The Cross

Chapter Seventy-Two

The chalet exploded in a gigantic rolling fireball that lit up the night sky. Burning wreckage was catapulted hundreds of feet into the air.

Alex and Joel felt the heat on their faces from halfway up the mountain as the goblins closed in on them. A moment later, a great rumbling shook the ground under their feet. The whole mountain seemed to be trembling.

The goblins looked up in fright and then scattered as the entire face of the towering peak seemed to detach itself and came crashing towards them — millions of tons of snow and ice and rock dislodged by the sound vibrations of the explosion and hurtling downwards in a devastating wave. The fleeing goblins were crushed as if a giant fist had pounded down on top of them.

Alex and Joel ran to avoid the path of the avalanche, but not even a vampire could run that fast.

‘Don’t let go of my hand!’ Alex shouted over the deafening roar.

Then it hit.

Hundreds of yards away across the mountain slope, Gabriel Stone was crouched forlornly by Lillith’s prone body when the explosion lit up the sky.

At the same moment, Zachary let out a whoop of joy. Lillith was stirring. She blinked, once, twice, drew in a gasping breath. ‘Gabriel, is that you? Zachary?’

‘I thought I had lost you, my dearest love.’ As Gabriel held her tightly, the ground began to shake and little landslides slithered down around them.

‘Look,’ Zachary said.

They watched as the avalanche flung its wrath down the mountainside, sweeping away everything before it. It bore down on the burning wreck of the chalet. Blazing timbers shattered and were driven over the edge of the abyss. The cable car went plummeting down the valley and smashed into a thousand pieces among the trees below.

Once the fury of the mountain was spent, all was silent. Just the whistle of the wind and the gentle patter as a fresh snow began to fall.

A large, flat rock suddenly overturned and Alex crawled out from under it, bloodied and bruised, her hair white with snow. She staggered to her feet.

‘Joel!’ she called out, anxiously scanning the new landscape that the avalanche had left in its wake.

There was no sign of him.

‘Joel!’ she called again. A healthy vampire could always dig its way out, even from under tons of rock and snow — but not one so close to starvation. She couldn’t bear the thought of what could happen to him if he didn’t feed very, very soon.

Her heart leaped as she saw a hand sticking up out of the snow. She ran over to it and clasped it. It was as cold as ice. She dropped to her knees and started digging. After a few moments, she was able to haul him out. He wasn’t moving as she laid him down on the snow.

Joel opened his eyes. ‘I’m starving, Alex,’ he said, barely audible over the wind. ‘I don’t think I have much time left.’

Alex rolled up her sleeve, brought her wrist up to her mouth and bit deep into the veins. Dark blood trickled down her hand and onto the snow.

‘Drink from me,’ she said to him. ‘It’ll keep you going a while.’

Joel hesitated, then grasped her hand. She threw back her head in a strange mixture of pain and pleasure as he sucked greedily at the blood from her wrist.

‘You’ll stay with me now?’ she said, and felt that rarest of all things trickle down her cheek: a vampire tear. ‘Forever?’

He nodded. Blood on his mouth. ‘Forever.’

They embraced, then turned to gaze at the spot where Baxter Burnett’s majestic hunting lodge had once stood. Nothing remained except the few smouldering timbers that hadn’t been buried in the avalanche.

But there was something else down there. Dark against the snow, two tiny figures, huddled close to one another, one limping, the other carrying a small rectangular object.

‘What now?’ Dec asked Chloe as they trudged along together. The snow was falling more heavily now, and after the heat of the fire he was shivering with cold. Like Chloe’s, his hair was frizzed and scorched from where the explosion had rolled over them as they hurled themselves into the snow.

Chloe looked down at the case in her hand, her father’s cross nestled inside. ‘We’re vampire hunters, aren’t we?’ she said.

‘Sure, I don’t know what we are exactly,’ Dec replied.

Chloe nodded. She clicked the locks shut, rolled the combination wheels, then tossed the case down on the snow and walked away from it.

She and Dec were holding hands as Joel and Alex came down to meet them.

‘Are you all right?’ Joel asked Dec, noticing the blood that was caked over the kid’s face.

‘Ah, hardly a scratch, like. I’ll do rightly.’ Dec grinned through the pain.

‘You did good, Dec,’ Joel said. ‘I’m proud of you.’

Chloe handed Alex the empty gun. ‘Ash is dead. You can have this back now.’ She jerked her thumb over her shoulder at the case lying on the snow. ‘You can have the cross, too, if it’s any use to you.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Alex said. ‘I should have trusted you, shouldn’t I?’

‘It can’t be easy.’

‘I guess we all had some learning to do,’ Alex said. She touched Chloe’s arm.

Chloe smiled. ‘Does this mean I have a new vampire friend now?’

‘You know what?’ Dec said. ‘I’m beginning to wonder if there aren’t worse things than frigging vampires.’

‘You got that right,’ Alex replied.

‘Indeed he did,’ said a familiar voice behind them. The four turned to see Gabriel standing there with Lillith and Zachary. Kali was skulking jealously in the background.

‘The question is, Gabriel, what were you planning on doing about it?’ Alex asked him.

Gabriel shrugged. ‘I believe the time may have come to call a truce. Strictly on a temporary basis, you understand.’

‘Depends on what you mean by a truce,’ Joel said.

‘We’re gonna go back to Siberia and kick those Ubers’ asses,’ Zachary grunted. ‘Could do with some help from you guys.’

‘I might not have put it quite that way myself,’ Gabriel said. ‘But he expresses my intentions accurately enough. Well? What do you say to the notion of our joining forces?’

‘We need the humans, Gabriel,’ Alex said.

‘Why, naturally. Who else can wield the cross for us?’

‘Which means you’d have to swear not to lay a finger on them.’

Gabriel looked hurt. ‘Was ever a vampire so cruelly misjudged? What do you take me for, Alexandra? A monster?’

‘I won’t answer that.’ Alex turned to Chloe. ‘You don’t have to do this, you know.’

‘We’ve come this far,’ Chloe said.

‘Dec?’

Dec shrugged. ‘Like I said. There are worse things than vampires.’

Alex looked at Joel. ‘What about you?’

‘I don’t think I have a choice,’ Joel said.

‘Then we’re a unit,’ Lillith said.

‘A veritable alliance,’ Gabriel said with a smile.

The snow was falling more heavily now, rapidly turning into a blizzard.

‘So … which way is Siberia again?’ Dec asked.