Alexander tottered and fell over on his side, and the wolf was instantly upon him. The Beast—for that was truly what Qarakh had become—clamped down on the Ventrue’s throat and began to draw forth the prince’s life essence in great, gasping, ravenous gulps. The Beast sensed its prey attempting to resist, felt it grabbing fistfuls of fur in an attempt to dislodge the predator that was stealing its vitae, but it was no use. The Beast had already drained too much, and the prey had grown too weak to defend itself any longer. Alexander’s hands released their grip on Qarakh’s wolfish hide. The former Prince of Paris slumped to the ground as the Beast continued to fill its belly full to bursting.
When it was done, the Beast lifted its blood-soaked muzzle skyward and released a howl that shook the very stars in the heavens.
Alexander was floating, drifting, almost weightless… He opened his eyes and saw a gray sky above him, and surrounding him in all directions, a sea of crimson.
“No…” he whispered as the first of the blood-swimmers came toward him. As it drew closer, he saw that the creature had Rudiger’s face, and it was grinning. The bloody sea churned as thousands of sharp-toothed, fish-eyed monsters surged toward the man that had slain them in the world of the living. And as the monstrous apparitions tore into him, Alexander’s last thought was a surprisingly tender one of a woman called Rosamund.
And then he thought no more.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Qarakh, in man-form once more, stood looking down at the corpse of Alexander. The body of the ancient Cainite was rapidly falling away to dust, and in moments it would be gone. He understood that he had somehow defeated the Ventrue, but he couldn’t quite remember how. Then he looked at the backs of his hands and saw they were covered with wiry gray-black hair that was almost but not quite fur. He ran his tongue over his teeth and found them still sharper. He’d allowed his Beast to take control, slaying and—from the energized way he felt—diablerizing his foe.
He looked around at the knights and tribesmen still trapped by the Telyavs’ spell. The earth that held them was no longer a wet mire but had become dry and cracked, the grass brown and dead. The Telyavs’ enchantment had run its course.
The soldiers of both armies were looking at Qarakh in stunned silence, and then the tribe—led by Alessandro—let out a chorus of cheers. Realizing the battle was lost, the knights struggled to free themselves from the ground that encased them, tearing up chunks of soil with their bare hands. The Gangrel, however, had no such need to rely on brute strength to win free. The same blood gift that allowed them to inter themselves within the ground allowed them to slip out of the earth with ease.
“Slay the Christians!” Arnulf bellowed, waving his ax over his head. Wilhelmina—looking more bestial than ever—growled her assent, and the Gangrel fell upon the knights, most of whom were still stuck in the ground.
It was a slaughter.
Qarakh merely stood and watched as his people wallowed in an orgy of bloodletting. Even Alessandro, plucked from the ground by Arnulf, was soon covered with vitae as he chopped his sword into the neck of one knight after the other. Arnulf’s ax was a blood-smeared blur as the Goth warrior reduced enemy Cainites to wet piles of ragged meat and splintered bone. Wilhelmina buried her snout deep within the bellies of her victims and thrashed her head about like a hound worrying a well-chewed and beloved bone as she sought the tender meat of their hearts.
Despite the savagery surrounding Qarakh, his Beast remained silent. Perhaps it was finally sated—at least for the time being.
Qarakh saw a few knights dig free of their earthen prisons and flee the battlefield on foot. His tribesmen chased after most of them, but one or two escaped without pursuit. Let them go, Qarakh thought. The war was over.
He sensed someone approaching and turned to see two robed figures—one in black, the other in brown—coming from the direction of the nearby woods. One was Malachite, but the other’s face was hidden by a hood. Qarakh assumed the Nosferatu’s companion to be one of the Telyavs, but which?
“My congratulations on your victory,” Malachite said.
Qarakh felt a darkness stir somewhere deep within him, and he heard a whisper of an echo of a thought: Traitor. The voice was Alexander’s. He told himself that it was only his imagination, that his mind had not yet settled after experiencing the vision of the grove, of being filled with the smith god’s power and diablerizing Alexander. He almost believed it, too.
The Telyav reached up with age-gnarled hands and pulled back her hood. Her skin was wrinkled, eyes receded into the sockets, their bright emerald green now dull and cloudy. What hair remained was thin and white, no longer a thick, lustrous red. But when she smiled with her dry, cracked lips, a ghost of her wry humor was still there.
“You may have to start calling me Grandmother,” Deverra said, her voice soft and quavering.
Qarakh wanted to ask her what had happened, but he couldn’t find the words.
“You paid your price to Telyavel,” she said. “And I had to pay mine. I still retain my immortality, but my appearance will forevermore reflect my true age.”
Qarakh reached out to take her hand, and though she tried to pull away,
