The Cross

Chapter Sixty-Three

Alex was the first to leap down from the rear balcony and follow Baxter’s tracks in the snow around the side of the chalet. She heard the meaty chopping sounds and the strange chittering, twittering noises before she rounded the corner and saw the strange little figures, no taller than children, that were crowded around what was left of the movie star. The crude, hooded robes they wore were like scaled-down versions of the habits worn by medieval monks, held in at the waist with broad leather belts or lengths of stout rope. But what drew Alex’s eye was the cruel-looking assortment of bloodied butcher’s knives, machetes and cleavers the creatures clutched in their grey, clawed, three-fingered little hands.

The twittering stopped abruptly. The creatures looked up from the bloody circle in the snow and stared at her from under their hoods. Alex counted eight of them as she backed away a couple of steps. Suddenly she was aware of Joel at her side. Lillith, Gabriel, Zachary and Tiberius had joined him. Glancing up, she glimpsed Dec and Chloe standing above on the balcony, leaning out over the rail with looks of horror.

‘It seems to be curtains for our thespian friend,’ Gabriel said, nudging Baxter’s severed head with his toe.

‘Never mind him,’ Alex said. ‘What about those?’

‘Whatever they are,’ Joel said, ‘they’re not afraid of us.’

As if to prove him right, the little hooded figures charged at them with uncanny speed and aggression. Alex shot the nearest one in the face and it somersaulted backwards in a dark mist of exploded skull and brain matter, the wicked machete flying from its hand.

Lillith snatched the weapon out of the air. As the creatures closed on them she windmilled it around her, splitting one from hip to shoulder and lopping off another’s arm. Without a sound, the thing bounded away from her, blood spraying the snow from its stump. It would have knocked Joel off his feet if he hadn’t thrust out his katana in time. Impaled through the middle, the creature fell back, its surprising weight almost tearing the sword from Joel’s grip.

Tiberius stepped back out of the arc of a cleaver blow that would have halved a strong man, grabbed his attacker by the folds of its habit and dashed its brains out against one of the chalet’s thick wooden support struts; meanwhile, Gabriel swept the feet out from under another and crushed its throat with a stamping kick. Zachary had scooped one up by the rope around its middle, knocked the knife out of its hands and was busy strangling it in his fists.

The remaining creature turned, chittering to itself, and went bounding away like a mountain goat over the rocks.

‘One thing’s for sure,’ Alex said, using her foot to roll over one of the corpses. ‘These things are no vampires.’

‘Then what are they?’ Joel said. He knelt down beside the dead creature and ripped away the hood, exposing its face to the moonlight. Its skin was grey and leprous. It had the wrinkles of a very, very old man. The large eyes of a cat. The jutting, muscular jaws of a barracuda, slick with slime and drool. Joel looked away in disgust.

‘I’ve never seen anything like this before,’ Alex said.

‘Zachary and I have,’ Lillith said. ‘At the Uber citadel in Siberia. Their answer to a ghoul, I thought.’

‘This thing’s never been a human. Look at it.’

‘It is a Zargoyuk,’ Gabriel said. ‘The nearest translation of the ancient word would be “goblin”.’

Lillith looked at him. ‘You knew about these things?’

‘They are drones, hunters, the slave workforce of the citadel, hatched deep in its bowels from mutated Ubervampyr spawn. I told you before, sister, of the secrets and wisdom of the Masters.’

‘I wouldn’t say it was wise to create something like this,’ Lillith said, pointing at the dead creature.

‘The question is,’ Alex cut in, ‘how many more are there?’

Zachary gazed up the mountainside to where the goblin had disappeared among the rocks. ‘She’s right. There could be dozens of the little mothers hiding up there.’

‘What do we do, Gabriel?’ Tiberius said. ‘Go up there and hunt for th—’

Before he could finish, something came whistling out of the darkness and thwacked into the wooden support next to them. A dark liquid spatter caught Tiberius across the face as he was speaking. He clapped his hand to his lips, spitting and choking. A second arrow whooshed out from somewhere in the rocks, narrowly missing Alex.

‘Get inside,’ Gabriel said. ‘Quickly.’

Within instants of the strange black fluid spattering his face, Tiberius couldn’t walk properly. He fell on his knees and would have collapsed on his face if Gabriel and Zachary hadn’t caught his limp arms. As they dragged him across the snow to the chalet, more incoming fire came whistling in from the mountainside. A shaft juddered into the wall inches from Joel. Another plunged into Tiberius’s calf and yet another embedded itself deep in his back.

Alex booted open a back door, shouting ‘Everyone in!’ It was a storeroom filled with junk, tools, gas cylinders and old ski equipment. Gabriel and Zachary dragged Tiberius inside and laid him down on the floor. The remaining vampires piled in behind them and Alex slammed the door shut just as another arrow thunked into it.

By now, Tiberius was completely paralysed.

‘We saw this too,’ Lillith said, pointing at the black fluid that was dribbling from his arrow wounds.

‘We sure did,’ Zachary muttered. ‘Some kinda ugly poison.’

‘An Ubervampyr neurotoxin,’ Gabriel said grimly. ‘Akin to the venom with which a spider paralyses its prey. It is less effective on our kind than on humans. But even for us, only in the tiniest quantities are the effects temporary. I fear that Tiberius has suffered far too great a dose.’

‘You mean he’ll be paralysed like this—’

Gabriel gave a solemn nod. ‘For the rest of time. We must deliver him. Sister, hand me that blade.’

Lillith hesitated, aghast, then passed him the machete she’d taken from the dead goblin.

‘My very old friend,’ Gabriel said, bending over Tiberius’s prone body. ‘Forgive me.’

Joel had to look away as the blade came down.

‘Poor Tiberius,’ Lillith breathed.

‘In such circumstances, I would expect any of my brethren to show me the same mercy,’ Gabriel said, stepping up from the decapitated body and handing the machete back to her.

‘I don’t want it,’ she was about to say — when they suddenly heard an urgent shout from upstairs.