“Then I imagine you will be hard to kill.”
“Impossible would be closer to the mark. I have grown beyond anything this world understands as a vampire.” The swollen creature gloats,
emphasing
the warning with a sharp toothed smile.
“Then it is a pity that I cannot meet your price.”
“Indeed it is, but then I thought that might be the case. It could not be otherwise unless your old mistress were alive and I have heard nothing to make me think that might be true.”
The Elder’s pale eyes look into the distance at some long gone memory.
“Your old mistress was always ready to pay such a price, blood was a special passion for her, she’s even responsible for some of my own development you know. Of course, she was looking for a cure, so she said, but her meddling had unlooked for side effects.”
While
Pellan
talks the moist earth in the ceiling behind the Pilgrim quietly parts, to reveal a pale worm-like strand, reminiscent of the tentacles that had bound Lillian on her journey through the marshes. Before Lillian can give the stranger warning, the tendril snakes out, in a whip like motion, its tip lashing towards the oblivious Pilgrim. Time dilates, as the slimy limb comes almost close enough to touch the back of the Pilgrim’s neck. The end of the tentacle bulges as its muscles tense and a long claw launches itself from the tip, an action so fast that it could be missed in a single blink but instead of finding its target and puncturing the Pilgrim’s skin and spine, the piston-like claw thrusts itself through empty air. In the space between heartbeats the sabre sings a single note and hacks though the soft tissue higher up the gruesome limb leaving a long segment writhing on the ground, its retractable claw spasmodically gouging at the soft soil of the chamber’s floor.
With a bark of rage,
Pellan
leaves his seat, the heavy body moves faster than Lillian could ever have imagined. As soon as the giant stands the source of the pale limb becomes obvious, thick strands of pale flesh dangle from almost every point of the Elder’s back. Hundreds of strands of varying thickness coil behind the chair and dig deep into the marsh soil, some are no thicker than hair or more accurately, nerves, the means by which he knows what passes in his domain; others are thick and gnarled cables that flex as they drive yet more clawed tentacles through the soft earth and out into the chamber.
A gun shot echoes from those breached walls, as Blake sends the giant recalling back into his seat with a well-placed slug. Clear liquid and congealed blood explode from the wound as the grotesque Elder keels backwards, smashing his long tortured chair into splinters in his fall. Meanwhile, Dale throws himself towards the intruder, his head sprouting deadly horns and his hands curling with thick black talons. Lillian watches in amazement as the Pilgrim meets the charge head on. At the last possible moment the white haired man grasps either horn and allows his opponent’s momentum to throw him into the air, even as he lands the sabre blade flashes out again, drawing a line of dark blood down Dale’s spine, penetrating the protection of his thick skin.
Two white tentacles pound into the ground where the Pilgrim had stood only nanoseconds before. Dale’s headlong momentum causes him to plough into the tendrils, drawing a gasp of frustration and pain from
Pellan
as he painfully tries to raise his bulk from the floor. Lillian notices with satisfaction that the collision has torn one of the claws from the tentacle and left it stuck in the earth. Another shot sounds and half of Dale’s head explodes. Unfazed by his wounds, the
shapeshifter
wheels about and sends tentacles of his own flying after his attacker.
Impossibly, Blake manages to twist his body through the grasping ribbons of flesh and leaves behind several trophies, quivering on the floor, for his efforts. The white haired Pilgrim is fast and strong but it is clear to Lillian from the start that he is on the defensive. Again and again he is forced to duck and weave through the grasping limbs of his two attackers. Lillian stands at the exit to the chamber unable to decide what to do. It is only a matter of time before her self-appointed
saviour
is brought down, already the seemingly innumerable white limbs are harrying him into an ever tighter mesh and Dale seems impervious to any damage done to him. Lillian edges closer to the door trying to work up the courage to run into the ill lit passages but her common sense tells her she does not know the way out, nor has she forgotten the mad, fiery eyes watching her from the darkness. The fact that Pellan’s twisted offspring have not seen fit to aid him in the struggle, leads her to wonder whether whatever freaks are still waiting in the darkness will obey his injunction against harming her. There is simply no denying that the Pilgrim is her only hope and it is the acknowledgement of this thought, rather than any personal bravery, which makes her turn and go back into the chamber.
There is nowhere for the fool to go now, Dale thrills in that part of his brain that is still working. It will take a while for him to work out the knots and pulped ganglia in his bullet-shattered nervous system, but for now, he has all that he needs to function in his killer instinct, which drives his malleable body to ever greater extremes. Had he been in full position of his faculties, he would have admitted that his assessment of the Pilgrim as ‘merely human’ had proved terribly flawed, he had never seen anyone move so fast and his strength, though, obviously beginning to flag, was prodigious. At the moment, however, all he can see is his victim at bay, brought to heel by his master’s strong limbs. He gathers himself for the pounce, the final charge that will end this fight. Without his right ear or eye, he gets no warning of the sudden impact as Lillian throws herself against him, pushing him off line. The dark hunter gives a howl of frustration and whirls on his new attacker, through the red haze that clouds his mind he sees the girl as nothing but an annoyance, an insect, which has ruined his moment. Heedless of dimly remembered instructions not to harm her Dale raises both sets of talons with every intention of leaving the girl disemboweled and screaming but instead pain explodes through his chest.
A white limb punches through Dale’s
amoured
skin, its claw extruding from the front of his chest and lifts the howling vampire, high above Lillian’s head.
“You were told not to harm her, under any circumstances.”
Pellan
growls but there is no response, the claw has pierced Dale’s heart. With a frown that distorts his jowls even further,
Pellan
lets the corpse drop.
“Enough of this!” He says, addressing Blake where he stands warding off the poised claws with his dancing blade. “You cannot win and I cannot let you have the girl, perhaps we can come to another arrangement.”
“Like what?” Blake asks, warily.
“Let me make my deal and then bother whoever buys her. I will have what I want and you can bother the other fools who seek the Gate to your heart’s content.”
“How do I know that I can trust you?” Blake asks, stepping gingerly from the circle of severed claws and clear gore.
“What choice do you have? I grow new limbs every day, as part of my condition. I can already see you flagging, there is simply no way for you to stop me. However, I dislike pain and I see another way for us all to get what we want.”
“What makes you think that I can’t kill you?”
“Lop limbs off all day if you like, I’m still all around you. I have grown for centuries, I have countless limbs, many hearts.” The Elder slaps the wound already sealing on his flabby distorted chest.
“What you see here is only a small part of me, there is simply no way for you to really harm me.”
“There is one thing you’ve forgotten,” the Pilgrim says making as if to sheathe his sword.
“What’s that?”
Pellan
asks, with the air of one indulging a child.
“As far as I can see you only have one head.”
All the white limbs react at once, grasping as fast as they can trying to fend off the streak of motion that shoots towards the bulk in the middle of the room but they are none of them fast enough to stop Blake’s sword from lashing out in a heavy blow that sends the large head flying away from its obese body. Deprived of sight and much of its personality,
Pellan
flails out at its tormentor, fine tendrils as thin as hair wait patiently for any vibration. Nearly a dozen clawed limbs tear into the ground near the spot where Blake had so recently stood but the Pilgrim is gone now moving as quickly as he can, while taking care not to step too heavily on the ground. A few feet away Pellan’s head watches him with an expression of sheer hatred, its mouth opens and closes like a fish out of water. With an abrupt heave of its toothless jaw, the head manages to drag itself forward, leaving a snail’s trail of fluid. Already the gelatinous neck is sprouting thin cables which it uses to stabilize itself and help propel it forward.
At the sight of this abomination moving towards him, Blake instantly stands still and brings his finger up to his lips silently urging Lillian not to make a sound or movement. It takes a few seconds before the head registers the significance of the warning and by then it is too late. Three clawed tentacles slam into the only thing they can still sense moving in the room and tear the gaping head into splinters of bone and torn flesh. Without a central brain it takes a moment for the main body to process the fact that the size and weight of its victim can only mean one thing. A shower of viscous fluid erupts from the remains of Pellan’s neck and the swollen torso quivers with a scream that wracks the whole body but finds little expression in the ruined vocal chords at the stump of the neck. ‘NOW!’ Blake mouths, gathering his legs beneath him.
The anguished monster feels the change in weight but it does not react in time to prevent, its attacker from grabbing Lillian by her left arm and plunging into the partially lit corridor. Turn follows turn and Lillian finds herself all but dragged down the slimy passages which seem to explode with raking claws and hungry tentacles. All around her she can hear the screams of Pellan’s twisted children dying in their burrows and damp graves, killed by their parent’s madness. Somehow the Pilgrim guides them through the chaos, taking little more than scratches despite the frenzied attacks launched from the very walls themselves. More than once Lillian feels something wet close on a wrist or an ankle but the Pilgrim’s sabre lashes out so quickly that they never even seem to stop moving. At last they turn a corner and the darkness ahead is twinkling with stars. Lillian slumps against the damp wall, her body going limp with sudden relief.
“No!” the Pilgrims cry comes just in time to allow her to throw her body to the side and avoid the writhing tentacle and its hooked claw as it bursts from the wall just above her head. Once more the sabre blurs and the offending limb drops, still pumping watery icor into the mud.
“We can’t afford to rest yet,” the white haired man admonishes her, “we will not be safe until we are out of this damned marsh.” He confides in an urgent whisper, as he drags her up roughly by her armpit.
“Let go…” Lillian snaps, trying to drag herself free but the grip on her arm is every bit as strong and unforgiving as Kurt’s undead grasp had been. Without saying anything else the Pilgrim lifts her painfully and throws them both towards the tunnel’s end.
Cold water and more mud, rise up to meet their falling bodies. Lillian shrieks in shock and outrage as the miasma of the swamp engulfs her and sticks to the course woolen robe, which immediately becomes sodden and heavy and seems to drag her down further into the mud. With what little strength she has left the baron’s daughter heaves herself up onto her knees to glare hatred at the Pilgrim, who seems somehow, to have avoided the worst of the muck. She opens her mouth to vent anger that has built for nearly thirty hours but at moment the ground behind her explodes with a huge sucking noise. Whether it was the ferocity of Pellan’s attacks which collapsed the tunnels or he had always been the one holding them up and had simply allowed them to collapse through carelessness or in the hope of trapping the fugitives there is no way to tell but it takes all of Blake’s strength to pull a spluttering Lillian from under the wave of chill mud, caused by the sudden implosion of his ancient lair. The depression in the earth stretches for nearly a mile behind them, a ruined stretch of vegetation, quickly filling with the churned and dirty waters of the marsh. Lillian is too exhausted and dazed to even look back, she simply allows the Pilgrim to guide her on the long trek through the marshes until at last they emerge, the last two weary
survivours
to walk out of
Eden
.
*
The great train that the people of the Bowl know only as
Tyre
is coming to a stop at
Brigton
station. Steam and smoke hiss and coil upwards, ghostly fingers catching the pink glow of the setting sun, a light that the Tinker, hidden in the foremost compartment of the train behind thick shutters will never see again. There is some regret in the loss of that light even now; since his all but forgotten boyhood Kalip had admired the trains, he had delighted in the power and majesty of the juggernauts as they settled at the platforms, like dragons choking smoke and smelling of fire. He had pursued his craft long enough now to know that the steam and all the rest were mere show, though he could not even begin to guess at the true complexity of the energies that powered the great locomotives. Not even three centuries of study had given him that much insight, he knew that the great machines had little more than appearance in common with the rare locomotives that the noble families sometimes ran on the disused lines.