Underworld: Blood Enemy by Greg Cox Read Free Book Online Page B

unquenchable blaze that would engulf the entire castle, burning the trapped vampires alive or else driving them out into the daylight where the sun’s deadly rays would consume them just as surely as the devouring flames.
    By the Elders, no! Lucian thought vehemently. Not on my watch! He could not imagine a greater nightmare than seeing Sonja’s flawless skin reduced to ash before his very eyes. I will die before I will permit such an obscenity to occur!
    The great doors shuddered before the unceasing battering ram, and the timber walkway beneath Lucian’s feet shook as though rocked by an earthquake. Knowing that time was of the essence, he eschewed the stairs and climbed up between two large gray merlons. Fiery arrows whizzed past his head and shoulders, but Lucian paid them no heed. A full three stories below, the gatehouse projected beyond the castle proper.
    Without hesitation, Lucian leaped from the battlements to the roof of the gatehouse. The vertiginous drop, some one hundred feet, would have killed a mortal man, yet he landed as nimbly as a panther on the flat stone roof. The soles of his boots had scarcely touched down before he hurried over to the lower battlements to take charge of the gates’ defense.
    “You!” he shouted to one of the lycans still on his feet, a stablehand named Pyotr. “Get down to the courtyard and round up every lycan you can. Pile whatever you can find against the door. Kegs, hogsheads, mattresses, benches . . . the heavier the better! And put your own shoulders to the door as well. We have to keep these murderous varlets out of the castle!”
    “Yes, Lucian!” The other lycan hurried to implement Lucian’s instructions, disappearing down a stairway at the back of the roof. Lucian could not help noticing that Pyotr limped as he departed, the result of a bloody puncture wound in one leg.
    He was hardly the only casualty; dead and wounded lycans were strewn atop the gatehouse, their maimed bodies riddled with arrows and scarred by burns. Pitiful moans escaped a huddled figure whose body was hidden beneath a heap of soggy blankets. Fresh blood painted the ancient stones.
    Lucian snarled at the carnage. “Man the murder holes!” he barked, referring to a number of vertical slits in the rooftop that exposed the paved gateway below to attacks from above. At his command, each surviving lycan positioned himself above a hole, armed with sharpened poles and buckets of boiling water. Once the besiegers breached the doors, as they seemed destined to do, they would find death and injury waiting for them as they passed beneath the gates.
    But would that be enough? Lucian feared that such tactics would only delay the mob’s entrance into the castle. The humans were too many, their will to murder stoked to a feverish pitch. Even now, he could hear the crazed monk inciting the ruffians with his bellicose rantings.
    “Lay on, men, lay on! Bring down this sanctuary of Satan, and reap your reward in heaven! Yea, even though you may fall in battle against the Evil Ones, know that an eternity of bliss awaits those who do battle in the Lord’s almighty name!”
    Lucian had had enough of the monk’s insane jeremiads. Drawing his dagger from his belt, he took aim at the distant cleric and let fly the blade, which went straight and true toward the choleric human. If I can just slay the monk, the lycan hoped, perhaps the other mortals will abandon this demented crusade!
    Avid blue eyes tracked the speeding dagger, which looked to strike the nameless monk squarely in the chest.
    Lucian held his breath while fierce glee surged within his heart. Yes! he thought expectantly.
    Taste my steel, monk!
    His only regret was that he couldn’t rip the man to shreds with his own teeth and fangs.
    At the last minute, however, an unwary peasant stepped between the monk and the zooming knife. The dagger caught the luckless mortal totally by surprise, sinking deep into his chest. “Brother Ambrose!” the man cried