00.1 - Death's Cold Kiss Read Online Free

hammer.
    There would be no going to the castle for help.
     
    The doors and window frames of the temple had been inlaid
with fine silver wire; bent into the shape of the runes the mage had sworn would
keep the undead at bay. Meyrink had had no choice but to employ the man, despite
his deep-seated distrust of magicians.
    Meyrink studied the silver swirls.
    There was nothing, as far as he could tell, remotely magical
about the symbols that had cost the temple an Emperor’s ransom. The man had
assured the priests that the combination of the curious shapes and the precious
metal would turn the confines of the temple into a prison for any of the tainted
blood. He had sworn an oath, for all the good it did them now.
    Like the windows and doors, the entrance to the crypt itself
was protected by a serious of intricate metal swirls that had been laid in after
Victor Guttman had been led below. Together, the mage had promised, these twists
of metal would form an impenetrable barrier for the dead, keeping those without
a soul from crossing. Again, Meyrink had no choice but to believe the man,
despite the evidence of his own eyes.
    Meyrink descended the thirteen steps into the bowels of the
temple.
    The crypt was dank, lit by seven guttering candles that threw
sepulchral shadows over the tombs, the air fetid. Guttman had refused the
comforts of a bed and slept curled up on a blanket in a dirty corner, ankles and
wrists chained to the wall like some common thief.
    It hurt Meyrink to see him like this: living in the dark,
hidden away from the world he so loved, shackled.
    This was no life at all.
    “Morning, brother,” he called, lightly, struggling to keep
the grief out of his voice.
    “Is it?” answered the old man, looking up. The flickering
candlelight did nothing to hide the anguish in his eyes or the slack skin of his
face. “Time has lost all meaning underground. I see nothing of light and day or
dark and night, only candles that burn out and are replenished as though by
magic when I finally give in to sleep. I had the dream again last night…”
    Meyrink nodded. He knew. Two more girls—they were no more
than children in truth—had succumbed to the sleeping sickness and died during
the night. Two more. They were calling it a plague, though for a plague it was a
selective killer, draining the very life out of Drakenhof’s young women while
the men lived on, seemingly immune, desperate as those they loved fell victim.
It was always the same: first they paled, as the sickness took hold then they
slipped into a sleep from which they never woke. The transition was shockingly
quick. In a matter of three nights vibrant healthy young women aged as much as
three decades to look at and succumbed to an eternal sleep. Meyrink knew better:
it wasn’t a plague, it was a curse.
    “Did I…? Did I…?”
    He nodded again.
    “Two young girls, brother. Sisters. They were to have been
fifteen this naming day.”
    Guttman let out a strangled sob. He held up his hands,
rattling the chains in anger and frustration. “I saw it… I…” But there was
nothing he could say. “Have you come to kill me?”
    “I can’t, brother. Not while there is hope.”
    “There is no hope. Can’t you see that? I am a killer now.
There is no peace for me. No rest. And while I live you damn the young women of
our flock. Kill me, brother. If not for my own sake, then do it for theirs.”
Tears streaked down his grubby face.
    “Not while you can still grieve for them, brother. Not while
you still have compassion. When you are truly a beast, when the damned sickness
owns you, only then. Before that day do not ask for what I cannot do.”
     
    “He has to die!” Messner raged, slamming his clenched fist on
the heavy oak of the refectory table. The clay goblets he and Meyrink had been
drinking from jumped almost an inch, Meyrink’s teetering precariously before it
toppled, spilling thick bloody red wine into the oak grain between