was not alive.

  He lifted his head off the cavern floor and squinted. His skin felt like dry leather, tight and constricting, while his vision registered vague shapes; cloudy shadows that were sprawled across the floor around him. His ears functioned considerably better, and that’s what brought him from slumber.

  His stomach rumbled. Something crawled on top of his head. He scratched it and wound up scraping away two strips of corroded flesh, along with a tuft of wispy white hair.

  “How frustrating,” he said.

  Voices were almost never used down here. His words stirred and became an echo that aroused the others. Soon the rest of them were in the throes of early waking, too. From somewhere behind him, the creature whose name he didn’t know might have stirred in its chamber.

  Codrin’s heart would have pounded if it worked. He called the fiend strigoi viu because he didn’t know another word that more accurately described the monstrosity. If this witch heard their awakening, it or she would be the one determining the best course of action. Her needs had to be fulfilled before all others’.

  That couldn’t happen.

  Codrin’s task was finding blood for the clan, and this was as close as they had ever been. Their land was in strife and amidst a drought, susceptible to dark opportunism. The Devil’s Row moniker had been nothing if not earned over the last few seasons. As such, Codrin’s people had gone unfed for so long that their strength was all but sapped. They were barely strong enough to rise with the moon, let alone infiltrate what few unsuspecting villages remained.

  The clan had positioned several sentries throughout the land, each with orders identical to Codrin’s. But that howl was close by. The fates had decided that he was to be the hero.

  “Rise,” he told the slumbered as they stretched across the cool cavern floor. They had chosen this outpost because of the witch’s invita
tion. It was mostly safe here, and the temperature this far below ground remained the same in the summer as it did the winter. Long slumbers were easier and more comfortable. Better representative of a soil sleep.

  The others might’ve protested Codrin’s arrangement with the witch had they known. The price of asylum had been their three weakest bodies, paid immediately upon arrival. She took them as soon as they slept, and in exchange, gifted them with safety for as long as it was required.

  Apparently, even witches worried about the scarcity of victims in times of imperial unrest.

  “Why do you awaken us?”

  Codrin studied the face of the one who had asked—a woman whose name he did not recall. His disdainful glare receded some as he was stunned by the cruelty with which age had treated her. Her face was gaunt, as if someone had stretched a thin sheet over a skeleton. Her lips were without color, and pellucid flesh looked like it might tear upon touch.

  “There are travelers nearby,” he whispered.

  The woman got off her knees and fumbled for her cloak. It was not only her face that was skeletal, but her body as well. Recessed, with jutting ribs, sagged breasts, and contracted hips. She slipped the robe over her scraggly figure and dropped to the ground, her palms pressed against the cavern floor.

  Their sleep was deep and to be pulled from it was often disorienting.

  She coughed twice—much too loud—and said, “I do not see what we are supposed to do about travelers.”

  Codrin decided that he did not like her. “Careful,” he said. “This will require us to work together.”

  Around them, four others rose, each resembling graveyard cadavers. They staggered and groaned as though their old bones could barely house what little weight remained atop them.

  Codrin would never admit that she was right, but agreed all the same. How were they supposed to drink in this condition? The witch would wake them on occasion, feeding them whatever drops did not fill her phials. Meager offerings that kept them cognizant and little else. In order for his task to be successful, they were going to need more strength than those driblets afforded.