The Dark Arts of Blood by Freda Warrington

him with a grunt of pain. Bruno was not the one who’d fallen from the chalet balcony, but he felt as if he had. He slumped forward, his forehead resting on the handlebars. Every sinew hurt, every bone felt bruised. His head pounded in time with the raw ache in his throat.
    It was a miracle Wolfgang had escaped with his life. Only the steep, peaty slope of the hillside had eased his fall. Then Bruno had been forced to take the motorcycle’s controls for their return journey, despite being in no fit state to do so. He’d nearly killed them again, skidding on the perilous mountain roads. They’d taken hours to reach home.
    “Get off,” snapped Wolfgang, glaring at him. “I risked my life to save your skin. I am the one with cracked ribs and my throat nearly torn out. And you – you have a mere hangover? Feeling sorry for yourself?
Get off
.”
    Bruno obeyed, cursing himself for drinking so much the previous night. One more beer always seemed a marvellous idea at the time… but his drunken stupidity had led him to proposition a strange girl in the street, and set in motion all that followed.
    “They bit me too,” he growled. “Her and the other
strigoi
.”
    He staggered. Suddenly his companion had him round the throat, pressing him into the canvas side of a truck.
    “Idiot,” Wolfgang repeated. “You must never carry your
sikin
around in public. You never take it from the cabinet, let alone from these premises. You know that – so what were you thinking? That you’d use it to intimidate someone in a drunken brawl? Or to impress a female with your… weapon? What?”
    Wolfgang released his grip. Rubbing his bruised voice box, Bruno choked on the words. “Maybe. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
    “Very little, it seems. Herr Reiniger
must
be able to trust his inner circle. Don’t you know how privileged we are? You’ve broken that trust.”
    “I’m sorry, sir.”
    “What punishment do you think you deserve? Expulsion?” Wolfgang’s voice was low and restrained, thick with exasperation, but Bruno didn’t fear him. Godric Reiniger was the only man he feared.
    “I don’t know. I came to you and confessed: I didn’t know what else to do.”
    “And I, fool that I am, did my damndest to help you. Rode fifty miles to the middle of nowhere, faced the mad vampire woman, almost died for my efforts.”
    “I offered to go into that chalet!” said Bruno.
    “You were falling-down drunk,” Wolfgang said with contempt. “Hadn’t you bungled enough? She
would
have killed you, you cretin. And I would have left you in the forest to rot.”
    Bruno’s anger welled up. “You do understand that I stabbed her
only
because I realised she was a vampire? I was defending myself. I don’t go around randomly attacking folk in the street!”
    “I believe you. Still, drink and weapons are a dangerous combination for any man.” Wolfgang’s manner eased. He was Reiniger’s deputy, but he had a human touch that their leader lacked. Bruno and everyone ran to Wolfgang with their troubles. “This was your problem, and now you have made it mine. Thank you for that.”
    “What are we going to do?”
    “We shall have to face Godric and tell him the truth.”
    “What will he do to us?”
    “That’s up to him.” Wolfgang’s cheeks lost colour. He pushed a hand over his cropped hair. “We need to frame this in a more positive light. Yes, we lost the knife, but think:
we identified actual vampires.
Is that not the most astounding aspect of this?”
    “If you say so.” Bruno went hot with delayed shock. Wolfgang was right.
    “It’s lucky the other two, the blond boys, weren’t in the chalet, since I never stopped to wonder how I’d fight three of them.”
    “Is this news going to please him?”
    “I hope so.” Wolfgang dropped a heavy hand on his shoulder. “God knows what we’ll do with you, Bruno. Keep off the beer. Come on, let’s clean up, have breakfast before we face the storm. We’ll have to hope