Molay swiped mightily at Raiis; the weight of his weapon and force of the swing taking him past his opponent. Raiis saw the opening presented by Molay's miscalculation. He turned his sword and drove the hilt into the Grand Master's gut.
Brandy had dropped back at Ray's side and held him, ducking and flinching, as the knights raged at each other yards away. Despite her fear, Brandy couldn't help but be amazed by the entire outrageous affair. Two dead men battling to - what? Their death? No. It was something more. The shadows of two men, their souls resurrected after centuries of waiting, were battling for eternity. Brandy grabbed Ray under the arms and, ignoring his windless groan of pain, dragged him back from the tomb and further out of the way of the battle.
That battle continued from one end of the burial plot to the other; singing swords cut the air, mail crashed, grunts, groans of exertion, and hellish howls rose and fell. A sword struck the wrought-iron fence with a clang and vibrating hum. Another landed on the side of a raised sarcophagus with a violent crack that sent marble chips flying. Francois de Raiis fell over a raised tomb and struggled to get back up. Jacques de Molay fell into an open grave and struggled to get back out.
Finally, to Brandy's horror, it appeared Raiis had the upper hand. Molay was driven to his knees again and the evil knight appeared about to deliver a last blow. He laughed maniacally as he raised his sword.
Brandy shouted, “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.”
Raiis paused, turned on her and hissed. From his knee, Molay rotated his sword and jammed it straight up into Raiis' throat.
“Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
The evil Templar, kabobed and gagging, dropped his sword. Putrid fluids, black in the light of the fading full moon, escaped his mouth as if it were a fountain. The Grand Master rose to his feet and yanked the blade out. As Brandy prayed on, Molay spun the sword once around his head, leveled it, and drove it back into Raiis' flesh with supernatural might.
“Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one.”
The blow decapitated the demonic Templar. Molay found Raiis' head in the grass and lifted it by the hair. The eyes still blazed, the lips peeled back and sneered, the teeth snapped so viciously the entire head bobbed in the Grand Master's hand.
Brandy held Ray but her attention was on the surreal scene before her. The resurrected Molay placed the living skull atop one of the grave coverings on the ground, upright on its neck and still-snapping jaw. There it bobbed like a wind-up Halloween decoration. Then the knight grabbed the heavy stone lid from his own tomb and, with an audible intake of breath and an otherworldly grunt, lifted it high above his head.
Mesmerized, Brandy whispered, “For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever. Amen.”
He brought it down with all his might on top of Francois de Raiis' decapitated skull. With a monstrous crack and trailing crunch the hellish thing was smashed to splinters and sent to a richly deserved oblivion.
Brandy felt it - as if a dark veil had that moment been lifted from her soul. Yet somewhere outside the graveyard she knew the evil still lurked.
Jacques de Molay found his sword lying near the quickly decomposing corpse of the evil knight. He lifted it, kissed the golden grip and slid the elegant weapon back into the scabbard on his belt. Then he turned and faced Brandy and Ray with gauntleted hands on his hips. Molay stepped toward them and extended his hand to Brandy. She took it and he helped her up, off of Ray, and to his side. Then, ignoring his complaints, Molay lifted Ray from the ground and slung him over his shoulder. The big American, struggling to remain conscious, had no strength to fight the Templar.
The knight carried Ray through the wrought-iron gate and out of the cemetery. Brandy followed wordlessly.
The vampire, Maigny, cleared Zorion's stall with his leap but missed Luis. The young man hit the dirt and rolled into the stall to avoid the attack, then was up and running again. The creature recovered quickly and took chase deeper into the sagging middle section of the stable.
There, beneath dust-covered tarps, lay the stored wine-making equipment from Anibal Socrates' failed venture; unused oak barrels stacked to the sagging roof, hand cranked presses (of rusting metal), chemicals (settling and separated), hand-bottling devices (claimed by spiders). And on the opposite side, under a second set of tarps, bottled wines and full casks from Socrates' first and only crop. They'd been stored there en route to a final resting place in the old castle dungeon because the village withheld the permits to sell them and his wife withheld her permission to drink them. Now they'd never make the last leg of that journey.
The human and the vampire tussled amid these relics; Maigny frantic for his sustenance, Luis desperate for his life. Socrates kicked the monster off of him into one of the tarp coverings and both heard the shuffle and rattle of encased bottles beneath. The vampire rose and, enjoying himself monumentally, whipped the edge of the covering away to reveal the wine. The vampire took the treasure in with his glistening yellow eyes. He grabbed a bottle by the neck, pulled it free and smashed it on the side of the case. Shards flew, wine spilled, and he brandished the jagged weapon.
Luis stared at the crouching vampire, and his improvised blade, and wondered if this night's battles would never end. In that instant of sadness, he instinctively reached for the comfort of the worn little black book in his back pocket. Not to read, just to feel it and know it was there. The pocket was empty; his Shakespeare missing.
Only then did Luis realize it didn't matter. Nobody could have worshipped the Bard that long without also carrying him in his heart. As he crouched, eyes trained on Maigny's broken bottle, he drew courage from Henry V, saying aloud, “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more…”
Maigny laughed. “Shakespeare.” He waved the bottle and, with a grating voice and a nasty hiss, spit back one of his own. “If you prick us, do we not bleed?”
Luis was livid. How dare he profane The Merchant of Venice.
The vampire lunged.
Luis ducked, pivoted, retreated. Maigny slashed and stabbed coming on. Down the length of the sagging stable they danced, Luis ducking blows and throwing anything not nailed down, the vampire viciously swiping, beside him one instant, hanging from the teetering ceiling the next.
Providence, as Father Trevelyan would have called it, Luck as he and Ray would say, brought Luis backwards to a stool, a dust-covered table and the stretched tarp that served as the north wall. Cornered with no escape and driven by terror, Luis stepped over the first, tripped backward over the second and fell through the last. The day's first glorious rays of sunshine shot through the hole in the canvas.
The light swatted Maigny as if he were an insect. In seconds the screaming vampire, and soon the stable, was in flames.
Twenty Five
The vampire creature that once had been Antoine Beauvais was desperate. His sole motivation for attacking the chapel throughout the night had been an insatiable hunger. Now, though his thirst for blood was as great, a new reason had taken hold. Fear. A desperate fear of the rising sun - and its murderous light.
It caused the monster to risk immolation and jump the accursed ossuary crucifix as it lay broken on the ground. He cleared it, feeling the threat of its inglorious heat, and chinned himself on the balcony. Carefully, for the railing broke as the crucifix came down, he mounted the balcony and slipped beneath the collapsed roof.
He crawled beneath the debris, found the door and, hissing and scratching, tried to force entrance. Part of the roof fell away, slivers of sunlight painted the back of Beauvais' hand, and it flared. He howled, pulled it into the dark, and beat out the flames. Fear became panic as the vampire fought to enter while trying to hide from the blowtorch rays of the sun. The more he struggled, the more the crippled roof fell away. The more the roof disintegrated, the more he was exposed. His foot caught fire and, howling, Beauvais put it out. His hand caught again – and on.
Despi
te his frenzied efforts, and because of them, the balcony, the roof, and the door to the gallery were soon ablaze. Still pounding and screaming, Beauvais was on fire again.
Aimee and Father Trevelyan saw the smoke gathering in the gallery ceiling and knew the balcony was on fire. But what could they do?
It was outlandish; a raging fire before them, gallons of water immediately behind them, and they were helpless to put out the blaze. Every drop was blessed and every time it touched a vampire, a Templar, or anything unholy, it started a new fire or worsened one already burning.
They shared looks of terror but before they could act were interrupted by the sound of all hell breaking loose in the ambulatory. They ran into the hall and found the problem in the locked office.
Dust danced on a white beam emanating from the hole in the door - as if the room were filled with light. The reporter and the priest crept up. Looking past Brandy's crucifix, jammed in the hole, they saw the office window, shattered the night before, was now completely broken out with sunlight streaming through.
The day was here (to drive away the demons). They'd made it!
Then a shriek startled both. The scorched face of Fulke, Petit's driver a lifetime ago, glared through at them. Blood shot through his yellow eyes, ran from his mouth. Smoke curled off of his head and shoulders. As quickly as the monster appeared the crucifix forced him away.
The vampire was in agony and had nowhere to go. The sunlight, the crucifix, blinded and burned. Desperately the creature averted his eyes, grabbed the holy icon and yanked it from the door. His hand burst into flames. Screaming, he threw it as he fell back into the pool of sunlight. Fulke exploded in flame. The fireball burst out to the courtyard and in to the hall.
Trevelyan and Aimee fell, clutching each other, to the ambulatory floor as the door was blown off its hinges over them. The concussion died, the screaming stopped, but the blaze raged. Smoke and flames poured from the office while the priest and reporter crawled to get away.
Then came a high-pitched shriek from the nave. Aware they were the only two in the chapel, Aimee and Trevelyan stared at each other in disbelieving horror. The scream came again – a woman's scream.
Luis was grateful. Repeatedly over the last three days, he'd faced death and escaped. He'd just done so again. Maigny had come this close to having him and he'd turned the table (or at least fallen over it). The vampire had gone up in flames. And he'd taken the stable with him; aided by his father's wine casks exploding. Luis was grateful. But gratitude was difficult to show with your back peppered with burning wood splinters.
He howled and tore his shirt off. It helped but wasn't a cure. That would take soap, water, antiseptic and time. All of which would have to wait. Luis still had some surviving to do.
He wandered from the collapsed inferno that had been the stable, his ears ringing, into the courtyard. He was stunned, smarting, his eyes filled with smoke. It didn't occur to Luis that he'd left the frying pan for the fire. As his vision cleared, he found he was standing not ten feet from one of the Templar mummies; the same dagger-throwing bastard who'd killed a soldier from twice that distance the night before.
Over that knight's shoulder, Luis saw a second creature, the one-armed Templar, hanging on the chapel tower, kicking frantically at the bell chamber louvers. The knight was panicked. The opposite slats were already broken and he had merely to crawl around and slip through, but the creature may not have seen this… for smoke billowed from the tower as if it were a chimney.
Luis' eyes followed down the roof to see… “Mon Dieu, no!”… the balcony had collapsed… the north side of the chapel… roared with smoke and flames. Suddenly it hit Luis as no vampire attack could… Aimee Laurent was inside. Aimee was dead.
Just as suddenly nothing in life mattered anymore. He saw the Templar in the courtyard draw a dagger. He didn't care. Luis simply waited. The knight slowly raised his hand, blade pinched between fore finger and thumb. Then his hand began violently to shake. The first rays of sunlight reached the north end of the courtyard, and Luis, and the Templar. It bathed the knight's stretched flesh. Puffs of smoke curled up from his face and hands. The gray skin blackened and, even at that distance, was heard to sizzle. The Templar convulsed and coughed a dry scream that came - not from the struggling Crusader but - from the pit of hell. His dagger clattered to the cobblestones. The knight's body vaporized while his cloak, mantle and armor, along with his ancient weapons, fell smoking in a heap as if someone had kindled a campfire with museum relics.
The golden sun rose like a searing blowtorch.
The one-armed Templar fell from the bell tower and landed prone and spread-eagled on the roof. The creature began to undulate and sizzle like an egg cracked on a hot rock. Soon, like everything else, he burst into flames. Then gravity provided the final insult as the Templar's helmet and halberd slid down the chapel roof and, respectively, flipped and dropped off the eave. Thirty feet below, the spear impaled the ground like a javelin, while the helmet struck a large courtyard stone and, dented and oblong, took a wobbling bounce and clattered away like a kicked can.
Luis stood numb. Then he began to shake. Then he began to cry. Finally, as the chapel fire raged, he began to scream - for his lost Aimee.
So completely devastated was he, Luis failed to notice the bloodied, reanimated Loup scramble up from the darkness beneath the collapsed balcony into which he'd crawled. He was upon Luis before he could react, had knocked him down and was atop him, yellow eyes dull in the light, black irises glistening with hate. Luis would have been done for – had it been an attack. But it wasn't at all.
The sun was burning him to a crisp and Loup, despite being ravenous, was trying to escape it. Luis, standing between him and the castle ruins, the only close structure not aflame, was in the way. Smoking and screaming, Loup crawled off of Luis and raced for the castle.
Suddenly Luis, on his back on the ground, had a reason to live. He'd sent Micheline's killer to whatever lay beyond. He'd rebuilt his life. Now he'd lost everything – again. Before he surrendered this existence, he would send all of Aimee's killers to a richly deserved hell. Luis rose and chased Loup into the castle.
On the far side of the ruined foyer, he found the warning tape down, melted as if cleaved by fire, and the NE PAS ENTRER sign lying on the descending steps. Luis followed the curved stairs into the cold earth and, at their base, took a deep breath to steel himself. One of the heavy wooden doors to the dungeon was ajar.
It came again, a woman's scream above that echoed all around, the hall, the stairs, the nave. But there were no women save her, Aimee knew, alive in the building. She and Father Trevelyan tried to use the stairs but the gallery was engulfed. They turned back through the hallway, now raging with fire, and raced for the nave.
The place was a disaster, flames, smoke, heat, broken glass, broken doors and rails, torn banners, scattered candles, spilled water, bottles, buckets and chalices, blood, ashes, a burned corpse. Through the choking smoke they turned to see blood streaks smeared across the floor from the far corner, tracking up the wall into the gallery… as if something had climbed…
Suddenly Aimee was screaming.
The door to the balcony was open and on fire. The gallery was on fire. One of the gendarme vampires was at the rail on fire and shrieking. Behind him, crouched and crying on the floor was Felix's once gorgeous, now undead, girlfriend, Eve Molyneux.
Twenty Six
The evil that led Eve back from death had walked her up the wall and bid her open the door to the monster that once was Beauvais. And, having done so, left her with nowhere to go.
Eve's beauty was gone. She was pallid, sickly and destitute, with bright yellow eyes and black pupils. Her shaking hands fanned the billowing smoke and fought to shield her from the brilliant rays of sunlight that stabbed through the door. She was crying, bleeding, screaming, and her once shocking red hair was now shockingly on fire.
“Eve!” Trevelyan shouted as he started for the ambulatory door.
“No, Father,” Aimee screamed. “Father! There is no Eve!”
He stopped and stared, wondering what in God's name was wrong with Aimee and knowing, at the same time, she was right. Debris fell and the fire raged beneath the stairs, merged with the inferno in the hall, and forced Trevelyan back into the nave.
The gendarme thing had, by then, either jumped or fallen from the gallery and, in flames, was crawling across the chapel floor toward Aimee. She was frozen in place – staring. Above, Eve had stopped shrieking and fallen over dead again.
The fire was unlike anything the priest had experienced. The oppressive heat beat him to the floor. Brilliant orange, red, yellow and white flames danced around him. The smoke reached the vault and curled back down in great black swirls, devouring the daylight – and stealing the air.
Trevelyan choked and sputtered, struggling to breathe. He heard Aimee gasping as well. The smoke would soon have her, would soon have them both. But the vampire would not. Beauvais stopped crawling and slumped to the floor.
Foolishly, perhaps because he was dazed and oxygen deprived, Trevelyan grabbed a bottle of water from one of the crates, pulled the cork with his teeth and shook it at the fire. The flames laughed at his effort – until a splash landed on Beauvais' burning corpse. The reaction was devastating; as if he'd thrown gasoline. The flames flared brilliantly, burning Trevelyan and driving him back.
Aimee, holding her breath against the increasingly superheated smoke, stumbled to the front doors and wrestled the batten free. She threw the door open and gasped at the exchange, cool autumn air rushed in at her feet, black smoke poured out the top of the door and Aimee fell to her knees for a breath.
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