04 - Rise of the Lycans (31 page)

Do you hear that, Viktor?
he thought bitterly.
That is vengeance come
calling!

Viktor leaned out over the balcony. His jaw hung open in astonishment. He
couldn’t believe what he was seeing and hearing. For more than half a millennium
Castle Corvinus had defied invasion. Never before had any enemy dared to breach
its walls. But his seasoned Death Dealers were being torn apart by a pack of
animals!

How in Perdition had this ever come to pass?

His nails dug into the railing so hard that they gouged the polished black
marble. His pale face flushed with anger. Hellfire burned in his eyes.

This is all Lucian’s fault,
he raged. First the treacherous lycan had
despoiled his daughter, now he had brought death and carnage to the very door of
the keep.
Is there no end to his atrocities?

Behind him, Viktor heard Tanis slink away. Without so much as begging his
master’s leave, the cowardly scribe retreated from the balcony. His furtive
steps quickened as he disappeared back into the keep.

Not so fast,
Viktor thought. He had need of Tanis now. There was a vital
task to be carried out before the invaders could get any farther. Even before
Viktor could join the battle himself.

The future of the entire coven might depend on it.

After the werewolves came the lycans. Armed men poured over the parapet,
shouting and waving weapons. A pair of heavy boots landed on the ramparts beside
Lucian. He looked up to see Raze gazing down at him in concern.

Welcome, my friend,
Lucian thought.
I have need of your strength.

Raze contemplated the other lycan’s wounds, his gaze shifting from the arrows
in Lucian’s back to the bloody harpoon impaling his leg. “Be brave, lycan,” his
deep voice rumbled as he bent to extract the poisoned missiles from Lucian’s
body. Choosing to get through the ordeal as swiftly as possible, he yanked the
crossbow bolts from Lucian’s inflamed flash and hurled them away. His back
against the battlements, Lucian gritted his fangs and tried to keep from screaming. Fresh blood streamed down
his naked back as each arrow was wrenched free. He remembered Sonja doing the
same for him only four nights ago, after Kosta riddled his body with
silver-tipped quarrels. The memory of her death flayed his soul anew.

Raze seemed to recall the incident as well. “Your lady?”

Lucian shook his head, unable to put the blazing horror of Sonja’s execution
into words. He doubted that he would ever be able to speak of it, no matter if
he lived unto the next millennium. Even for a lycan, some scars never healed….

Raze nodded grimly. Mercifully, he did not ask to know more. Instead he
turned his attention to the harpoon spearing Lucian’s knee. Lucian braced
himself against the damp stone battlements as Raze grabbed the shaft at both
ends, then snapped it in two. Blinding pain filled Lucian’s world for a
heartbeat. Agony contorted his face. He gasped out loud.

But then the worst was over. Raze worked the severed ends of the spike from
the wounded knee, which immediately began to scab over. He tossed them over the
edge of the parapet, then rose once more to his feet. A headless Death Dealer
lay prone upon the ramparts a few feet away, a thick wool cloak spread atop his
body. Raze rescued the cape from the corpse, who would not be needing it any
longer, and draped it over Lucian’s naked body like a blanket. The cloak was
only a
little
bloody.

Lucian was touched by the giant’s care. Shucking the cloak aside, he tried to
rise to his feet. Dizziness assailed him and he slumped against a nearby merlon to keep from falling. He
closed his eyes while he struggled to keep his balance.

“Steady, my friend,” Raze advised. “You need time to heal.”

Lucian grasped Raze’s wrist and pulled himself up. The dizziness passed and
he shook his head. The wounds upon his back began to close. His punctured knee
supported his weight. Already he could feel the moonlight restoring him.

“Do not worry, my friend.” Lucian mustered a weak smile. “Tonight is not the
day I die.” He nodded at the conflict raging in the courtyard below, where a
besieged band of Death Dealers was fighting a losing battle to keep the invading
werewolves and lycans from the front entrance of the keep. The outmatched
defenders were losing ground, and men, with every passing moment. “Now go and
free the others.”

Not entirely happy about leaving Lucian alone, Raze nonetheless scrambled
toward the scaffolding left behind by the lycan workers. Lucian took a moment to
catch his breath, but no longer. He would not wait a second more. Escape was no
longer his goal.

Now is the rise of the lycans,
he thought.
It is time for the
vampires to taste our wrath.

Viktor most of all.

Viktor found Tanis in his beloved archives. Two leather saddlebags rested at
the scribe’s feet, packed to overflowing with rare books and manuscripts. More
scrolls were tucked under his arms as he hurriedly ransacked the library. Tanis
muttered under his breath, unable to make up his mind which texts to rescue.

Caught up in his dilemma, he didn’t even hear the Elder approach until Viktor
lunged forward and knocked an armload of heavy tomes onto the floor. Alarmed,
Tanis shrank from the irate Elder. He threw up his hands in fear of another
blow.

“There is more to worry about than your precious scrolls!” Viktor bellowed.
He was appalled at the scribe’s distorted priorities. Did he not realize that
there were more important things at risk? “Get to the other Elders! Now!”

Tanis scurried to obey.

Following Lucian’s orders, Raze stormed the castle’s dungeons. Blood dripped
from his mighty war ax. The bodies of dead and wounded guards lay in his wake.
Avoiding the heavily guarded front entrance, he had climbed the scaffolding to
one of the keep’s upper windows, then made his way down to the dungeons. The
dank subterranean corridors stirred unpleasant memories in the former prisoner,
who had hoped never to return to this hellish purgatory again. Lycan slaves
stared at him in alarm through the iron bars of their cages. Raze recognized
some of them as survivors of the ambushed caravan who had been too frightened to
escape with him and Lucian before. Already agitated by the sounds of battle
seeping down from above, they greeted his unexpected appearance with startled
gasps and questions. Fear and confusion showed upon their greasy faces. Moon
shackles pricked their throats. Unearthly blue eyes glowed in the shadows. Like
Raze, they were no longer human.

Not pausing to explain, he took hold of a barred gate with both hands. As a
mortal, the forged metal would have withstood even his considerable thews, but
now he brought the strength of a full-blooded lycan to bear. His powerful
muscles flexed beneath his skin. Veins swelled upon his biceps and atop his
shaved cranium. Straining iron creaked in protest before surrendering to the
lycan’s preternatural might. He ripped the heavy gate from its hinges and tossed it down the corridor, where it
clattered loudly against the moldy stone floor. Ringing echoes reverberated
throughout the dungeons.

He stepped away from the door to let the prisoners out. Most rushed to join
him, but a timid few hesitated at the rear of the cell. They peered uncertainly
at Raze, more intimidated than impressed by his prodigious feat of strength. He
saw a hunger for freedom in their eyes, but also the same debilitating fear that
had held them back before. This time, however, Raze had no intention of leaving
any slave behind.

“You want your revenge?” he challenged them. “It is out there. GO!”

His stentorian voice overcame their doubts. The remaining prisoners rushed
from their cage. Moving swiftly Raze tore open the adjoining cells, freeing yet
more lycans, until he found himself at the head of a parade of liberated slaves.
Eager to put the dungeons behind them forever, he guided them up from the depths
toward the battle above. The growls of the invading werewolves, and the frantic
cries of the vampires, called out to him. A brilliant shaft of moonlight
penetrated a lattice window at the top of the stairs, bathing Raze in the
celestial glow. He suddenly felt more alive than he ever had before. His
newfound power surged through his veins. Dark brown eyes turned cobalt blue.

No longer afraid of what he had become, he embraced the wolf within him. His
massive frame swelled to even more gargantuan proportions. Constricting clothing was shredded by his expanding form. Thick black fur covered his
nakedness. A canine snout protruded from his face. Fangs filled his gaping jaws.

Growling more deeply than any other werewolf, Raze pounced up the steps.

Satisfied that Tanis was seeing to the safety of his fellow Elders, Viktor
went to war. His royal armor encased his regal form as he stalked through the
keep, flanked by Captain Sandor and the rest of his honor guard. His broadsword
hung in its scabbard. A pair of silver daggers were clasped to his waist. His
coat-of-arms was emblazoned on his burnished steel cuirass. Blood-red rubies
studded his gauntlets and the pommel of his sword. Scowling, he lowered his
helmet over his livid features. Cast in the semblance of a leering death’s-head,
the helm gave him the skeletal aspect of an armored Grim Reaper. Sharpened fins
crested his helmet and shoulder plates. Icy azure eyes peered out from behind
his iron mask.

He marched out onto the balcony once more.

The situation below was even more dire than before. The front gates had been
opened from within, allowing yet more enemies to penetrate the castle’s defenses.
Fog rolled in from outside, adding to the confusion. The hate-maddened
werewolves had been joined by a throng of human-looking lycans. The escaped
slaves wielded swords and axes against his knights, who were in complete
disarray. Dead vampires, their immortality cut short by the rapacious animals,
lay in pieces upon the blood-soaked floor of courtyard. The ravaged corpses
testified to the unremitting savagery of their barbarous foes. Viktor cursed William for unleashing their vile breed upon
the world—and Lucian for inspiring this heinous insurrection. Indeed, unless his
eyes were deceiving him, Lucian had united William’s rabid spawn and the new
breed of lycans in common cause.

Such an obscene alliance could not go unchallenged a moment longer.

Viktor drew his sword. He strode to the edge of the balcony and flung himself
over the rail. Dropping twenty feet to the courtyard below, his silver blade
lopped off the head of an unlucky werewolf even before his boots touched down on the
cobblestones. Sandor and his guards leapt after him. Viktor shouted above the
bloody strife.

“KILL THE DOGS!”

Lucian surveyed the battle from atop the ramparts. A leather vest, trousers,
and boots, harvested from the uncomplaining body of the headless Death
Dealer, clothed his body. His bare chest was caked with sweat and blood. Sonja’s
pendant was safely tucked in his pants. Although his knee still ached where it
had been pierced, he felt his strength returning. The full moon blessed him and
his army with the power they needed to lay waste to their ancient foes and
former masters. Lucian was tempted to assume his wolfen form once more, but, no,
when he faced Viktor once more he wanted to do so man to man, not werewolf to
vampire. He needed a human tongue to confront Viktor with his crimes.

But where was the coven’s tyrannical ruler?

Gripping the dead soldier’s sword in his fist, Lucian searched for his
ultimate enemy. Let his valiant brethren take on Viktor’s foot soldiers; the
Elder’s foul blood belonged to him. At first he could not spot his quarry, but
then an armored figure dropped from a balcony into the fray, followed by a squad
of Death Dealers. The lead vampire thrust himself into the heat of the melee,
hacking and slashing with abandon at the werewolves and lycans around him. His
shining sword cut a bloody swath through the invaders. Lucian recognized the
ornate armor and its macabre headpiece; he had forged it himself for none other
than…

“Viktor!”

Sword in hand, Lucian pounced from the ramparts to the floor of the
courtyard. Fog swirled around his ankles. Grappling combatants, engaged in
brutal hand-to-hand fighting, blocked his path to Viktor. The clash of metal
competed with the primeval roars of the werewolves. Body parts crunched wetly
beneath his boots. The pavement was slick with blood and spilled intestines.
Swinging his sword like a berserker, he fought his way through the chaotic
free-for-all toward Viktor. A foolish Death Dealer got in his way and paid for
it with his life. Lucian’s sword stabbed him in the face, producing a geyser of
frigid vampire blood. Shrieking, the soldier reeled backward into the mist,
where he was immediately disemboweled by a roaring werewolf. Lucian glimpsed
Sabas and Xristo fighting side by side. A knife-wielding Death Dealer came at
Xristo from behind, almost taking him unawares, but Sabas saved his boon
companion by tackling the vampire from the side. Digging his nails into the
soldier’s throat, the burly lycan throttled the Death Dealer with his bare hands. Xristo defended
Sabas in turn by holding off Viktor’s men with a whirling hatchet until his
friend was done strangling the vampire. Together, they exacted gory vengeance
for generations of servitude.

But despite the lycans’ bravery, the advent of Viktor and his reinforcements
threatened to turn the tide of the battle. The embattled Death Dealers rallied
around the Elder and began to hold their ground. Viktor himself slew any
werewolf, lycan, or mortal peasant that came within reach of his sword. Shaggy
carcasses began to join the heaps of mutilated vampires filling the bailey. Dead
werewolves melted back into human guise. For a second, Lucian feared that the
hated vampires were going to prevail once more….