by Amy Cross
I watched Judith for a moment. She'd been at the altar for a while now, praying silently, and I couldn't help but wonder why she bothered. It was as if she believed that divine intervention would suddenly arrive and save us all, when it was patently clear that we had to deal with the problem ourselves. And while I admired her sense of optimism, I couldn't help but wish that she might apply herself in a more useful manner.
Ahead of her, on the altar, a bare wooden cross stood calmly in the church's cavernous interior.
“Humans are so strange,” I whispered, before turning and making my way along one of the rows of seats.
Since arriving at the church, I had been trying to remember everything I knew about Murhenge. I was not, I had to admit, an expert on such things, but I recalled an image that I had seen once in a book about ancient sites of human worship. Much like its more famous counterpart Stonehenge, Murhenge featured a series of large stones that had long ago been set in a circular pattern. Unlike Stonehenge, however, Murhenge had been largely ignored by archaeologists, primarily because its stones were smaller and simpler. Murhenge had been quickly described as an old site for ritual sacrifice. In other words, there had seemed to be no real history to the place, no mystery, which made it less interesting to the world.
Until now.
Now Murhenge seemed to be taking on some new significance, and I could only wonder why anyone would be so determined to take the blue Gothos ring to such a place.
Turning, I saw that Judith was still praying.
A moment later, hearing a rustling sound outside, I turned and looked at the nearest stained glass window. The window was both too high and too fully decorated to allow me to see outside, but I was starting to wonder whether I might have heard the sound of footsteps somewhere in the churchyard. I hesitated, listening in silence, and sure enough I soon heard the same sound again.
We cannot have been found already, I told myself.
It's impossible.
My mind is playing tricks on me.
I glanced once more at Judith, but she was still lost in prayer and I did not want to disturb her. Instead, I made my way toward the far end of the church and opened the simple wooden door that led out to the cemetery. Stopping, I looked past the higgledy-piggledy gravestones and watched the darkness beyond, waiting for any hint of movement. A faint hint of fog hung in the air, but otherwise the night was quiet and with each passing second I told myself that my fears were unjustified. We were in the middle of nowhere, in a forgotten church in some neglected part of England, and it was simply impossible to believe that anyone could have found us so quickly.
And then, as I turned to pull the door shut, I heard the unmistakable rustle of footsteps hurrying across cold grass.
Every hair began to rise on the back of my neck, and I realized that there was indeed a threat lurking in the darkness. It was as if something had made its way closer and had suddenly announced itself on some hidden, subliminal frequency, yet I couldn't quite determine where the threat lay. I looked all across the cemetery, but the threat seemed somehow to not quite announce its position. A moment later, however, I spotted a very faint shape in the darkness, followed by another, followed by several more, and I finally realized what had happened.
We were surrounded.
There were men everywhere, at least a dozen of them, probably more. They had taken up positions in the cemetery and were watching us, yet somehow I could tell now that they were not the source of the threat that I was detecting. They were working with that threat, but they were not its true source. They were henchmen, nothing more than that, while the real evil lay close but unseen.
“Good work,” I snarled, as I tried to work out how they could possibly have found us. “You must have had a back-up plan, in case you failed to get the ring out from the airfield. Or...”
I hesitated, as I began to realize that these figures seemed different somehow. I could only really make out their silhouettes, but there was a different scent in the air.
“Or you're a whole different gang of thugs,” I continued, still watching the darkness in the hope that I might spot the real danger. There was no point making a move yet, not until I knew what I was up against. “That's it, isn't it? There are two groups searching for the ring. The first group almost got it away from here, and now it's your turn. You won't succeed, though. We're more than prepared for you.”
“Hugo?”
Turning, I saw that Judith was coming along the aisle toward me.
“Stay back!” I called out to her.
“What is it?”
“We've been tracked down,” I told her. “Go and find Matthias and Chloe. Tell them we might have to fight our way out of here!”
“Are we completely surrounded?” she asked.
“Go and find Matthias and Chloe!” I said firmly. “I need their help to -”
Before I could finish, I heard more footsteps outside, but I turned to see that none of the figures had moved. It was as if they were waiting for something, and I slowly began to understand what was happening. They were waiting for their leader to come at me.
“Let me see his face, then,” I said. “Come on, why not show yourself? Even if you're Klaus Zieghoff himself, what have you got to lose? Or are you too scared to show me the whites of your eyes?”
“Hugo,” Judith said cautiously behind me.
“I thought I told you to go and get Matthias and Chloe!”
My senses were burning with the certainty of approaching danger.
“I know, Hugo, but...”
Her voice trailed off.
“Hugo, please...”
“I won't let anything happen to you,” I said firmly, “I promise. I never have, and I never will, but I need you to go and find Matthias and Chloe! These -”
Suddenly the moonlight became a little brighter, and I saw to my relief that the figures weren't actually figures at all. They were merely tall tombstones, which in a moment of frenzied, paranoid madness I'd mistaken for actual people. I hadn't realized quite how frantically worried I'd become, but now I breathed a huge sigh of relief as I realized that the supposed threat wasn't real at all. As for the sense of danger that had seemed to accompany the figures, I could only assume that this too had been part of some extreme psychological reaction to the night's events.
Yet still the sense of danger remained.
“It's okay, Judith,” I said cautiously, “there's no need to -”
Suddenly something sharp burst through my back and out through my chest, and I gasped as I looked down and saw the bloodied, spiked tip of a wooden cross. Blood was running from the wound, and a moment later I felt a hand press on my shoulder, trying to force me down to the floor.
“This really is bad luck, isn't it?” Judith said, whispering into my ear as I felt myself slipping into darkness. “Getting staked twice in one night. How will you ever live it down?”
I opened my mouth to ask what was happening, but in an instant she twisted the stake, sending a searing agony burning through my chest.
“I'm so sorry, Hugo,” she continued as she eased me down to the ground, and as I began to lose consciousness. “You have to believe me. I never wanted you to find out this way.”
Chapter Nineteen
Chloe
“I swear I heard something!” Matthias said as I followed him through from the church's back room. “I think there was -”
Stopping suddenly, we both saw that Hugo was on the floor next to the open door. Judith was kneeling next to him, sobbing as she tried to remove a wooden cross that had been pushed through his chest.
“Help!” Judith sobbed. “There are these things outside! They did this to him!”
Rushing over to help, I looked down and saw that Hugo had once again been staked through the heart. His eyes were wide open, and there was an expression of helpless shock on his face.
“We have to get it out,” I said, kneeling and reaching over to grab the cross.
“No!” Judith gasp
ed, pushing my hands away. “It's not that simple!”
“It worked last time!” I pointed out.
“This is a religious relic,” she explained. “It's not so simple.”
I tried again to remove the stake, but she was still trying to block me.
Matthias hurried over and looked out at the cemetery. When I looked past him, I saw only the rows of tombstones that stood in moonlight.
“Who did this?” I asked. “Matthias, is what Judith said true? Is this more serious because it was caused by a cross?”
He turned to me, and for a moment he seemed lost for words.
“I never heard anyone make that claim before,” he said finally, before looking at Judith. “Who's responsible for what happened? Just pull the damn thing out and -”
Suddenly she screamed and lunged at him, holding up a dagger that she plunged toward him. Matthias stumbled back against the wall, with the dagger embedded deep in his shoulder, as Judith pushed past him and rushed out into the cold night air.
I hurried over to help Matthias, but he was already pulling the knife out of his shoulder.
“If you're going to try to stake a vampire,” he snarled, turning and rushing out after her, “you do not want to miss.”
Judith had already reached the car, and she was desperately trying to start the engine.
“What's happening?” I asked as I hurried after Matthias. “I don't understand, what's Judith doing?”
“She's trying to get away with the ring,” he replied, stopping and watching as she continued to try starting the car. “Fortunately, I had my suspicions earlier, when she was so insistent on stopping at this church. I could tell she was hiding something, so I made sure to pull out a few wires in the car. She's going nowhere.”
“Damn it!” Judith yelled, before climbing out of the car and stopping as she saw us watching.
“What did you do?” I asked her, still not quite able to believe what was happening. “Where are you taking the ring?”
“Where do you think?” she snarled. “I'm taking it home, to where it can be used by its proper masters. Klaus Zieghoff was a good man, and he had the right ideas. His death was a tragedy, but it was something he knew might happen. That's why he had me ingratiate myself with you fools from the start.”
“Zieghoff sent you to my brother,” Matthias said darkly. “I understand that now. What did he promise you? Money? Freedom?”
“Glory!” Judith yelled. “I was just a poor peasant girl when the Nazis rolled their tanks into my country, but I immediately knew what I was seeing! I was seeing power, I was seeing the future, and I loved it! Fortunately, the great Klaus Zieghoff recognized that I could be useful, and he trusted me with the most important task of all. I had to lure the pathetic, pompous Hugo Bane to Paris so that he could be used for the good of our plans. Zieghoff had always been interested in the occult, he was convinced that it was the key to winning the war. Once he acquired the ring from a dealer, he was ready to get started.”
“You were on Zieghoff's side all along?” I stammered, before taking a step forward. “You lying, cheating little -”
“Wait!” Matthias said, grabbing my arm and pulling me back. “How exactly did you lure my brother to Paris, Judith?”
“How do you think?” she sneered.
“What's she talking about?” I asked.
“I lured him with the promise of a cure for your sickness,” she replied. “Lots of work went into nudging the pair of you in our direction. General Zieghoff knew that you were connected to the prophecy somehow. All I had to do was turn up at one of your big banquets in Italy and slip something into your food, Matthias. You swallowed the poison down and soon your brother was desperate for a cure. We set a few rumors buzzing, and soon the pair of you were in Paris. Just as we wanted.”
“You poisoned me!” Matthias sneered. “Why did that never occur to me?”
“General Zieghoff might have failed,” she continued, “but I'm going to pick up where he left off. I still needed your help until tonight, I needed you to get rid of any rivals who might also interfere. Now that you've done that, however, it's time for me to get back to Paris with the ring. I won't make my rendezvous at Murhenge, but that's okay, there are plenty of similar sites in France. Zieghoff's plan is still going to work.”
“If you think there's any chance of that happening,” Matthias said, stepping toward her, “then you're -”
“Try this for fun!” she shouted, suddenly throwing the contents of a small bottle at him. I hadn't even seen the bottle in her hand, but Matthias pulled away as he was splashed in the face.
Judith was already running away from the church.
“What was that stuff?” I asked Matthias.
“I think it was supposed to be holy water,” he replied, seeming somewhat surprised. “That woman really has some strange ideas about what can and can't hurt a vampire. Next, she'll probably try assaulting me with garlic.”
“We have to go and get that thing out of Hugo's chest!”
“No, no yet,” he replied, as we both turned and looked along the dark road. “First, we have to go and get that idiot woman back. We need her to tell Hugo what she did, in her own words, or I don't think he'll ever believe us.”
“We also need the ring,” I pointed out. “If she gets that back to her friends in France or Germany, there's no telling what they might do with it.”
***
“It's over, Judith!” Matthias snarled a short while later, as we saw her stopping to catch her breath on the middle of a moonlit bridge. “You can't keep running forever.”
She turned and looked at us, and I could see the fear in her eyes.
“You had a plan and it failed,” Matthias continued, stopping at the foot of the bridge. “There's no way we're going to let you get that ring back to your Nazi friends.”
“You don't have a clue what you're talking about!” she gasped, clearly starting to feel weak after trying to run from us. “Nothing can stop us! It's our destiny to use this ring! General Zieghoff said it himself, this is our chance to change time in order to make sure that we wage the perfect war! We won't let anyone get in our way!”
“You were very convincing,” Matthias replied. “I'll give you that. When I went into your mind, I genuinely believed that I had the run of the place. You must have gently concealed so much from me.”
“The training paid off,” she said with a grin.
“You even pretended to be held prisoner at Chateau Malafort,” I pointed out. “I risked my life to save you!”
“Which just proves that you're an idiot!” she replied. “General Zieghoff had this plan set up years ago. I'll admit, he used me as a kind of back-up. He told me what I had to do in the event of his death. I never believed he'd die, of course. Even now, I keep hoping that he'll come back. He was the most remarkable man of all, I never met anyone I admired so much. Maybe I can use the ring to save him.”
“You betrayed your own country!” I reminded her.
“No!” she snapped. “I'm helping to make France greater! We'll be part of the strongest empire of all time!”
“She's deluded,” I said, as I saw the fever in her eyes. “She's really supporting men like Zieghoff. Everything she ever said to me was a lie!”
“You're going to let me walk away,” she said firmly, “or I'll destroy the ring. Is that what you want?”
Reaching into her pocket, she took out the bag containing the ring, and she dangled it up for us to see.
“You're going to let me walk away from here,” she continued, “because you know that destroying the ring would be a catastrophe. It'd break a link in time, it'd prevent Chloe from ever coming here. That's quite apart from the potential for an explosion. Hugo thinks that the ring contains a vast store of energy, maybe enough to blow this country in half. Are you really willing to take that risk, Matthias? Are you willing to risk killing millions of people, just to stop me leaving?”
“No,” Matthias said.
<
br /> “Are you insane?” I hissed. “We can't let her just walk away!”
“I wouldn't risk letting you destroy the ring,” Matthias continued, “but I don't have to do that. Because while you have the bag, Judith, you haven't even looked inside to check that it contains the ring, have you? I became suspicious of you tonight, but I didn't want to discuss those suspicions with anyone. I didn't want to risk besmirching the name of a good woman, but I very carefully took a few precautions, one of which was removing the ring from where Hugo was keeping it.”
“You're lying!” she snapped.
“See for yourself.”
She hesitated, but it was clear from the look in her eyes that she was starting to worry.
She looked in the bag, and I immediately saw the shock in her expression.
“Looking for something?” Matthias asked, taking the ring from his pocket and holding it up for her to see. “How were you planning to destroy it, anyway? Squeeze it between your thumb and forefinger? You really didn't plan very far ahead, did you? Or were you just going to toss it into the river and hope that we could never find it?”
She stared at the ring, and in that moment I could see that all her confidence was draining away.
“You're going to come back to the church with us,” Matthias told her, “and confess everything to Hugo. I honestly don't know how he's going to take the news of your deception and betrayal, but I'll let him decide what to do with you. And if you're still alive when he's finished, then I'll get revenge for the poison you put into my system all those years ago. Then, and only then, we'll start thinking about the rules of human justice.”
She looked at me, and then at Matthias.
“It's the right thing to do, Judith,” I pointed out, still scarcely able to believe that any of this was really happening. “You know that. If any part of you truly cared for Hugo at all, you must want to tell him to his face. Please, just come with us.”
“I don't need to come with you,” she replied, her voice trembling now with fear. “I know what's going to happen. The prophecy at Murhenge foretold it all.”