Bloodborn by Nathan Long Page B

Holmann for their parting that wouldn’t make him suspicious? She couldn’t just run off in the middle of the hunt after telling him she was a vampire hunter. Of course, she could just kill him. But she had promised not to kill. She needed a believable reason for splitting up.
    Ah! She had it.
    ‘It seems he went up this ladder,’ she said, turning to Holmann. ‘But I think it might have been a feint to throw us off the trail. Look here.’ She stepped past him and pointed to the ledge further along the tunnel. There were no footprints there except their own, but Holmann hadn’t the eyesight to know that. ‘You see. It looks like he continues down the tunnel too.’
    Holmann nodded as if he could see the prints. ‘Clever. So he continues down the tunnel?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ said Ulrika. She stood up beside him, then shivered at the proximity. This close she could smell the blood in him, and hear it pounding, and the urge to feed grew like a fire in a hay loft within her. She fought it down with difficulty. She had to get away, as soon as possible. ‘We’ll… we’ll have to split up. You have the lantern. You follow the tunnel. I’ll go look in the street.’
    Holmann nodded. ‘Very well. But how will we find each other again?’
    Hopefully we won’t, thought Ulrika. I might not be able to resist temptation again. ‘Name the place,’ she said. ‘I’ll wait for you there.’
    The witch hunter scratched his square chin. ‘The Armoury, in the Halbinsel. It is a tavern. You know it?’
    ‘I’ll find it,’ said Ulrika, and put a foot on the ladder. ‘Good hunting, Templar Holmann.’
    And with that she scrambled up into the pearl-grey pre-dawn and ran, racing the sun and fleeing her hunger.
    Ulrika cursed herself as she ran through the waking city. Why had she dismissed Aldrich’s coach? With it there would have been no trouble going home as the sun came up. Now it was going to be a race, and one with deadly consequences if she lost. She kept one eye always on the east, to watch the progress of the dawn. At first, there was almost no distinguishing the houses from the sky behind them, but as she wound through the Handelbezirk, where shopkeeps put out the morning’s wares and watchmen dragged off last night’s drunks, their silhouettes began to stand out against the brightening horizon, and as she reached the wall between the Neuestadt and the Altestadt, the sky had turned from grey to pink.
    It had been nothing to pass through that wall in the coach of a wealthy merchant. The guards at the High Gate had saluted, and not bothered to look within. But as the coachman had warned, going back through alone in the early hours of the morning, dressed in patched male riding gear and speaking with a Kislevite accent, was going to be more difficult.
    Ulrika paused at the last intersection before the gate, watching the bored guardsmen pace back and forth before it. She could try invoking Guildmaster Aldrich’s name to gain passage, but it might not work, and worse, it might draw suspicion to his house, something of which Countess Gabriella would most definitely disapprove.
    She glanced again at the eastern sky. It was blushing brighter now, and beginning to hurt her eyes. It looked like it was going to be a cold, bright day, without a cloud in the sky. There was no time to hesitate, but what did she do? The sewers must go under the wall, but they were a maze. She might never find her way. Could she go over? She had heard of vampires who could turn themselves into bats or mist, but she had not so far noticed any of these abilities manifesting in herself.
    Perhaps she didn’t need them. Hadn’t she made leaps and jumps that would have shamed a cricket? Hadn’t she broken out of the tower at Castle Nachthafen and climbed safely to the ground? She backed around the corner, out of sight of the gate, then wound through the neighbourhood until she came to the street which paralleled the wall. She looked up and down