Free 00.1 - Death's Cold Kiss by Steven Savile - (ebook by Undead)

 
 
    The old priest fled the castle.
    Lightning seared the darkness, turning night momentarily into
day. The skeletal limbs of the trees around him cast sinister shadows across the
path that twisted and writhed in the lightning. Thunder rolled over the hills,
deep and booming. The rain came down, drowning out lesser sounds.
    The primeval force of the storm resonated in Victor Guttman’s
bones.
    “I am an old man,” he moaned, clutching at his chest in dread
certainty that the pain he felt was his heart about to burst. “I am frail. Weak.
I don’t have the strength in me for this fight.” And it was true, every word of
it. But who else was there to fight?
    No one.
    His skin still crawled with the revulsion he had felt at the
creature’s presence. Sickness clawed at his throat. His blood repulsed by the
taint of the creature that had entered Baron Otto’s chamber and claimed young
Isabella. He sank to his knees, beaten down by the sheer ferocity of the storm.
The wind mocked him, howling around his body, tearing at his robes. He could
easily die on the road and be washed away by the storm, lost somewhere to rot in
the forest and feed the wolves.
    No.
    The temple. He had to get back to the temple.
    He pushed himself back up and lurched a few more paces down
the pathway, stumbling and tripping over his own feet in his need to get away
from the damned place.
    There were monsters. Real monsters. He had grown numb to
fear. A life of seclusion in the temple, of births and naming days, marriages
and funeral rites, such mundane things, they somehow combined to turn the
monsters into lesser evils and eventually into nothing more than stories. He had
forgotten that the stories were real.
    Guttman lurched to a stop, needing the support of a nearby
tree to stay standing. He cast a frightened look back over his shoulder at the
dark shadow of Drakenhof Castle, finding the one window that blazed with light,
and seeing in it the silhouette of the new count.
    Vlad von Carstein.
    He knew what kind of twisted abomination the man was. He knew
with cold dark certainty that he had just witnessed the handover of the barony
to a daemon. The sick twisted maliciousness of Otto van Drak would pale in
comparison with the tyrannies of the night von Carstein promised.
    The old priest fought down the urge to purge his guts. Still
he retched and wiped the bile away from his mouth with the back of his hand. The
taint of the creature had weakened him. Its sickness was insidious. It clawed
away at his stomach; it tore at his throat and pulled at his mind. His vision
swam in and out of focus. He needed to distance himself from the fiend.
    His mind raced. He struggled to remember everything he knew
about vampires and their ilk but it was precious little outside superstition and
rumour.
    The oppression of the pathway worsened as it wound its way
back down toward the town. The sanctuary of rooftops and the welcoming lights
looked a long, long way away to the old man. The driving rain masked other
sounds. Still, Guttman grew steadily surer that he was not alone in the storm.
Someone—or something—was following him. He caught occasional glimpses of
movement out of the corner of his eye but by the time he turned, the shadow had
fused with deeper shadows or the shape he was sure was a pale white face had
mutated into the claws of dead branches and the flit of a bat’s wing.
    He caught himself looking more frequently back over his
shoulder as he tried to catch a glimpse of whoever was following him.
    “Show yourself!” the old priest called out defiantly but his
words were snatched away by the storm. The cold hand of fear clasped his heart
as it tripped and skipped erratically.
    A chorus of wolves answered him.
    And laughter.
    For a moment Guttman didn’t trust his ears. But he didn’t
need to. It was a man’s laughter. He felt it in his gut, in his bones and in his
blood, the same revulsion that had caused him to black