The Cross

Chapter Fifty-Six

Siberia

3.44 a.m. local time

By the time the Citation Bravo touched down at the tiny airfield a few miles from the mining outpost of Norilsk, the night sky was turning white with snow and visibility was so poor that the landing lights were just yellowish blurs in the raging blizzard. Neither the pilots nor the ground crew would have ever contemplated being out in these conditions if it hadn’t been for the handsome cash handouts promised by the mysterious Mr Stone.

Beyond the rusting hulk of an old Ilyushin jet liner was the little shack where the humans had strict orders to remain until the three travellers returned; they hurried over to it to warm themselves over the woodburning stove. Stepping out of the air-conditioned plane into a minus twenty degree gale, Ash might have taken refuge alongside them if he’d been willing to show human frailty in front of his two escorts.

He wasn’t about to do that. Instead, he waited in the near-whiteout with Zachary and Lillith and shivered miserably under his fur-lined parka. Under his arm he was clutching the sackcloth-wrapped executioner’s sword that he wouldn’t be parted from. After a few minutes the lights of an approaching vehicle cut swathes through the blizzard and a snow-covered black Mercedes pulled up to collect them.

An hour later, when the car had cut as deep into the white wilderness as it could, they were picked up by a little convoy of snowmobiles.

The vampires were being careful. Even though he could see hardly anything out of his remaining eye but swirling snow, Ash was blindfolded for the remainder of the journey to the Ubervampyr citadel. By the time it was removed, he was far below ground and the temperature had risen to something close to bearable. Ash looked around him at the fantastical ice caverns, like something from another world. His mouth twitched.

Zachary could see the faraway look of sadness on Lillith’s face as the guards escorted them through the citadel. ‘You’re thinking about Gabriel and Kali?’ he asked her softly.

She shrugged and said nothing.

‘He’ll come back to you,’ Zachary told her gently. ‘He always does.’

They were met by another squad of vampire guards. ‘You have it?’ their leader barked. Zachary took off the backpack he was wearing, unzipped it and took out the lead-lined case, still wrapped in the chain Gabriel had fastened around it. The guard went to snatch it, but Zachary jerked it up out of his reach.

‘This is for Master Xenrai,’ Lillith said. ‘Nobody else touches it.’

‘Is it just me, or are these guys more heavily tooled up than they were last time we were here?’ Zachary rumbled as they were led through the ice corridors. Lillith had noticed it too: there were almost twice as many vampire guards in evidence, and they carried long, cruel halberds and pikes as well as swords.

‘Only you two may enter,’ the guard said, stopping at a doorway. ‘The human comes with us.’

‘Where are you taking him?’

‘He will be kept safe. Your weapons, please. You cannot go before the Masters so armed.’

Lillith and Zachary reluctantly unstrapped their sidearms and were shown inside a high-walled chamber. Before long, the tall, bent figure of an Ubervampyr appeared, followed by a second, their robes sweeping the floor as they seemed to glide along. Zachary looked away as the creatures drew back their hoods, and not just because it was impolite to make eye contact.

‘I’d been expecting Master Xenrai,’ Lillith said, recognising the face of the Ubervampyr called Tarcz-koi who had headed the prosecution at the trial.

Tarcz-koi made a stiff little bow. ‘Just as I had been expecting Krajzok — or, as you call him, Gabriel. I am afraid that Master Xenrai is … indisposed. You will deal with me and my esteemed comrade, Grakshukh, from now on. Where is our prize?’

‘Here,’ Lillith said. She hesitated, then passed him the case. The Ubervampyr took it eagerly from her and ran a clawed hand over its surface. ‘That so small an object could cause such pain,’ he murmured.

‘Gabriel said you plan to encase the cross in liquid lead and bury it deep in the ice, where it can never do harm again and no human can ever find it,’ Lillith said.

The Master’s hideous face twisted into an expression that Lillith recognised as an enigmatic kind of smile. ‘We shall dispose of the Zcrokczak as we see fit. Tell me, where is our beloved Young One? His absence here today is a disappointment to us.’

Lillith told him.

‘A holiday,’ the Master sneered, with a glance at his colleague.

Grakshukh made a distorted creaking sound that Lillith supposed was laughter. ‘What of your human companion?’ he asked in a voice even deeper than Zachary’s. ‘Is it true what we hear?’

Lillith nodded. ‘Ash got the cross for us. He was the one who carried it into the enemy’s camp.’

‘Then victory correctly belongs to this Ash, not to Gabriel,’ Grakshukh said, his mandibles contracting in a way that showed irritation. ‘To a mere human we owe this?’

The rest of the conversation was short and strained. Tarcz-koi and his colleague seemed desperate to take their prize away, and rapidly disappeared as guards came to escort Lillith and Zachary to the quarters where they were to rest a while before their long return journey. The swords they’d handed over seemed to have mysteriously vanished.

‘What did the uglies say to you?’ Zachary asked softly on the walk back down the icy passage.

‘I’ll tell you later,’ Lillith muttered with a glance back at the guards.

‘I didn’t like the look in that thing’s eye,’ Zachary whispered, stooping closer to her ear. ‘In fact I don’t like any of this. You ask me, I’d say the motherfuckers are up to something.’

In another part of the vast citadel, the two Ubervampyr observed unseen through a semi-opaque screen of ice as the human called Ash detachedly explored his new surroundings. They had observed many humans in captivity before, and this one didn’t behave like any they’d ever seen. After pacing up and down his quarters a few times, Ash seemed to lose interest. He crouched down to unwrap the sackcloth from his sword. They watched as he lovingly caressed the blade, and then replaced it in its scabbard to drop down to the floor and begin a gruelling series of press-ups.

‘This human is not like others of his kind,’ Grakshukh said in his deep, deep voice.

‘You echo my sentiments, comrade Master,’ Tarcz-koi replied. ‘And I sense that the same thoughts have formed in your mind as in my own.’

‘Yes. This latest behaviour of that fool Xenrai’s young protege is further evidence of his growing decadence. Gabriel is weak, and he is untrustworthy. He celebrates a victory that is not his to claim, and he further insults us by sending mere servants in his stead. The Council should not have relented so easily to the Judge’s wishes.’

‘I did all in my power to influence the court,’ Tarcz-koi said. ‘Xenrai held too much sway.’

‘Xenrai no longer poses an obstacle to us,’ said Grakshukh. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully, watching as the human continued unrelentingly pumping out press-up after press-up. ‘With our eminent Master eliminated, we are free to deal with his former protege in whatever manner we deem appropriate. Gabriel may very well have outlived his usefulness.’ He tapped the tip of a black claw against the ice screen. ‘This one, by contrast … Such a creature could serve our purpose far better.’

Tarcz-koi nodded. ‘We will put him to the test.’

The ice walls of Ash’s quarters were streaming with condensation by the time guards opened his door and brought him an unexpected gift. The human female was one of the many hundreds kept in the dark caverns beneath the citadel. Born in darkness and deprived of sunlight for all of her seventeen years, she was as blind as she was naked. The vampire guards had scrubbed the filth off her body, brushed out her long hair and scented her with aromatic oils that glistened on her skin. Now they flung her down on the floor at Ash’s feet by way of an offering, and left the two of them alone with shining golden platters heaped with meats, jugs of wine and spirits.

In return for the freedom she’d been promised — even if it meant being turned loose in the hostile frozen wilderness that some of the older captives said was all that existed up there on the surface — the girl was willing to do anything to pleasure this man. She undulated her body provocatively on the floor in front of him, crawled sightlessly on all fours like a dog, tried to touch him and press herself against him.

Ash just slapped her away as if she were an annoying insect, without the slightest glance at her nakedness. He sniffed at the wine, put down the jug untouched, pulled a face at the smell of the spirits. Grabbing a piece of half-raw meat from one of the heaped platters, he went and sat in a corner, tore off a hunk with his pointed teeth and chewed for a while, still ignoring the girl’s best attempts to gain his attention.

When he’d eaten enough to take the edge off his hunger, disinterested by the piles of food that remained, he took a sharpening stone from his pocket and busied himself with total concentration whetting the edges of his sword with long, careful strokes up and down the blade. After half an hour, the girl had given up trying to gain his attention and lay curled, weeping, against the far wall.

The two Ubervampyr had been watching the whole time. ‘He resists admirably,’ Tarcz-koi said with a smile. ‘Neither by his stomach nor his loins can he be tempted. Most unusual in so base a creature.’

‘Never have I seen a human so pure of intent,’ Grakshukh agreed. ‘He appears quite untainted by the moral degradation that corrupts his species as a whole, and to which our own Gabriel has too long been a willing party.’

Tarcz-koi looked at him. ‘Then it is decided?’

Grakshukh nodded. ‘It is decided. Gabriel’s time is over. Ash’s is about to begin. Is the cargo aircraft on standby?’ He was referring to the old but serviceable Antonov An-124 transport jet that was kept in a hangar at a disused military air base a hundred miles away across the tundra.

‘It is.’

‘Good. He will need help. Gather fifty of our best Zargoyuk.’

‘It shall be done.’

Grakshukh drew up his hood and turned away from the screen. ‘Send in the guards. Slaughter the female and have Ash brought to me, that we may commence his initiation.’

‘What about the two servants of Gabriel who brought him here?’ Tarcz-koi asked.

‘Destroy them. Immediately.’