Bloodforged (20 page)

This made her pause. Something was amiss. The gangsters were stirred up. Did they know she was coming? How could they?

She slipped past the patrol and followed her earlier path up to the roof to the louvred vent, then stuck her head in and looked around. The warehouse was empty and quiet, but she could detect a faint constellation of heart-fires at the edge of her senses, in the direction of the offices. She dropped silently to the rafters and padded across to where she had left her sword. The relief that flooded her as she belted it around her waist was embarrassing. She had felt naked without it.

She tiptoed across the rafters until she was over the door that led to the offices. She could sense pulses behind it, but the voices were coming through the wall directly beside her – a first-floor office? She edged along the beam to the wall and put her ear to it. More heart-fires here, seven or eight, all grouped close together, and a harsh voice trying to sound smooth.

‘Friends,’ it was saying. ‘If you found the goods we provided not to your liking, I will gladly find you replacements for no charge. We aim to please, and–’

‘Do you think I’m here for money, Gaznayev?’ said another voice, this one dark and rich. ‘You planted a damned cuckoo in our flight of doves, and I’ll know the reason why.’

‘Cuckoo?’ wheezed a third voice. ‘She was a bloody hawk! Fifteen of us she killed. Fifteen!’

Ulrika froze, her claws digging into the wall. They were talking about her. The men in the office were cultists, putting Gaznayev on the spot for including her in the shipment of girls.

‘You can’t hold us responsible for that,’ Gaznayev was saying. ‘I don’t know nothing about it!’

Ulrika hopped down from the rafter and stalked eagerly to the door. By a stroke of luck, she had found her lost lead again. She would question the man with the dark voice about the leader of the cult. Perhaps he was the leader himself.

There were more murmurs behind the door. She listened.

‘Easy, friends,’ said a voice she recognised as that of the bull-necked gangster from earlier. ‘Don’t do anything foolish. The bosses are just talking, that’s all.’

‘Then you should lower your weapons as well,’ said another voice.

Ulrika smiled. Tensions were rising among the minions as well as the masters. Good.

A shout came from above. ‘None of that! None of that! Kino, stop him!’

A clash of blades and a rumble of boots and falling furniture followed, and was immediately echoed behind the door. Ulrika drew her rapier and dagger. Now was her time.

She wrenched open the door and darted through. Inside was a small office, with desks along one wall and flailing bodies in the centre. Bull-neck was bashing a cloaked man over the head with a boathook, while his scrawny companion was staggering back from two more, a dagger in his chest.

Ulrika sprang and ran Bull-neck through the throat before he knew she was there, then cut down the two cultists as they turned to face her. Scrawny writhed in pain on the floor. Ulrika raised her sword to him, then recalled his treatment of the girls in the cage and turned away. He didn’t deserve a quick death.

The sounds of fighting from above ceased as she crept up the narrow steps. Only Gaznayev’s voice continued, though it was so high and frightened it was hardly recognisable.

‘I don’t know!’ he was shrieking. ‘I don’t know! They was all just girls! We took ’em from the usual places, I swear!’

Ulrika raised her head and looked though the railing at the top of the stairs. Another office, this one with a single large desk at the back wall, and dead men all over a mangy rug. Two were hooded cultists, but the rest were gangsters. Kino, the sly villain who had asked questions at the Blue Jug, lay with his sword slack in his hand and his eyes staring blankly over Ulrika’s head, weird violet smoke curling from his half-open mouth.

Standing over the dead were five more cultists, cloaked and hooded, and in the middle of them, on his knees, a grizzled old tough in fine clothes, clawing at his throat, his face purple. The same violet smoke that drifted from Kino’s mouth was thick in his, and had invaded his nostrils too. He was drowning in it.

‘Let me go!’ he gasped. ‘You must… believe me!’

The cultist before him held up a clenched fist. He was as anonymous in his hooded cloak as the other four, but Ulrika’s witch sight saw around him a shimmer that warped the air – a warlock.

She gathered herself to spring. She would need to strike swiftly, before he could turn his magics upon her, for she had no counters to them. But just as she was about to vault the rail, he turned and looked directly at her, his hands stretching wide and glowing with dread power.

‘Come out!’ he cried, as Gaznayev collapsed behind him. ‘Show yourself!’

Ulrika snarled and cleared the rail in a single bound, leaping for him. Three of the cultists rushed to defend him, swords appearing from beneath their cloaks, while the fourth backed away, shrieking and pointing.

‘It’s her! It’s her! The fiend from the cage!’

Ulrika hacked left and right, trying to bull through the cultists by main force, but these were of a different calibre to the men she had faced in the distillery, and did not give ground.

She snarled and disarmed the one in the middle, but before she could finish him, a snake of purple smoke weaved past him and forced itself into her nose and mouth, burning her throat with the taste of incense and black lotus. She fell back, coughing, but what would choke the living did nothing but annoy her. She did not breathe to live, only to speak. She recovered and killed the disarmed one, then drove back the other two.

‘A vampire!’ cried the warlock.

‘Didn’t I say?’ shrilled the man who cowered behind him. ‘Didn’t I say?’

Ulrika disembowelled the left-hand swordsman with a whirling slash and shouldered the other into a chair, but before she could impale him, the warlock cried a guttural word and she was suddenly paralysed with agonising ecstasy. Great pulses of excruciating pleasure snaked through her body, rippling down her arms and throbbing between her legs. She staggered back against Gaznayev’s desk.

The last swordsman recovered and attacked, knocking Ulrika’s rapier from her quivering hand and cutting deep into her hip. She grabbed the blade and held it tight, though it cut her palm, then stabbed her dagger at his throat. He caught her wrist and they struggled, each trying to break the other’s grip. It was ridiculous. She should have had twice his strength, but the agony and ecstasy that coursed through her made her as weak as a child.

‘I know not why you seek to destroy us, bloodsucker,’ said the warlock, his left hand flickering with purple flames as he stepped beside the swordsman. ‘But not even the aristocracy of the night will defeat the children of the god of pleasure. Our master will prevail. Our queen will conquer!’

The flames entwining his fingers blazed higher.

Ulrika knew what was coming, but couldn’t stop it. She couldn’t let go of the sword or break the cultist’s grip.

The warlock raised his hand, the purple fire roaring, but just as he made to hurl it at her, the diamond-paned window behind him exploded inwards, and a figure in grey and black burst through feet-first to land in a crouch amongst the dead men as glass rained all around him.

The warlock whipped around in surprise. ‘Another fiend!’ he cried, then shot his flame at the intruder.

The man swirled his grey cloak in front of his face and caught the fire upon it, then flung it aside as it was consumed. The cultist swordsman ripped his blade from Ulrika’s hand and charged him. Ulrika collapsed to the floor, still limp with excruciating ecstasy, and heard as much as saw what followed – a roar of defiance, a shriek of pain and the cultist hit the floor clutching his bleeding chest.

‘Burn, vampire!’ cried the warlock, thrusting out his hands as the dark figure advanced on him.

The intruder dropped flat as billows of purple flame shot over his head, setting the walls and furniture on fire. He sprang up again and leapt for the warlock, but the cultist retreated, spreading more fire, then fled for the stairs.

‘Brother, don’t leave me!’ screamed the last cultist, who still cowered in one corner.

Ulrika heard a door slam below, and the receding laughter of the warlock, quickly drowned out by the roaring of the flames that devoured the room. The intruder backed away from them, then knelt beside her and turned her over. She squinted up, eyes burning. It was the vampire from the Blue Jug, he who had watched her from the rooftops as she fought Raiza.

‘Can you stand?’ he asked.

Ulrika nodded, then winced as he pulled her up. The enervating ecstasy had faded now, but the pain from her hip and hand was dizzying. She gripped the desk to steady herself, then jerked away. It was on fire. The flames were all around now. The walls, the rug, the stairs, the ledgers on their shelves, all were burning, and the heat beat at her like the pounding of heavy surf.

The vampire crossed to the remaining cultist, who was curled on the floor, hacking and coughing from the smoke, and hauled him up. The man shrieked and fought him, but the vampire just slapped him and shoved him at Ulrika.

‘Feed,’ he said.

She caught the cultist around the throat and pinned his windmilling arms, then hesitated. ‘But the fire–’

‘You need strength,’ snapped the vampire. ‘Hurry.’

Ulrika tore the struggling cultist’s hood and veil back, and bit hard into his neck, then moaned with relief. The vampire had been right. The pain of the hip wound receded and new strength flowed into her arms and legs as the cultist’s blood spread through her body. Though she had fed well on the cultist in the ceremonial circle, fighting for her life against the Lahmians and resisting the warlock’s spells had taken more out of her than she had realised. She pulled hard at the pumping vein.

‘Enough,’ said the vampire. ‘We must go.’

Ulrika reluctantly lifted her lips from the cultist’s neck and let him drop. The fire had crept even closer. She could hardly move without touching flame.

The vampire turned to the window. It was ringed with fire like the flaming hoop dogs jumped through in a Strigany circus.

‘It is a drop to the street,’ he said. ‘Be prepared.’ Then he sprinted through the flames and dived headlong through it into the night.

Next to the desk, Gaznayev woke screaming, his legs ablaze. ‘Fire!’ he cried inanely, beating at the flames. ‘Save me! Help me!’

Ulrika ignored him and faced the window, then charged forwards and dived through the shard-toothed mouth of flames as the gangster bellowed and pleaded behind her. Cold air kissed her skin and the street shot up at her alarmingly. She tucked into a flip and landed in a perfect crouch beside her rescuer – then crashed forwards on her face, her hip screaming.

From somewhere in the distance, the dark voice of the warlock roared, ‘They have escaped the fire! Kill them!’

Running footsteps echoed after the words. Her rescuer hauled her roughly to her feet and into the shadows of the next warehouse. There was an iron sewer grate there. She reached for it, ready to haul it up, but the vampire stopped her.

‘No,’ he said. ‘They will know the sewers better than we do. To the roofs.’

Ulrika nodded, then climbed unsteadily up the wall of the warehouse behind him. He was already starting off across the angled slates as she pulled herself onto the roof. She groaned and followed, limping and hissing as she tried to match his leaps from building to building on her wounded leg.

At the peak of a high roof, she paused and took a last look back at the blazing warehouse. It hadn’t worked out precisely as she had imagined it, but Ulrika had killed Gaznayev and put him out of business, just as she’d intended.

After leading her for a few more blocks, the lank-haired vampire stopped on the roof of a shop and looked out over the dark streets. Ulrika stumbled to a stop beside him, then sagged against a chimney, weary and bloodsick.

‘We part here,’ he said, and stepped to the edge. ‘Farewell.’

‘Wait!’ called Ulrika. ‘Stop.’

The vampire turned, his dark eyes cold. ‘Yes?’

‘You will at least allow me to thank you,’ she said, pushing herself upright again. ‘I owe you my life.’

The vampire stared at her for a long moment, his angular face unreadable, then spoke. ‘Why do you bother with the affairs of men?’

Ulrika paused. It was an unexpected question. ‘I… I have sworn to protect Praag. These daemon-worshippers threaten it. They plan some sort of “awakening” when Mannslieb is next full that will allow them to open the gates to a champion of–’

The vampire waved an impatient hand. ‘As the Lahmian said, there are always cults, and they always have plans. Besides, you knew nothing of them at the start of the night. You were tailing common gangsters until you stumbled upon those caged women.’

Ulrika bridled. He had spied upon everything she had done. ‘What business is it of yours what I do?’ she said, her voice rising. ‘How I live is my affair. I don’t require approval from any of you!’ She slouched sullenly against the chimney. ‘Why don’t you leave me alone?’

He eyed her again for a moment, then shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Pity, I suppose.’

Ulrika looked up, glaring. ‘What?’

The vampire continued as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘I admit I was intrigued by you at first. You looked capable, and I have need of a capable hand. But after following you, I don’t believe you would be an asset.’