Veridian Shores

Chapter 39 - Reunion

The animal scream cut into Gliss like a blade and she froze for just a moment. Then her senses reasserted themselves and she whirled round. Through wide, disbelieving eyes, she saw Capper thundering down the corridor toward her, his axe drawn back to swing. Her mind spun in confusion. What was he doing here, and how had he tracked her down? But those answers could wait – the fact was, he was here and from the look of it, he wanted to kill her.

Her survival instincts kicked in with a vengeance and she turned and ran.

Twisting through several passages, Gliss could feel him closing in on her, racing along on wings of wrath. She turned left, right, left and zeroed in on one of the clan smithies' workshops, slamming a shoulder into the door with enough force to rip it off its hinges. She stumbled into the room and looked around frantically for something to defend herself with, acutely conscious of the raging firestorm of his Aspect churning down the hallway after her.

Darting between the tables, she lunged forward and swept up a newly-mended sickle from one of the worktops. Gliss spun and swung in the nick of time as Capper's axe came scything down towards her.

Their weapons smashed together with a deafening clang of metal on metal, and the sheer impact threw her back against the work bench. Pain jolted up her spine as she smacked into it, but there was no time to dwell on it as the axe fell again. She twisted aside, leaving the blade to smash a head-sized divot in the sturdy work surface, and scrambled backwards raising the sickle to defend herself.

Capper turned, his full vampire visage on display, fangs bared with rage, pupils dilated to searing pinpricks of venomous black and his Aspect roiling around him like a storm. He took a heavy step forward, then another...

"Capper, please," she said desperately. "You don't under-"

His howl of fury cut her off as he lunged forward again, swinging the axe with enough force to break her in half. Gliss just barely deflected the swing to one side, stumbling back from the reverberations it sent through her body.

It was then that she realised that Capper was no longer thinking or listening. Drawing on the well of anger that she'd created with her betrayal, he simply let it flow, and the outpouring of emotion filled him with extraordinary strength, even by vampire standards. He'd relinquished control, now a berserk killing machine that wanted nothing except to murder her.

She parried her way back through the workshop, Capper's wildly swinging axe leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. One swing drove the axe so deep that it lodged into one of the surfaces, but as she stepped forward to try and disarm him completely, he lunged into her, ramming a shoulder squarely into her sternum with the force of a wrecking ball. A yelp of surprise escaped her lips and the force launched her backwards until she smashed into a section of metal shelving.

Gliss crashed to the ground, shielding her head from the falling lumps of metal and tools that rained from her impact. She scrambled upright, scooping up her sickle and turning to see Capper wrench his axe free from the work surface in a blizzard of pulverised wood.

"Capper, you've got to listen to me!" she yelled desperately, trying to pierce through that curtain of bloodlust.

"Like I listened to you before?!" he screamed back, advancing on her. "My best friend is dead, our clans are going to war and I may never be able to go home; all because I listened to you, you lying, traitorous bitch!"

And then he was swinging again. She had never seen anyone or anything so hell-bent on death. What was worse, she couldn't even blame him. She had used him, betrayed him, and judging from his words, her act of luring the Baelock vampires into attacking the Glaive compound had resulted in dire consequences.