00.1 - Death's Cold Kiss (2 page)

On the hillside around him the cries of the wolves
intensified. It was a mocking lament. He knew what they were, those wolves. He
knew how the beasts could shift form at will. He dreaded the moment their cries
made sense to him, for then his doom would be complete.

He dragged himself another foot, and then another, almost
blacking out from the sheer exertion. His face held barely inches above a muddy
puddle, he stared at his own reflection in the water, trying to memorise
everything he saw. He knew the image would fade, knew he would forget himself,
but it was important to try to hold on to who he was. Another foot, and then
another. The old priest clawed his way down the long and winding road. He felt
the steel breeze on his face as he craned his neck desperately trying to see how
far away the city lights were.

Too far, they taunted him. Too far.

He would never make it.

And because of that he was damned.

Desperately, Victor Guttman pushed himself up, stumbled two
unsteady steps and plunged face first into the mud again. He lay there, spent,
cursing himself for a fool for coming to the castle alone. The chirurgeon was
long gone, probably safely at home in his bed already, tucked up beside his
shrew of a wife while she snored. Or he’s lying dead in a ditch somewhere. He
was just as alone when he left the castle. Just as vulnerable. And probably just
as dead. Guttman thought bitterly.

Again he stumbled forward a few paces before collapsing. Five
more the next time. He cried out in anger and frustration, willing someone to
hear him and come to his aid. It was pointless, of course. The only people
abroad at this ungodly hour were up to no good and would hardly come to
investigate cries on the dark road for fear of their own safety. Thieves,
robbers, bandits, lotharios, debauchers, drunks, gamblers and vampires, children
of the night one and all. And not a Sigmar fearing soul amongst them. He was
alone.

Truly alone.

Meyrink and Messner were passionately arguing an obscure
point of theosophy, the older man being driven to the point of distraction by
the younger’s sheer belligerence. He was impossible to argue with. There was no
reasoning, only absolutes. The arguments were black and white. There was no room
for the grey spaces of interpretation in between. Normally there was nothing
Meyrink enjoyed more than a good argument but the youth of today seemed to have
abandoned the art of reason in favour of passion. Everything was about passion.
Meyrink laid aside the scrimshaw he had been carving and rolled his neck,
stretching. The carving was therapeutic but his eyes weren’t what they had been
even a few years ago and the close detail gave him a headache from straining. He
felt every one of his years. Brother Guttman would return soon. Perhaps he could
make young Messner see reason.

“Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps,” Meyrink muttered bleakly. He
didn’t hold out a lot of hope.

“Ah, is that the sound of quiet desperation I hear leaking
into your voice, brother?”

“Not so quiet, methinks,” Meyrink said with a lopsided grin.
He liked the boy, and was sure with the rough edges rounded off his personality
Messner would make a good priest. He had the faith and was a remarkably centred
young man.

“Indeed. I was being politic. Come, let’s warm our bones
beside the fire while we wait for Brother Guttman’s return.”

“Why not.”

“Tis a vile night out,” Messner remarked, making himself cosy
beside the high-banked log fire that spat and crackled in the hearth. He poured
them both cups of mulled wine.

“For once I’ll not argue with you lad,” Meyrink said wryly.

The night stretched on, Meyrink too tired to debate. He
looked often at the dark window and the streaks of rain that lashed against it.
Messner was right: it was a vile night. Not the kind of night for an old man to
be abroad.

They supped at their cups, neither allowing the other to see
how much the old priest’s lateness worried them until a hammering on the temple
door had them both out of their seats and almost running through the central
aisle of the temple to answer it. Meyrink instinctively made the sign of the
hammer as Messner threw back the heavy bolts on the door and raised the bar. It
had been many years since they had left the temple open through the night. It
was a curse of the times. He didn’t like it but was sage enough to understand
the necessity.

Messner opened the door on the raging storm.

The wind and rain ripped at the porch, pulling the heavy door
out of the young priest’s hands.

For a heartbeat Meyrink mistook the shadows on the threshold
for some lurking horror, distorted and deformed as they were by the storm, but
then the wine merchant Hollenfeuer’s boy, Henrik, lumbered in out of the driving
rain and dark, a bundle of rags cradled in his arms. It took Meyrink a moment to
realise that the rags weren’t rags at all, but sodden robes clinging wetly to
slack skin and bones, and that Henrik had brought Brother Guttman home. The old
priest’s skin had the same blue pallor as death. His eyes rolled back in his
head and his head lolled back against the boy’s arm, his jaw hanging loose.

“Found ’im on the roadside a couple of miles back. Carried
’im ’ere.” Henrik grunted beneath the strain. He held the old man in his
straining arms like a sack of coals. “No idea how long ’e’d been there. ’E’s
still breathing but ’e’s not in a good way, mind. Looks like ’e’s been attacked
by wolves or summink. ’E’s got some frightenin’ wounds where ’e’s been bitten
round the throat.”

“Put him down, put him down,” Meyrink flapped. “Not here, no,
no, not here. In his room. In his room. Take him to his room. What happened? Who
did this to him?”

“I don’t know,” Henrik said, tracking the storm into the
temple. Behind him, Messner wrestled with the door. Meyrink moved in close,
feeling for the old priest’s pulse. It was there, faint for sure, but his heart
was still beating and his blood was still pumping.

They carried the broken body of Victor Guttman up the winding
stairs to his bare cell and laid him on the wooden pallet he called a bed,
drawing the blanket up over his chest to his chin. The old man shivered. Meyrink
took this as a good sign—there was still life enough in him to care about the
cold.

He sent Henrik on his way, urging him to summon Gustav
Mellin, the count’s chirurgeon. He pressed a silver coin into his palm. “Be
convincing, lad.” The wine merchant’s boy nodded and disappeared into the storm.

Meyrink went back to the old priest’s cell where Messner was
holding a silent prayer vigil. He cradled Guttman’s fragile hand in his,
whispering over and over entreaties to Sigmar, begging that His divine hand
spare the old man from Morr. It was odd how the young man could be so adamant in
the face of theory and yet so devout in the face of fact. His blind faith was as
inspiring now as it had been annoying a few hours ago. Meyrink hovered on the
threshold, looking at the young man kneeling at the bedside, head bowed in
prayer. Guttman was clinging to life—a few words, even to the great and the
good, wouldn’t save him. It was down to the old man’s will and the chirurgeon’s
skill, if he arrived in time. When it came down to it that was their prime
difference: Meyrink was a realist, Messner an idealist still waiting for the
brutality of the world to beat it out of him.

Meyrink coughed politely, letting Messner know he was no
longer alone.

“How is he?”

“Not good. These wounds…”

“The bites? If that is what they are.”

“Oh that is what they are, without doubt. Whatever fed on him
though, it wasn’t wolves.”

“How can you be sure?” Meyrink asked, moving into the cell.

“Look for yourself. The first set of puncture wounds are
precise and close together, suggesting a small mouth, certainly not a wolf. And
there are nowhere enough teeth or tearing to match the savagery of wolves. If I
didn’t know better I’d say the bite was human.”

“But you know better?”

Messner shook his head.

“Then let us content ourselves with the fact that the world
is a sick place and that our dear brother was set upon by one of the flock. It
makes no difference to the treatment. We must staunch the blood loss and seal
the wounds best we can, keeping them clean to keep out the festering. Other than
that, perhaps you are right to pray. I can think of nothing else we can do for
our brother.”

They did what they could, a mixture of prayer, medicine and
waiting. Mellin, the chirurgeon arrived at dawn, inspected the wounds
clinically, tutting between clenched teeth as he sutured the torn flesh. His
prognosis was not good:

“He’s lost a lot of blood. Too much for a man to lose and
still live.”

“Surely you can do something?”

“I’m doing it. Cleaning up the wounds. If he deteriorates, my
leeches will be good for the rot, but other than that, he’s in the hands of your
god.”

Guttman didn’t wake for three straight days. Mostly he lay
still, the shallow rise and fall of his chest all that distinguished him from
the dead, though he did toss and turn occasionally, mumbling some incoherent
half words while in the grip of fever dreams. The sweats were worst at night. In
the darkest hours of the night the old priest’s breathing was at its weakest,
hitching and sometimes stopping for long seconds as though Guttman’s body simply
forgot how to breathe. Messner only left his bedside for a few moments at a time
for daily ablutions. He ate his meals sitting against the bed frame and slept on
a cot in the small cell, leaving Meyrink to oversee the day-to-day running of
the temple and lead the congregation in prayers for Brother Guttman’s swift
recovery.

The fever ran its course and on the fourth day Victor Guttman
opened his eyes.

It was no gentle waking: he sat bolt upright, his eyes flew
open and one word escaped his parched mouth: “Vampire!” He sank back into the
pillow, gasping for breath.

The suddenness of it shocked Meyrink. He thought for a moment
that he had misheard, that the dry rasp had been some last desperate plea to the
gods for salvation before the old priest shuffled off the mortal coil, but it
wasn’t. He had heard correctly. Guttman had cried vampire.

Meyrink stared at the sutured wounds in the old man’s throat,
his mind racing. Could they truly be the mark of the vampire? The thought was
ludicrous. It hadn’t even crossed his mind. Vampires? But if they were… did
that mean Victor Guttman is one of them now? Tainted? He was a priest of Sigmar
surely he couldn’t succumb to the blood kiss…

Meyrink took the old man’s hand and felt none of the
revulsion he was sure he should if Guttman had been born again into unlife.

“It’s not too late, my friend,” he said, kneeling at
Guttman’s bedside. “It’s not too late.”

“Kill… me… please,” the old man begged, his eyes rheumy
with pain. The chirurgeon had left nothing to dull the pain and Meyrink was
loathe to let the man loose with his leeches. “Before I… succumb… to it.”

“Hush, my friend. Save your strength.”

“I will not… kill. I will… not.”

Reinhardt Messner turned the brittle pages of the dusty old
tome. He was tired, his enthusiasm for the search long since gone and the ink on
the paper was a degree less intelligible than a spider’s scrawl. The words had
long since begun to blend into one. Beside him Meyrink grunted and shifted in
his chair. It had been three days since Brother Guttman’s return to the land of
the living. During that time he had faded in and out of consciousness. He
refused food, claiming he had no appetite. He drank little water, claiming he
had no thirst. This disturbed the young priest. No hunger, no thirst, it was
unnatural. It added a certain amount of credence to the old man’s story of
vampires but Messner refused to believe there was any real truth to it. Still,
he studied the old tomes looking for some kind of geas that might be used to
seal Guttman in the temple. It was useless. There was nothing.

The few references to the vampiric curse he had found
revolved around fishwives’ gossip and stupid superstitions about garlic and
white roses. The only thing of any use was a single line about silver being
anathema to the beasts. Other than that there was nothing of substance. One had
ideas of how to keep a vampire out of a building, not keep it trapped within one—though
for a while he hoped the solution might be one and the same.

“This is out of our province,” he admitted grudgingly,
closing the book in a billow of dust. “Short of sealing Brother Guttman in a
silver lined vault, which is both impractical and impossible given the cost of
the metal, I have found nothing. I hate to say it, but this is useless. We are
wasting our time.”

“No, it has to be in here somewhere,” Meyrink objected, for
once their roles of donkey in the argument reversed. Meyrink was being the
stubborn ass refusing to see the impossibility of their situation. If Guttman
had been infected—and that was how he thought of it, a disease—then the best
thing they could do for the old man was drive a stake through his heart, scoop
out his brains and bury him upside down in consecrated ground.

If…

“You know it isn’t, brother. This is a wild goose chase.”

“What would you have us do? Slay our brother?”

That was a question he wasn’t prepared to answer. “Nothing
good comes of death,” he said instead, hoping Meyrink would take it as his final
word.

“Yet we cannot stand guard over him night and day, it is
impossible. There must be a way.”

A thought occurred to him then: “Perhaps magic runes…?”
They could place runes on the doors and windows to act as locks barring
Guttman’s ingress and egress, thus confining the vampire to the crypts.

Meyrink spat. “Would you consort with the servants of Chaos?”

He was right, of course. The practice of magic was outlawed—it would be next to impossible to find anyone to craft such magic, and even if
they could, for how long would the magic remain stable? To rely on such a
warding was to court disaster, for certain, but Messner knew there was hope in
the idea. Could such a series of runes be created to turn the old temple into a
sanctuary for Guttman?