DEATH BY DROWNING

A Stehn and Villenheim story

"Ever seen anything like this before, sir?"

"Not sure. Can't really say..."

Villenheim sniffs morosely. That, Stehn knows, is a bad sign. He glances down at the body again. The girl is perhaps sixteen or seventeen years old.. Her hands are slender and her form slim. She might have been pretty. It's difficult to tell now.

"Any idea who called it in?"

Villenheim looks around the alley. It is a theatrical, pointed gesture. Beyond its mouth the citizens of Averheim bustle along the Eisenerzstrasse. None of them so much as glances in their direction.

Stehn returns his attention to the corpse in front of him. He's been doing this job for nine months now, but this part of it doesn't seem to have got any easier. The girl's young face seems frozen, the mouth set in a grimace, folds of skin rucked around it, the blue-tinged lips swollen and...

Stehn looks more closely. With a tentativeness he likes to think of as respect for the poor girl, he touches her face.

"Sir..."

Villenheim sniffs again and shifts his not inconsiderable weight from one foot to the other..

"Sir... her lips..." Stehn looks up at the Constable of the High Ward of Averheim excitedly. "Her lips are... Sir, this girl has drowned!"

The smell was disgusting. Stehn splashed forward a few steps and then stopped, unsure whether he could physically carry on.

"What's the hold-up?"

Stehn half-turned to stare at his superior. The left side of Villenheim's face was veiled in shadow, but he could tell the Constable of the High Ward was glowering. But not sniffing.

"Nothing," he said quietly, trying to keep his breathing shallow. "Just getting my bearings."

Villenheim grunted and moved past him, taking their torch with him. "Honestly, lad. You'd think you'd never been in the sewers before."

Stehn tried to ignore the stench and the half-submerged things bumping against his legs as he splashed after him. He kept his gaze fixed on the flickering flame of Villenheim's torch. Every so often it would flare with a blue light as it passed through a pocket of some noxious gas or other. The colour reminded him of the dead girl's mouth.

Villenheim rolls the sleeves of the dead girl's smock back and grunts.

"That makes things a bit easier..."

On the inside of the girl's wrist is a tattoo of a curling leaf-wreathed vine.

"Gang marking. Maybe even cult." He sighs. "Poor girl. She was a clan-daughter. Strigani. We'll try the docks. Most of the clans have contacts there."

"What do you make of this?"

In this section of the sewers, the walls were composed of unworked stone and crumbling mortar. Someone had etched a strange, curving mark into the near wall at this particular intersection. Stehn looked at it curiously. And then paled, as he quite unexpectedly felt a wave of revulsion wash over him that had nothing whatsoever to do with the stinking waste that sloshed around their ankles. With an effort, he tore his gaze away. Villenheim was looking down the passageway thoughtfully.

"Looks like you were right, sir."

The larger man glanced back at him. "Do you remember the Kesselhof girl?"

Stehn looked at his superior blankly. The strange marking shifted and changed in his mind, unfurling slowly like the petals of a beautiful, blasphemous flower. Villenheim's eyes narrowed.

"Are you all right, boy?"

"No." Stehn shook his head. "I mean... yes. Yes, I'm fine. Apart from trudging through the aggregated waste of Averheim's nobility. I meant... no, I don't remember the Kesselhof girl." He didn't think Villenheim could see him blushing in the poor light. A few feet away from him, an unseen rat squeaked shrilly.

Villenheim grunted. "Before your time, perhaps. Ferdinand Kesselhof was a butcher and his daughter was quite a beauty. Anyway, she went missing and turned up a couple of days later in an ornamental pond just off Ruhigsstrasse. Drowned, of course." He scratched his chin with a wide forefinger. "The thing is... Ruhigstrasse's on the other side of town from the Kesselhof place, but, unless my sense of direction has completely deserted me, it's about thirty yards from where we're standing." He stared at Stehn, his eyes taking on a curiously empty expression that the younger man knew well. "Makes you think, doesn't it?"

Villenheim harrumphed and jerked his head towards the distinctly uninviting shadows at the far end of the sewer tunnel. "Shall we get on with it, then? You first, lad."

Trying not to let his discomfort show, Stehn waded off, the light from Villenheim's torch bobbing up and down behind him.

The docks are noisy, the air throbbing with the shouted imprecations and blasphemies of dozens of sailors, hawkers and stevedores. Stehn sighs and wipes the sweat from his forehead. He and Villenheim have been here over an hour already. The Constable's contacts among the Strigani have been less than forthcoming.

He watches Villenheim remonstrate with yet another sallow-skinned peddler for a moment and wanders over to a nearby bread stall. His stomach rumbles in agreement as he pays the vendor and takes the bread roll from the man's outstretched hand – a hand attached to a wrist bearing a tattoo.

A leaf-wreathed vine snaking up the man's arm.

Automatically he grabs the vendor's wrist.

"Constable!"

"Constable!"

Stehn fought down the rising panic that threatened to turn his voice into a strangled squawk.

"Constable!"

At some point in the last few minutes, Villenheim and the torch he had been carrying had disappeared. The Constable had been right behind him and then...

The sound of splashing sent a surge of relief coursing through his veins. He whirled round, but in the foetid darkness he could see just enough to know that it wasn't Villenheim wading towards him through the stinking effluence.

Desperately he clutched at his short sword, but it was barely out of its scabbard before hooded figures lurched out of the gloom and grabbed him.

Stehn winces as Villenheim lands another blow on the breadseller. The Constable is a big man and the street vendor's face is a mass of cuts and freshly blooming bruises.

"I'll ask again..."

The vendor doesn't answer and Villenheim brings his knee up into the man's groin. Stehn is beginning to feel sympathy for the man, but he makes himself remember the girl's face. Her blue-tinged lips.

"The sewers..." gasps the street vendor. "We took her to the..."

But, Villenheim is already turning away.

"Let's go," he says, darkly.

He woke with hard damp stone pressed against his back. Shaking his head to clear it, he scrambled to his feet.

Judging by the smell, he was still somewhere in the sewers, but the enclosed space was larger and of a different construction than the functional stone-walled tunnels he had journeyed through earlier. This place seemed older somehow. Torches blazed in wrought iron sconces that were themselves fixed into recessed alcoves. Their light was reflected on the mirror smooth surface of a square pool of water directly in front of him. The whole place felt more like a temple than a sewer.

And the chanting did rather give the game away, of course. There were perhaps a dozen cultists standing around the perimeter of the pool, all robed, all cowled, all horrifyingly off-key.

"Is this the best you can do?" cried Stehn, who had once heard the preacher Alfred Gisch proclaim that the workers of evil cannot abide the mockery of the righteous. "You can't even..."

In front of him, the water began to stir and then froth furiously. Stehn found himself gazing into the agitated pool. The water was glowing with a pinkish yellow light.

"Oh," he said.

Something erupted from the pool, water dripping suggestively from its pale, naked form. Two slender, too-long limbs hung limply by its sides, thin fingers flexing and undulating in the close, stale air. White eyes glistened like wet marble as it bent forward to inspect him.

Stehn wanted to back away but found he couldn't. The thing exerted a strange compulsion over him. Its face was inches away from his. He saw soft, full lips underneath a vestigial nose. It brought its hand up to his cheek and stroked it softly. Stehn shivered.

And then it struck. Its lips were on his and his mouth opened involuntarily with the shock of the contact. Fluid flooded his mouth and forced its way down into his lungs. He struggled frantically, but the creature held him fast and, while he panicked and flailed his arms futilely, he realised with a shiver of fear that this was how the girl had died – in a desperate, lingering torment. He was dimly aware of the cultists chanting, but his world was shrinking quickly to the coldness of the lips pressed against his and the horrible fullness of his mouth and the burning labouring of his lungs. Desperately, he beat his hands against the creature's body, but his strength was failing. His vision blurred and the wet slapping sounds of his hands against the thing's skin became distant and muffled in his ears.

And then the contact broke and he fell to the floor, gasping. The chamber was filled with screams and shouts. And something else. From somewhere behind him, there was a terrible roaring. He shook his head to clear his vision, but it was still blurry and... Steam. The air was full of steam.

And an anguished keening wail.

The creature was writhing, a flickering shroud of flame encasing its form. Stehn continued to gasp for air as hot vapour billowed across his vision and his lungs reached for air that almost scalded his throat. The creature continued screaming, its formerly pale skin blackening and crisping. The white marble of its eyes was shot through with tiny threads of orange fire. They bored into him with a revolting mixture of longing and disgust.

Stehn tried to pull himself to his feet, but someone behind him shoved him back down to his knees.

"Stay where you are, boy!" a matronly voice shouted in his ear.

A split second later, a blast of orange-red fire obscured his vision and he shrank back instinctively from the wave of heat that accompanied it. The shrieking of the creature in the pool suddenly ended and the torrent of flame ceased soon after.

What in Sigmar's name was going on?

To his left, he could hear the tell-tale sound of swords clashing. To his right, a pistol discharged, the sound echoing from the stone walls. Involuntarily, he glanced towards the sound and was rewarded with the sight of a flamboyantly dressed man, whose lilac hat sported a single long peacock feather, stepping over the crumpled form of a cultist to run through another Chaos worshipper with a silver rapier.

Stehn blinked. Who was...?

"Don't sit there gawping, lad."

He recognised that voice. Blinking bemusedly, he looked into the wide rough face of Alexander Villenheim, Constable of the High Ward of Averheim. The face broke into a broad grin and Stehn blinked again as the grip of a sword was thrust into his hand.

"We've saved a couple for you, if you like."

Stehn rose unsteadily to his feet, the sword feeling strange and heavy in his hand.

"Erm..." he said. "Right."

To his left the sounds of battle continued. He turned in that direction to see a thin-faced man in the instantly recognisable garb of a witch-hunter battling with two cultists. The man was more than holding his own really, but, as this was the only combat currently taking place in this accursed place, it seemed reasonable to assume that they were the 'couple' Villenheim had mentioned.

Stehn looked around him. Robed bodies were everywhere and a charred, humped shape floated, partially-submerged in the steam-wreathed pool. The cult that had festered in the sewers for Sigmar alone knew how long had been broken.

As he ran towards the witch-hunter and his opponents, he remembered the events that had brought him here. He remembered the touch of the thing's lips on his; he remembered the horrible weight of water in his airways, the filling of his lungs. He remembered the girl, dumped in an alleyway amidst the refuse of a city which simply did not value her existence – whose citizens did not care in the slightest whether she lived or died.

With a jolt of surprise, he realised something that had, he knew, been true for some time. He cared.

By the time he reached the cultists and swung the borrowed sword in his hand, his anger had lent him the strength the creature had so nearly taken away. The blade slashed at the cultist's side and Stehn brought it back for another pass, its steel biting deep into the man's forearm. The cultist went down, screaming. A quick, brutal thrust to the throat silenced those screams forever. Stehn turned to the witch-hunter by his side, but the man had already dispatched his opponent and now regarded Stehn with calm, blue eyes.

After a moment, the witch-hunter flicked a glance behind Stehn. "You were right, Herr Constable. He has spirit. And a keen sense of justice. I like this one."

Villenheim harrumphed as he ambled over to them. "Of course I was right, Joachim." He clapped a meaty hand on Stehn's shoulder. "He needs to develop a stronger stomach, mind you, but he's a good lad."

Stehn trembled slightly under Villenheim's touch. Adrenaline, most likely. Or...

"What the hell is going on?" He turned to his superior, eyes blazing. "Where were you?" A thought occurred to him. It was not a pleasant one. "Did you plan this? What..." Stehn turned round slowly, his gaze taking in the witch-hunter, the lilac-hatted pistolier with his absurd moustache, an overweight middle-aged woman who held a faintly glowing staff and finally... Villenheim. "Answers. I want answers, dammit! I almost died back there."

The man in the lilac hat grinned. For a moment, Stehn thought he might twirl his moustache, but he settled for a more subtle twitch instead.

"And fire. That's good, too." The man's accent was strange. Not a local, thought Stehn, filing that information away in his mind for future reference.

"Don't patronise me!" said Stehn, hotly. "I almost died!"

Villenheim looked at him searchingly. He took a step forward. Stehn stood his ground. It was clear to him now that Villenheim had known much more about the cult than he'd let on. Stehn would have answers.

"So what!" growled Villenheim.

Stehn blinked. "W... what?"

"You think your life is important, do you? More important than the life of that girl in the alley? Or the Kesselhof girl?" Behind Villenheim, Joachim the witch-hunter's eyes glinted with cold approval, but all Stehn could focus on was the face of the Constable. It was transformed by a passion that he'd never seen before. "Or any of the other countless nameless wretches whose hopes and dreams are the meat and drink for daemon-worshipping scum and rat-men and goblins and Sigmar knows what else in this stinking city?" The Constable was close now, so close that Stehn could see the tracery of veins in his nose. "Yes," he said softly. "I used you. So what. We've known about the cult for weeks now. But the creature can melt into water, can't it? We needed something to anchor it here. To keep it where it would be vulnerable. Once it's kissed its prey..."

Villenheim smiled. It was not a pretty sight. Stehn remembered the look on the creature's face just before it died – longing and loathing strangely mixed. He licked his lips.

"You used me."

A shrug. "We're all used, Stehn. Get over it." Villenheim stuck out his hand and grinned. "And welcome to the... group."

Stehn eyed the hand suspiciously. "Group? What group?"

"Well, we haven't come up with a name yet." Villehheim glanced at the others. Joachim grimaced, while the pistolier chuckled softly. The woman rolled her eyes but kept silent. "But we are a force dedicated to eradicating the threats arrayed against this city."

Stehn's eyes narrowed. "I thought that was your job anyway?"

Villenheim smirked. "This way's more fun." He extended the hand a little further, glancing down at it meaningfully. "Well?"

Sighing, Stehn took the proffered hand and shook it perfunctorily. "What choice do I have?"

"That's the spirit!" Villenheim draped an arm around Stehn's shoulder and led him away from the pool and the charred shape that floated in it. "I can see a great future ahead of you, my lad."

The others closed ranks behind him, heading towards the nearest sewer exit.

"Does it include a bath?" asked Stehn hopefully.