“Guess we showed him,” I said, wincing as I ran my hand across the crescent of bite-marks that curved from my right clavicle down to my armpit.
“Indeed,” she said, arching an eyebrow at the mess that was me.
“So the occlusion spell…” I prompted.
“…lifted once you killed Ricou,” she said.
“Why? Why wouldn’t Grigori keep this place hidden?”
Lilith frowned a frown that coulda won awards. “Perhaps he did not anticipate Ricou would be so easilydispatched. Or perhaps he simply did not intend to return, and needed a physical anchor onto which to transfer the spell. Who am I to speculate as to the peculiarities of his magicks?”
I shook my head. Doing so hurt. “Dunno. Seems fishy. Doesn’t track.”
“I think that’s you you’re smelling,” she said, her perfect nose crinkling. “Tell me, Collector, did you kill Ricou by crawling inside him and then burrowing your way back out?”
“Near enough,” I said. “But that business with the occlusion spell, it doesn’t explain what prompted you to come, or to pull me from the drink.”
Until that moment, I don’t think I’d ever seen Lilith look sheepish before. “I thought you may have needed help, is all. Turns out, I was right.”
“You know you saved this meat-suit’s life.”
“Yes, well, this one — unlike the corpses you’ve historically favored — happens to contain a living, breathing mortal man, and I know how you hate to have deaths not assigned to you weighing upon your conscience.”
“Why Lily, that may just be the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
Lilith bristled. “You misunderstand me, Collector. I merely meant to suggest your subsequent moping at the sacrifice of this man would stand in the way of doing the job at hand. And time, I’m told, is of the essence.”
“You know what, Lil? I think I understood you fine.”
In the distance, I heard a scrape of metal on stone. It was the door to the cave through which Yefi — or rather Grigori — and I had entered, grinding open once more. Lilith glanced toward the noise, her brow furrowing in worry.
“What is it?” I asked her.
She answered with a question of her own. “Can you walk, or must I carry you?”
I flexed my legs each in turn. Climbed unsteadily to my feet, while a strange, scrabbling sound drew ever closer on the far side of the underground lake. Found to my great surprise that I could support my own weight. Said, “I’m good to walk — why? What’s out there, Lily? What’s headed our way?”
Lilith put a hand to the small of my back and pushed me into the narrow aperture at the back of the small stone platform. It led to a spiral staircase, carved into the natural rock. “Grigori’s little hamlet may be once more visible to me and those like me– “
As if there were anyone who fit that bill, I thought.
“–but that does not mean he’s left it unprotected.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning by the time that I arrived, every man and child in town was dead, bled dry by the townswomen — or, rather, the beasts that they’ve become. The blood gives them strength, and stokes their hunger. And,” she said, closing her eyes as we ascended, the glow she emanated dimming slightly as she allowed her attentions to wander beyond this narrow staircase to the town beyond, “it seems that they can sense their master’s absence, because to a one, they’re on their way here. And they’re not happy.”
“Jesus,” I said, feeling Lilith’s glare of disapproval on the back of my head as I ascended in front of her, “he wanted to keep this place safe, he couldn’t just use ADT?”
From below us, snarling. Lilith’s hand on my back, urging me onward. “The fuck is going on down there?” I asked.
“Don’t worry. They can’t cross water. They’ll have to find a way around to reach us –scale the walls, perhaps — which should slow them down a little, at least.”
“Okay, a) I think you haven’t the faintest idea what the words ‘don’t worry’ mean if scaling the walls is only gonna slow them down a little, and b) how the fuck could you possibly know that?”
“I’ve seen their kind a time or two before. This isn’t the first time Grigori’s employed them as a smokescreen to mask his flight.”
“Nor the first time hell’s gone after him, apparently,” I observed drily, which might have been tough for her to discern on account of my rising panic and stair-induced huff-and-puffing.
“You forget, Collector, that I’m a good deal older than the Great Truce, and so are the Brethren.”
“Here’s hoping his hell-bitch version 2.0 didn’t get the aqua-upgrade.”
“Honestly, do you hear yourself sometimes? What you people have done to the language of Shakespeare seems far more blasphemous than anything Lucifer or I have ever done.”
“See?” I said, smiling. “You can act your age. All you’re missing is an impassioned ‘get off my lawn’.”
A strange slavering kicked up behind us. The townswomen had reached the base of the stairs, their animal utterances echoing up the spiral staircase like ocean-sounds through a conch shell. As I glanced worriedly over my shoulder, I caught a glimmer of amusement in Lilith’s eye. “I could think of nothing more fitting to punctuate my point than those being the last words this poor vessel of yours has the ignominy of uttering.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve never had much use for punctuation.”
We reached the top of the stairs. Hit the wooden door — arched to match the stairwell, and the platform below — at a run. Pushed it open so hard I damn near toppled out.
Good thing, too. If I hadn’t stumbled when I went through the door, the crazy undead townie chick woulda taken my head off with her goddamn battle-axe.
The lady wasn’t looking so hot. Too thin and wiry by half, all bone and gristle and harsh angles. Skin so pale it appeared translucent, and hypoxic blue as well. Red-rimmed eyes shot through with blood, and retinas blood-red to match. Nails grown unnaturally long and sharp, thick and yellowed and splitting — from her fingers and her bare feet. Face smeared red around a wide gash of mouth too wide for her face, as if Grigori’s infection had warped her very physiognomy, inside which gleamed elongated canines glazed pink. I wondered if that was her husband’s blood all over her face, or her child’s. It was spattered elbow-high across both arms, as well, and her simple cotton housedress was stiff from it — an apron of gore. But given her crazed, lustful stare — inhuman eyes rolling, her pupils pinpricks on account of the castle’s ample lamplight — I’d say whoever’s blood that was, it had only served to whet her appetite.
She’d been swinging for my head. Which, thanks to my stumble, was a good head lower than it usually was. The axe-blade whistled past so close, she parted my meat-suit’s hair. I stumbled forward, Frank’s muscle-memory carrying me through a tuck-and-roll before I so much as realized what was going on. I came out of the somersault on one knee, pivoting and reaching for a gun that wasn’t there.
Turns out, it didn’t matter. Lilith was just fine on her own.
The woman’s swing continued full-bore past me toward Lilith. Lilith laughed and caught the blade midair with both hands — grabbing the sharpened edges as if they were rubber-gripped handles — and used the momentum of the woman’s (ah, to hell with it — I may as well just say vampire’s) swing to lift her off her feet and slam her into the stone wall. She hit hard enough to loosen mortar, and then stuck there, nails dug in as she peered with rage and hatred down at us over one shoulder. She scurried up the wall, then, like a spider — faster than I would have thought possible, had I not seen Simon Magnusson perform a similar trick — and then hurled herself downward toward Lilith.