[Von Carstein 03] - Retribution Read online

  His words had the desired effect on the effeminate young man. He backed away a step, his lack of gallantry putting the woman between him and Skellan. Skellan took the opportunity to move in close to the woman. She didn’t shy away from him, which intrigued the vampire. On the contrary, she withdrew her hand from her companion’s and offered it to Skellan. He took it and kneeling, raised it to his lips. “Guten abend.”

  “Good evening,” she said, smiling slightly at the sight of the scarred, one-eyed man on his bended knee playing the chevalier.

  “Das einzige Schöne ist eine bezaubernde Frau,” Skellan said, smoothly. The only beauty is an enchanting woman.

  “And who are you, flatterer?”

  “Skellan, Jon Skellan.”

  “Well Jon Skellan, you are quite the charmed one, fighting vampires and living to tell the tale.”

  “I like to think of myself as the hero of my own life story,” Skellan said.

  “What is this fool blathering on about?” The fop virtually hissed, recovering his courage and trying to push between them.

  Skellan ignored him. “And you are?”

  “Narcisa da Vries. My rude companion is Niculai Gaspard. He is, as I am sure you know, an actor of no small repute.”

  “Currently treading the boards in Vitas Mortis, a piece I penned myself,” he said with such utter disdain for the other man that Skellan couldn’t help but smile. The man was a blowhard and a hack.

  “Indeed,” Skellan said, never breaking eye contact with Narcisa. “I shall have to drag myself out of the slums more often if it means I get to rub shoulders with the beautiful and the famous.”

  “You should,” she said.

  Skellan’s smile broadened as her fingers moved, apparently of their own accord, to touch the vein at her throat.

  “May the night be kind to you, flatterer.” It was her eyes, Skellan thought again. They were so much older than her face. Narcisa da Vries fascinated him—well fascinated him as much as any prospective meal ever had.

  “And to you both. What was your play again, Gaspard? Schönheit und das Tier?” Skellan smirked and walked away before the fop could get his dander up sufficiently to actually say something back to him.

  Thirty feet down the cobbled street Skellan turned to see Narcisa da Vries looking back over her shoulder directly at him. He couldn’t see her expression, but her body language was invitation aplenty.

  She knew exactly what he was, and she welcomed it.

  He had always imagined there would be those who craved what his kind had to offer—those who hungered for the immortality of the blood kiss. He could not deny that she was enchanting, but that made her more dangerous than any plain beauty. Even as a mortal her numina blazed. What would come of her should she be born again into the unlife? He breathed deeply, trying to recall her scent. Dare he turn her into Schönetod? La Bella Morte? The Beautiful Death? Dare he not? She was mesmerising, he thought again, and yes, he knew he wanted her. He was sick of all the rancid meat, the washed out wretched corpses of the homeless, the starving and the diseased. She was fresh. Vitas Mortis indeed: vitality and death. She promised far more than any dried-up matron from the Sisterhood of the Dove. He licked at the air, wetting his lips. Yes, perhaps he would sire her, perhaps. She would be a trophy, of that there was no doubt.

  Schönetod: The Beautiful Death.

  With that delicious thought firmly in mind, he followed them.

  Narcisa walked slowly, lingering over inviting shop windows where the merchants had displayed their wares, pointing and laughing. Skellan imagined her talking in sweet whispers to her beau. In every way, the fop, Gaspard, seemed to fill her up. Skellan moved behind them, never allowing them out of his sight. To anyone else they probably looked like perfect lovers as they moved arm in arm down the cobbled streets. Skellan’s face twisted bitterly. He would feed, he promised himself. Let those same people who smiled and nodded now be the ones that found their corpses in the river come sunrise. The actor and the courtesan, bled dry and bloated by the Reik. Let them cling to their dead smiles then. Let their ghosts talk in sweet whispers until the end of time.

  By the river, she tossed her head back and laughed. Her laughter’s melodic thrill, like a bird speaking in a language only he understood, reached Skellan. The laughter wasn’t for the fop. It was for him. She wanted him to understand how superior to Gaspard she truly was.

  He followed the pair from district to district all the way back to their lodging rooms across from the statue of a long-dead noble with a chipped and weathered profile. He settled himself down on the statue’s plinth and waited, watching the windows to see which, if any, lit up on their homecoming. There was a bakery near by. The air was filled with the rich scent of freshly baked bread and the more delicate aromas of pastries, cinnamon and chocolate.

  He didn’t have to wait long before he saw Narcisa, backlit in a sheer linen gown, laces undone on her ample curves. He stared at her in the window on the fourth storey. She knew he was down there, watching. She wanted him to see. It didn’t matter that it was a fleeting glimpse. It was enough. He knew what he had to do. Skellan rose to his feet. Heavy vines of ivy, interwoven with clematis crept up the wall to her wrought-iron balcony. He tested them, pulling hard to see how deep their roots had burrowed into the brick wall. Satisfied, he climbed.

  Skellan rose, hand over hand.

  The stone was coarse beneath his fingers.

  Midway up the mortar crumbled and a handful of clematis came away from the ivy with a sickening tear, leaving him dangling precariously over the city street. He hung there for a second, expecting more of the plant to wrench free under the force of his sudden drop. Tendrils of greenery and flowers wrapped themselves around him, the syrupy fragrance of the clematis overpowering. He kicked at the wall, scrabbling around for a toehold to support his weight before gravity undid whatever was holding the last of the clematis to the ivy in the wall. The toe of his shoe scraped over the stone, sticking on the slimmest edge, but it was enough. He shifted his weight and leaned back slightly, looking for a handhold above him. There weren’t any. He dragged his fingers down the stone, searching out a weakness. The mortar, undermined where the ivy had rooted, crumbled. It was enough. He forced his fingers into the crack and hauled himself up another foot. He took his time, scaling the wall foot by foot, making handholds where there were none.

  Skellan reached out and grabbed the black iron balcony railing and pushed himself away from the wall, hauling himself up onto the balcony. He hunkered down beside a planter overflowing with a riot of night-blooming jasmine and pressed his face up against the window.

  The room beyond was opulent: regency stripe on the walls broken up by cameos and oils. An extravagant golden fire dragon had been woven into the huge rug; the workmanship was, even from afar, exquisite. The carpet had almost certainly been imported from some far eastern land at no little expense. A huge four-poster bed dominated the room. Veils of lace were cinched to the elaborately carved posts. Storm lanterns bathed the room in a lush, warm glow. A seven-tier crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling, each of the tiny perfect facets of glass catching the light and scattering it across the enormous bedroom in a kaleidoscope of colour.

  And yet Skellan barely registered the finery, because Narcisa lay naked on the bed, more lush and opulent than any mere trinket or tapestry.

  The fop lay beside her, his hair matted with sweat, his prissy shirt and waistcoat cast aside in his ardour. Skellan touched the glass. She reached up for Niculai Gaspard, but at the last moment, as she drew him down onto her, her eyes shifted and her smile widened as she met Skellan’s gaze. Her face distorted as though a veil passed across it, the hunger rising as her nails dug bloody runnels into the actor’s back. She raised her fingers to her lips, one by one licking them clean.

  A shiver of delight traced down Skellan’s spine as she tangled her hand in the fop’s bedraggled locks and drew his head down until his lips brushed her collarbone as though it were the most
sacred inch of skin on her body, worshipping her inch by perfect inch.

  Then she bit him.

  She came up bloody, her teeth ruby. She wiped the back of her hand across her face, smearing the blood across her cheek in the parody of a smile. The beast finally found its way out through her face; her cheeks narrowed, jaw distended, brow planed, as every contour of her grew harsher, more defined, and yet still held to that core of physical beauty. It was not a full transmogrification; she did not fully become the beast in the way that Skellan did when he loosed the animal inside him. She maintained the illusion of humanity even as she fed on the cattle, but she was a kindred beast, of that he was certain. He met her gaze, saw the predatory cunning there and rejoiced in it. Then she lowered her head again, feeding.

  It was different though, controlled. She wasn’t draining the life out of her lover; she was decanting him, like a fine brandy, just a mouthful of blood and then breaking the contact. Her discipline was extraordinary.

  The fop rolled over in her arms, languid in the afterglow of their coupling.

  Skellan moved away from the window, spilling the jasmine planter. The sudden flurry of noise betrayed him. He scrambled around, trying to prevent the clay pot from shattering on the balcony floor. It slipped through his fingers and hit the floor hard, shattering. Skellan winced. He pushed himself to his feet and was halfway over the railing when, still bleeding, Niculai Gaspard threw open the glass double doors and stood, naked, on the threshold. Gaspard levelled the percussion pistol in his right hand at the centre of Skellan’s forehead.

  “I know you, sir. Don’t think I don’t. With a face like that how could I not? Now I suggest you stay right where you are,” Gaspard said, thumbing back the black iron hammer until it snicked into place. “Believe me when I say I won’t hesitate in pulling the trigger.”

  Skellan didn’t move, didn’t take his good eye from the black bore of the pistol.

  Narcisa da Vries moved in close behind her lover, one arm sliding around his waist. Her fingers traced the lines of his ribs as they caressed his skin.

  “My, my, I do believe it is Herr Skellan from Drog Strasse. How peculiar,” the woman said, obviously enjoying the moment. “One might wonder what you are doing on my balcony in the dead of night.”

  “Up to no good, surely,” Gaspard rasped. The pistol wavered in his hand. His free hand covered his genitals. The man had remembered his nakedness and was uncomfortable, and not surprisingly. His nudity left him psychologically vulnerable despite the weapon in his hand. “No better than a common peeping torn. I should shoot you on the spot, villain; put you out of your misery.”

  “And out of my bedroom,” Narcisa said.

  Skellan waited, knowing there would be no sudden sunburst of agony in his skull from the shot tearing into him. Gaspard was a windbag. He wasn’t man enough to pull the trigger. No, he would pump himself up and preen and bluster but he wouldn’t bring an end to it. Few could. It took a special kind of man to kill. Knowing this gave Skellan the upper hand, despite the bizarre nature of the situation. Of course, there was always the possibility that the fool’s violent trembling would cause the gun to go off accidentally. More pointless things had happened, to be sure.

  Skellan tensed, ready to spring. The pain of the fall would be welcome compared to suffering the black iron shot through the skull.

  “What did you intend? To wait for us to sleep and then rob us blind? Murder us in our beds? You cowardly cur! I should wipe the floor with you. You are less than a man!”

  “Oh, just shoot me and be done with it, you pompous blowhard,” Skellan muttered. Instead of dropping down he swung his leg over the iron railing and began to lower himself back off the balcony.

  “Stay where you are or I’ll shoot,” Gaspard said. His nakedness undermined the venom in his voice, making him appear quite ludicrous as he stood there waving the pistol around.

  Narcisa leaned in, drawing her arm tighter around his chest, pinning him as she bit into the soft flesh of his neck just hard enough to draw blood. Gaspard let out the smallest of whimpers. The pistol jerked dangerously in his hand as his body convulsed, pleasure coursing through him.

  “We should settle this like men,” Skellan said, still half-on, half-off the balcony.

  “Like men?” Gaspard said with disbelief. You break into my house and expect some kind of leniency? You propose what? Fisticuffs? You deserve nothing short of death, sir!”

  “Then,” Skellan said, slapping the fop across the face with the flat of his hand. “Pistols at dawn, you want satisfaction, I want your woman. That should satisfy your sense of honour.”

  “I… I…”

  “You ought to kill me, I know, you already said that. Perhaps you will manage it come morning.”

  The woman’s smile was only enhanced by the small ribbon of the actor’s blood that had dribbled down her chin.

  They met beside the river before first light.

  Gaspard picked the spot and waited beneath one of the many mournful willows. A small dinghy was moored on the riverbank. As with the day before, he was dressed in an elegant coat of red silk and dark flowing breeches that ballooned over the top of knee-length leather boots. His shirt of ivory silk was open. At his throat he wore a silver hammer of Sig-mar, for all the good it would do him from twenty paces.

  Skellan smiled grimly, the fop had obviously raided the theatre’s wardrobe to best look the part.

  Beside him, Narcisa looked exquisite in a long flowing skirt of the subtlest blue and a simple white blouse. She curtseyed to Skellan as he approached. He responded with a slight inclination of the head.

  Gaspard didn’t so much as acknowledge his presence.

  Skellan stretched, rolling his shoulders to work the ache out of them. It had been a long night. After the encounter on the balcony he had been forced to retreat to the Alt Stadt empty handed. Luckily, as dawn crept in he had found a baker’s boy running errands. The boy tasted sweeter than his pastries smelled.

  Skellan picked a strip of gristle from between his teeth.

  He saw that the fool had set up a small table and a stool. There was a glass tumbler and a decanter containing amber liqueur on the table.

  The actor had gone to great lengths to set the scene. It was a shame his theatrics lacked an audience.

  Niculai Gaspard’s second walked slowly towards him. Gaspard’s man carried a small case fashioned from the finest walnut, lacquered and polished. The case bore the crest of some petty noble long since stamped out by the greed of the ever-expanding Empire. It was fastened with twin gold hasps. The man nodded to Skellan as he approached. Skellan watched as he broke the hasps and opened the velvet-lined case on two identical double-barrelled percussion pistols. The weapons had Tilean curved grips and steel end-caps that were carved with the same crest as the walnut case. The barrels themselves were seven inches long with swivel ramrods. They were beautiful pieces.

  Skellan took one, making no effort to mask his smirk, as he knew it would rankle the fop no end. He looked across the field of honour to where the fop was stretching and loosening his muscles up as though he expected the duel to degenerate into a brawl. There was a nervous energy about Gaspard. Skellan supposed it was some form of pent up righteous fury. The pistol was heavy in his hand. He wasn’t used to such cowardly tools. He liked his killing intimate, close. Still, he sighted down the barrels. The aim appeared true.

  “You have made your decision, sir?” the second asked deferentially.

  Skellan nodded.

  He knelt, resting the barrel beside a fallen leaf. Pulling the hammer into full-cock he dry fired the pistol into the grass. The leaf moved an inch as the wind from the barrel got beneath it. Skellan nodded appreciatively. It was a well-made piece.

  Beside the pistols was a powder flask. Skellan took what he needed, pouring a small measure of the black powder down the muzzle of the pistol. He made a show of checking the pistol to see that everything appeared to be in working order—no obvious blockages
that might cause the gun to backfire or the shot to ricochet. He took two of the lead balls from the purse of shot and depressed them into the cylinders one at a time. They fit snugly into the chamber. So exact was the fit that a small ring of lead sheered from each ball as they were tamped down until they sat perfectly beside the black powder. Finally, he greased the inside of the barrels with what smelled like duck fat. He half-cocked the pistol and nodded.

  “If you would be so kind as to stand on your mark, sir, I will see to Herr Gaspard’s pistol.”

  Skellan walked slowly to a point midway between the weeping willow and an imperious royal oak. Gaspard’s man had planted a small red flag in the dirt to signify the mark.

  Skellan watched the fop go through the same elaborate routine, taking his pistol, loading it, and greasing the barrels to avoid chain fire from the second barrel. Gaspard laboured over it, doing everything as slowly as humanly possible. It was gamesmanship. It was also a ham actor overacting. He wanted to give Skellan time to get nervous, for doubt to worm its way into his mind and undermine his aim when the time came for them to face each other.

  The fop walked slowly towards the mark, his man one pace behind him.

  “Prepare to die, Herr Skellan,” Gaspard said, coming to stand beside him. The man was sweating profusely despite the relative chill of the morning.

  Skellan smiled coldly.

  “Oh, I am long since past preparing, little man. Come, I grow weary of waiting to kill you. I want to taste your woman.”

  The second coughed politely into his gloved fist. “The rules of engagement are simple. It is a duel of honour. You each have two shots, to be fired alternately. You will stand back to back, and on my word take ten paces, turn, take aim and fire. Should one or both of you die in this duel, may Morr have mercy upon your soul even as your death proves the right of the other.”

  “May the black birds carry your soul swiftly to Morr,” Gaspard said.

  Skellan saw then that a handful of crows and a single large raven had settled down on the thin drooping branches of the willow above Narcisa da Vries. The sight of the carrion eaters chilled him to the marrow. More birds settled on the riverbank, another huge raven landing on one of the dinghy’s oarlocks.