Chapter 48 | Rirth
Rirth
I plunge my blade into a rotten heart, pull back, and hear the monster wheeze and splash a mouthful of slick blood onto the dirt before it slides down at my feet.
Then I let out a breath. It’s a ragged one, for sure. In front of me are the cathedral’s doors, closed, ominous stained glass reflecting moonlight on the hillside below me.
I glance over my shoulder.
I’ve made it up faster than my Silverknights. They’re valiantly fending off a swarm of vampires that came from the east, pouring over the hill like a great wave of filth. I was already nearly to the summit by the time they charged in.
Now there’s dozens of the filthy bastards separating me from my contingent, wreaking havoc on my men and women, clawing at their shining cuirasses and breastplates, drawing out grating squeals and harsh clangs.
My soldiers scream their battle-cries. They fight like hellmakers, and I’m torn between jaunting down the hill to join them in the wholesale slaughter, or barging into the cathedral like Sephania ordered me to.
By this point, the humans scattered to the left and right of the cathedral have either been evacuated or fled into the fog from their captors. I can’t be sure, and I can’t turn back to find out.
My only way is forward. It has to be. If any other humans are in that massive church, they deserve saving.
Gripping my sword tight, I rush forward—
Only to see a blur out my left periphery, rounding the side of the cathedral from the north. I spin, sword drawn, knees bent, sliding to a halt and kicking up dirt—
Skartovius Ashfen stares at me. Behind him, bodies flood down the hillside to join my fighters. No, the people behind Skartovius are vampires.
With a shocked gasp, I snap my gaze to the hill. My mind screams: Treachery!
Then my head tilts. The vampires Skartovius brought move like the wind and they’re fighting . . . other vampires.
The arrogant nobleblood smirks at me. “Not a sight you see every day, is it?”
“You came,” I breathe.
“Of course I came.”
“Sephania wasn’t so sure.”
He scoffs, high and haughty. “Bullshit. I’d never forsake my little temptress.”
“Join me?” I nudge my chin toward the cathedral. “I reckon there will be plenty more in there.”
“Gladly. My blade lacks a significant sheen of blood. Lead the way, Silverknight.”
We charge together past ornate pillars holding up the facade of the building, under the awning they keep erect. We put our hands on either side of the double doors, carved with wolf’s heads and raven’s eyes—
And Skartovius hisses. Pulls his hand back like he’s touched fire. I reckon he has. His palm is smoking as he shakes it out.
“Fuck.” He frowns at me. “No good for a vampire.”
My brow furrows. “You’re telling me there aren’t vampires in that fucking church of the Damned?”
“Ones that are initiated to their faith, perhaps. Not the uninitiated, like me. She has created a barrier for her diabolical purposes.”
“That clever bitch Valenthia,” I growl. “Keep out the dangerous vampires, keep only the sycophants inside.”
“Precisely.” He quirks a handsome smile at me, and it reminds me of Culiar, which makes my soul ache. My friend-turned-lover who died in one of this man’s treacherous shadowgalas. “Looks like you’re on your own, Silverknight. I’ll watch your back.”
How times change. Killed my lover, now we’re working together.
I grit my teeth, nod firmly, turn my head—
And feel a presence drop into the shadows behind me from the nearest pillar. Skartovius’ eyes tells me he sees i, over my shoulder, moving fast, skulking like a phantom.
I grip my sword to spin—
But then Skartovius’ hand shoots out, sending his sword flying at me like a dart, perfectly straight, reflection of my eyes in the point of that blade, and I have no time to twirl or swing or do anything but duck.
The sword warbles over my head, singing in my ears an inch above my skull—
Thudding into something. A gurgle and splatter of warmth on the back of my neck.
From my knees, I wheel round—
To see Indokkus Shirin clutching at his chest where Skartovius sword has embedded. He spits up blood, shocked, stumbling back before collapsing. Ashfen’s sword toss was a perfect strike into his former soldier’s heart.
“NO!”
The heart-stricken wail has me twisting again, recoiling as I turn to running feet pounding the pavement toward me—
Vanison Shirin’s sword is cocked back, a foot away from my face, and I gasp as his arm descends, trying to futilely lift my sword in time to parry him, knowing there’s no chance—
Shadows fly from my own fucking face, flitting in the moonlight, and wrap around Vanison’s wrist as his sword-arm descends—
Catching his momentum like an immovable stone in midair, elbow bent, grimace and teeth bared in his gaunt face.
Skartovius flicks his wrist, twisting the man’s arm as the shadow moves.
“You fucking traitor!” Vanison screams over his shoulder as the nobleblood glides up behind him.
Skartovius plucks Vanison’s sword from his hand as easily as plucking a daisy. He releases his shadow-hold on the human and Vanison spins to him, screaming, “Why did you—”
Skartovius hacks halfway through Vanison’s neck before the human’s words end on a gargle with a wet bubbling and spraying of blood across the nobleblood’s front.
Vanison collapses at my feet. A dark pool spreads swiftly beneath him. I shudder a shaky breath. My knees feel like giving out.
The nobleblood flings Vanison’s blade away and it clatters onto the ground. “As you were, Silverknight,” he mutters, beginning to walk away.
“He called you traitor,” I call out, squeezing the handle of my sword harder. It’s hard to fathom I’m still alive, and that it’s due to Lord Skartovius Ashfen.
He freezes five steps away. I think I’ve made a mistake. He leers at me over his elegant shoulder, lips a thin line in his smooth, pale face. “Or was it you he called a traitor, for sending him to his execution?”
“No.” I shake my head. His vampiric lies won’t sway me. “He was talking to you. Why would Vanison Shirin call you a traitor, Lord Ashfen?”
A flicker of a smile shows on his face, half-silhouetted by the moonlight creeping in through the pillars. “Because I told them they could kill you after this was over.”
My teeth clench. He says it so easily. I grasp for hope. “So it was a scheme, then? One of your many, to get them when their guard was down?”
“No, Silverknight.” He shrugs. “I simply changed my mind.”
My eyes bulge, my jaw loosens, my lips part. “The vampire behind me was your lieutenant for decades. And you . . . simply changed your mind?”
Another shrug. So arrogant, so thoughtless, so disaffected. “It dawned on me, Silverknight: You are much more important to Sephania than Indokkus was to me. If I let you die, I’ll never hear the end of it from her.”
“So you saved me for her sake.”
He scoffs, the fucking bastard. “Well it certainly wasn’t for mine.
” He plucks his sword from Indokkus’ chest and sheathes it.
“What,” he mutters near my ear, “you think I did that out of the goodness of my heart? Have you learned nothing about vampires in all the time you’ve been fighting them, Captain Rirth? ”
My skin crawls. I stare forward in disbelief.
His sharp chin juts down the hill behind us. “Now you’d better run along into that church, boy, before the vampires I brought see what you did to their two allies.” He gestures at the dead Shirin brothers at our feet.
I croak a sound somewhere between an incredulous laugh and a gawk. He wouldn’t dare. Then my rational mind takes hold. Of course he fucking would.
I throw the doors to the cathedral open before he can change his mind again.
Daggers come out from behind my tunic when I realize I’ll need them more than my sword. Just as quickly as my blade slams home into its sheath at my hip, I spin the daggers out from my back belt and toss them left and right.
The one on the left twirls into a vampire’s shoulder, pinning his dirty green robe against the wall. The one on the right gets an approaching vampire’s eye and sends him wheeling in place.
My sword comes back out as I march down the center aisle of the nave. There are two more robed zealots here, rushing at me in a much more coordinated effort than the sluggish beasts outside. These ones have swords, too.
Even so, I’ve been fighting all my life.
Whether it was the Grimsons, the Silverknights, or for my own life at the bottom of a mug, I’m trained for these occasions.
These fucking fools were reading tomes and filling their heads with nonsense before they were turned. Their swings are clumsy and disjointed.
I move into the pews to my left, barring the one charging at me, and then wheel to my right and duck over the sloppy swing from the rightmost vampire thrall.
As its arm sails overhead, I crunch my fist into leathery skin and hear a satisfying snapping of ribs.
The male vampire stumbles back and bares its fangs—
Just before I sweep my sword across its throat then jab it in the chest as it’s going down.
The female bloodsucker to my left has figured out the obstacle pew by now and leaps over it—
To earn my sword thrust through her collar as a reward for her misguided journey. She croaks, eyes widening, and I pull back and finish her off through the heart.
The last two vampire priests with daggers sticking out of them try to come at me at the same time.
A quick roundhouse from my knees sends them scattering.
By the time they come forward, I’m already leaping off a pew’s bench, kneeing one in the face, and then driving my sword through its shoulder down into its heart.
The last one, with the newly missing eye and a bloody socket where my dagger sits, slices at my exposed shoulder and draws blood.
I hiss, push myself back from the bench crowding me, and force its arms up as I tumble into it. We go down to the ground in a great crash of wood chips and grime.