4-10
When the deafening noise of straining metal and crushing force faded into a ringing echo in Gilead’s ears, he found that he had come to rest on what had once been the wall of Shati’s rear compartment, with Sara clutched tightly to his armored chest. It was the first time they had touched without even a frisson of discomfort on his part, though the plate no doubt helped.
“Sara? Make sign if thou’rt safe.” He let go of her shoulders: his tight grip had kept them together as Shati rolled, but was counterproductive now. “Sara?”
“I’m alright. That was… awful.” Sara shifted slightly. “I’m going to need a moment to manually ratchet down the tension on all of my muscles.”
Gilead gave her a moment. It was only after the fact, when he noticed how rapidly his heart was beating and felt the sour tang of terror in the periphery of his body, that Gilead realized how scared he had been. Not for himself: for Sara. He had been certain, completely certain, that she was going to die.
She pushed away from him, and Gilead let her go. The two of them, (who had just been in a car crash with no seatbelts) made it as far off the ground as crawling before Sara broke down laughing.
“How?!”
“How what?”
“How is your makeup still that intact? Juniper, did you paint that stuff on with magic?”
Juniper screeched at them from the forward compartment. “I nearly broke my fucking nose, now is not the time for this!”
Gilead and Sara helped get the others out of the wreck through the open roof hatch, all except for the Conductor of Justice, who had escaped the wreck before anyone else. Though, calling it a wreck was rather inaccurate; Shati had flipped over onto her side, carving a furrow in the ground as she did, but was otherwise mostly intact.
Wes surveyed the damage from atop the overturned side. “BLAST AND DAMN! ONE OF THE GHOULS FELL INTO THE GEARING ARRAY! MY BELOVED LAND STEAMER HAS SLIPPED A TREAD!”
Gilead had no idea what a tread was, or how bad it was to slip one. “Canst thou repair it?” he shouted.
“CERTAINLY, IN A DAY OR TWO, ONCE I HAVE ALL OF MY TOOLS! UNTIL THEN, WE’RE STUCK.”
Sara swore. While Gilead still disliked such unladylike language from her, he had to admit that he could sympathize with the feeling.
He scrambled back into the wreck, crawling on his hands and knees until he found the sword and shield he had pilfered from Ruthven’s manor; thank God neither had been damaged by the crash. By the time he made it back out, the others had started to form up in a cordon around the far side of the crash site: Wesley with his steam pistol, Vilena with her claws, Sara with her rifle.
A minute passed, then two, without even so much as a sound of claws scrabbling across rich country earth. The ghouls had retreated.
The Conductor of Justice flickered away, leaving only Wesley Wall in his place. “Do you suppose they don’t realize we’ve crashed?”
“Possible,” Sara replied. “Or maybe they’re waiting.”
Juniper threw up her arms. “Waiting for what? It’s already nighttime!”
Indeed it was, though it hardly felt like night. The vast expanse of golden runes that crisscrossed the heavenly dome over Scrapyard was brighter than a full moon, rendering the land below merely shadowy, not the true dark that Gilead remembered. There would be no better time for an ambush.
Vilena bared her teeth, forcing Gilead to look away. “No. Ruthven is not a patient man when he becomes enraged, and if I know anything at all it is that he is furious.”
“What, then?” Gilead asked. “What stratagem doth he pursue?”
Vilena’s eyes flitted back and forth. She cut a distinctly beautiful figure, shoulders hunched, claws spread, no rise and fall beneath her substantial chest.
“Something else is coming,” she said. “Something worse than ghouls.”
“What?” Qi Zhen asked. There was no reply.
Sara looked down at Zahra, clinging to the back of her waistcoat. “You should go. You’re in no state to fight whatever this is.”
“Okay,” was all Zahra said.
Gilead had understood that Zahra was unwell, even though she had the physical strength to remain standing, but he had not realized the severity of it until then. Zahra was a good child in almost every metric aside from obedience; that she would meekly go along with Sara’s order meant nothing good.
“I can keep her safe,” Qi Zhen volunteered. “I may lack the reserves to fight, but I have recovered enough to travel, and I know how to survive the wilderness.” They turned to Juniper. “Would you like to come with me?”
The fairy only hesitated for a second before nodding in agreement and moving to put herself next to the other two noncombatants. Qi Zhen reached down, and Zahra understood, leaping up into their arms. Her weight fazed Qi Zhen not at all.
The three of them made it about two steps before Vilena let out a feral hiss, turning her attention skywards. Lots of things happened very quickly. Sara chambered another round in her rifle and aimed it up. Wesley murmured his pretension phrase, bringing the Conductor of Justice back into the fray. Qi Zhen grabbed Juniper and leapt off into the woods in that strangely weightless manner of theirs, rapidly vanishing from view. And Vilena screamed a challenge.
“Try me! See if I fear a man who cannot even be bothered to fight his own battles!”
Gilead missed what she was reacting to until it was almost too late. Three shapes, blurs against the backdrop of the sky-runes, approaching fast on massive arcing trajectories. Coming right for them.
“CREATURES OF MIST, EH? FACE THE WRATH OF THE CONDUCTOR!”
He turned a dial on the heavy pistol at his belt, then aimed it towards the approaching figures. The hiss when he pulled the trigger was deafening, a shrieking buzz of white noise that made Gilead want to cover his ears. A plume of steam ten meters in length shot up into the air, turning the night suddenly hot and wet. One of the shapes grazed the edge of the plume, making a sharp turn in the air as it retreated, the other two rapidly turning to avoid the attack.
All three reached the ground at about the same time, solidifying instantaneously into the forms of three women, each one dressed similarly to Vilena. Gilead recognized Priya, as well as the pretty blonde one, Imogen, the latter being in the process of regenerating her lost arm after Wesley’s anti-air fire. The third was nobody he had met before, an olive-skinned woman with short, brown hair and an athletic frame, distinctly contrasting the plush femininity of the other brides.
“Tanyth?” Vilena hissed. “You’re not supposed to be here!”
Tanyth cackled. “Some of us are willing to go above and beyond for our loved ones. Unlike you, who has decided to betray him without even telling us!”
“You, of all of us, know that what we have is not love,” Vilena replied bitterly. “He’s going to marry a child next. Eight years old.”
Priya winced. “That explains the sudden change of heart…”
“Don’t go soft on me now, Priya! Now let’s take care of this: I’m thirsty.”
Sara was starting to learn her lesson about how fast vampires can be. Tanyth hadn’t finished speaking before she shouted out, “First Pretense: Watch the World Burn!”
“Oh hell, bomber!”
Sara turned her shoulder, detaching her arm at the elbow and hurling a gigantic explosive charge at the two vampires, but it didn’t work. Priya’s warning was fast enough for both of them to dodge out of the way in what rapidly reversed momentum into a pincer attack.
Tanyth crashed into Vilena, and the two were soon caught in a fearsome grapple. Unlike Priya, though, Tanyth knew what she was doing when it came to unarmed combat, and Vilena quickly found herself outmatched, one of her arms caught in a brutal pin. Gilead stepped into Tanyth’s flank and, once he had found an opening, thrust his sword directly into her side, between two of her ribs. Her ribs stopped the thrust before it could reach the heart, but Tanyth still dropped Vilena, pivoting to face Gilead.
On the other side, Priya had tried to go after the Conductor, only to be intercepted by Sara with a crushing explosive-powered hook to the jaw. Wes let her take the brunt of it, Sara’s doughy Pretension form able to absorb Priya’s overwhelmingly powerful blows while he turned the dial on the steam pistol once more. When next he fired it, it was significantly more controlled, a quick and short-ranged puff of high-density gas that shoved Priya back even as it charred her skin and hair. Sara had taken several bad scratches, but as long as her First Pretense held, she could give just as good as she got.
If it had just been two vampires, each outnumbered, then winning the day would have been easy. But Imogen’s obliterated arm didn’t hold her down for long. With an inhuman screech, she charged into the fray, her rage-driven display giving Gilead a split second to face her and raise his shield. She grabbed onto the steel plate, claws attempting to rip it out of Gilead’s grip, but his strength was too much. The shield remained firmly in Gilead’s hand even as his whole body, armor and all, was hurled six meters through the air, landing hard on his back.
Imogen was on top of Gilead in a second, his shield once again saving him from certain death. She reached around it, claws scraping off of his armor until he could bring his sword-arm to bear, heaving the blade directly into her throat, biting into bone and sending the briefest fear of decaptitative death into the vampire’s heart. Imogen reeled back, yanking the blade out of her neck as she frantically pinched shut the wound. Gilead had just enough time to heave to his feet before she returned, twice as feral as ever.
Imogen was no Ruthven, and the situation was different from that brutal beating, for Gilead was encased in (false) steel and not half as drained. She attacked again and again, lashing out with claws and pulling at sword and shield, but every attack, Gilead could counter. He was on the back foot against a creature so much stronger and faster than any vampire he had encountered in his previous life, but nothing would convince him to give up.
Slash after slash deflected off of the armor plate, and cut after cut bit deep into Imogen’s flesh, leaving her dress in tatters. Had she been mortal, even with her advantage in speed, Gilead could have killed her a dozen times over: but ever did the killing blow, a thrust into the heart or a full decapitation, evade him. And with each defense he had little choice but to push himself to the absolute limit, his endurance and acuity bleeding away one second at a time.
Meanwhile, without Gilead to distract her, Tanyth again fell upon Vilena, easily brushing aside her defensive maneuvers with superior combat skill. The brawl went to the floor, Vilena on her back as Tanyth pawed at her chest, trying to flay her open and reach her heart. The Conductor, out of the fray just long enough to reach a sense of environmental awareness, saw Vilena go down and turned the dial on his steam pistol yet another time. This blast was longer than the others, quieter, but the steam that emerged was no less fearsome, a huge vortex that ripped grass out of the soil as it passed.
When the vortex struck Tanyth, she was pulled back, her strength barely enough to prevent her from being pulled into the air. That was all the opportunity Vilena needed to strike back, punching again and again and again until blood poured down Tanyth’s face. She fought to her feet, and this time made sure to keep Tanyth always between herself at the tip of the Conductor’s steam pistol.
Priya, stunned by the burning agony of that very same weapon, left herself fully open for a vicious counterattack from Sara. With each punch she grew more daring, the detonations along her elbows and shoulders and feet growing louder and louder until each blow was the sound of a cannon firing. Priya may have been immortal, but her vampire body was still composed of flesh, flesh that could be turned to pulp by impossibly powerful steel-piston blows. Her bones shattered, blood spilled from her.
Imogen and Gilead parted for just a moment, the former silently furious and the latter sagging under the weight of his own fatigue.
“What are you?” Imogen sneered.
“I am hight Gilead du Carbennic, Knight of the Round Table and of the Grail, Knight of the Strange Belt. To destroy evil beings is my purpose.”
“Hn. Let’s see what you’re like without being able to use that shield of yours. It’s cheating.”
Imogen dissolved into mist and as though blown by a hurricane gale, rushed forward. Gilead spun about, assuming that she planned to reappear behind him, but it was a feint: she was angling for his shield. This time, without a chance to brace, when her claws seized around the edge of the metal, Gilead was unable to hold on, and his best line of defense was tossed off into the dark, skipping across the ground as it went. He pivoted, trying to put his sword in the way, but the disarming had rattled him, and Imogen had the advantage in pure speed.
She grabbed his armor by the collar, pulling him towards her. Her jaw unhinged and her fangs went to Gilead’s throat.
Sara struck Priya again and again, each impact harder than the last, her form growing feral from the weight of exhaustion physical and mental. Then she stopped, paralyzed. Throughout the night she had been switching back and forth between Zeroth and First Pretensions, running down her limited capacity to sustain the latter in need of any means of keeping up with the supernatural foes she faced. The time had come to pay the piper.
There was a flicker, and Sara was human again; human, and covered in deep slash wounds that poured with blood. She let out a single cry of pain, then slumped over in a faint. Priya had little eye to finish the fight, instead focused squarely on her fellow bride, caught between Vilena’s might and the painful stinging of the steam pistol. Even her limping was as fast as a mortal’s sprint as she dashed towards Wesley, bearing him to the ground and wrapping her hands around his throat.
Vilena screamed and Tanyth cackled. Vilena lunged, desperate and furious, but her rage lent her little strength. Tanyth, the warrior bride, caught her blow and redirected momentum, ripping Vilena’s shoulder out of its socket altogether and sending her to her knees to receive a vicious hail of kicks to the side, knees to the jaw, further stretching and ripping of her agonized arm.
“This is what happens to traitors!” Tanyth howled.
Imogen’s fangs pierced Gilead’s neck with the softness of a swimmer going under for the last time. A cold agony passed through him, then was subsumed by the gentle buzz of narcotic venom. He struck her a few times, elbows hammering into her ribs, but not even Gilead du Carbennic could overpower a vampire with mean strength alone.
His limbs gradually numbed, death settling around his limbs like a wrapped blanket. He was a child again, sobbing in his mother’s lap, the scar on his face still bleeding as moaned from a desperate need to understand why, why, why? Was this what Dindrane had felt as her lifeblood drained away? No wonder she was so serene if that was the case. The sword slipped from Gilead’s hands and thudded to the ground. There are three ways to kill a vampire: decapitation, a piercing blow to the heart, and fire. None of those were going to save Gilead now.
Imogen, feeling her prey grow weak under her grasp, adjusted his position like a lover, dragging his neck down and back, forcing Gilead to stumble a half-step closer to her, until his torso was pressed against her stomach. There was a sharp hiss, followed by a screech.
Gilead staggered as Imogen ceased to hold up his weight, as the pain of the fangs at his throat was instantly removed. His vision blurred, then came into focus: Imogen clutched onto her stomach, where a strip of her dress three fingers wide and stretching from one side to the other had been burned away, the flesh underneath steaming and cracking and bubbling.
There is a fourth way to kill a vampire. Holy objects. No ordinary cross will do it, they must be truly sanctified, objects imbued with holiness via their very construction. Such as, for instance, the hair of a sainted martyr, braided into a belt and worn at Gilead’s waist during the course of nine long years of turmoil and hardship.
Hands trembling from both weakness and righteous will, Gilead reached behind himself and undid the knot holding the belt in place. The hair fell into his hands, a single long strip. Taking one end in his palm, he wrapped it around the fist, then reversed the coil, continuing it around the opposite hand until both were combined into a single knotted hammer of faith and fist. Gilead staggered forward, mind blank aside from a single driving need to keep breath hissing through the gap between his teeth.
Imogen charged, and he met that charge with force, both fists thrust into her chest with all the might his muscles could muster, sending her flying back. He followed, screaming, hammering his hands into the side of her skull. Imogen’s hair caught flame, but even the heat could not dissuade Gilead as he struck again and again, pounding against her shoulder, her stomach, until at last she went to the floor.
A flicker of pity crossed Gilead’s mind as he unwrapped the belt from around his hands. But only a flicker. She had nearly killed him, after all, and Vilena had given her her chance. He dropped under his own weight, planting a knee on Imogen’s back, and looped the holy belt around her neck.
The loop formed an ichthys as he pulled with all his might, tugging until Imogen’s back arched off the ground, until every muscle from Gilead’s wrist to his stomach screamed from the overwhelming exertion. Blood still spilled down his back, soaking into the under-suit of his armor as he pulled the life out of the vampire until at last the burning effect of the belt’s sanctity burned through her throat and her head separated from her shoulders with one last mortal snap.
Gilead sagged. Hands rigid, colors before his eyes. Imogen’s body hardened, shrank in on itself beneath him. His heart no longer pounded in his chest; it had given up on sustaining his body, and his brain swam in the oxygen deprivation.
Priya screamed, sobbing in agonized confusion even as she clawed at Gilead’s paralyzed hands, grabbing hold of the belt just long enough to hurl it aside. Not that he had the strength to repeat what he had done. Tanyth picked up Imogen’s severed head, already mummifying, and cradled it to her chest as peals of grief flew skyward. The same sky that was now turning the red of an opened torso.
Priya grabbed Gilead by the hair and dragged him upright, screaming invectives in Marathi even as she broke his nose with one blow of her fist. His head lolled back. Gilead was too exhausted to ponder death; not twice in such rapid succession.
THUM-CRASH-BOOM-KABLAST
A colossal detonation sent all three of Gilead, Priya, and Tanyth flying, as the air was suddenly soaked in vermillion incandescence, the sky and ground made one by the brilliance of the light. A terrible wind flowed outwards from a single source, pinning the vampires to the ground even as it lifted Gilead up, granting him just enough strength to remain kneeling.
Dindrane stood in the center of the field, holding the Grail aloft over her head.
“Hail Vermillion! Hail Leviathan! Ironfather blesseth this day! Thou hast done well, Fallen Saint, and slain the unkillable. Now come, my love, and claim thy reward!”