The guards glanced around them frantically, then stared in unison at their leader, whose face was filled with terror at the prospect of what the Masters would do to him now.
That was when a shower of little ice chips hit the floor at their feet, and they looked up at the ceiling.
‘Whoops,’ Zachary muttered, clinging to the crevice he and Lillith had been digging above them.
Instantly, a dozen halberd blades swung upwards. ‘Get down,’ the leader of the guards commanded. ‘You are summoned.’ It wasn’t a suggestion.
Lillith and Zachary dropped to the floor, dusted the ice from their hands and let themselves be herded out at spear-point.
‘I really have a bad feeling about this,’ Zachary said.
The guards marched them through the echoing honeycomb of passageways until they reached the entrance to another grand chamber. They were prodded inside and the door was slammed shut and barred behind them.
‘Now what?’ Lillith whispered to Zachary.
A tinkling silvery curtain swished aside, and from behind it stepped out the ominous figure of Master Tarcz- koi.
‘We caught them trying to escape, Master,’ the guard leader said.
‘What’s the idea of this?’ Lillith demanded. ‘Why are we being kept waiting for hours? This isn’t what was agreed.’
The Ubervampyr rubbed his claws. The vibration of his mandibles denoted pleasure. ‘There has been a change of plan.’
‘Hold on. We had an arrangement here. You’ve got the cross — now we want to go back with the human. Gabriel promised to turn him, and he will.’
Tarcz-koi’s smile widened hideously. ‘He will, as you say, be “turned”. But this shall be our doing, not Gabriel’s, and not until Ash has served a further purpose. He will not be disappointed in the powers we bestow on him in the meantime, for they are far greater than those your bastard race can offer.’ The black eyes twinkled. ‘As for the Young One, by the time Ash has dealt with him, I can assure you that he will be in no position to “turn” anyone ever again.’
Zachary saw the look in Lillith’s eyes, her mouth hanging open in horror. ‘What’s he saying?’
‘The cross will go to Switzerland,’ the Ubervampyr went on, seeming to relish every word. ‘When Gabriel is no more, Ash will continue his quest until the mongrel rabble the humans call “vampires” are all but extinct. Then, only then, shall we recreate the human after our own image. Not a vampire, but a
‘What do you mean, imminent doom?’ Lillith burst out. ‘You’ve used us and now you’re going to
‘And rather than waste any more of the Council’s time on foolish trials I will perform the task myself. Have you anything to say before sentence is carried out?’
‘Just that you’d better do a damn good job of it,’ Lillith said. ‘Because if you don’t, I promise you that Zachary and I will fuck every single one of you ugly pieces of shit and bury what’s left of you inside this ice tomb.’
‘I think not,’ Tarcz-koi said. For an instant, his mandibles quivered and the tendrils around them curled into slimy little hooks.
And then the horrible face split apart.
From between the fleshy folds of the parted mandibles snaked a tentacle-like tongue, grey and glistening. Its tip peeled open to reveal a set of sharp fangs. Sticky threads of ooze stretched and snapped as the fangs gaped wide open. The tentacle coiled back, gathering itself to strike — and then lashed out with blinding speed straight at Lillith’s face.
Zachary grabbed the guard leader off his feet and thrust him in front of her as the tentacle struck. The fangs sank deep into the guard’s chest and there was a crackling and splintering of bone. A scream filled the chamber as his heart and lungs and part of his spine were ripped out of his body. The tentacle hurled the guard’s organs away and fired a powerful jet of black oily liquid that spattered over his face and into his screaming mouth. Instantly, he slumped to the floor, paralysed by the vampire nerve toxin stored in glands at the base of the Ubervampyr tongue.
The tentacle flailed towards Zachary as he backed away. Lillith reached into the front of her jumpsuit and pulled out the concealed ice dagger she’d cut from the ceiling of their chamber earlier. The blade was as hard and sharp as glass. Faster than Tarcz-koi could withdraw it, she slashed the knife at his tongue. Dark blood and venom spattered. The severed tentacle-tip fell writhing to the floor, the fangs snapping wildly. The Ubervampyr recoiled with a wail of agony and fury and his tongue slithered back inside his mandibles.
‘Get them!’ he shrieked to the guards, pointing his claw at Lillith and Zachary.
The pair were already sprinting for the door. Zachary broke the neck of a guard who tried to block his way — it couldn’t kill him, but it would slow him down — and grabbed his halberd, swinging it at another guard and slicing his head clean off. Then, with a blow that shattered the steel blade and shaft, Zachary used the weapon to crash open the door of the chamber. He and Lillith ran out into the maze of ice passages.
‘This way!’ she yelled, tugging his sleeve.
The screams of the enraged Tarcz-koi echoed up the corridor as they ran. Zachary glanced back and saw the guards giving chase. He dipped his hand inside his jacket and came out with a disc of ice with glass-sharp teeth like a circular saw blade’s. He spun it towards the guards. One managed to duck the flying disc, but two behind him weren’t so fast and their heads hit the floor before their running legs crumpled and collapsed under them.
‘Told you they were up to something,’ Zachary said to Lillith as they ran. ‘Didn’t I?’
‘They’re going to murder Gabriel,’ Lillith gasped. ‘They’re sending Ash after him with the cross.’ She’d barely spoken before a jet of black venom spattered against a pillar just inches away. She jumped back with a cry of fear and saw the blobs of thick liquid clinging to the leather sleeve of her jumpsuit.
‘Don’t touch it,’ Zachary yelled. ‘It’ll paralyse your ass.’ Lillith scraped her arm hard against the ice wall and glanced behind them to see five more Ubervampyr bounding after them, moving horribly fast on their muscular legs, surrounded by sprinting guards with weapons raised. There was no time to be frightened. The two vampires ran faster than they’d ever run before, tearing down ice passages that they no longer recognised.
Suddenly, a fork up ahead.
‘Which way?’ Lillith gasped.
‘No idea,’ Zachary said. They took the left turn, dashing past entrances that could fly open at any moment and release hordes of pursuers to block them off. The twisting passage suddenly opened and they emerged into a huge, high, echoing space.
Then skidded to a halt as they caught sight of the ring of tall Ubervampyr figures that surrounded them.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Zachary grabbed Lillith’s arm and was about to push in front of her to protect her from the flying venom, when he realised.
‘They’re statues,’ Lillith said, staring at the terrifyingly realistic ice sculptures. And she remembered now — she’d seen them before.
‘What is this place?’ Zachary muttered, looking around him. ‘Looks like some kind of a garden.’
Lillith suddenly knew just where she was.’It is a garden.
‘ Craning her neck upwards, she spotted the window of Gabriel’s chamber, from which the two of them had looked out. Fifty yards away beyond the ring of statues was the giant, tower-like shape of the astronomical telescope that Gabriel had pointed out to her — and above it, dizzyingly high up in the domed roof above the
