from the dwarf woman’s fingers, illuminating the heretofore unseen runes that marked the doors in turn. Neferata felt the urge to flee grip her in the face of that glow, but she forced herself to creep forwards. The bats that were nestled in the nooks and crannies of the ceiling chattered quietly at her approach, and she stretched her mind towards them.
Their minds were like tiny candle flames and they crowded towards her, their hairy bodies covering hers for a moment. Once, such a thing would have disgusted her. Now she welcomed it. She let her hand drop and the bats followed it, circling her arm like a tornado of leather wings and teeth. ‘Go,’ she hissed. The bats spiralled down towards the guards and the priestess in a squeaking horde.
There were hundreds of bats and only two dozen dwarfs. Neferata dropped from the ceiling, landing on all fours before Dromble, who gaped at her in astonishment before Neferata closed her hands around his head and crushed both his skull and his helmet with one brutal motion. Then, without pausing, she jumped towards Hilga, knowing instinctively that the priestess was her most dangerous opponent. She caught the dwarf’s robes and yanked her away from the doors. Hilga uttered a sharp cry and a short-hafted hammer appeared in her hand. It bounced off Neferata’s pauldron and she released the priestess.
Hilga scrambled aside as one of the gruff warriors who’d accompanied her attacked Neferata. He swung his two-handed hammer in a mighty blow, and Neferata’s skin itched as the silver-threaded head of the hammer narrowly missed her. Her hands shot forwards, her claws tangling in his beard, and she wrenched him into the air and hurled him at the Vault doors hard enough to kill him. Blood splashed over the doors and she hissed in pleasure as the omnipresent pressure emanating from them dimmed. ‘Ha!’ she said, turning to lunge for another dwarf. A guard staggered towards her blindly, his head trapped in a mask of bats. Neferata grabbed him, crushing his limbs as she hefted him like a sack of grain and sent him crashing against the doors. Blood and brain matter splattered across the decorations and a moment later Naaima and the others dropped to the floor, racing easily through the cloud of bats. Naaima, a sword in each hand, sprang amongst the dwarfs in a violent dance punctuated by streamers of blood.
‘Your magic is powerful, woman,’ Neferata said, stalking towards Hilga, who had got to her feet. ‘But I am more so.’ The dwarf woman’s reply was to attack. Her hammer’s head was inscribed with more runes than Neferata’s eyes could discern and it fairly hummed as it flashed towards her. She stumbled back, falling against the doors to the tombs. Her flesh sizzled and she screamed.
She staggered forwards and fell, smoke rising from her. ‘No, blood-drinker,’ Hilga said. ‘You will not desecrate our dead.’
Neferata growled low in her throat and then, as something caught her eye, she smiled nastily. ‘I wouldn’t be so sure of that.’
Hilga’s eyes widened behind her helm and she spun. Dromble stumbled towards her, animated by Naaima’s will. The other dead dwarfs were already falling upon those of their fellows who had survived the vampires’ attack. ‘No,’ Hilga whispered as Dromble clutched at her. ‘No!’
‘Yes,’ Neferata hissed, lunging to her feet and grabbing the priestess from behind. ‘Unlock it, priestess, and I will let you live.’ In the distance she could hear the sound of clomping boots. Reinforcements were on their way. They had no time.
‘Never,’ Hilga cried out, struggling in Neferata’s grip.
‘Then die,’ Neferata snarled in frustration, shoving the dwarf into the grip of her dead companion. Dromble gripped the priestess’s braids in one hand and clawed for her throat with the other. Hilga set her feet and drove her hammer into the tomb-warden’s skull, cracking it and the helm protecting it. But not soon enough; Dromble’s fingers tightened, cartilage popped and flesh tore, and Hilga toppled backwards, choking on her own blood.
‘Neferata, we must go,’ Naaima said. As if to emphasise her words, dwarf horns blew, signalling the approach of more warriors. The animated corpses of the guards swayed in place and then, one by one, as if struck by a strong breeze, they toppled. The magic that seeped from the Vaults was too strong to keep the dead animated for more than a few moments.
Neferata glared down at the body, and then at the doors that were forever barred to her.