Bloodforged (37 page)

Ulrika wondered, as they hurried away from the screams and clash of steel, if these horrors had always been here, or if the Chaos magic Arek Daemonclaw’s sorcerers had focused on the city during the siege had birthed them.

As they followed the sewer into the Novygrad, the tunnels soon became too populated to navigate, and they were forced to return to the surface. There were just too many mutants huddled in the shadows, and in their own territory, they were no longer so shy.

Ulrika cringed, wilting, as she and Stefan climbed back out onto the ruined streets and the sun struck her again like a hammer. It was full daylight now, and the ten blocks to her hideout in the abandoned bakery were utter torture. By the end, she was so weak Stefan had to carry her. Her entire body throbbed as if it were on fire, and her arms and legs felt like they were made of paper and twigs, but her hunger nearly drowned out all of those things. She needed to feed desperately. The fighting and the burns and the sun’s leeching heat had sapped all the strength she had taken from the apprentice’s blood, and it felt as if she would crumble to dust if she could not have more.

Stefan laid her on the baking table by the oven and unwrapped her cape, then hissed in sympathy as he saw her blistered skin. His skin was unmarked, but as red as a boiled lobster, and his hands shook as he tucked her pack under her head for a pillow.

‘Wait here,’ he said. ‘I will bring us sustenance.’

Ulrika could do nothing but nod and lie back, staring at the brick ceiling as he hurried away. She could not sleep, or relax. She shivered like a plucked wire, and blinding jolts of pain shot through her body with every twitch. She had been burned by the sun before, but that had been the merest touch of the flaming brush compared to this. The backs of both her hands looked like milk on the boil, bubbling with hideous, pus-filled translucent blisters. She probed her face. It was the same. And under that bright pain was the dull sick throb of the wound Jodis had given her with the silver knife. The cut on her wrist was as black and brittle at the edges as burnt paper.

After an interminable time, in which she drifted in and out of waking dreams where women in gowns made of cobwebs clawed at her with hands like hawks’ talons, and where a faceless man in cultist’s robes cut open her veins with a shard of onyx that pulsed red at the centre, she woke to footsteps and voices above her.

‘I don’t take no damaged goods,’ a rough-voiced man was saying. ‘Only the youngest, most beautiful girls.’

‘I assure you,’ came Stefan’s voice, ‘she is so beautiful I wish I didn’t have to part with her, but in these hard times, one needs money more than beauty, eh?’

Ulrika frowned as the man with the harsh voice laughed. She didn’t understand what was happening.

‘Don’t I know it,’ said the man. ‘Right, then, where is she?’

‘Just down here,’ said Stefan. ‘In the cellar.’

There was a pause at that. ‘The cellar? This ain’t some trick? You ain’t got some mates down there, waitin’ to jump me?’

‘Of course not,’ said Stefan smoothly. ‘Here. You may hold my sword if you wish.’

‘Nah,’ said the hoarse voice. ‘Nah. It’s fine. Can’t be too careful though, you know?’

‘Indeed,’ said Stefan. ‘Now let me light a lamp and we shall go down.’

Ulrika raised herself up on one elbow and drew her sword as she heard the scritching of a flint. Was Stefan going to sell her? Why? Where did this betrayal come from?

Yellow light blossomed in the arch that led to the stairs, and steps creaked down them. Stefan entered the room with a gaudily dressed bravo behind him. The man lifted his lantern, squinting into the darkness and revealing curling moustaches and a wide, feathered hat, which he wore over a black bandana, like an Estalian bandit.

‘Where is she?’ he asked.

‘There on the table,’ said Stefan. ‘Waiting for you.’

The man turned towards the table, then recoiled, gagging. ‘Her face! What happened to her face?’

‘Oh, that will heal,’ said Stefan. ‘She only needs a good meal.’

And with that, he tore the lantern from the man’s hand and shoved him towards Ulrika.

Ulrika threw aside her sword and caught the man’s arms as he screamed, her fears allayed. Stefan hadn’t betrayed her. Indeed, he seemed to have gone out of his way to pick a victim she would approve of – a predator of the worst kind. It would be a pleasure to drain him.

The slaver thrashed and tried to get away, but as weak as she was, she was stronger than he. She pulled him close, knocking off his hat and gagging on the stink of cheap scent and pomade, then sank her teeth into his neck.

Cooling relief flooded through her body as the blood spilled down her throat and his struggles weakened. Her dry tissues swelled and smoothed and the pain of her burns and the cut from the silver knife began to lessen. The deep-sea pulse of the slaver’s pumping heart countered the throbbing of her head and enveloped her in soothing salt waves. Her eyes closed and she clung to him like a lover, wrapping her arms and legs around him and pulling him down on the table.

Too soon, a gentle hand rocked her shoulder.

‘Enough,’ said Stefan’s distant voice. ‘Enough. I too am hungry.’

Ulrika batted at the hand. ‘Leave me be!’

Stefan caught her wrist. ‘Enough,’ he said again. ‘You will be sick.’

Ulrika glared at him for a moment, unable to understand the words, but then reason returned to her and she let the man go. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

‘No need to apologise,’ said Stefan, pulling the man from her. ‘Your need is great, but there will be more later.’

He bit the man precisely where Ulrika had, and she watched, fascinated, as the man’s hands struggled feebly, then ringed Stefan’s waist and clung to him. It shouldn’t have shocked her that a male victim should feel pleasure from the bite of a vampire of the same sex – had not poor Imma, the maid at Herr Aldrich’s house, pledged undying love to Ulrika after she had fed upon her? Nevertheless it did, but at the same time it was somehow arousing. Stefan was strangely gentle with the man, supporting him and stroking him as he drank, and not pulling or tearing at his neck.

When he had finished, and the man hung limp in his arms, Stefan carried him to another table and laid him on it, folding his hands over his chest. Stefan’s eyes, when he turned back to Ulrika, were glassy and heavy-lidded.

‘We will take care of him later,’ he said, stepping to her with a smile. ‘But first we must take care of you.’

Ulrika frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

He reached out and turned over her hand. The blisters had shrunk, but they were still there, and still painful, and the black cut of the silver knife was still dark, and had not entirely closed.

‘You are not fully healed,’ he said. ‘And you have lost much strength. It would take many victims and many days to return you to the height of your powers, and we haven’t time for that, but there is another way.’

Ulrika drew back as he looked into her eyes. ‘What other way?’

‘I have strength to spare,’ he said, and turned his head to expose his neck. ‘I would share it with you.’

Ulrika blinked, shocked. ‘You want me to… to feed on you?’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Surely you have heard of this before.’

‘Y-yes,’ she said. ‘But I was told it was… lovemaking.’

He smiled again. ‘It can be. But it also heals and imparts strength. Do you want to face those northern daemon-lovers again while weak and sick?’

She shook her head, remembering Jodis’s flashing long-knives, but still she hesitated. ‘Does it not also bind one to the other? Make them loyal to each other? Like the blood I shared with Boyarina Evgena?’

‘It forms a bond,’ he said, nodding. ‘And stronger than that of blood drunk from a bowl. We will be as brother and sister. You will find it hard to turn against me, and I will find it hard to turn against you.’

Ulrika frowned. Was that what she wanted? Stefan had been cold at first, but he had come to be a good companion to her. Did she want him to be more than that? It would certainly be advantageous to make it harder for him to betray her, but what if she became besotted with him and couldn’t turn against him if she needed to?

‘I will not press you,’ he said. ‘If you wish to remain in pain that is your prerogative.’ He leaned in to her and turned his head again. ‘I merely make the offer. The decision is yours.’

Ulrika looked at his strong, slim neck, and the thick blue vein that ran beneath the alabaster skin. There was a pulse there, borrowed from the man from whom he had drunk, but slower and stronger than any human pulse. She could smell the blood through the skin, clean and pure, and without the human stinks of sweat and perfume and illness that so often masked it. Though she had just fed, she found she was hungry again, desperately hungry. Her burned skin begged for relief. Her depleted veins begged to be filled. Her heart begged as well. It too wished to be filled.

Slowly, like a blade drawn by a lodestone, her lips drew closer to Stefan’s neck, then kissed it. He trembled but stood still, hands at his sides. The pulse beat slow and heavy under her lips, like the pounding of a galley master’s drum, and just as insistent.

She could resist no longer. Her fangs extended and she bit, remembering at the last moment to be gentle, and then drank. Stefan grunted and steadied himself against her, and she held him in her arms. His blood was richer than any she had ever taken from a living man. Its power flowed through her like lava, not just warming her, but enflaming her. It was as if it had been distilled, cleansed of all impurities and made into an elixir of strength.

Her head whirled as emotion coursed through her, though whether it was hers or Stefan’s, carried along on the blood, she didn’t know. Great joys, titanic sorrows and all-encompassing rages brought her to the verge of tears in turn. With each sip she felt she was learning more of Stefan’s heart, his loyalty to his father, his hatred for his father’s enemies, his affection for her, his loneliness, his lust.

At last she could take no more. It was too rich, too overwhelming. She shuddered and slumped back on the table, gasping and looking up at him. His eyes were closed.

‘It was… it was…’ she said.

‘It was, indeed,’ he said, opening his eyes with difficulty and giving her an unfathomable look. ‘You… you are strong in your drinking, sister. You could pull the heart from a man.’

Ulrika’s eyes widened in alarm. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I haven’t–?’

He touched her cheek and shook his head. ‘Do not apologise. It was a gift I am blessed to have received.’

She smiled sleepily. ‘It is you who has given me a gift,’ she said, holding up her hands. They were healed. Even the cut from the silver knife was only a thin black scar. ‘I have never felt stronger. Thank you.’

Stefan took the proffered hand. ‘No thanks are necessary,’ he murmured, kissing it. ‘But, I too have wounds. If you would allow…?’

Ulrika hesitated at this further step. It was when one was fed upon that one lost one’s will, but how could she refuse Stefan after he had given so freely of himself? She pulled him down beside her and turned her head. ‘Take what you will.’

Stefan encircled her in his arms and lowered his lips to her neck. She shivered as he kissed her, both aroused and vaguely unsettled. The last person to drink from her had been Adolphus Krieger, the vile predator who had made her what she had become, and the feel of Stefan’s lips on her throat reminded her of her blood father’s soft manipulations, of the way he had toyed with her and pretended she had a choice in what he did to her. Was Stefan the same, as Evgena had suggested? Was he tricking her in some way? To some unfathomable end?

She almost pushed him away as doubts crept into her heart, but memories of Krieger’s kiss, of the pleasure it had given her, began to push them aside. It had been a pleasure that, to her shame, she had found herself begging for when he denied her it. Her hands remained where they were and she lay still, tensing as Stefan’s sharp teeth dragged across her skin, then sighing and clutching him tight as they pierced her flesh with a delicious shock of pain and found her vein.

She closed her eyes as he began to draw blood from her with gentle pressure. This was a different sort of pleasure than taking blood. That was the pleasure of hunger sated and strength returned. This was the pleasure of control lost and the drifting, sleepy rapture of tension released. The dark memories of Krieger faded away, to be eclipsed by rosy dreams of flying, of gliding with Stefan like dragons in a sky of blood. He was leading her, drawing her on in his wake, and she was happy to follow, to let him choose the path, to give herself up to his will and let him do with her as he pleased. If he wished to drink his fill and let her die, so be it. She would die in bliss, floating towards his warm red sun until it consumed her in its molten core.

She groaned in dismay when he raised his head and the kiss ended. It felt as if a cord between them had been cut, and she was suddenly cold and alone. She cupped the back of his neck and pulled him back down again, but he resisted.

‘I dare not,’ he said. ‘Lest I weaken you too much.’

‘Then let me take more from you,’ she said. ‘And you can take it again.’

She pulled his mouth to hers and bit his lips and tongue, drawing blood and sucking greedily. He bit back. They clawed at one another, tearing away each other’s clothes and writhing against one another.