00.1 - Death's Cold Kiss Read online

  A WARHAMMER STORY

  DEATH’S

  COLD KISS

  Von Carstein - 00.1

  Steven Savile

  (A Flandrel Scan v4.0)

  The old priest fled the castle.

  Lightning seared the darkness, turning night momentarily into day. The skeletal limbs of the trees around him cast sinister shadows across the path that twisted and writhed in the lightning. Thunder rolled over the hills, deep and booming. The rain came down, drowning out lesser sounds.

  The primeval force of the storm resonated in Victor Guttman’s bones.

  “I am an old man,” he moaned, clutching at his chest in dread certainty that the pain he felt was his heart about to burst. “I am frail. Weak. I don’t have the strength in me for this fight.” And it was true, every word of it. But who else was there to fight?

  No one.

  His skin still crawled with the revulsion he had felt at the creature’s presence. Sickness clawed at his throat. His blood repulsed by the taint of the creature that had entered Baron Otto’s chamber and claimed young Isabella. He sank to his knees, beaten down by the sheer ferocity of the storm. The wind mocked him, howling around his body, tearing at his robes. He could easily die on the road and be washed away by the storm, lost somewhere to rot in the forest and feed the wolves.

  No.

  The temple. He had to get back to the temple.

  He pushed himself back up and lurched a few more paces down the pathway, stumbling and tripping over his own feet in his need to get away from the damned place.

  There were monsters. Real monsters. He had grown numb to fear. A life of seclusion in the temple, of births and naming days, marriages and funeral rites, such mundane things, they somehow combined to turn the monsters into lesser evils and eventually into nothing more than stories. He had forgotten that the stories were real.

  Guttman lurched to a stop, needing the support of a nearby tree to stay standing. He cast a frightened look back over his shoulder at the dark shadow of Drakenhof Castle, finding the one window that blazed with light, and seeing in it the silhouette of the new count.

  Vlad von Carstein.

  He knew what kind of twisted abomination the man was. He knew with cold dark certainty that he had just witnessed the handover of the barony to a daemon. The sick twisted maliciousness of Otto van Drak would pale in comparison with the tyrannies of the night von Carstein promised.

  The old priest fought down the urge to purge his guts. Still he retched and wiped the bile away from his mouth with the back of his hand. The taint of the creature had weakened him. Its sickness was insidious. It clawed away at his stomach; it tore at his throat and pulled at his mind. His vision swam in and out of focus. He needed to distance himself from the fiend.

  His mind raced. He struggled to remember everything he knew about vampires and their ilk but it was precious little outside superstition and rumour.

  The oppression of the pathway worsened as it wound its way back down toward the town. The sanctuary of rooftops and the welcoming lights looked a long, long way away to the old man. The driving rain masked other sounds. Still, Guttman grew steadily surer that he was not alone in the storm. Someone—or something—was following him. He caught occasional glimpses of movement out of the corner of his eye but by the time he turned, the shadow had fused with deeper shadows or the shape he was sure was a pale white face had mutated into the claws of dead branches and the flit of a bat’s wing.

  He caught himself looking more frequently back over his shoulder as he tried to catch a glimpse of whoever was following him.

  “Show yourself!” the old priest called out defiantly but his words were snatched away by the storm. The cold hand of fear clasped his heart as it tripped and skipped erratically.

  A chorus of wolves answered him.

  And laughter.

  For a moment Guttman didn’t trust his ears. But he didn’t need to. It was a man’s laughter. He felt it in his gut, in his bones and in his blood, the same revulsion that had caused him to black out at the feet of von Carstein when the man first entered van Drak’s bedchamber.

  One of the count’s tainted brood had followed him out of the castle. It was stupid and naive to think that von Carstein would be alone. The monster would have minions to do his bidding, lackeys who still clung to their humanity and servants who had long since given it up. It made sense. How could a creature of the damned hope to pass itself off among the living without an entourage of twisted souls to do its bidding?

  “I said show yourself, creature!” Guttman challenged the darkness. The rain ran down his face like tears. He wasn’t afraid anymore. He was calm. Resigned. The creature was playing with him.

  “Why?” A voice said, close enough for him to feel the man’s breath in his ear. “So your petty god can smite me down with some righteous thunderbolt from his shiny silver hammer? I think not.”

  Brother Guttman reeled away from the voice, twisting round to face his tormentor but the man wasn’t there.

  “You’re painfully slow, old man,” the voice said, behind him again somehow. “Killing you promises to be no sport at all.” Guttman felt cold dead fingers brush against his throat, feeling out the pulse in his neck. He lurched away from their touch so violently he ended up sprawling in the mud, the rain beating down around his face as he twisted and slithered trying to get a look at his tormentor.

  The man stood over him, nothing more than a shape in the darkness.

  “I could kill you now but I’ve never taken a priest. Do you think you would make a good vampire, old man? You have a whole flock of dumb sheep to feed on who will come willingly to you in the night, eager to be fed on if your holy kiss will bring them closer to their precious Sigmar.” The man knelt beside him, the left side of his face lit finally by the sliver of moonlight. To Guttman it was the face of ultimate cruelty personified but in truth it was both beautiful and coldly serene. “What a delicious thought. A priest of the cloth becoming a priest of the blood. Think of the possibilities. You would be unique, old man.”

  “I would rather die.”

  “Well, of course. That goes without saying. Now, come on, on your feet.”

  “And make your job easier?”

  “Oh, just stand up before I run out of patience and stick a sword in your gut, brother. You don’t have to be standing to die, you know. It isn’t a prerequisite. Swords are just as effective on people lying in the mud, believe me.” He held out a hand for the priest to take but the old man refused, levering himself up and stubbornly struggling to get his feet beneath himself.

  “Who are you?”

  “Does it matter? Really? What’s in a name? Truly? Turned meat, cat’s urine and mouldy bread by any other names would still smell repugnant, wouldn’t they? They would still stink of decay, rot, so why this obsession with naming things? There is no magic in a name.”

  “What a sad world you live in,” Guttman said after a moment. “Where the first things that come to mind are riddled with corruption. Give me a world of roses and beauty and I will die happily. To live as you do, that is no life at all.”

  “Do not be so hasty to dismiss it, priest. They have an old saying in my hometown: Die reinste Freude ist die Schadenfreude,” the man said in perfect unaccented Reikspiel. “The purest joy is the joy we feel when others feel pain. Now I believe it is the only genuine joy we feel. The rest is transitory, fleeting. Soon the darkness will be all you have left, and the light and your precious roses and everything else you think of as beautiful will be nothing more than memories. The knowledge of this gives me some slight happiness I must confess. When you’ve been reduced to nothing, then let us see how much of the so-called beautifu
l you choose to remember. My name is Posner. Herman Posner. Say it. Let it be the last thing you say as a living creature. Say it.”

  “Herman Posner,” Brother Victor Guttman said, tasting the name in his mouth. The words were no more evil than any others he had said. There was nothing unique about them. They were not tainted with vile plague or ruined by undeath. They were just words, nothing more.

  “A rose or rot, priest? You decide,” Posner said. His hand snaked out grabbing the old man by the collar and hauling him up until his toes barely touched the floor. Guttman struggled and fought, kicking out as Posner drew him in close enough for the priest to taste the redolent musk of the grave on his breath. The creature’s touch was repulsive.

  It didn’t matter how much he kicked and twisted against Posner’s grip; it was like iron.

  He felt the teeth—fangs—plunge into his neck, biting deep, hard. The old man’s body tensed, every fibre of his being repulsed by the intimacy of the kill. He lashed out, twisted, flopped and finally sagged as he felt the life being drained out of him.

  And then the pain ended and Posner was screaming and clutching his own chest.

  Guttman had no idea what had caused the vampire to relinquish his hold. He didn’t care. His legs buckled and collapsed beneath him but he didn’t pass out. He lay in the mud, barely able to move. He was sure his tripping heart would simply cease beating at any moment and deny the vampire its kill. There was a delicious irony to the thought, the beast gorging itself on dead blood, only realising its mistake when it was too late.

  Posner lifted his hand. The skin beneath was burned raw with the mark of Sigmar’s hammer.

  For a moment the old priest thought it was a miracle—that he was saved. Then the cold hard reality of the “miracle” revealed itself. The silver hammer he wore on a chain around his neck had come loose from his clothing and as the vampire leaned in the silver had burned its mark on the beast. Silver. At least that part of the stories was true. The metal was anathema to the lords of the undead. He clasped the talisman as though it might somehow save him. It was a feeble gesture. Posner leaned over him and grasped the silver chain, ignoring the hiss and sizzle of his own flesh as he yanked the holy symbol from around Guttman’s throat, and tossed it aside.

  The stench of burned meat was nauseatingly sweet.

  “Now let’s see how you fare without your pretty little trinket, shall we?”

  Before Guttman could scramble away Posner had him by the throat again, fingernails like iron talons as they sank mercilessly into his flesh. The pain was blinding. The priest’s vision swam in and out of focus as the world tilted away and was finally consumed in an agony of black. The last sensation he felt as the pain overwhelmed him was the vampire’s kiss, intimate and deadly, where his fluttering pulse was strongest. Guttman’s eyes flared open and for a fleeting moment the world around him was intense, every colour more vibrant, more radiant, every scent more pungent, more aromatic, than they had been through his whole life of living with them. He was dying, drained of life and blood, and this intensity was his mind’s way of clinging on to the memories of life, one final all-consuming overload of the senses. Victor Guttman let it wash over him. He felt his will to live fade with his thoughts as he succumbed to Posner. He stopped struggling, the fight drained out of him.

  Posner yanked his head back, better to expose the vein, and sucked and slurped hungrily at the wound until he was sated. Grinning, he tilted the old man’s head and dribbled blood into his gaping mouth. Guttman coughed and retched, a ribbon of blood dribbling out of the corner of his mouth. His entire body spasmed, rebelling against the bloody kiss and then he was falling as Posner let go.

  The vampire walked away, leaving the old man to die.

  To die, Guttman realised sickly, and become one of their kind. An abomination. No. No. It cannot happen. I will not kill to live. I will not!

  But he knew he would.

  In the end, when the blood thirst was on him and his humanity was nothing but a nagging ghost he would feed.

  Guttman clawed at the mud, dragging himself forward a few precious inches before his strength gave out. His erratic breathing blew bubbles in the muddy puddle beside his face. His hand twitched. He felt himself slipping in and out of consciousness. Every breath could easily have been his last. He had no idea how long he lay in the mud blowing bloody bubbles. Time lost all meaning. The sun didn’t rise. The rain didn’t cease, not fully. He tried to move but every ounce of his being cried out in pain. He was alone. No passing carters would save him. He had a choice—although it was no choice at all: die here, now, and wake as a daemon, or fight it, grasp on to the last gasp of humanity and hope against hope that something in the temple could stave off the transformation and buy him precious time. Death was inevitable, he had always known that, accepted it. He would meet Morr, every man, woman and child would eventually; it was the way of the world. He promised himself he would do it with dignity. He would die, and stay dead. Judge me not on how I lived but how I die… who had said that? It made a grim kind of sense.

  On the hillside around him the cries of the wolves intensified. It was a mocking lament. He knew what they were, those wolves. He knew how the beasts could shift form at will. He dreaded the moment their cries made sense to him, for then his doom would be complete.

  He dragged himself another foot, and then another, almost blacking out from the sheer exertion. His face held barely inches above a muddy puddle, he stared at his own reflection in the water, trying to memorise everything he saw. He knew the image would fade, knew he would forget himself, but it was important to try to hold on to who he was. Another foot, and then another. The old priest clawed his way down the long and winding road. He felt the steel breeze on his face as he craned his neck desperately trying to see how far away the city lights were.

  Too far, they taunted him. Too far.

  He would never make it.

  And because of that he was damned.

  Desperately, Victor Guttman pushed himself up, stumbled two unsteady steps and plunged face first into the mud again. He lay there, spent, cursing himself for a fool for coming to the castle alone. The chirurgeon was long gone, probably safely at home in his bed already, tucked up beside his shrew of a wife while she snored. Or he’s lying dead in a ditch somewhere. He was just as alone when he left the castle. Just as vulnerable. And probably just as dead. Guttman thought bitterly.

  Again he stumbled forward a few paces before collapsing. Five more the next time. He cried out in anger and frustration, willing someone to hear him and come to his aid. It was pointless, of course. The only people abroad at this ungodly hour were up to no good and would hardly come to investigate cries on the dark road for fear of their own safety. Thieves, robbers, bandits, lotharios, debauchers, drunks, gamblers and vampires, children of the night one and all. And not a Sigmar fearing soul amongst them. He was alone.

  Truly alone.

  Meyrink and Messner were passionately arguing an obscure point of theosophy, the older man being driven to the point of distraction by the younger’s sheer belligerence. He was impossible to argue with. There was no reasoning, only absolutes. The arguments were black and white. There was no room for the grey spaces of interpretation in between. Normally there was nothing Meyrink enjoyed more than a good argument but the youth of today seemed to have abandoned the art of reason in favour of passion. Everything was about passion. Meyrink laid aside the scrimshaw he had been carving and rolled his neck, stretching. The carving was therapeutic but his eyes weren’t what they had been even a few years ago and the close detail gave him a headache from straining. He felt every one of his years. Brother Guttman would return soon. Perhaps he could make young Messner see reason.

  “Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps,” Meyrink muttered bleakly. He didn’t hold out a lot of hope.

  “Ah, is that the sound of quiet desperation I hear leaking into your voice, brother?”

  “Not so quiet, methinks,” Meyrink said with a lopsided grin.
He liked the boy, and was sure with the rough edges rounded off his personality Messner would make a good priest. He had the faith and was a remarkably centred young man.

  “Indeed. I was being politic. Come, let’s warm our bones beside the fire while we wait for Brother Guttman’s return.”

  “Why not.”

  “Tis a vile night out,” Messner remarked, making himself cosy beside the high-banked log fire that spat and crackled in the hearth. He poured them both cups of mulled wine.

  “For once I’ll not argue with you lad,” Meyrink said wryly.

  The night stretched on, Meyrink too tired to debate. He looked often at the dark window and the streaks of rain that lashed against it. Messner was right: it was a vile night. Not the kind of night for an old man to be abroad.

  They supped at their cups, neither allowing the other to see how much the old priest’s lateness worried them until a hammering on the temple door had them both out of their seats and almost running through the central aisle of the temple to answer it. Meyrink instinctively made the sign of the hammer as Messner threw back the heavy bolts on the door and raised the bar. It had been many years since they had left the temple open through the night. It was a curse of the times. He didn’t like it but was sage enough to understand the necessity.

  Messner opened the door on the raging storm.

  The wind and rain ripped at the porch, pulling the heavy door out of the young priest’s hands.

  For a heartbeat Meyrink mistook the shadows on the threshold for some lurking horror, distorted and deformed as they were by the storm, but then the wine merchant Hollenfeuer’s boy, Henrik, lumbered in out of the driving rain and dark, a bundle of rags cradled in his arms. It took Meyrink a moment to realise that the rags weren’t rags at all, but sodden robes clinging wetly to slack skin and bones, and that Henrik had brought Brother Guttman home. The old priest’s skin had the same blue pallor as death. His eyes rolled back in his head and his head lolled back against the boy’s arm, his jaw hanging loose.