Chapter 31 #2
‘This is pathetic, even for you, Raleigh.’ Lukas pushed him, sending him staggering, long enough to stoop down and retrieve Raleigh’s sword.
He weighed the silver blade in reluctant awe.
‘Silver? This is quite the upgrade,’ he said, nodding to the sword he’d taken from the armoury, now in my hand. Then he blurred.
I thrust the sword in Raleigh’s direction. ‘Take it!’ I cried.
Raleigh rushed towards me. I felt his hand coaxing the sword from my fingers, before my eyes caught up. He secured his grip, spinning gracefully, and drove the blade into Lukas’s stomach. Lukas fell to his knees, eyes bulging, as Raleigh unsheathed in a slash of crimson.
The Queen watched impassively from the altar, utterly unreadable.
Lukas started to laugh. ‘You can’t kill me with—’ His words stuck, hands flying to the gaping wound that was once his stomach. Where his skin should have already started to stitch itself together, it was beginning to smoulder. ‘How—’
‘This is a ceremonial sword,’ Raleigh said, lips curling coldly, ‘gifted to my great-great-grandfather on the eve of his investiture.’ He bent low, tilting Lukas’s chin with the tip of the blade.
‘It isn’t steel, it’s silver alloy, blessed by the Bishop of Triz.
’ Lukas’s chin was starting to smoke. ‘Didn’t you know? All Linfords carry silver.’
Lukas lurched away, but fell, crying out from the exertion. He craned his head towards the altar where his Queen awaited, her icy beauty cast in shadow. ‘Constantina,’ he rasped, reaching for his one salvation.
The Queen took a single step closer, and her lips twisted in disgust. ‘I didn’t realise you were so weak’ was the last thing she said to him before Raleigh plunged the sword into his back, and his skin turned to ash.
She watched silently as the ash settled at Raleigh’s feet. He turned to her and raised his sword.
‘I did like him,’ she said. ‘I do wish the two of you could have gotten along.’ She lifted her eyes to Raleigh. ‘Well, you’ve slain my general. You’ve divided my court. Are you finished with your little tantrum yet?’
‘You’re the one who’s finished,’ Raleigh said steadily. ‘I’m done taking orders from you. You have no more power over me, and you’re unprotected. You’ve lost.’
She raised a brow. ‘You think I have no power?’
‘Clara has my vial,’ he said, his emotion a mask. ‘I don’t answer to you.’
The Queen’s laugh echoed around the crypt, bouncing shrilly off the cold stone. ‘You believed that farce? You’re so lucky that you’re pretty, you idiot boy. The vials are symbolic.’ She reached out, beckoning Raleigh to her.
He swayed, his whole body fighting the pull, then fell to her spell. His eyes were wide, alert, without a trace of enchantment, but his legs dragged him right to her, until he was kneeling at her feet.
The Queen gripped his face with one hand, forcing him to look at her.
‘I created you. Without me you would have rotted to dust centuries ago.’ She bent low, so close her lashes fluttered against his cheek.
‘If you’re so desperate to die, you know you could have asked. Of course, now I can never let you.’
She kissed him. A muffled sound of protest erupted from Raleigh’s lips as he went taut against her mental hold.
My blood felt like acid, rage curdling through me. ‘Don’t touch him,’ I screamed.
The Queen broke the kiss, but didn’t release her grip on Raleigh, her nails biting harshly into his cheek. ‘You’ve only survived this long through sheer luck,’ she said venomously. ‘Do not dare to threaten me.’
My eyes darted to where my dagger had slid. It glimmered behind the statue of Raleigh’s father. But I was too obvious; she caught the motion, her lips splitting wide. ‘Go on and try, human.’
It was a trap, one so obvious it left me paralysed. If I could reach it before she moved, if I could get there first … No, it was impossible. She would kill me the second I lifted my foot.
‘Nothing?’ she cooed, running her fingers through Raleigh’s hair. ‘See, Raleigh, your little pet has much more sense than you. Such a shame she can’t come home with us.’ She lowered her lips to his ear. ‘Because you’re going to kill her.’
Raleigh’s whole body convulsed. ‘No.’ His arm began to shake, fingers straining to drop the sword as the compulsion forced them to hold it. He rose to his feet like a puppet, swaying heavily under her influence. ‘Clara, run!’
Jerking as he resisted his orders, he lunged towards me.
He slashed widely with the sword, his movements clumsy, sloppy.
I rolled to the side, then scrambled to my feet as the blade crashed down.
Before he could swing again, I hurled myself towards the spot where my dagger lay waiting.
It was the only hope I had at saving us both.
I skidded to my knees when I reached the tomb, throwing myself to the ground to reach behind the statue. My fingers ached from the stretch. Just as I caught a glimpse—
Something pierced through me. I jerked away, gasping, unable to breathe, scrabbling at my chest for an injury I couldn’t find. My heart stilled. I couldn’t breathe. Had Raleigh …
Everything slowed around me. The crypt felt like a whirl of noise and colour and blinding lights. I must have collapsed; cold stone pressed into every part of my flesh. How long had I been on the ground? Why wasn’t I already dead?
Raleigh, where was Raleigh? All of my muscles screamed in protest as I moved my head to search for him. They felt disused, as if they had atrophied in the time I’d lain there. When I found Raleigh, he was paralysed.
‘Clara!’ His scream was too loud. I gritted my teeth, bracing against the echo in my eardrums. Everything was too much. My mouth felt too full. I ran my tongue over my teeth, then froze, clarity washing through me like poison.
I clamped my mouth shut before the Queen could notice, but Raleigh already had. His horror condensed to something deeper, something feral, then bled away to something unreadable. He lowered his sword. His order had been fulfilled.
I was dead by his hand.
‘Fight, Clara.’ The command ran through me, but it was no hypnosis. There was no sticky haze, only clarity. This wasn’t a command from a vampire to an entranced thrall. It was the command of a sire to his spawn.
‘I don’t believe that was my order.’ The Queen approached Raleigh, grabbing him by the collar and spinning him to look at her.
‘My order was for you to kill her, not stand here and watch her die of whatever this is.’ She waved a hand at me as I rolled over, hiding my face from view. ‘I want her dead by your hand.’
‘My orders are fulfilled.’ He jabbed his sword at her, but she dodged him easily and grabbed his throat, her nails pressing crimson crescents into his flesh.
‘I’ll have your eyes for that.’
‘You won’t have the chance,’ Raleigh rasped.
The Queen began to laugh, but behind her, I was already dragging myself to my feet. It felt like I was moving through sludge, but time was dragging too.
My knife. I needed my knife.
The Queen’s laugh pierced my ears, so shrill I wondered how I’d endured it before. I screwed my eyes closed and reached under the tomb again. This time my hand struck silver.
It felt like removing something from a hot oven. Though my gloves protected me from the worst of it, the silver threatened to melt my flesh if I dared hold it too long. I forced myself not to look, knowing that if I saw my own weapon everything would be over.
Dread washed over me. Terror. Behind my eyelids my greatest fears played out before me.
Raleigh, broken, tortured, forced to live.
Moira and Enrique strung up and unrecognisable from their own fate.
My father, Yann, the people of Orlfen bled dry like cattle.
I forced myself to watch, to endure, knowing that if I didn’t they’d become real.
And with all the will I had, I forced my arm forward and brandished the crucifix carved into the blade.
The Queen and Raleigh both recoiled in unison. She let go of him in her attempt to shield her eyes.
‘I said. Don’t. Touch. Him.’
The Queen hissed. She vanished, and then a rushing force had me flying across the room.
I crashed into a statue. Felt the marble crumble around me.
I tried to push past my daze to rise to my feet, but she was already there.
She grabbed me by the collar of my coat, then hurled me back to the ground.
Sharp pain exploded in my chest. I gasped, choking on the conflicting sensation of my body trying to catch its breath and the fact that I no longer knew how to breathe.
‘Pathetic,’ she said and brought her foot crashing down on my ankle.
I screamed, white pain blinding me to everything else as the bone shattered. Every individual splinter sliced through muscle in wave after wave of agony.
‘Leave her alone!’ In her distraction, her hold over Raleigh had slipped. He ran at her, brandishing his sword, but all she did was raise one hand. Raleigh halted. His limbs shook, face contorted in the effort to fight against his bonds.
‘Give me the sword,’ she said calmly.
Raleigh hesitated for a long moment, but finally her hold over him won out. He slowly and shakily lowered the sword into her waiting hand.
Her fingers closed around the steel hilt as though it were forged for her. ‘Good boy,’ she said, then drove the blade into his stomach.
A deafening noise sliced through the air and it took me a moment to realise it was my own scream.
Raleigh staggered backwards, mouth open and quivering.
The Queen withdrew the sword, just as Raleigh had done to Lukas, and repositioned the blade just over his unbeating heart.
I dragged myself to my feet, but my ankle quivered under my weight, then collapsed.
I could feel the splintered bone puzzling itself back together. Too slow. I’d never make it.
‘You really were my favourite toy.’ She pressed the blade in, just enough to pierce the first layer of skin.
Raleigh screwed his eyes shut.
‘It’s such a shame to lose you.’
I clawed closer. My pain was nothing.
‘But you did this to yourself.’ She gave one final terrible smile.
Then something shattered.
The Queen whirled around, leaving a thin burning gash across Raleigh’s chest with the motion. Her entire left side was soaked, dots of red marring her skin. Then she started to smoke.
Yann stood at the base of the stairs, the satchel Father Leon had given me strapped over his chest. He had a glass vial clutched in one hand. I knew, then, that its twin had been the source of the shatter. Holy water.
The Queen lurched towards him as the left side of her face began to melt. She couldn’t vanish as she had at court. She was slow, vulnerable.
Yann threw the second vial. She swatted it away, sending it shattering uselessly against the wall. His other hand was back in the bag. But she was upon him.
He pulled out the Orlfen crucifix and pressed it hard against her chest.
In the fleeting second when I caught a glimpse of the silver, I realised why Raleigh hated it so much.
The shape was meaningless; a weapon made to kill and an ornament made to worship were incomparable.
That cross had witnessed the lives of every soul who’d ever lived in Orlfen.
For centuries it had stoically absorbed the hope of christenings, the joy of weddings, the sorrow of funerals, and every last moment had been drawn into the very silver itself; it was a blazing beacon of life.
And every second of it burnt white against the Queen’s chest as it burst into flame.
She shrieked. Fingers clawed at the growing cavity, but Yann only held tighter, even as his fingers blistered.
My ankle screamed as loudly as the Queen as I forced myself to my feet. I staggered. One step. Two. The reek of melting flesh filled the air. Horror from the presence of Yann’s crucifix made me want to retch, but I raised my dagger.
And buried it in her back.
The Queen gave one final ear-shattering scream. Then I was staring into Yann’s startled eyes as she burst into ash.
It was over.
Her ash fell between us like putrid snow. Yann threw the burning crucifix aside, unable to hold on any longer. The flames extinguished as it clattered to the ground, and I hurled my coat over it to smother the repellent it emitted.
And then the world was still. Stiller than I knew it could be. We’d won. Raleigh was free. Raleigh was—
‘Clara …’
I spun to face him, and all joy went dead.
Raleigh was still on the ground, clutching his stomach, crimson pooled around him.
I rushed to his side, skidding to my knees. What was happening? He should have healed more than this by now. Yes, it was a silver blade, but the wound had been in his stomach, not his heart. It shouldn’t be fatal. Not for a vampire.
The blood rushed from my head.
The Queen was dead. Raleigh wasn’t a vampire.
He was human. And he was dying.