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  His brother gone, Zhiekhill was locked up in his chapel, fussing with the bubbling liquids that combined to make his potion. Detlef, intent on delaying the expected, was playing the scene with a comic touch, as if Zhiekhill weren’t quite aware what he was doing. In his recent works, Detlef’s view of evil was changing, as if he were coming to believe it was not an external thing, like Drachenfels usurping the body of Lowenstein, but a canker that came from within, like the treachery forming in the heart of Oswald, or the murderous, lecherous, spiteful Chaida straining to escape from the confines of the pious, devout, kindly Zhiekhill.

  On the stage, the potion was ready. Detlef-as-Zhiekhill drained it, and Hubermann’s eerie tune began again as the influence of the magic took hold. Dr Zhiekhill and Mr Chaida forced the Trapdoor Daemon to consider things he would rather forget. As Chaida first appeared, with Detlef performing marvels of stage magic and facial contortion to suggest the violent transformation, he remembered his own former shape, and the Tzeentch-born changes that slowly overcame him. When, at the point Detlef-as-Chaida was strangling Zhiekhill’s brother, the monster was pulled back inside the cleric and Zhiekhill, chastened and shaking, stood revealed before the philosopher, the ghost was slapped by the realization that this would never happen to him. Zhiekhill and Chaida might be in an eternal struggle, neither ever gaining complete control, but he was forever and for good or ill the Trapdoor Daemon. He would never revert to his old self.

  Then the drama caught him again, and he was tugged from his own thoughts, gripped by the way Detlef retold the tale. In Tiodorov, the two sides of the protagonist were reflected by the two women associated with them, Zhiekhill with his virtuous wife and Chaida with a brazen slut of the streets. Detlef had taken this tired cliché and replaced the stick figures with human beings.

  Sonja Zhiekhill, played by Illona Horvathy, was a restless, passionate woman, bored enough with her husband to take a young cossack as a lover and attracted, despite herself, to the twisted and dangerous Mr Chaida. While Nita, the harlot, was played by Eva Savinien as a lost child, willing to endure the brutal treatment of Chaida because the monster at least pays her some attention.

  The murder scene drew gasps from the auditorium, and the ghost knew Detlef would, in order to increase the clamour for tickets, spread around a rumour that ladies fainted by the dozen. While Detlef’s Chaida might be a triumph of the stage, the most chilling depiction of pure evil he had ever seen, there was no doubt that the revelation of the play was Eva Savinien’s tragic Nita. In A Farce of the Fog, Eva had taken and transformed the dullest of parts – the faithful maidservant – and this was her first chance to graduate to anything like a leading role. Eva’s glowing performance made the ghost’s chest swell wet with pride, for she was currently his special interest.

  Noticing her when she first came to the company, he had exerted his influence to help her along. Eva’s triumph was also his. Her Nita quite outshone Illona Horvathy’s higher-billed ­heroine, and the Trapdoor Daemon wondered whether there was anything of Genevieve Dieudonné in Detlef’s writing of the part.

  The scene was the low dive behind the temple of Shallya, where Chaida makes his lodging, and Chaida was trying to get rid of Nita. Earlier, he had arranged an assignation here with Sonja, believing his seduction of the wife he still believes virtuous will signify an utter triumph over the Zhiekhill half of his soul. The argument that led to murder was over the pettiest of things, a pair of shoes without which Nita refuses to go out into the snow-thick streets of Kislev. Gradually, a little fire came into Nita’s complaints and, for the first time, she tried to stand up to her brutish protector. Finally, almost as an afterthought, Chaida struck the girl down with a mailed glove, landing a blow of such force that a splash of blood erupted from her skull like juice from a crushed orange.

  Stage blood flew.

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  Warhammer horror

  A Black Library Publication

  First published in Great Britain in 2019 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

  Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.

  Cover illustrations by Dave Greco and Alex Boyd.

  The Hunt © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2019. The Hunt, Warhammer Horror, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.

  All Rights Reserved.

  A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN: 978-1-78999-619-7

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

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