Blood Red (9781101637890) (4 page)

Just in time. Its victim was a mere ten feet away, swaying where she stood. The hideous thing had its back to Rosa and had no idea she was there. Its bloodlust and hunger were overpowering at this distance. Even an ordinary human with not a speck of magic would have felt it. It had no eyes, no thought, for anything but the prey in front of it.

With a silent prayer to Saint Hubert, she let fly.

The bolt flew clean and true, hitting the monster squarely in the heart.

Its victim dropped where she stood, unconscious, as the monster's control over her evaporated.

It didn't die cleanly, of course. The
vampir
never did. It thrashed and writhed and spouted half-rotten blood from every possible orifice. But at least it did so quietly, and as soon as it was safe Rosa closed in on it and drove the stake all the way through its body with a shove of her boot, pinning it to the earth. That finished it. With a final squirm, it died, mouth open in a soundless gasp.

The stench was appalling. She pulled a candle out of her hunting bag and struck a lucifer match to examine the monster.

It did not differ substantially from any other
vampir
she had killed in the past. Bald head, hideous face not unlike a goblin's mask, strangely wizened body, clawlike hands. Mouth
full
of nastily pointed teeth. Most
vampir,
if they didn't want to kill their victim immediately, would make a cut on the inside of the elbow or some other place it didn't show, and lap the blood like a dog. But most
vampir
didn't bother with niceties. They simply tore the victim's throat open, messily, and fed, and either left the body to be found later or disposed of it somehow so they would have a few more days or weeks to continue hunting.

She had heard from the Bruderschaft tales of very ancient and very cunning
vampir
indeed, who had secured a place and ruled it with terror and a crushing mental power. She thanked the Good God and Saint Hubert she had never had to come up against one such as those. It would take not just a Hunt Master like herself, but the largest Hunting Party possible to put such an evil down.

She reached into her hunting pouch again and removed the glass-lined flask of naphtha. Dispassionately she poured it over the body, then bent down and lit it with the candle, stepping back quickly as the soaked rags flared into instant flame. That was one good thing about
vampir,
the only good thing, really. They were tinder-dry and burned to ash quickly, even without the use of naphtha to hurry things along.

She blew out the candle and restored it to her pouch so as not to waste it, and went to examine the girl. She was still unconscious, but a superficial examination did not reveal any telltale cuts that suggested the beast had fed on her yet. Good, then she had not been given the
vampir's
blood in return; he had not been grooming her for his nest. She was vaguely pretty, and clearly poor. Probably a serving wench in the inn or a servant of some sort. Her hands showed she was no stranger to hard work. That sort was the easiest prey for the
vampir
to lure, with sensuous dreams and erotic magic.

Well, she would be all right. Of course, she would probably have hysterics when she woke up from the
vampir-
induced trance and found herself in nothing but her shift, beside the mill in the open and next to a pile of smoking ashes, but that was no concern of Rosa's. The local Brotherhood had brought her and Hans here for one reason and one reason only: rid the area of the
vampir,
its nest, and whatever servants it had acquired. It had not required of her that she do anything other than
save
the next presumptive victim.

Now to get to the next hunt, before morning came and the servant-beast hid itself among humans again.

Without any need to conceal herself, she trotted up the road and out of the village, heading for the ridge where the two creatures' paths had diverged as fast as she could, pondering what her next move should be. Straight hunt, or ambush?

I don't know these mountains, and the creature probably does. I would wager that the
vampir
recruited it here so that the fiend had someone that could give it local knowledge.

Now
she felt a mingled thrill of dread, excitement, and anticipation.
Vampir
were pretty mindless once they had focused in on a victim, and this one had been operating with the same handicaps she had, since it was not a native to the area. But the native creature? It was hunting on its own ground. This was going to be a real fight, and she was at a distinct disadvantage. At home in the Schwarzwald, she would have been able to set up an ambush.

I don't know where to ambush it here.

She shivered, and pulled her cape around herself.
Not
going after it was not an option. Even with its master gone, it was a terrible danger to everyone here. Worse, because evidently the local Brotherhood had not known of its existence. It must have been confining its slaughters to the forest creatures—but that would not last, once it had allied itself with the
vampir.
Surely by now, as a reward, the master had let it taste human blood. Once that happened—

The pit of her stomach went cold.

She didn't dare send out a widespread call for Elemental help either; it was possible for the creature to be an Elemental Magician itself, and it would hear the call. She remembered all too clearly when the one that had attacked Grossmutter had heard her frantic, widespread call for help. To send out something like that right now would be very like painting a glowing target on herself.

But . . . there might be a way around that.

She knelt and put her bare hand on the soil, and sent out something that was more like a whisper. It was not meant to travel far.
If you fear the thing that walks as both beast and man, please come to me now.

She waited. She sensed that there were things all around her, the local creatures of Earth, the wild ones, the ones far less inclined to help humans because of what humans meant to them. She had a good idea that they were debating among themselves.
Should
they come to her? Which represented the most threat to them—the thing that roamed the night, or she, herself?

Perhaps another Elemental Master might have tried to coerce one of them, but that was not the way of the Bruderschaft. She waited, patiently, and finally, as time seemed to crawl past (and yet went far too quickly), she heard hesitant hoofsteps behind her, soft thuds on the earth.

She turned, and looked into the strange, slantwise, goat eyes of an ancient satyr.

She kept her gaze on his eyes, because he was priapic, of course. A satyr could not be alive and in the presence of anything female and not be priapic. If she took notice of it,
he
would take that notice for an invitation, as satyrs always did, and then there would be a tremendous waste of time while she dealt with
that
particular complication.

He was very, very old; he might even date back to when the Romans were in these mountains. His gray beard and hair fell in tangled masses, full of leaves and twigs, down to his waist. His curled horns were enormous, and she wondered that he could even hold his head up beneath the weight of them. “By your courtesy, Elder One,” she said politely, trying Latin first. “Could you bend your effort to ask of your Master to speak with me?”

He looked at her with his head tilted to the side, and she was about to try again in Greek, when he answered.

“You are bold, to wish to speak to the Lord of the Hunt,” he replied.

“There is another, twisted hunter in his realm, as you know,” she replied calmly. “I think He might wish to be rid of it, for surely it is preying on you, His children. Or if not now, it will soon.”

Now the satyr bent his head, a very little, in agreement. “It is,” he said. “The forest is troubled. And you can rid us of this troublesome thing?”

“I hope, with the aid of the Lord of the Hunt,” she told him, truthfully. A magician must never, ever lie, for his lies could turn to bring him mischief. “This forest is not my forest, and I need the help of one for whom every leaf is familiar.”

“That will be the Lord of the Hunt,” the satyr said, nodding. And grinned. “For the sake of the cheese that I smell in yon bag, I will go to Him.”

She was very, very glad that all he asked for was the cheese. Without hesitation, she took the wax-wrapped wedge from her hunting pouch and handed it to him. All of the Earth Elementals had a fondness for human foods; many were partial to baked goods, but it seemed this satyr had a taste for something more robust.

He took the cheese and even bowed graciously to her, then turned without another word and walked back into the forest. A moment later, he was gone. Quite gone; he had vanished as only an Elemental on its home ground could.

She waited again, concentrating on
not
being impatient. The Being she sought would not be impressed by impatience.

But to her relief, the Being she sought evidently was just as eager to get the beast out of his forest as she was. It could not have been more than a few minutes before the forest all around her fell absolutely silent. But not with the silence of fear—no, this was the silence of awe.

The forest before her literally lit up with the golden glow of Earth energies. Every leaf, every twig, every blade of grass or frond of moss was alive with light. And striding out from the heart of the light was the Lord of the Hunt.

He glowed like the harvest moon, golden and radiant. Crowned with the many-branched horns of a king stag, clothed in a tunic of hide and fur and breeches of rough-tanned leather, he wore a hunting horn at his side and his every step was marked by a faint trembling in the earth. His eyes fixed on Rosa, implacable, stern. His face was neither old nor young, but had the same watchful stillness about it as an ancient carving.

Her impulse was to bend the knee to him, but this was no being to show submission to. Cernunnos to the Celts, Woden in her own home forest, Herne in the isle of Britain, he was the ultimate predator. This was the Lord of the Hunt, and any display of weakness could be taken as a sign that you were prey. He had been a god once. Now, with no or few worshippers, his power was diminished. But by no means gone.

Instead, she kept her eyes on his as she nodded slightly, acknowledging that he was much her superior in power, but also displaying her stubborn courage. She waited, however, for him to speak.

To her relief, he sounded amused.

“So. The little female wishes to rid my forest of The Fell Beast?”

“It is
your
forest, Lord of the Hunt,” she replied. “I am but a stranger here. Yes, I do so wish, for we both know the thing will kill and kill and kill your children, wantonly, as well as ravage the mortals of this place. It is the mortals who begged me to come to hunt, but it is your children that I most truly wish to protect.”

No lies there. To a certain extent, she was . . . unsympathetic with a population that decimated its protectors, the local Brotherhood, then went weeping because there was no one there to protect them from the things of the night. But the Elementals of this forest had
not
had a hand in that, and did not deserve to suffer.

The Lord of the Hunt smiled faintly. “You speak wisely, as well as truly. But the aid that such as I may lawfully render is limited to such as you. Be plain; what aid do you think I may render to you?”

“These lands hold no secrets from you, but many from me, Great Old One,” she said honestly. “The surest way I can rid you of this beast is to ambush it, yet I have no knowledge of these forests to do so.”

The Lord of the Hunt pondered her words, then again, smiled, this time broadly.

“I have a solution that is both lawful and amusing, Earth Master,” he chuckled. “Hold you still while I drink of your scent.”

It took every bit of discipline she had to hold very still while the Great Elemental—who had, after all, once been a
god of fertility
hereabouts and was known for mating with his priestesses—came within a hands-breadth of her, and snuffed her all over like a bloodhound. The sheer
power
he exuded was enough to make her knees weak. And there were a great many alarming instincts awakening in her when she was in this close a proximity to him. Flight, for one; in the long-ago days, he had hunted men. Again, the urge to fall to her knees. And . . . most alarming of all, and fortunately she had been warned of this many, many times, so she was not taken by surprise . . . there was the urge to strip her clothing off and submit to him in
quite
another way, as if she had been one of those eager priestesses.

Of course she did none of these things. And from the curl of his lips, she knew that
he
knew all these things were going through her. But tonight, he wanted what
she
wanted, and she was safe from him. Yes, even her virtue.

He lingered just long enough over his task to ensure that she was wildly uncomfortable before backing away. “Go into hiding yonder,” he said, pointing to a rock outcropping. “Be prepared to step out and take your strike, and make the first blow the fatal one when the beast is in reach. I shall go and lure it to you, with your own sweet scent.” He chuckled again. “It is hungry. I think it will not be able to resist.”

And with that, the Lord of the Hunt somehow folded the golden light around himself, and vanished.

She didn't hesitate a moment, because there was no telling how near or far the beast was; she got herself into place and pulled her coach gun from the sling on her back, under her cloak. She readied it, making sure both barrels were loaded with her special rounds.

And then, she waited. Because if the Lord of the Hunt did what she
suspected
he would, the beast would come swiftly, and not at all—

—a bloodcurdling howl split the night air—