The Company of Shadows (Wellington Undead Book 3) by Richard Estep Read Free Book Online Page B

Marathas turning tail for, I presume, Gawilghur?” Wellesley nodded, confirming the Colonel’s suspicion. “With their ragtag little band making for Gawilghur, I feel confident that we shall survive this day and emerge as a stronger, unified fighting force when the moon rises.”
    “Agreed.” Arthur clapped the other vampire approvingly on the shoulder. “And then neither Scindia nor Berar shall know what has hit them…”
     
     

 
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER FIVE
     
     
    She should have died down there. Jamelia felt it in her bones, the sure and certain knowledge being sensed on a visceral, almost primal level deep within.
    Wellesley had wounded her grievously. True, she had given as good as she had gotten, raking the vampire with her claws and tearing at his flesh with her teeth, and he had been so engrossed in the fight that he had failed to notice her commanding officer, the Hanoverian named Pohlmann, swoop in to attack him with a silver blade.
    They had both fallen then, she and Wellesley. Jamelia had no idea what had become of him, for she had been far too focused on trying to save herself. She remained ambivalent toward his fate. A large part of her hoped that Pohlmann’s strike had ended the vampire’s existence outright, snuffing him out as he had snuffed out the life of her beloved father, the Tipu Sultan, in the water gate tunnel at Seringapatam; but then there was another part, every bit as vengeful and fervent as the first, that hoped for his survival, so that she might have the pleasure of tearing him limb from limb with her own claws and jaws, one piece at a time.
    Falling from such a great height, Jamelia had been traveling breathtakingly fast when her feline body slammed into the surface of the Kailna. As the breath left her lungs, she imagined that this must be what it felt like in the instant in which a cannonball struck, violently blasting your body into thousands upon thousands of fragments. She opened her mouth to roar, a combination of defiance and raw agony. Cold water rushed in, making her choke.
    The moments after that were all gone from her memory, nothing more than an incoherent blur of pain and disorientation. The great tigress had sunk to the bottom of the river, stunned by the brute force of impact and the wounds that she had sustained during her struggle with Wellesley. She dimly recalled sinking into the shale of the riverbed, rolling to lay on her back with all four paws in the air above her.
    Dimly, Jamelia could sense the life leaving her body for the last time…and found that she really didn’t care. Not one whit.
    Let it be over. Let it be done.
    She could not say how long she had lain there, her battered and tortured body buffeted by the passing current. Water filled her lungs. She was drowning, and it felt almost pleasant, the overwhelming urge to simply drift away from this life and never come back.
    Jamelia wasn’t precisely sure what secrets lay beyond the veil of this life, but she knew that there had to be something. She was an instrument of the goddess Kali, and knew for certain that there were greater things in the world than this painful and undignified existence. Jamelia’s deity had offered her tantalizing glimpses of the afterlife, visions that flashed past almost as quickly as they arrived; they usually came when she was acting as a vessel for the goddess, when the Dark Mother Kali would infuse Jamelia with her divine essence, speaking through her mouth and seeing through her eyes. Each time that Kali came forcibly to the forefront of her mind, Jamelia’s own personality was forced to the back, feeling as though she was being repeatedly punched in the head. Lights flashed before her eyes and she would suddenly perceive another place, or perhaps more accurately, she felt, another state of being; one in which she could be free of the shackles of the body, and all the limitations of her physical incarnation.
    Then it was gone, snatched away when Kali left,