~Second Night~
Crossing the Dead
From her vantage point on the steeple Sibyl could overlook the whole area. It was colder than the night before, partly because the sky was not clouded, partly because very little in this surrounding emitted heat. For more than five hundred years people brought their dead to this place. This soil was blessed by decay.
Why is it me sitting in the dark two nights in a row, freezing and thinking about all the nice things I could do instead -- or the nice things that could be done to me? Oh, right: rookie...
The gothic steeple belonged to the Eastern Cemetery Chapel, which was actually a small church. All around, the graveyard lay painted in monochrome contrasts by the hard moonlight
("yes, full moon -- good thing we are avoiding clichés at this point")
.
Lurking over the northern balustrade, Sibyl had a clear overview of the awry lines of graves. More importantly, she was able to watch both the funeral parlour and its two accesses.
It had not taken László much time to find out to which mortuary Suydam had had referred.
"I don't like being the fun wrecker all the time, but whatever Suydam was up to, he failed. So why should anybody show up?" she had asked during her briefing.
"His hosts still are not aware that he is cold. We have reason to believe that he gave very specific orders as to his working conditions. That's why he was quartered in that tower, and not in a place owned or controlled by the High Houses of the Elders."
László had felt rather confident of this, and so it was now for Sibyl to feel rather chill. She had positioned herself at the leeward side of the steep roof, yet it still was more than a little bit draughty.
"
As soon as I see which way whoever is coming, I'm down from here.
"
The funeral parlour could be reached from the southwest and from the east. The first way led through almost the whole cemetery and was used by the bereaved. The eastern, however, was meant for...
delivery
.
But the sound that alarmed Sibyl came from neither of these directions. First the noises of breaking twigs, then suppressed talking reached up from the southern side.
"What now...?!" moaned Sibyl and sneaked over to have a look.
In the moonlight, the group of three was clearly visible between the ancient graves. The boy in the lead had a skull under his arm, the girl following him was carrying several black candles. The second bloke, finally, was in charge of the most crucial ingredient of any Black Mass: booze. The three hobby Satanists had chosen a leaning tombstone not fifty metres away from the chapel's portal. The girl placed the candles along the outlines of the grave and lit them. Under mystical murmur the leader positioned the skull on top of the stone, while the booze man was busy sacrificing the first bottle to his liver.
"I can't feel any presence yet," the black-haired lass stated. Sibyl suspected that -- unlike her own -- the girl's hair was dyed.
Booze-boy looked over his bottle: "Maybe we're not doing this correctly."
"Shh! I can feel presence," the leader exclaimed. "Yes! I can feel your presence, Dark Lord!"
Even twenty metres above ground Sibyl heard the rumbling coming from the ivy-covered crypt just behind the trio. A moment of silence followed, then the door flew open, creaking in its rusty hinges. From the dark rectangle a ghoul appeared, tramping backwards and pulling a rather new lead coffin into the open.
"Oh, shit! Oh, shit!" -- "What is that thing?!" -- "Run! Oh, fuck! Keep running!"
Sibyl had trouble assigning the hysterical voices. The three teenagers kept yelling as they took flight through between the gravestones, tripping over tomb slabs and tree roots. Not that the ghoul was chasing them. It let go of its loot, probably more scared than the lads and lass (ghouls were cowards by nature). When the coffin bumped to the ground, the creature had already disappeared in the nearest grove. Nonetheless it could be heard clamouring being mulcted of its midnight snack. It wouldn't be a threat for any of the cemetery's nocturnal visitors. No, the threat came from someone else.
Whilst his good-for-nothing friends were running south, back the way they had come, the booze-boy headed northwards, straight towards the parlour. Well, right now he was lying on the ground, knocked down by a low-hanging branch, but as soon as he was on his feet again, he would be bound to this direction once more.
Crap!
Sibyl leaped into the steeple's staircase, hastened down the steps, took two of them with her bum as she slipped on the clammy stones. She could not have that boy run into Suydam's overdue hosts. The Nightbringer did not care much whether they would kill him -- most probably they would. But then they might investigate from whom or what he had tried to escape and who else was waking this holy ground. Rushing out of the portal, she jumped down the entrance stairs, her coat waving behind her like a bat wing.
~
He had almost felt relieve when he had looked back and not seen the crypt-thing hunting him. But then this dark-clad woman appeared out of nowhere, and he doubted that he was capable of outrunning her. She was faster by far and jumped over gravestones in one fluid move (actually, she did not jump but stepped over them like a hurdler). Cold air burnt his lungs, and his legs simply ignored his order to move even faster across the uneven ground. Roots and fallen twigs reached for his ankles at every step.
"More cardio, Dark Lord?!"
But too late: A smooth hand was laid on his shoulder, then pulled him back viciously.
~
"Surely such a nice lady won't hurt me?" The teenager made a poor job of sounding nonchalant, and not just because he was still out of breath.
"No, but she cannot speak for
them
."
Sibyl nodded to somewhere beyond the pedestal of the forlorn statue behind which she had dragged her prey. Between the un-right angles of half-sunken tombs a group of shades was coming the south-western way. Its members were still too far away to make out any details, but surely they were not heading to the parlour for condoling. She had actually expected them to come along the eastern road, mayhap in a hearse or a small lorry to transport a coffin including body.
"Who are those blokes?" he whispered.
She did not answer. So he tried a different approach:
"If I called them over right now while jumping up and down, would this action result in dire consequences for one or both of us?"
Sibyl couldn't stifle a smile.
"I am at enmity with them, if it is what you want to know."
"What are they up to here? Are these Satanists -- I mean, real ones?"
"That's none of your business."
He ran a hand through his blonde hair, which hadn't seen scissors for quite a while.
"And that crypt-thing, did it belong to them, too?"
"The ghoul? No."
Sibyl didn't want to exclude that other Houses summoned these vile creatures now and then, too. But the one interrupting the trio's candle-light boozing had certainly just been hungry.
"That was a ghoul?! Damn, I knew I shouldn't have come tonight! It almost gorged me!"
"Hardly. A sole ghoul is more or less harmless for a healthy living person -- apart from all the aetiological agents it carries. What are you guys doing on a cemetery at night anyway?"
"Uhm... school project."
"Mm-hmm."
The boy examined his... what? Captor? Rescuer? Not that he was complaining: The woman, actually more a girl, was quite a looker. Lithe and lissom, in excellent physical shape. Maybe a bit on the pale side.
