Black against the snow, the shaft of a goblin arrow was sticking vertically from her shoulder. Gabriel shouted her name again. There was no movement.
And now the pause in the shooting was explained. Dark shapes came scurrying down the mountainside. As Gabriel stared in anguish, the first goblins reached her and began dragging her away by the wrists. Others stood by, their hooded little heads jerking this way and that as they scanned the rocks. The nearest of the creatures plucked a fresh arrow from the quiver at its side. Two others had their bows already at full draw, waiting for a target to appear. Lillith’s body was out of sight now behind the rocks. There was the scrape of steel on stone, as if a blade was being sharpened.
Gabriel was fully aware of what was happening. The Masters had trained their little hunters well. They were using her as bait to draw the rest of them out. ‘I swear that if I survive this day,’ he murmured through clenched teeth, ‘I will strike back at the Ubervampyr for what they have done to me.’ He lashed out his fist in anger, and a rock next to him split in two.
‘Let her go, Gabriel,’ Kali said, clutching at his hand. ‘She’s only your sister.’
Gabriel turned to her with a terrible look. ‘I have walked with Lillith since before you were born a human.’ He sucked in a long breath. He couldn’t stand it any longer. With a shout of rage, he tore away from Kali’s grip and leaped out from behind the boulder, charging wildly at the goblins.
A twang of a bowstring; he felt something rip through his shirt and scrape his side. Zachary was right behind him, his roar of fury filling the air. They could fire a hundred arrows into that huge body and he’d still be on his feet long enough to rip every one of them limb from limb with his bare hands.
At the sight of him, the goblins threw down their bows and ran. Gabriel hurdled a rock to see five of them clustered around Lillith’s prone body. A blade glinted in the dull moonlight as it rose and began to fall. Gabriel grabbed up a fist-sized rock and hurled it savagely. As the blade spun out of the goblin’s little grey hand, he was already on the creature, ripping back its hood and pounding his fists into its face with a ferocious violence that crushed the skull in like a seashell. Zachary dodged a flying glass ball and dashed two goblin heads together, broke the neck of a third with a flying kick and sent a fourth tumbling to its death down the mountainside.
By the time Kali had joined them, the remaining goblins had fled and Gabriel and Zachary were kneeling by Lillith’s side in the snow. Zachary was sobbing as he cradled her.
Kali stood over them with her fists on her hips, head cocked to one side, watching impassively.
‘Let me attend to her, Zachary.’ Gabriel gathered Lillith in his arms and rested her head on his knee. Her eyes seemed not to see him. Ripping the seam of her leather outfit at the shoulder, he grasped the base of the arrow shaft where it met the flesh and gave a hard tug. Black venom oozed from the wound as the arrow came out. Tossing it away, Gabriel pressed his mouth to the hole and sucked hard. He spat black on the snow, then sucked again; he kept on doing it until he tasted the sweet flavour of vampire blood on his lips.
‘I have drawn what I could from the wound,’ he said, laying her limp body back down on the snow. ‘I can only hope that it was not too late.’ He gazed down at her. ‘I cannot envisage eternity without her at my side.’
Kali’s eyes had narrowed and her lips were tight. Gabriel paid her no attention.
Lillith’s hand was dwarfed in Zachary’s great fists as he clenched it tight. ‘Come on, Lil,’ he pleaded. ‘Wake up. Come on, Lil … Wake up …’
Chapter Seventy-One
The fire was gaining all through the lower floor of the chalet, timbers blazing everywhere and thick black smoke choking the stairway and passages so that Chloe and Dec were running almost blind.
‘Which way’s outside?’ he yelled.
‘Try that door,’ she replied, her eyes streaming tears.
He crashed it open. ‘Fuck it! Some kind of storeroom.’
‘Try another.’
But it was too late. Ash’s footsteps were pounding towards them through the smoky corridors. Dec and Chloe ran into the storeroom, clambering through the clutter of junk they could see in the dim moonlight from the window. Dec hid between an old Yamaha snowmobile and a stack of Butane gas cylinders. Chloe ducked behind a pile of packing cases.
Now they were trapped. They could only pray that Ash would run by the door so they could escape from the storeroom and make their way outside before the whole place went up in flames. The acrid stench of burning was making it harder and harder to breathe.
In a tiny square of moonlight shining on the floor next to her, Chloe examined the pistol, trying to see what the hell had gone wrong with it. The answer came to her immediately. A piece of grit from the rocky ledge had got stuck in the crook of the gun’s hammer, preventing it from snapping forward to hit the firing pin. She picked at it with her fingertip, breaking the nail — but the grit didn’t move.
Ash’s footsteps came storming down the passage. They stopped at the door.
Chloe held her breath as she scrabbled around for something to pick the blockage from the gun.
The door crashed open and Ash stood silhouetted against the smoke and the flickering orange fire-glow that was spreading through the chalet with every passing second.
‘I know you’re in there,’ he said. ‘I can smell you.’
Chloe’s fingers clasped something in the shadows. It was an old nail, bent and rusty. As Ash burst into the room, she dug the point of the nail frantically into the crook of the pistol’s hammer and felt the trapped piece of grit spring free.
‘Give me back the cross,’ Ash said, ‘and I’ll kill you quickly. You have my word.’
Chloe checked the Desert Eagle’s magazine and her heart stalled for an instant as she saw it was empty. Then, in her panic, she remembered the breech: there might still be a round in the breech. That was how these weapons worked. She grasped the back of the slide, inched it back and the moonlight glimmered on shiny brass. Her heart began to race again. She still had one shot left.
She closed her eyes.
‘Give — me — the — CROSS!’ Ash roared as he came charging through the smoke, kicking debris out of his way.
There was a rending screech from above as the ceiling gave way and a burning beam came crashing down into the storeroom. The wall collapsed. Flames leaped through the broken planking and spread hungrily in all directions. An old armchair burst alight, setting fire to the heap of cardboard boxes next to it. The flames flew up the walls, hugging the contours of the room, spreading everywhere, flaring up into a raging inferno.
Chloe knew that if she and Dec didn’t get out of here within the next few seconds, they’d be burned alive.
Or maybe it was already too late. Hot smoke seared her lungs. The taste of death: so this was what it felt like.
But then, through her streaming tears she saw the door at the far end of the room that had been hidden in the shadows before. She leaped to her feet. ‘Dec!’
Together they raced for the door. Chloe wrenched it open and gasped as she burst out into the cold night air. The whole front of the chalet was ablaze now.
Ash marched through the burning room, ignoring the flames that licked up his trouser legs.
‘Hey, Ash!’
He looked round. Chloe stood in the doorway, her face shining with sweat, her eyes glowing from the firelight. In her hands was the battered, singed case. She held it open for him to see the cross inside. ‘You want this? Come and get it.’
Ash bellowed and came charging through the flames.
Chloe snapped the case shut. She tossed it to Dec and pulled out the pistol and fired off her last shot.
The bullet missed Ash by a good five feet. But that was only because she hadn’t been aiming at him.
