The Company of Shadows (Wellington Undead Book 3) (2 page)

You’re a damnable fool, Arthur Wellesley, and it may well be the end of you this time. You were so wrapped up with the tigress, lost in a blind rage over what she done to Campbell and poor old Diomed…

The enemy officer had taken him by surprise, rising up from below the intertwined pair of furiously-struggling combatants, and the vampire General would still have been angry with himself if there had been time for such luxuries. As things stood now, there was not; the chill waters of the River Kailna had quenched his ire when he had hit them with the force of a falling cannonball, his flank pierced by the silver blade of that opportunistic Hanoverian weasel.

Jamelia’s claws had gouged the flesh of both thighs, raking the flesh and laying it open to the bone. The wounds would ultimately heal, he knew (or at least, they would not end him) but the scars would remain forever, a pointed reminder of his opponent’s supernatural nature. They, too, burned and froze him, just like the puncture wound inflicted by Pohlmann’s silver blade.

But for a vampire, there were worse burnings than those caused by the slice of a silver-edged weapon or the claws of a were-creature.

There was the sun. Already, the shimmering darkness that surrounded him was becoming more grey than black, a sure sign that dawn was almost here…and when it finally arrived, every single vampire not entombed in the cool, protective soil of the Deccan would find themselves burned beyond all salvation by those merciless scorching rays.

Wellesley lay drifting along the riverbed, wrapped in a blanket of rock and shale. The Kailna flowed over and around him, and he was so tired — so damnably weary — that just for a moment, he was tempted to let go…to let go of everything, allowing himself to simply fall backward into the comforting arms of the river. Every fiber of his being hurt, even those parts which had not been traumatized by his enemies on the battlefield above. His body burned, and yet the water soothed, and he wanted nothing more than to simply lay back and drift away, both figuratively and literally; let the river take him where it would, for he lacked the drive to fight it any longer.

Yes, that would be so much easier. Let go of your pain,
whispered a voice inside his mind, soft and seductive, yet decidedly alien.
Give up all of your worries, your fears and your fancies, and simply
be.

His eyes snapped open, glowing an angry, luminous red.

That was not
his
voice, Arthur knew; not the quiet, reasoning voice of inner calmness with which he always consulted, his internal monologue. No, this was an intruder. An invader. This was…he recognized it at last.

Kali.

Kali the seductress. Kali the deceiver. Kali, the goddess of the dead, whose grand design, he suspected, was the reason why the bodies of the newly-slain had begun to rise once more to walk the earth and feed upon the flesh and blood of the living.

The demented cackle that threatened to tear his skull apart from the inside out told him that Kali knew she had been discovered. That silky voice inside his mind which sounded oh so very
reasonable
could only have been hers, and none other, for who else but a goddess could have gotten past the innate psychic shields possessed by all vampires?

“Oh, very well done indeed,
Major General.
” Kali’s words bypassed his hyper-acute hearing and spoke directly into his mind, placing a mocking emphasis on his rank, as though such things were too inconsequential for her to care about. “You can hardly blame me for trying, wouldn’t you agree?”

“I would agree that trickery and deceit seem to be your usual
modus operandi,
” Arthur projected back, gathering his strength and attempting to shove the invasive presence from his thoughts. It was like trying to push against a cliff-face.

“All is fair in love and war, my dear, and who is to say which one this is?” The voice sounded more playful now, bordering on the coy.

“If you expect me to fall for your wiles—”

“Wiles? Such arrogance! Far greater men than you have fallen to their knees in the face of my charms,
vampire.
” Kali’s disembodied tone had changed just like that, shifting to one that was shot through with rage. Wellesley imagined her face, which he had to admit had been the very model of flawless complexion and unparalleled beauty, flushed purple in the wake of her new-found anger. “I have been the wife and consort of gods, and the lover of emperors and kings. Do not think for a moment that I would stoop to sully myself with a mere
General,
whether he be a
Major
one or not.”

“Bless me,” Arthur shot back slyly. “I do appear to have touched a nerve.”

“Be careful, Irishman. You are playing with fire.”

“
Irishman?
That is true enough. I have been called that before, though not by you.” It had been something that the Tipu Sultan had like to call him during many of the dream-visitations that the two had shared since the potentate’s death at Wellesley’s hand. The vampire General had still not determined to his own satisfaction whether the corpulent little man’s spirit had truly returned from beyond the veil of death, or whether his own subconsciousness had created him as a means of processing its worries and concerns during the idleness of the dream-state; perhaps now he would
never
know, for on the Sultan’s last visit, he had been about to allude to Kali’s grand plans, only for the goddess herself to banish him with a casual wave of her hand. Wellesley had been preoccupied with the pursuit of the Maratha army ever since, but if the truth be told, he rather missed those visits, and had hoped that the goddess was not punishing the Sultan for his loquaciousness.

He feared that he was becoming something akin to
fond
of his old adversary, and the vampire hadn’t realized just how much he would miss the were-tiger’s visits until they had been cut off so abruptly.

“Your army is dying, vampire. Up there, on the plain above.” The anger of the goddess seemed to have abated as quickly as it had arrived, and her voice now carried a distinct undertone of gloating. “One at a time, your fragile little toy soldiers are being picked off and gobbled up.”

“You lie. It is
your
army that has been defeated.” Arthur’s glowing red eyes narrowed. “The forces of Scindia and Berar have been utterly broken. They are fleeing the field even as we…speak, for want of a better term. Do not waste your time with such empty deceptions.”

Kali laughed, long and loud, the sound pealing around inside the vampire’s aching brain like a church bell being rung by a lunatic. “That may be so, my dear Wellesley, but it seems that you have missed the point entirely. For you see, that is not the army of which I speak…”

Then it dawned on him. The bodies of the fallen would be rising. In their thousands, if he was any judge.

And they would be hungry.

“Every one of your oh-so-precious red-coated little darlings that has been slain this night shall return, his attention fixed on just one thing…”

“Feeding,” Arthur thought flatly.

“On the flesh of his former comrades,” the goddess agreed gaily. “Every man that falls, no matter whether he be Maratha or foreigner, shall soon enough join the ranks of
my
army. As your force is depleted, so mine shall swell. This can only end in one way: your inevitable defeat. Poor,
poor
little vampire. You have really but one choice left open to you.”

“And that is?”

“Burn or starve.” And there it was. Even before Kali continued, Wellesley knew that she was right. “Soon enough, there shall be none left alive for you and your kind to feed upon, vampire…and who shall stand watch over your graves then, when the sun overhead renders you impotent and vulnerable? Already it rises above the horizon. As you British like to say, you have no cards left to play. So I repeat: burn or starve. Which shall it be, I wonder?”

Kali’s goading had an entirely different effect on Arthur than she had meant it to. Rather than be driven to despair — something to which he not been given, even during his mortal lifetime — her taunting served instead as a spur, prodding him to action.

So be it. If I am to be ended this day, let it at least be said that I met that end while standing before my troops, leading them against His Majesty’s enemies!

Testing muscles that hadn’t been used since his body had slammed into the bed of the fast-flowing Kailna, Arthur put his arms out on either side, using his elbows as leverage to allow him to sit up. Getting his booted feet underneath him, the vampire worked himself into a squat, slowly gathering both his wits and his strength about him.

Then he sprang.

CHAPTER TWO

The vampire General exploded from beneath the surface of the river like the Kraken of ancient mythology, flying twenty feet into the air and splashing gallons of displaced water about him in all directions.

“Sweet Lord Jesus,” said Sergeant David Pace, shaking his head in disbelief at the sudden, unexpected apparition of his senior commander. The diminutive, stocky NCO’s attention was immediately dragged back to the matter at hand, which in this case was a cluster of seven or eight dead men, all of whom were clawing and groaning for his personal flesh and blood.

Bracing his feet firmly a shoulder-width apart, Pace swung the butt of his trusty Brown Bess musket around in an arc, driving the thick wood hard into the face of the closest reanimated corpse. From the facings on the man’s threadbare red jacket, Pace could tell that he was a fellow Highlander of the King’s 78th, and yet the dark-haired Sergeant knew that he no longer dared think of the man — no, the
thing
— in that way, at least, not if he wanted to live. These were no longer former comrades that he was squaring off against, in a desperate struggle for his own survival: he had to think of them as enemies, no matter
whose
uniform still hung from their lurching, staggering frames.

The butt of the musket hit with full force, smashing the dead man’s nose flat against his face in a surge of sticky black blood; at least, Pace
assumed
it was blood, for this fluid looked both darker and more viscous, a liquid come straight from the bowels of Hell itself. Temporarily stunned by the blow, the creature tottered backward, its arms windmilling drunkenly as it fought for balance. That had to be an instinct, a tiny part of Pace’s still-rational mind realized, because the creatures showed no signs of purposeful thought or action other than the direct attack. One of the dead redcoat’s new pals, a white-jacketed native who was dressed in the uniform of a Maratha infantry regular, hissed at the NCO and stepped forward into the gap that had just been created.

Pace risked a look to either side. The creatures were closing in on him, and he was well and truly trapped. The Kailna was at its back, and if he jumped into
that,
he’d either drown or be forced to cast off his one slim chance of survival, the Brown Bess and its cartridge-box, which hung on a leather strap around his neck and still contained a good twenty or so rounds, by his reckoning. Giving up
that
would amount to a self-inflicted death sentence.

Besides, there was Mr. Campbell to think about.

Pace looked down at his feet, where his former Lieutenant — since newly-promoted to the rank of Captain, and Major General Wellesley’s personal adjutant, to boot — writhed and moaned weakly. Then he looked back up. The clutch of foul creatures was closing in, drooling and slavering between snapping yellow teeth.

There was no time to reload, Pace knew, for the ravening things were too close. All he had left were the point of his bayonet, the few extra feet worth of reach that the Brown Bess provided, and some good old British muscle to stick behind them both. It wasn’t much of an advantage, but it was better than nothing, he supposed.

A wave of calmness suddenly suffused him, coming out of nowhere, as if a bucket of cold water had been dumped over his head. Pace had heard drunken stories from other veterans, sitting around the cooking fires at sunrise after a long night’s march, of how a man’s entire life would flash before his eyes in the last few seconds before his death finally came calling. Time had no meaning when your life had run its course, the old sweats would say with all the confidence of the true expert. This was the condemned man’s last opportunity to review the choices he had made over the years, before it was time to stand before Saint Peter and give a full accounting of themselves and their actions.

“You get as calm as a cow, and your blood turns to ice water,” Pace remembered fat Jimmy Anderson insisting, jabbing at each word with his cup for added emphasis. Arrack had slopped over the rim, making the older man curse and lick the side of the cup to try and salvage some of the spillage. “Everything slows down, if you follow me, and you live your whole life over again, but
slowly,
so that each minute takes an age.”

“And you know this how?” Pace had asked skeptically.

“Got it from Billy Flanagan. You remember ‘im? Got clipped by a cannon-ball when we was storming Seringapatam. Lost his leg.”