Scott Mariani - The Cross

‘Thank you, human,’ Yuri shouted as he went staggering off across the hallway.

‘Any time,’ Dec mumbled. Dec Maddon, vampire hunter. A great start to his career, this was.

The cable car was getting closer. And now the single figure inside could be clearly seen through the glass. Even from forty yards away, the triumphant jagged grin was visible on Ash’s face.

Chloe spotted Alex’s fallen pistol and scooped it up off the floor. The controls were different from the air gun she was used to, but the essentials were the same. She stuffed it into her waistband. ‘Down the stairs, quick!’ she yelled to Dec. ‘We have to stop that thing so I can get a clear shot.’

They raced down to the chalet’s ground floor, tore down the short passage and burst through the door of the boarding station to see the cable car just thirty yards away. Chloe ran to the landing platform and felt her knees turn to rubber at the sight of the dizzy drop to the valley below. The mountain wind blew her hair and whistled around the chalet.

She looked across at the approaching glass front of the cable car and her eyes met Ash’s.

Both his eyes.

For a moment of bewilderment, Chloe wondered whether it could be the same man. Because Ash had changed. Something had happened to him. His features were sculpted, symmetrical, chillingly beautiful. The new clothes he was wearing clung to his leaner, taller and more powerful form.

But it was him, all right. Chloe could see the cross in his hands, clutched tightly against his chest — and, sticking up above his shoulder in a back-scabbard, the hilt of the great sword that had killed her father.

And now he was hers. All she had to do was halt the cable car, and there’d be nowhere he could run from her. She glanced around for the control box. Sure enough, there was no way to stop the cable car except by cutting the power. ‘The wires, Dec!’ she yelled.

Dec was no electrician, but the large transformer of the electric motor was easy to spot. There was just one thick cluster of wires running into it, wrapped up in a black shielded covering. He swung his katana at it with all his might, praying that the leather handle of the sword would protect his hands when the high voltage shot up the blade and the tang.

Crack. The blade missed its target and hacked a piece out of the transformer box. The cable car glided on another few feet.

Dec swore and hit the wires again, and this time the blade found its mark through the armoured covering. The jolt of electricity almost took the sword out of his hands. A loud bang, a flash and a shower of sparks, and the cable car motor drive suddenly ground to a halt.

‘Got you now, asshole,’ Chloe said, and raised the pistol.

On his way across the valley moments earlier, Ash clutched the cross tightly to his chest, smiled and his reflection in the glass front of the cable car smiled handsomely back at him. He liked this new Ash he’d become: he was stronger, more dangerous, and more determined than ever. So far, his new Masters had done everything they’d promised they’d do. And there was more to come, when he returned victorious to the citadel after this final mission. The new Ash would be renewed again, with capabilities far beyond anything a mere vampire could offer him. Tarcz-koi had shown him things that even Gabriel Stone had no conception of.

The smile dropped from his lips as he felt the cable car’s smooth forward momentum die away without warning and it juddered to a stop, swaying in the mountain breeze. He looked out of the window at the empty space all around him, the drop below. Then gazed back towards the girl he could see standing on the platform. He knew her face — where had he seen her before?

It didn’t matter. What mattered was his plan. He mustn’t fail.

And the powers that his Masters had given him would see to it that he didn’t. They hadn’t just restored his eye and made him prettier.

It was time for a change of tactics. Inside his head, Ash gave his soldiers the silent command to press forward the attack. Then, tossing the cross into the lead-lined case that hung from his shoulder, he drew out his executioner’s sword. With a powerful upward thrust he punched the blade through the aluminium roof of the cable car. He yanked it out with a metallic shriek, punched it through again. In seconds he’d cut a ragged hole. He sheathed the sword, jumped up and hauled himself bodily through onto the swaying roof, between the parallel cable tracks.

The girl was still standing there, twenty-five yards away on the edge of the platform, nothing below her except the thick wooden support struts of the chalet and a snowy rock ledge. Clinging on to the steel cables with his right hand, Ash ripped the cross back out of its case with his left and thrust it out towards her. He frowned. Why didn’t she fly into cinders? Everyone else did. Raising it higher, he hauled himself over the pulley apparatus towards her.

By the time he saw the gun in her hand, it was too late to react — but even as Ash tensed at the sight of the weapon, he knew that his soldiers had answered the call to attack.

Standing on the edge of the platform overlooking the dizzy drop to the valley below, Chloe squared the Desert Eagle’s sights firmly on her target’s chest. She saw her father’s face in her mind. She nodded to herself and squeezed the trigger.

At the same instant that the pistol bucked wildly in her hands and its huge flat report filled the air, she heard a muffled cry from Dec and a staggering impact knocked the world sideways. For a dazed moment or two as she rolled across the platform, she thought that it was the gun’s recoil that had sent her flying.

Then she saw the demonic-looking hooded goblin creature coming in for another cut with the chopping blade in its fist. It was Dec who’d knocked her over as he leaped in between them. His face twisted in fear, he managed to parry the blow with his sword and knock the chopper out of the thing’s clawed, muscular hand. It came on. He backed away, shielding Chloe with his body.

‘Get away from her, you wee skitter!’

The goblin gazed at them for a second or two, making a strange twittering sound. Then, with terrifying speed, it pounced.

The force of the impact knocked the sword out of Dec’s hand and cannoned him into Chloe. She staggered backwards towards the edge of the platform. Her arms flailed for something to grab—

And then she was falling into empty space, nothing but the black sky above her and the valley far, far below.

There was wild chaos as the remaining vampires crowded through the chalet, desperate to put as much distance between themselves and the fearful cross as they could. Gabriel, Kali, Lillith and Zachary pounded down the stairs towards the back exit on the ground floor. Alex and Joel were running down the passage towards the top of the stairs when Sonia, Albrecht and Yuri came crowding past in a panic.

‘I’m not sticking around here to be cooked by that thing,’ Albrecht brayed, suddenly breaking off from the rest of the group and turning towards a little window that overlooked the back yard. In his panic, he crashed into Alex, knocking the wind out of her and inadvertently dragging her along with him as he launched himself out of the window.

Alex landed heavily in the snow, hitting her head hard against a boulder. Dazed, she struggled up onto her hands and knees. She could hear Joel calling her name from somewhere inside the house.

Albrecht was sprinting madly away up the craggy slope. As she watched, an arrow flew towards him from behind a rock. Still running like crazy, he dodged it, and covered a few more paces before another pierced his throat. He’d barely hit the snow before a horde of little dark figures swarmed out from their hiding places among the rocks and descended on him. Knives and hackers rose and fell. Body parts were tossed up in the air.