[Mathias Thulmann 01] - Witch Hunter Read online

  Gregor detached himself from the wall. “I do understand, father,” he said as he walked toward the bed. “But you must understand something. You must understand that it was not your place to take all those lives, no matter what you hoped to achieve, no matter who you hoped to protect. No good can come from such a thing. Can’t you see that?” A moan of despair rattled from the aged frame of the patriarch.

  “Now,” he said. “Now I understand. I could not before, or perhaps I simply would not. Kohl explained to me the dark secret of our family, and your grandfather, upon his deathbed, told me what must be done to keep our line from harm. I recoiled in horror as they revealed these things to me. I did know it was evil, but I persuaded myself that it was a necessary evil.”

  Wilhelm grasped his son’s hand, the old man’s withered claw closing about Gregor’s fingers with a strength that surprised his son.

  “You must get away from here!” the old man told him. “When the sun rises you must gather your mother and Anton and leave this place.”

  Wilhelm’s face flared with anger as he saw the questioning look on Gregor’s face. “Don’t question me in this! If you ever honoured and loved me, obey me this last time! It is not safe here any longer. I thought it would not come, that it would leave us alone if we left it alone.” A haunted, miserable light crept into the old man’s watery eyes.

  “You cannot placate evil,” he told his son. “You must hunt it down and destroy it, never tolerate it to thrive, never suffer it to live. That has been the great crime of our family. We feared to face our enemy, and hid ourselves behind spells and walls crafted from innocent blood. But the walls are gone now,” Wilhelm cautioned. “There is nothing to keep it away now. That is why you must leave.”

  “What is coming, father?” Gregor asked, his curiosity kindled. Wilhelm lifted his withered frame from the bed, his wrinkled face peering into that of his son.

  “Death,” the old man hissed in a voice that was more shudder than speech. The heads of both men spun around as a loud crack roared through the room. The heavy oak door exploded inward, slamming against the floor as its twisted hinges rattled across the chamber.

  A chill froze the room and with the cold came a stink of graves and blackening blood. The flickering candles dimmed as a shadowy shape billowed across the threshold, two pits of corpse-fire glowing from its darkness veiled face.

  Gregor could feel the terror stab into the very core of his being like a dagger of ice. He could feel the breath in his lungs freeze, feel the blood in his veins congeal, the strength in his knees crumple.

  The young noble found his gaze riveted to the embers that smouldered from the face of the dark shadow, transfixed like a small bird beholding the approach of a serpent. On the bed behind him, Wilhelm gave name to the unholy visitation.

  “Sibbechai,” his voice shivered. The burning eyes of the shadow turned towards him and the dark shape drifted forward, the feeble light in the room illuminating its rotten flesh, mouldering raiment and skeletal figure. The skull-face of the vampire curled into a malevolent sneer, the withered face pulling back from the gleaming rodent-like fangs.

  As the vampire surged forward, the motion caused such a wave of horror in Gregor that he found his terrified paralysis overcome. The youth tore his sabre from its sheath, the sound of steel rasping against leather somehow invigorating him with its simple normalcy.

  The vampire didn’t even glance in his direction; its burning eyes instead transfixed Wilhelm Klausner. The undead creature reached a withered claw towards the bed.

  “You won’t have him!” Gregor shouted, lunging toward the monster, his steel held before his body like the lance of a knight. In his terror, the young noble had reverted to base instinct, all his martial skill forgotten.

  The crude attack did not fall upon its intended target. As Gregor lunged, a powerful grip closed about his neck, lifting him from the ground. Anton’s cold hand ripped Gregor’s sword from his grasp as if he were plucking a toy away from a child.

  Anton stared into his brother’s face, his ghoulish eyes filled with contempt and triumph. With a sweep of his arm, Anton hurled his brother across the room, Gregor’s body slamming into the wall with such force that the plaster cracked and rained about him as he fell.

  Anton Klausner grinned at his fallen sibling, the thrall’s cold flesh pulling away from the monster’s gleaming fangs. The beast took a step towards the stunned man, but the horrified gasp that sounded from the patriarch’s bed caused him to pause, turning to face his mortal father with a look of bitter victory.

  “Anton!” the patriarch sobbed. “Not Anton…” The corpse-lights burning in the face of Sibbechai flickered with amusement as the old man’s agonised wail crawled through the room.

  “Yes,” the Anton-thing hissed. “It is I, your second son. Your reserve in case anything should happen to your darling heir.” The malevolence in the vampire’s voice struck the old man like physical blows. “The son you denied purpose. The son who received nothing from you except his name, until you stripped even that from him.” Anton turned his gaze, gesturing toward the malignant shadow beside him. “But I have found a new father. One who has promised me purpose. One who has promised me power.” The thrall’s hand closed about the bed post, his unnatural strength causing the wood to splinter. “Let me show you that power, old man!”

  An inarticulate snarl from the Sibbechai brought Anton up short. The vampire thrall turned towards its master, cringing before the elder necrarch’s displeasure liked a whipped cur. Sibbechai waved its claw, gesturing for its slave to withdraw. Then its smouldering gaze returned to the wizened patriarch.

  “You have something that belongs to me,” Sibbechai’s words bubbled from its putrid mouth. “I will have it returned.”

  “Rot in the grave you have so long cheated!” Wilhelm shouted, his voice cracking with fury. What the vampire had done to Anton had caused such wrath to well up within him that even the necrarch’s aura of fear was not enough to subdue it. The vampire watched with amused interest as the old man rose from his bed. “You’ll get nothing from me!”

  With a speed that belied belief, the undead monster surged forward, its cold hand grasping the bottom of Wilhelm’s chin, forcing the old man’s head back at such a violent angle that it seemed his back would snap. The vampire’s lifeless, decaying breath washed over Wilhelm’s face as it glared down at him.

  “I tire of these games,” Sibbechai said. “You will tell me what I want to know or I will kill every living thing in this district and drown you in their blood. Then I will force life back into your swollen corpse and repeat the process.” The vampire’s fingers twisted, the claw-like nails tearing Wilhelm’s skin.

  Sibbechai’s eyes glowed more intensely as it saw the old man’s blood weeping down the front of his nightshirt. “Tell me where it is, Helmuth’s Das Buch die Unholden. Your end can be quick, or it can be longer than you are possible of imagining.”

  “Sigmar rot you, carrion worm,” Wilhelm managed to snarl. The vampire forced the old man’s head back still further and Wilhelm could feel the strength and anger flowing through its clutch, threatening to overcome the control of the vampire’s malicious intellect.

  “You will tell me where it is, you weak-willed fool,” Sibbechai promised. The vampire’s gaze shifted as a figure struck at it from behind. Once again, its slave Anton intercepted Gregor’s attack, catching the naked steel in its bare hand. Instead of cleaving through the vampire’s cold flesh, however, Gregor felt the blow resonate back up his arms. It was as if he had just struck a granite wall. Anton twisted his hand, snapping the blade he held, then lunged at the man who had been his brother. Sibbechai’s foul visage spread into a smile as it saw the patriarch’s eyes go wide with a miserable despair.

  The vampire released its hold on the old man, spinning about and ripping Anton from Gregor’s chest. The thrall slunk away staring at its master with resentment and terror. Sibbechai locked its arm about Gregor’s neck, lifting the y
oung noble back to his feet. The vampire spun him around so that Wilhelm could see his older son’s face. Sibbechai’s lips drew back in a savage grin.

  “Perhaps you do not value your own life,” it hissed. “But what of your son’s?” Sibbechai laughed as it saw the anguish that wracked the old man. The vampire pulled at Gregor’s hair, forcing his head to tilt and expose his neck. A thin line of black fluid, like stagnant water, dripped from the vampire’s fangs. “Nothing to say?” its malicious voice rasped.

  “Tell this monster nothing!” pleaded Gregor. Sibbechai forced the youth’s head back even further, stopping his words with a pulse of pain.

  “Be quiet boy” the undead thing snarled into Gregor’s ear. “This does not concern you. This is an arrangement between…” the vampire’s voice dropped, its tones slithering with a mocking scorn, “gentlemen.”

  Sibbechai raised its voice once more, directing its attention back toward the old man. “But will you do it, Lord Klausner? Will you save your boy from death? Or will you watch him die?” The vampire uttered another snort of tittering laughter. “Or perhaps worse than death,” it threatened. Wilhelm could see the vampire slice its palm with one of its long nails, could see the black blood of the monster begin to weep from the injury. Sibbechai began to move its hand toward Gregor’s lips…

  “Anything!” the old man cried. He began to lunge for the vampire, but was held fast by the interceding figure of Anton. Wilhelm struggled feebly in the grasp of his undead son, watching as the fiendish figure of Sibbechai threatened Gregor with the same fate. “I’ll do anything, just release my son!”

  Sibbechai gazed at the old man for a moment, its corpse-face studying that of Wilhelm Klausner. “Where is the book?” it hissed.

  “I will take you to it,” Wilhelm offered. “Just release Gregor.” The vampire seemed to consider the old man’s offer, then inclined its head ever so slightly.

  “Your father is a wise man,” its rotting voice purred into Gregor’s ear. Its hand closed about Gregor’s face, flinging him across the room. The youth crashed against his father’s heavy oak wardrobe. For the second time, Gregor fell to the floor but this time did not rise.

  Sibbechai smiled at Wilhelm, displaying its rat-like fangs. “If you play false with me,” it warned, “we shall return here and you will watch me do all that I have promised. Perhaps I shall even leave the slaughter of your household in the capable hands of your sons.” Sibbechai surged forward, one diseased talon pressing against Wilhelm’s cheek. “Where is the book?”

  “In the cemetery,” the old man choked. His eyes were fixed upon the unmoving figure of Gregor. A grim determination filled him.

  “I will take you to where it is kept,” he said.

  “The Dark Gods will feast on your soul, you filthy maggot!” Mathias Thulmann growled into Ivar Kohl’s bloodied face. “Damn you, confess your iniquities! Repent your evil ways!” Kohl’s head sagged weakly against the surface of the rack, a trickle of blood dripping from his mouth. The witch hunter’s gloved hand lashed out, striking the man’s face once more. “Do one decent thing with your wicked life! Help me to destroy this evil, to wipe its taint from this family forever!”

  Thulmann had been interrogating the unrepentant steward for the better part of an hour, his questioning growing more intense and enraged with every passing moment. Every ploy he had tried to break Kohl’s resolve, every trick and deception had failed. lust when the steward’s will seemed to break, the man would dredge up some new strength from some black corner of his being.

  The loyalty of Kohl would have been commendable in a healthy mind, but the witch hunter found the presence of such a virtue in the murdering sack of filth laid out before him whipping up his fury like lamp-oil thrown upon a fire. It might take days to break the man, and there was a dread gnawing at the witch hunter, a foreboding of doom that told him he did not have days, perhaps not even hours, to wrest the hiding place of Helmuth Klausner’s book of spells from the steward.

  Words began to sputter from Kohl’s broken lips. Thulmann leaned down, hoping to hear the heretic’s whispers. Instead, the steward spat a mouthful of blood into the witch hunter’s face. A satisfied smile flickered on the captive’s battered visage.

  Thulmann pulled away, wiping at the filth with a silk handkerchief. He glared down at the man, then looked over at Streng. The mercenary was grinning at his employer, openly enjoying Thulmann’s discomfort and growing frustration.

  “Got you, did he?” Streng chuckled. The witch hunter paid the jibe no attention but gestured toward the brazier of hot coals and the three irons that were nuzzled within them.

  “This vermin will talk,” Thulmann swore. Streng dutifully retrieved one of the irons, its tip smoking and glowing from the heat.

  “I’m not so sure that is a good idea,” the torturer commented. “You might be better leaving him be for a time.” Thulmann snatched the cruel implement from his henchman.

  “When I want your advice, I’ll ask for it,” he snapped. The witch hunter moved the heated iron toward Ivar Kohl. Yet as he did so, the already tormented man’s body shuddered, seeming to collapse upon itself. Thulmann dropped the iron to the floor, grabbing the front of Kohl’s robe.

  “The book!” the witch hunter snarled into the heretic’s face. “Helmuth Klausner’s grimoire! Tell me where it is!”

  Streng strode past Thulmann, staring intently at their prisoner. At length, he reached out and turned the man’s head, finding no resistance. Streng wiped his hand on the remains of Kohl’s robe then stepped back.

  “You’ll have to speak louder if you expect him to hear you now,” the mercenary observed with a shrug. “Or maybe send for the priest of Morr again.” The witch hunter swallowed an enraged curse. Streng grinned over at him. “I told you to hold back a little.”

  Thulmann turned away from the dead man, crushing his fist into his palm. He knew that Streng was right, it had been the overwhelming need for haste that brewed within him that had caused this. He had pressed Kohl beyond what the man’s already weakened frame could endure. Now there was only one place he could go to learn what he needed to know.

  “We’ll start on the old man then, eh?” asked Streng, not able to hide the brutal anticipation in his voice. Thulmann sighed with resignation and bowed his head.

  “Yes,” he said. “Wilhelm Klausner is the only one now who can tell me what I need to know.”

  The witch hunter turned, stalking across the chamber and opening the iron door. As the door opened, a terrible scream echoed down from above. Thulmann glanced over at his henchman, then raced back up the stairway, his sword in one hand, a pistol clenched in the other.

  The nagging foreboding that had been haunting him was surging through his mind now as the screams were repeated, echoing down the cellar stairs. The sounds spurred Thulmann on, and soon the Templar was leaping up the steps three at a time. Even so, he knew that he would not be in time to thwart whatever dark doings were afoot.

  The witch hunter sprinted down the empty corridors of the keep, running towards the sound of frantic voices and frightened sobs. Then something else made itself known to him, a chill that plucked at his skin, a foul carrion stench that assailed his nostrils. The nagging foreboding that had haunted Thulmann exploded into tragic reality. He soon found himself standing in the main hall, his pistol sweeping about the chamber as he entered it.

  A mob of terrified servants was huddled near the roaring fireplace, as though seeking protection from the stern-faced Klausner patriarchs captured in pain hanging from the wall behind them. Even a cursory glance told the witch hunter that every man and woman among them was trembling with fear.

  Upon the polished floor of the hall, he could see three bodies lying in crumpled heaps, servants who had tried to stop whatever foulness had visited the keep this night. Pools of blood glimmered in the flickering light cast by the hall’s torches.

  “They took him!” a woman’s voice shrieked. Thulmann turned toward the speaker, surpr
ised to find that the terrified words came from the normally calm, precise and collected Ilsa Klausner. The noblewoman pointed her shivering hand toward the main door. Thulmann’s gaze regarded the portal, finding that the heavy oak door had nearly been wrenched from its fittings.

  “Who did they take?” the witch hunter asked, his sharp tone lashing at the frightened mob like a stream of ice water. He already knew what the answer would be.

  “His lordship,” a blond-haired groom muttered, his voice a feeble croak.

  “They were monsters!” a young chambermaid gasped. “They weren’t human!”

  The girl’s words brought a gaggle of hysterical confirmations to her claim, as each witness struggled to be heard over the others. Above the babble, the witch hunter heard something that at once arrested his attention.

  “Anton? Who said that one of these intruders was young Klausner?” the witch hunter demanded. A pair of burly manservants stepped away from the crowd.

  “We saw him when Rudi and Karl tried to stop him,” one of the men said. “It was the young master. But he was wild and his strength was that of a daemon!”

  “It was not my son,” Ilsa Klausner swore as she came forward. “Whatever it was, it was no longer my son behind its eyes.” She fixed Thulmann with her wretched gaze. “I know enough of my husband’s former profession to recognise one of the undead when I see it. It was a vampire, like the thing it was with.”

  Thulmann spun around as a shape rushed at him from behind. It was only by chance that he did not fire his pistol and explode the skull of the man who ran towards him down the corridor. Streng drew his bulk to a sudden stop, exhaling sharply as he considered how near he had come to getting killed by his master.

  “Tardy as ever,” the witch hunter sneered, replacing the pistol in its holster.

  “Miss all the fun, did I?” Streng asked, still visibly shaken.