The Company of Shadows (Wellington Undead Book 3) (26 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY

The building's north-east corner was fully engulfed in flames. Despite there being little in the way of wind, the flames were spreading briskly along the northern and eastern frontages of the structure. A column of smoke rose up into the clear night sky, blotting out the stars above Talwada.

With her orders now given, Jamelia took as much of a run-up as the confines of the building allowed. The tigress bounded into the air at the last possible moment, springing from her back legs and propelling herself through the most intense part of the flames.

All things being equal, she should have gotten burned, or at the very least singed. Although flaps of matted fur and dead flesh did peel away, she felt no pain whatsoever.

One of the benefits of my new state.

Landing on splayed paws with something less than her usual feline grace, Jamelia's throat rumbled softly. She looked around for something to hunt, something to kill. Her undead soldiers were rising in their droves, punching their way up through the ground, whether it was from beneath the dirt floor inside the houses or that of the unpaved streets.

There would be no escape for the feckless British.

Closing her eyes for a moment, she attuned herself once more to the ebb and flow of the skirmish that was going on all around her. The British were fighting back, which was just as she had expected. As much as she hated them, she could not deny that these were tough, professional fighting men, capable and motivated. They were hardly going to curl up and die.

But her troops were already gaining the upper hand. They were swarming the British, and while that would never have worked on a proper battlefield, where the volleys of musketry would have taken a fearsome toll, it was an entirely different story in the cramped confines of a village such as this. The narrow streets, close-packed and claustrophobic, resembled nothing so much as a rabbit warren in the darkness, full of dead ends and choke points.

The British fought back to back in small packets, a pair here, a trio there, but no more than that. There simply wasn't the room. Their strategy seemed to be a simple and, to Jamelia, a logical one: Fight their way to the cooking fires, where there was more room for them to congregate.

It wasn't working.

As she stalked from shadow to shadow, protected by the greater shroud of the night itself, the tigress paused twice to watch small dramas play out. The first time involved a pair of redcoats who had rather unwisely allowed themselves to be backed into a dead end, the rear of a house which had a waist-high mud brick wall enclosing it.

Normally, the two redcoats would vault over the wall and make their escape. It was not high enough to be insurmountable, even taking into account their packs and muskets. But the dead had them penned in. Almost fifty of her foot soldiers filled the small patch of land, and had fanned out in a semicircle, keeping the hapless redcoats' backs pressed up against the wall. The world in front of them had shrunk down into nothing more than a collage of snapping teeth and flexing claws.

In sheer desperation, one of the redcoats discharged his musket into the face of the closest enemy. At a range of barely five feet, there was no way he could have missed. The heavy lead ball entered its eye socket, then blasted out the back of the creature's skull before burying itself in the neck of another. The thing dropped immediately, and took down three of its cohorts in a tangle of arms and legs.

Four down. Forty-six to go. And three of the four are already struggling to get back onto their feet again.

Closing her eyes, Jamelia touched the minds of those forty-nine minions and pulsed out a single command: Attack.

The mob surged suddenly forward, heedless of the redcoats' frantically-swung bayonets; one of the blades went into the shoulder of a corpse that wore the dress of a villager. So recently dead was he that blood, actual blood (as opposed to the sticky black ichor that usually bled from the creatures' bodies) wept from the wound. The dead villager himself obviously felt nothing, because he lunged for his attacker, forcing the man to drop the musket and try desperately to fend his attacker off with his bare hands.

Predictably, the attempt failed. Teeth sank into the British soldier's neck, just below the jawbone on the right side. The man gave a high-pitched squeal as blood spurted from the ragged hole, most of it going into the creature's mouth, but some gushing around the edges of the corpse's face as it worried at the wound like a wolf savaging its fresh kill.

The smell of blood drove the remaining creatures berserk. They surged forward like a tidal wave of death, snatching at their victims and beginning the savage process of tearing them apart.

Satisfied, Jamelia moved on, releasing her psychic hold over the cluster of corpses.

Let them feed. They have most certainly earned it.

Her second encounter proved to be more intimate than the first. She came upon a lone redcoat, making his way slowly along the length of a darkened alleyway between two houses. He moved with creditable stealth, in a crouch with knees bent and on the balls of his feet. His bayonet led the way, constantly probing the darkness high and low in front of him.

There was no way he could have known that the house to his left concealed the graves of ten undead. She smelled his fear, the cold sweat pungent on the still night air.

This one knows that the hunters are now the prey.

The British soldier had no idea what hit him. As he passed the entrance to the house, a pair of rotted arms emerged and grabbed him.

Startled, the Shadow jerked hard on the trigger of his musket. The ball went high and wide of its mark, punching a pock mark in the wall to the left of the doorway and then ricocheting off into the night.

Triumphant, the creature latched on to the man's face with its teeth. The grip was tighter than that of the strongest vice, and the redcoat tried to scream into the corpse's mouth. It looked to Jamelia like some horrific kiss, shared between the living and the dead. The obscenity only ended when the attacker sheared off the tip of its victim's nose, and then went to work on his left ear instead.

Disinterested, Jamelia slunk off in search of further prey. She knew how that particular engagement would end: The noseless soldier would join her ranks in no time at all.

She moved on past other small skirmishes, knowing without a shadow of a doubt that their outcomes would all be the same. It was simply a matter of time and sheer weight of numbers. Coming to the edge of flickering light cast by one of the cooking fires, Jamelia suddenly stopped in her tracks. She threw back her head and sniffed the air.

What was that smell?

No. It can't be.

But it was.

The tiger pounced at her from out of the shadows, barreling into her with the force of a cavalry charge. She was slammed to the ground underneath its crushing weight. Sharp claws raked her side and flank. Taken totally off guard, Jamelia roared in outrage, snapping at her attacker with her teeth. Yet the tiger was too powerful, weighed too much, and her own body was pinned, at a very real disadvantage.

A pair of yellow eyes glared down at her, twinkling in the firelight.

"Call them off," the tiger said. "Now. If you want to live."

Far too late for that
, she told herself, and bucked with every ounce of strength in her body. The tiger bellowed in surprise, digging in his claws in an attempt to maintain his purchase. He failed. Extending her own claws, Jamelia swatted at him.Parallel lines slashed across his face, bright red blood welling up from each one.

That began to draw her soldiers.

The two great hunting cats were locked in a feral embrace, snapping and slashing at each other with every weapon at their disposal. The pair rolled end over end across the ground, heedless of the world around them, cognizant of only one thing: The opponent before them.

Hot sparks and embers shot up into the night sky when the pair rolled into the fire. For her part, Jamelia felt nothing; her opponent screamed, for even a were-tiger could be hurt by flame — a
living
one, at any rate. In a flash, she changed her entire strategy. Rather than trying to drive him off, she now pulled her attacker in close. So close that one might almost mistake them for lovers, if anybody was around to take notice.

Now it was the tiger's turn to buck and writhe frantically. He could smell his own fur burning, the flesh charring and bubbling beneath it. Their entire world was hot and orange, the only sound that of crackling flame and the two of them roaring at one another.

Driven berserk by the excruciating pain, her male opponent summoned up the strength for one final explosive burst of speed and power. Growling in victory, he propelled himself backward and away from the cooking fire, twisting in mid-air to land somewhat less than gracefully on his four paws.

The male tiger dropped into a defensive crouch, snarling and ready for her assault. Yet if the tiger expected her to come straight after him, then he was very much mistaken. She found this newcomer fascinating. Not just the fact that he was a were, for there were many such tigers in the service of her father...though sadly, almost all had died with him in the fall of Seringapatam.

No, she was intrigued by the voice of this particular one. Its accent, unless she was very much mistaken, had been distinctly English; this puzzled her, because she had studied the British military hierarchy in great detail, and knew that their officer corps was entirely vampiric in nature. What, then, was a were doing among British troops? They had deployed none at Seringapatam, nor more recently at Assaye. Weres would make for excellent shock troops, and Wellesley could have greatly benefited from their services on that particular battlefield.

"What are you?" She advanced slowly, cautiously, ready to fend off any counterattack that he might make. His back and both of his sides were badly burned, the fur gone in big patches. Beneath it, the skin was an angry crimson. In some places, it had bubbled and blistered.

"You should know," the tiger spat back, his voice full of venom and hatred. "You made me."

Suddenly it all became clear.

"You were Wellesley's bodyguard," she reasoned. "You stood between us at Assaye."

"I did."

"That was not wise."

"And yet I seem to be doing alright," he growled.

"Are you? Are you really? Look around." Jamelia nodded meaningfully. The tiger didn't move his head, but she saw his gaze dart to the left and then to the right. A handful of redcoats had made it to the edge of the fire, no more than ten or so. The warm and glowing promise of safety was proving to be illusory. The dead were falling upon them in scores, a feeding frenzy that would not be denied. "You see what I see. Your men are being cut down, Englishman. I have thousands of my warriors here. Thousands."

Her adversary laughed, his tone as harsh and strident as a tiger's throat could manage to convey. "Warriors! Please. These...things are abominations. Nothing more."

"Call them what you will. They are soldiers, Englishman. Soldiers in the grand army of the Goddess Kali. They obey my will. Even those who still wear the uniform of your vampire king."

"You have made them a perversion of everything that is decent. I shall see you swing for it."

Jamelia laughed, the sound almost baritone. "The hangman shan't have me, for I am already dead."

"The blade, then, or the silver ball. The method makes no difference to me. Only the end result."

The two great cats continued to circle warily, ignoring the screams and guttural moans coming from all around them. Neither took their eye from the other for even a heartbeat.

"It does not have to end like this," Jamelia purred softly, teasingly. "You and your men do not have to die for nothing."

"What do you mean?"

"There is another way. A better way."

"What way?" The tiger suddenly sounded conflicted. Was that interest she heard in his voice? She had guessed shrewdly. This was indeed an officer, or a non-commissioned officer at the very least. Potentially a sergeant of some seniority.

It would not be his own death that he fears. That would bother him little, if at all. The death of his men, on the other hand...

"Surrender. Order your men to lay down their arms."

Now it was the tiger's turn to laugh. "That is not much of an offer. My men are Shadows. They serve in the Company of Shadows, woman. You may not know what that means..."

"The personal guard of General Arthur Wellesley," she interrupted. That obviously took him aback. He had not expected her to be so well versed in the ways of his army. "Yes, I accept that you are all more than willing to fight to the death. But I do wonder whether you, their commander, are willing to allow them to fight into undeath."

The tiger did not answer her. She saw his eyes flicker, just once, taking in the sight of his precious Shadows, fighting desperately to stave off the slavering horde of the undead. He must know that it was only a matter of time before they were overcome, and then...

She decided to try a different tack.

"What is your name?"