Hunter of the Dead Read Free Page B

him out of her guard, but the vital moment of surprise was lost. Now she would need all of her skill – and luck – to survive.
    “Bury that glog quick, Scav,” MacVicar shouted, bracing himself for the onslaught of Cashley and his six brides, “We’ve got bigger fish to fry.”
    Scav hissed and leapt at her. As though she had been struck by a bolt of lightning, she was suddenly on her back, both hands pinned to the floor and her weapons clattering away out of reach. The blow had knocked the wind out of her and as she fought the panic of being unable to draw in oxygen, she struggled, but she wasn’t even a rag doll in his grasp. She was like a butterfly, already pinned to a board.
    Then, like a tiny miracle, oxygen flooded into her lungs and she took a deep gasp. It had seemed an eternity, though she knew it had really only been a few seconds, and her wits finally returned to her. Looking up she wondered why the killing blow hadn’t come. But Scav wasn’t even paying attention to her.
    The vampire was staring at the door. She glanced back down the aisle and saw MacVicar, Cashley, and the six newborns all staring at the doorway, too, paused in mid-movement like a VHS tape. That, more than anything, brought a sinking feeling to Miranda’s stomach.
    The sound of a horse snuffling cut through Miranda’s torso like a knife. Defying all the boogeymen in her intestines screaming at her not to look, she turned her head toward the entranceway and caught sight first of the black hooves dripping a substance so dark it must have been tar, but she feared it was not.
    Over her head, in a child’s voice, Scav whispered, “ Il cacciatore del morto .”
    Miranda blinked and strained her neck to see the rest of the dark figure. The horse was black on black, with black eyes that didn’t even seem to reflect the moonlight. The man astride the charger was sealed in a wall of black plate armor, festooned with spikes and barbs. No mortal could have carried such armor; it must have weighed two tons. Like the horse’s hair, the man’s armor dripped with the dark, syrupy substance.
    The high helmet he wore had two long, curved horns, but otherwise it was nearly impossible to pick out any part of him. He had all the appearance of a blob of fresh black ink that had somehow been smeared on the landscape. He held a bastard sword in one hand, and in the other, seemingly defying the laws of physics; he held a long, pointed lance weighed down with what had to be a dozen corpses. From the hilt to the tip, stacked one on top of each other, each of Cashley’s remaining wives and concubines, at least fifteen of them or so, had been pierced directly through the heart. Blood soaked their grey jumpsuits.
    Their feud forgotten, Miranda and Scav rose to their feet. The horse slowly cantered into the temple. As it did, the knight merely shifted his lance, lifting it up into the air at a downward sloping angle. Alice’s body toppled from the lance first. Peggy’s followed.
    And with barely a shake, the bodies of a dozen or more of Cashley’s followers fell from the mounted figure’s lance and formed a trail behind him, like Hansel and Gretel’s breadcrumbs.
    Cashley was the first to regain his senses. He cowered, pushing his brides into a semi-circular shield wall in front of him.
    “I warned you. I warned you, MacVicar. Everyone’s scared of a serial killer but now you see what’s really happening.”
    The knight raised his lance in MacVicar’s direction, as though lining up a gigantic pool cue for a difficult shot. Scav seemed to realize what was about to happen.
    “No!”
    “Scav, don’t!”
    Scav flew through the air like a bird of prey dropping onto an unsuspecting rodent, but his trajectory was immediately arrested. Without looking in his direction, the knight lashed out with his blade, and sliced cleanly through Scav’s neck with a single stroke. His head came to a rest, balanced on the outstretched blade, while his torso crumpled to