Of course! he thought. He remembered how Lucian had turned back the rampaging werewolves the night of the ambush and realized that he had vastly underestimated his friend’s influence over the untamed denizens of the forests. The wolves weren’t coming for us at all, he realized. They’re heading for the castle!
He shared a pointed look with Sabas and Xristo and the rest. Awareness dawned on their faces as well. A wolfish grin crossed Raze’s face as he grasped the full implication of what was happening. He raised his ax above his head and answered Lucian’s howl with a deep-throated roar of his own. Fear gave way to exhilaration. His lycan blood sung in his veins. Casting all doubts aside, he sprinted eagerly after the pack.
To the castle—and Lucian!
Cheering exuberantly, the entire camp followed him.
Hardened Death Dealers were shaken by the intensity of Lucian’s howl. They inched slowly toward the impaled lycan, who lay sprawled atop the palisade. Although he appeared weak and vulnerable now, the former blacksmith had already slain more vampires than any werewolf since the infamous William of yore. They would take no chances with this one….
The lycan’s shaggy hide receded as he reverted to human form. Naked and bleeding, Lucian hung onto Sonja’s pendant as he writhed in agony. The vicious harpoon still transfixed his right knee. Silver quarrels studded his back and shoulders. Despite the pain, he refused to let go of the ash-covered pendant. Viktor would have to pry it from his cold, dead fingers!
Lucian heard heavy footsteps drawing near. Clanking armor heralded a hasty end to his struggles. After missing his chance to execute him twice now, Viktor was not likely to make that mistake again. Grimacing, Lucian tried to expel the silver bolts from his body, as he had before, but he was too weak from pain and loss of blood. There was nothing to do now but wait for the Death Dealers to live up to their name at last.
Make it quick, he thought. So I may see my Sonja again.
But a sudden clamor, coming from beyond the castle walls, drowned out the tentative approach of the guards. At first Lucian mistook the deafening roar for another thunderstorm, but then his keen hearing made out the howls, whoops, and war cries of an oncoming army. His bleary eyes widened in surprise. Hope flared unexpectedly in his heart. Despite the harpoon and chain mercilessly nailed to his leg, he hauled himself up against the battlements. Gasping for breath, he peered out over the parapet at the breathtaking sight of dozens of frenzied werewolves and lycans charging up the mountain toward the castle. Armed lycans brandishing swords, pikes, and axes ran alongside snarling werewolves who stormed the fortress in tremendous numbers. This was no mere raiding party, Lucian realized at once. It appeared as though every werewolf and lycan in creation was rushing to his rescue. He spotted Raze in the forefront of the charge, with Sabas and Xristo following closely behind him. The rocky slope quaked beneath the stampeding horde. A chorus of belligerent growls and shouts filled the air.
“Thank you, my brothers,” Lucian whispered hoarsely. He sagged against the battlements, too weak to do more than watch as the bestial invaders stormed the fortress. The chain tugging on his leg went slack as the Death Dealer at the other end of the iron links suddenly had a bigger problem to deal with. Defying gravity, an irresistible tide of werewolves crested over the outer walls, taking the outnumbered guards by surprise. They ran straight up the carved granite fortifications and bounded over the parapet onto the palisade, where they bowled over the blindsided guards. Shrieking knights were sent tumbling down the stairs. Werewolves pounced upon the fallen guards, tearing into them with slashing claws and fangs. Mangled pieces of armor were flung aside as the voracious beasts feasted on cold vampire blood and entrails. Strewn limbs and viscera littered the courtyard. Surviving the initial onslaught, a female Death Dealer made it to her feet and bolted for the keep, only to be brought down by a lunging werewolf. Pinned beneath the creature’s massive paws, she barely had time to squirm before its jaws closed upon her head, crushing her skull in an explosion of blood and brains. The beast swallowed her head whole before bounding after another victim. Blood streamed across the cobblestones, forming scarlet canals between the tiles. Bones crunched like broken china. The ghastly sounds brought a pained smile to Lucian’s lips. The screams of the dying vampires were like music to his ears.
Do you hear that, Viktor? he thought bitterly. That is vengeance come calling!
Viktor leaned out over the balcony. His jaw hung open in astonishment. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing and hearing. For more than half a millennium Castle Corvinus had defied invasion. Never before had any enemy dared to breach its walls. But his seasoned Death Dealers were being torn apart by a pack of animals!
How in Perdition had this ever come to pass?
His nails dug into the railing so hard that they gouged the polished black marble. His pale face flushed with anger. Hellfire burned in his eyes.
This is all Lucian’s fault, he raged. First the treacherous lycan had despoiled his daughter, now he had brought death and carnage to the very door of the keep. Is there no end to his atrocities?
Behind him, Viktor heard Tanis slink away. Without so much as begging his master’s leave, the cowardly scribe retreated from the balcony. His furtive steps quickened as he disappeared back into the keep.
Not so fast, Viktor thought. He had need of Tanis now. There was a vital task to be carried out before the invaders could get any farther. Even before Viktor could join the battle himself.
The future of the entire coven might depend on it.
After the werewolves came the lycans. Armed men poured over the parapet, shouting and waving weapons. A pair of heavy boots landed on the ramparts beside Lucian. He looked up to see Raze gazing down at him in concern.
Welcome, my friend, Lucian thought. I have need of your strength.
Raze contemplated the other lycan’s wounds, his gaze shifting from the arrows in Lucian’s back to the bloody harpoon impaling his leg. “Be brave, lycan,” his deep voice rumbled as he bent to extract the poisoned missiles from Lucian’s body. Choosing to get through the ordeal as swiftly as possible, he yanked the crossbow bolts from Lucian’s inflamed flash and hurled them away. His back against the battlements, Lucian gritted his fangs and tried to keep from screaming. Fresh blood streamed down his naked back as each arrow was wrenched free. He remembered Sonja doing the same for him only four nights ago, after Kosta riddled his body with silver-tipped quarrels. The memory of her death flayed his soul anew.
Raze seemed to recall the incident as well. “Your lady?”
Lucian shook his head, unable to put the blazing horror of Sonja’s execution into words. He doubted that he would ever be able to speak of it, no matter if he lived unto the next millennium. Even for a lycan, some scars never healed….
Raze nodded grimly. Mercifully, he did not ask to know more. Instead he turned his attention to the harpoon spearing Lucian’s knee. Lucian braced himself against the damp stone battlements as Raze grabbed the shaft at both ends, then snapped it in two. Blinding pain filled Lucian’s world for a heartbeat. Agony contorted his face. He gasped out loud.
But then the worst was over. Raze worked the severed ends of the spike from the wounded knee, which immediately began to scab over. He tossed them over the edge of the parapet, then rose once more to his feet. A headless Death Dealer lay prone upon the ramparts a few feet away, a thick wool cloak spread atop his body. Raze rescued the cape from the corpse, who would not be needing it any longer, and draped it over Lucian’s naked body like a blanket. The cloak was only a little bloody.
Lucian was touched by the giant’s care. Shucking the cloak aside, he tried to rise to his feet. Dizziness assailed him and he slumped against a nearby merlon to keep from falling. He closed his eyes while he struggled to keep his balance.
“Steady, my friend,” Raze advised. “You need time to heal.”
Lucian grasped Raze’s wrist and pulled himself up. The dizziness passed and he shook his head. The wounds upon his back beg
an to close. His punctured knee supported his weight. Already he could feel the moonlight restoring him.
“Do not worry, my friend.” Lucian mustered a weak smile. “Tonight is not the day I die.” He nodded at the conflict raging in the courtyard below, where a besieged band of Death Dealers was fighting a losing battle to keep the invading werewolves and lycans from the front entrance of the keep. The outmatched defenders were losing ground, and men, with every passing moment. “Now go and free the others.”
Not entirely happy about leaving Lucian alone, Raze nonetheless scrambled toward the scaffolding left behind by the lycan workers. Lucian took a moment to catch his breath, but no longer. He would not wait a second more. Escape was no longer his goal.
Now is the rise of the lycans, he thought. It is time for the vampires to taste our wrath.
Viktor most of all.
Chapter Twenty-three
Viktor found Tanis in his beloved archives. Two leather saddlebags rested at the scribe’s feet, packed to overflowing with rare books and manuscripts. More scrolls were tucked under his arms as he hurriedly ransacked the library. Tanis muttered under his breath, unable to make up his mind which texts to rescue.
Caught up in his dilemma, he didn’t even hear the Elder approach until Viktor lunged forward and knocked an armload of heavy tomes onto the floor. Alarmed, Tanis shrank from the irate Elder. He threw up his hands in fear of another blow.
“There is more to worry about than your precious scrolls!” Viktor bellowed. He was appalled at the scribe’s distorted priorities. Did he not realize that there were more important things at risk? “Get to the other Elders! Now!”
Tanis scurried to obey.
Following Lucian’s orders, Raze stormed the castle’s dungeons. Blood dripped from his mighty war ax. The bodies of dead and wounded guards lay in his wake. Avoiding the heavily guarded front entrance, he had climbed the scaffolding to one of the keep’s upper windows, then made his way down to the dungeons. The dank subterranean corridors stirred unpleasant memories in the former prisoner, who had hoped never to return to this hellish purgatory again. Lycan slaves stared at him in alarm through the iron bars of their cages. Raze recognized some of them as survivors of the ambushed caravan who had been too frightened to escape with him and Lucian before. Already agitated by the sounds of battle seeping down from above, they greeted his unexpected appearance with startled gasps and questions. Fear and confusion showed upon their greasy faces. Moon shackles pricked their throats. Unearthly blue eyes glowed in the shadows. Like Raze, they were no longer human.
Not pausing to explain, he took hold of a barred gate with both hands. As a mortal, the forged metal would have withstood even his considerable thews, but now he brought the strength of a full-blooded lycan to bear. His powerful muscles flexed beneath his skin. Veins swelled upon his biceps and atop his shaved cranium. Straining iron creaked in protest before surrendering to the lycan’s preternatural might. He ripped the heavy gate from its hinges and tossed it down the corridor, where it clattered loudly against the moldy stone floor. Ringing echoes reverberated throughout the dungeons.
He stepped away from the door to let the prisoners out. Most rushed to join him, but a timid few hesitated at the rear of the cell. They peered uncertainly at Raze, more intimidated than impressed by his prodigious feat of strength. He saw a hunger for freedom in their eyes, but also the same debilitating fear that had held them back before. This time, however, Raze had no intention of leaving any slave behind.
“You want your revenge?” he challenged them. “It is out there. GO!”
His stentorian voice overcame their doubts. The remaining prisoners rushed from their cage. Moving swiftly Raze tore open the adjoining cells, freeing yet more lycans, until he found himself at the head of a parade of liberated slaves. Eager to put the dungeons behind them forever, he guided them up from the depths toward the battle above. The growls of the invading werewolves, and the frantic cries of the vampires, called out to him. A brilliant shaft of moonlight penetrated a lattice window at the top of the stairs, bathing Raze in the celestial glow. He suddenly felt more alive than he ever had before. His newfound power surged through his veins. Dark brown eyes turned cobalt blue.
No longer afraid of what he had become, he embraced the wolf within him. His massive frame swelled to even more gargantuan proportions. Constricting clothing was shredded by his expanding form. Thick black fur covered his nakedness. A canine snout protruded from his face. Fangs filled his gaping jaws.
Growling more deeply than any other werewolf, Raze pounced up the steps.
Satisfied that Tanis was seeing to the safety of his fellow Elders, Viktor went to war. His royal armor encased his regal form as he stalked through the keep, flanked by Captain Sandor and the rest of his honor guard. His broadsword hung in its scabbard. A pair of silver daggers were clasped to his waist. His coat-of-arms was emblazoned on his burnished steel cuirass. Blood-red rubies studded his gauntlets and the pommel of his sword. Scowling, he lowered his helmet over his livid features. Cast in the semblance of a leering death’s-head, the helm gave him the skeletal aspect of an armored Grim Reaper. Sharpened fins crested his helmet and shoulder plates. Icy azure eyes peered out from behind his iron mask.
He marched out onto the balcony once more.
The situation below was even more dire than before. The front gates had been opened from within, allowing yet more enemies to penetrate the castle’s defenses. Fog rolled in from outside, adding to the confusion. The hate-maddened werewolves had been joined by a throng of human-looking lycans. The escaped slaves wielded swords and axes against his knights, who were in complete disarray. Dead vampires, their immortality cut short by the rapacious animals, lay in pieces upon the blood-soaked floor of courtyard. The ravaged corpses testified to the unremitting savagery of their barbarous foes. Viktor cursed William for unleashing their vile breed upon the world—and Lucian for inspiring this heinous insurrection. Indeed, unless his eyes were deceiving him, Lucian had united William’s rabid spawn and the new breed of lycans in common cause.
Such an obscene alliance could not go unchallenged a moment longer.
Viktor drew his sword. He strode to the edge of the balcony and flung himself over the rail. Dropping twenty feet to the courtyard below, his silver blade lopped off the head of an unlucky werewolf even before his boots touched down on the cobblestones. Sandor and his guards leapt after him. Viktor shouted above the bloody strife.
“KILL THE DOGS!”
Lucian surveyed the battle from atop the ramparts. A leather vest, trousers, and boots, harvested from the uncomplaining body of the headless Death Dealer, clothed his body. His bare chest was caked with sweat and blood. Sonja’s pendant was safely tucked in his pants. Although his knee still ached where it had been pierced, he felt his strength returning. The full moon blessed him and his army with the power they needed to lay waste to their ancient foes and former masters. Lucian was tempted to assume his wolfen form once more, but, no, when he faced Viktor once more he wanted to do so man to man, not werewolf to vampire. He needed a human tongue to confront Viktor with his crimes.
But where was the coven’s tyrannical ruler?
Gripping the dead soldier’s sword in his fist, Lucian searched for his ultimate enemy. Let his valiant brethren take on Viktor’s foot soldiers; the Elder’s foul blood belonged to him. At first he could not spot his quarry, but then an armored figure dropped from a balcony into the fray, followed by a squad of Death Dealers. The lead vampire thrust himself into the heat of the melee, hacking and slashing with abandon at the werewolves and lycans around him. His shining sword cut a bloody swath through the invaders. Lucian recognized the ornate armor and its macabre headpiece; he had forged it himself for none other than…
“Viktor!”
Sword in hand, Lucian pounced from the ramparts to the floor of the courtyard. Fog swirled around his ankles. Grappling combatants, engaged in brutal hand-to-hand fighting, blocked his path to Viktor. T
he clash of metal competed with the primeval roars of the werewolves. Body parts crunched wetly beneath his boots. The pavement was slick with blood and spilled intestines. Swinging his sword like a berserker, he fought his way through the chaotic free-for-all toward Viktor. A foolish Death Dealer got in his way and paid for it with his life. Lucian’s sword stabbed him in the face, producing a geyser of frigid vampire blood. Shrieking, the soldier reeled backward into the mist, where he was immediately disemboweled by a roaring werewolf. Lucian glimpsed Sabas and Xristo fighting side by side. A knife-wielding Death Dealer came at Xristo from behind, almost taking him unawares, but Sabas saved his boon companion by tackling the vampire from the side. Digging his nails into the soldier’s throat, the burly lycan throttled the Death Dealer with his bare hands. Xristo defended Sabas in turn by holding off Viktor’s men with a whirling hatchet until his friend was done strangling the vampire. Together, they exacted gory vengeance for generations of servitude.
But despite the lycans’ bravery, the advent of Viktor and his reinforcements threatened to turn the tide of the battle. The embattled Death Dealers rallied around the Elder and began to hold their ground. Viktor himself slew any werewolf, lycan, or mortal peasant that came within reach of his sword. Shaggy carcasses began to join the heaps of mutilated vampires filling the bailey. Dead werewolves melted back into human guise. For a second, Lucian feared that the hated vampires were going to prevail once more….
Would nothing end their undying reign of terror?
Then a host of howling lycans, led by an enormous black werewolf, burst from the front gate of the keep. Moon shackles, clamped around the throats of the lycans, identified them as the caged slaves Lucian had dispatched Raze to liberate. Peering gratefully at the hulking wolf commanding the escapees, Lucian realized that Raze had finally shed the last vestiges of his mortality. His heart surged with pride.