The Von Carstein Trilogy: Vampire Wars by Steven Savile

Author:Steven Savile
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2017-12-06T15:55:27+00:00

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

BRING OUT YOUR DEAD

THE IMPERIAL CAPITAL, ALTDORF

THE BIRTH OF THE NEW YEAR

The wolf entered the capital at dusk.

Jerek moved silently, with the grace of a predator, through the darkening streets. It felt like so long ago that he had last walked amongst the living, like a man. It was a lifetime ago.

The denizens of the city lived with new caution, casting suspicious glances back over their shoulders as they walked from shadow to deeper shadow, doorway to alley to doorway, expecting at any moment the claws and teeth of death to drag them down and revel in the slaughter of their flesh. Von Carstein’s war had carved this new world.

They had no idea that the wolf could dress in human clothing, that the monster could walk unnoticed in their midst, looking for all the world just like any one of them. He did not enjoy the deception.

Jerek pushed open the door to the Crooked Crone and walked into the taproom.

No one turned to stare. No one cried, ‘Fiend!’

Licking his lips, the wolf called over a serving girl and ordered a pint of the house brew.

He handed her a bruised shilling and took a seat by the fire, tempted by the warmth.

Jerek didn’t know where to begin. By rights, in the wake of Pieter’s spectacular failure at Nuln, he should have returned to Drakenhof. He hadn’t. He had come to Altdorf, city of spires, in search of von Carstein’s signet ring. It had become an obsession, a disease. To his way of thinking, if he could find it, so could anyone else, and he couldn’t allow them to. That meant he had to find it, and he had to destroy it.

Only it wasn’t that easy.

The last glimmer of humanity in the wolf might have wanted to ­shatter the promise of dominion that the ring offered, but that was nothing against the hunger of the damned beast within him. The beast craved it. Inheritance: the word gnawed away at him. Like hunger, it saturated his corpse. He wanted it destroyed, yet all the while, he hungered for it.

The beast was growing more powerful by the day, demanding its right to eternity.

Soon it would be impossible to deny, and then he would be forever damned.

He warmed himself by the fire.

The taproom of the Crooked Crone was busy, women with easy smiles worked the long tables, while men with loose purse strings spent their shillings and pfennigs as if they believed that tomorrow wouldn’t come, and who could blame them in these uncertain times? Let them take their pleasure when and where they could.

Men, deep in their cups, hunched over a rickety table playing knuckle­bones. They cursed, money changed hands, they rolled, cursed some more and more money moved across the table. Win some, lose some, the drinkers didn’t seem to care. They laughed, talked of life and love, and pulled occasionally at the serving girl’s skirts as she wove a path around them. Jerek sat awhile, enjoying the easy camaraderie.

Constellations of conversation moved around him.

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