The Cross

Chapter Seventy

Joel hadn’t imagined it — the sound of Alex’s voice on the wind, calling his name. There it was again … It was coming from further up the mountainside.

He ran, leaping over rocks, stumbling through deep snow. As the slope steepened, he clamped the katana blade between his teeth and climbed like he’d never climbed before.

‘Joel!’ It came out as a scream this time, just the other side of a rocky overhang a few yards up the slope. He launched himself over it and saw her.

Alex was surrounded by a whole pack of goblins, desperately beating them off with a gnarled old tree root in one hand and a jagged lump of stone in the other as they attacked her from all sides.

In an instant he was there with her. One of the creatures that hurled itself at Alex fell back, headless. Joel’s blade rose and fell. He killed another, then another, striking again and again with all the energy that was left in him, left and right, screaming with fury and hitting and slicing until he was standing knee-deep in the middle of a slaughterer’s yard of dead or dying goblins.

Still they kept on coming. So many of them, swarming in from everywhere, their number growing faster than Alex and Joel could kill them.

And now the strength was beginning to ebb out of Joel’s body, drained to such a low ebb that he could barely swing the sword or even stand upright. He dropped to his knees and looked at Alex. ‘I’m sorry,’ he groaned.

Alex shook her head. ‘I’m not. At least this way, I don’t have to lose you a second time. Better we go out together, Joel.’

He didn’t know what to say.

‘You know, I love you,’ she whispered.

The goblins gathered around them.

‘Where’s Lillith?’ Zachary shouted from behind the rocks.

‘I don’t see her,’ Gabriel shouted back from the other side of the mountain path, where he and Kali had taken cover from the flying arrows. The shooting seemed to have abruptly died away. Gabriel craned his neck out a little further from behind the boulder. ‘No,’ he groaned. ‘Oh, no, no.’

Lillith was still on the path, a few yards away. She was lying on her face in the snow, her arms outflung. Black against the snow, the shaft of a goblin arrow was sticking vertically from her shoulder. Gabriel shouted her name again. There was no movement.

And now the pause in the shooting was explained. Dark shapes came scurrying down the mountainside. As Gabriel stared in anguish, the first goblins reached her and began dragging her away by the wrists. Others stood by, their hooded little heads jerking this way and that as they scanned the rocks. The nearest of the creatures plucked a fresh arrow from the quiver at its side. Two others had their bows already at full draw, waiting for a target to appear. Lillith’s body was out of sight now behind the rocks. There was the scrape of steel on stone, as if a blade was being sharpened.

Gabriel was fully aware of what was happening. The Masters had trained their little hunters well. They were using her as bait to draw the rest of them out. ‘I swear that if I survive this day,’ he murmured through clenched teeth, ‘I will strike back at the Ubervampyr for what they have done to me.’ He lashed out his fist in anger, and a rock next to him split in two.

‘Let her go, Gabriel,’ Kali said, clutching at his hand. ‘She’s only your sister.’

Gabriel turned to her with a terrible look. ‘I have walked with Lillith since before you were born a human.’ He sucked in a long breath. He couldn’t stand it any longer. With a shout of rage, he tore away from Kali’s grip and leaped out from behind the boulder, charging wildly at the goblins.

A twang of a bowstring; he felt something rip through his shirt and scrape his side. Zachary was right behind him, his roar of fury filling the air. They could fire a hundred arrows into that huge body and he’d still be on his feet long enough to rip every one of them limb from limb with his bare hands.

At the sight of him, the goblins threw down their bows and ran. Gabriel hurdled a rock to see five of them clustered around Lillith’s prone body. A blade glinted in the dull moonlight as it rose and began to fall. Gabriel grabbed up a fist-sized rock and hurled it savagely. As the blade spun out of the goblin’s little grey hand, he was already on the creature, ripping back its hood and pounding his fists into its face with a ferocious violence that crushed the skull in like a seashell. Zachary dodged a flying glass ball and dashed two goblin heads together, broke the neck of a third with a flying kick and sent a fourth tumbling to its death down the mountainside.

By the time Kali had joined them, the remaining goblins had fled and Gabriel and Zachary were kneeling by Lillith’s side in the snow. Zachary was sobbing as he cradled her.

Kali stood over them with her fists on her hips, head cocked to one side, watching impassively.

‘Let me attend to her, Zachary.’ Gabriel gathered Lillith in his arms and rested her head on his knee. Her eyes seemed not to see him. Ripping the seam of her leather outfit at the shoulder, he grasped the base of the arrow shaft where it met the flesh and gave a hard tug. Black venom oozed from the wound as the arrow came out. Tossing it away, Gabriel pressed his mouth to the hole and sucked hard. He spat black on the snow, then sucked again; he kept on doing it until he tasted the sweet flavour of vampire blood on his lips.

‘I have drawn what I could from the wound,’ he said, laying her limp body back down on the snow. ‘I can only hope that it was not too late.’ He gazed down at her. ‘I cannot envisage eternity without her at my side.’

Kali’s eyes had narrowed and her lips were tight. Gabriel paid her no attention.

Lillith’s hand was dwarfed in Zachary’s great fists as he clenched it tight. ‘Come on, Lil,’ he pleaded. ‘Wake up. Come on, Lil … Wake up …’