“Motorcycles,” Gallowglass said. She fired a shot at the speeding shapes as they burst into the open, from amongst the ruined houses, with no apparent result. Something dark swooped across the face of the moon, and a harsh, chugging groan filled the air.
“Don’t forget the plane,” St. Cyprian said. His hand ached as he twisted the wheel.
“That’s not all,” Harker said. Behind them, something howled.
“Wonderful. Hang on,” he said, as the Roadster lurched forward, bumping across the remains of the village common. “Ladies, I cannot promise we’ll make it to the foothills in one piece, but we’ll make it in good time. Ms. Gallowglass, do help me remember to purchase one of these beauties when we get back.”
Gallowglass’ only reply was a burst of heated profanity. He glanced back, and saw dark shapes flitting through the trees. A chill ran down his spine as one of the figures dropped onto a motorcycle and tore the head from the rider. As the twitching body fell away, Ruthven casually assumed the dead man’s place behind the handle bars, and gunned the engine. The vampire grinned as he swept towards the car, angling the motorcycle so that he could get around them.
“Now would be a good time to do something,” St. Cyprian said, darting a look at Harker. She glared at him and stood. She caught hold of the passenger door, ripped it loose from the frame, and sent it spinning towards the front of Ruthven’s commandeered conveyance. The door slammed into the ground and the front wheel of the motorcycle struck it. The motorcycle flipped end over end, and smashed into a tree, taking its undead rider with it. The Roadster sped on.
“Think he’s carked it?” Gallowglass asked.
“Not bloody likely,” Harker said. She stood, one foot braced on the back of her seat, staring at their pursuers. “It doesn’t matter, so long as he thinks twice about trying it on again.” She looked up. “Bugger. Swerve!” she snarled, flinging a hand towards St. Cyprian. He jerked the wheel, but not soon enough, and two shapes—one big, one little—crashed down onto the back of the Roadster.
The larger of the two growled and lunged at Harker. They fell backwards, smashing through the Roadster’s windscreen and onto the hood of the car. The impact almost caused St. Cyprian to lose control. Matters weren’t helped when the smaller one snagged a handful of his hair. “While Jean does for your friend, I’ll scalp you as neatly as the Countess,” the vampire hissed as he jerked St. Cyprian back, almost out of his seat.
“Think again,” Gallowglass said. Out of the corner of his eye, St. Cyprian saw that she had produced her balisong. She flicked the blade open and rammed it into the vampire’s arm. Ténèbre shrieked and released St. Cyprian, who lurched forward to grab the wheel of the Roadster. Gallowglass wrenched the blade from her opponent’s arm and swept it out in a tight arc, across the vampire’s pearly throat. Ange gagged and reeled back.
Gallowglass stretched back and booted him in the chest. He slammed over the side and vanished. “Get some,” Gallowglass said, thumbing her nose in the direction the vampire had vanished.
St. Cyprian turned back to see Harker struggling with her opponent. He reached into his coat and fished out his pistol, but he couldn’t get a clear shot. “Gallowglass,” he snapped.
“Right,” Gallowglass growled. She braced her arm on his shoulder, and took aim with the Webley-Fosbery.
“Steady,” he said.
“Shut it,” Gallowglass muttered. The tip of her tongue poked out of her mouth as she squinted. She pulled the trigger, deafening St. Cyprian in one ear. The big vampire was punched forward, over the hood of the Roadster, and the motorcar bucked wildly as it ground the creature beneath its wheels.
Harker lurched upright and caught hold of the windscreen. “Look out,” she barked, pointing. St. Cyprian looked and saw the lean shape of a wolf running alongside the Roadster. The wolf bounded along, keeping pace easily, its form streaming away like smoke, so that only its head and forelegs were visible as it tore the ground in its pursuit. Carmine eyes glared at them, and white fangs flashed as the beast drew abreast of the motor car.
With a sudden, convulsive movement, it flung itself onto the side of the car, claws scrabbling at the frame. It howled in triumph and bit savagely at St. Cyprian’s arm, causing him to drop his pistol. “Oi, keep your teeth to yourself,” Gallowglass said, kicking the wolf in the muzzle. It howled and turned on her, teeth snapping shut on the sleeve of her coat. Gallowglass fired her pistol, emptying it into the wolf’s hairy flank. The beast gave a spasmodic heave and fell away from the motorcar, dragging Gallowglass after it.
“Ebe!” St. Cyprian cried, clutching at her, as she and the wolf tumbled from the Roadster and vanished. The Roadster burst out of the trees a moment later. The plane roared overhead, guns blasting. St. Cyprian fought the wheel, trying to keep the motorcar steady. He heard a whirr of something that might have been wings, as a shadow fell across him. Harker, still clinging to the windscreen, looked up and her eyes widened.
“St. Cyprian!” Ruthven howled, as he crashed down on the hood of the Roadster. The vampire looked dishevelled, but unhurt. He caught Harker’s hair and yanked her back into a vicious embrace, his arm wrapped tight around her throat. “Bad show, old man. Who tries to hit a man with a car?” he bellowed.
“One uses what one has to hand,” St. Cyprian said, fighting to keep the Roadster steady, as the sudden weight threatened to flip it. “Now let her go, and we’ll say no more about it, eh?” he said, as the plane swooped overhead. It banked and turned. He could see the mountains rising up before them.
“Oh, I think not,” Ruthven said, tightening his grip on Harker’s throat. She gasped and pounded at his arm, but he barely flinched. “You had your chance to turn it over, like a gentleman. Now, I demand you give me what I want, or I’ll break this salty little half-breed into pieces. And then, I’ll do the same to you.”
“D-don’t!” Harker gasped. The Roadster thumped over something, and Ruthven caught hold of the frame of the windshield. He twisted, swing Harker out over the front of the motorcar.
“Oh do, Charles. Or she winds up like a viper on the road. I’ll crush her neck and sling her under your wheels. Give me those cursed bones!”
“You want them so badly? Have it,” St. Cyprian said, catching up the valise and flinging it at Ruthven. The vampire caught it one-handed, with a laugh.
“Finally—you talk sense! Too bad it is too late to save your friend,” Ruthven said, tightening his hold on Harker. He tore the valise open with a flick of his thumb, and stared in shock at the lack of contents. “What—?”
“Hold tight!” St. Cyprian said, glancing up at Harker. He met her eyes and she nodded. He spun the wheel and the Roadster veered away from the track, blundering towards a copse of scraggly trees clinging to the scree of the mountain. This is a bad plan, a very bad plan, he thought, in the moment before impact.
St. Cyprian was jolted forward as the Roadster struck the trees head on. The world spun around him, in a kaleidoscope of color and noise. His skull bounced off the steering wheel, and his chest as well. He heard Ruthven, or maybe Harker, scream. He heard, and felt the metal of the Roadster buckling and glass exploding.
And then he heard and felt nothing at all.
18.
It was raining red. Poles of wood were inserted into wounds in the earth, sprouting like a forest of teeth from the hillside. On each, a human being flopped like a fish pulled fresh from the water. Their blood pattered down dully. St. Cyprian fought down the surge of fear that rose in him and said, “How many times are you going to perform this same Grand Guignol?”
“Until the point sinks home,” a voice said, as boots strode through the blood that pooled on the ground. St. Cyprian looked up, into a face that he had seen before. Fingers gripped his throat and he felt himself hauled up, up into the red air, dangling from the end of a long arm. Red eyes looked into his. A fanged mouth twisted into a Guy Fawkes grin. St. Cyprian clawed at the arm, trying to break its grip, but it was like striking a bar of i
ron.
“You are strong and stubborn. Good,” his captor said. He flung St. Cyprian to the ground. His shape seemed to waver and reform anew every few moments as St. Cyprian glared up at him. Only the horrible smile remained the same, stretched from ear to ear almost, its rows of shark teeth bared and shining in the crimson light.
When his shape finally became firm, Dracula was as he had been before, but rather than being clad in medieval garb, he wore a black suit, such as men might have worn in Victoria’s day. His hair was still long, and his teeth shone like razors beneath his drooping mustaches. Hands like a bird’s talons extended from coat sleeves which strained at the thick forearms and shoulders as he spread his long arms. “I am soon made flesh and I will be avenged upon my foes,” he rumbled. “Conquest is the best revenge. Your king and all his people will cower at my feet. I am a monster, and your kingdom will be the testament to my monstrousness. Do you know me, boy?”
“Dracula,” St. Cyprian said, climbing to his hands and knees. The word pulsed on the air like the toll of some great funerary bell. He looked around, at the stakes and writhing bodies. “Is this heaven for you, or hell?”
Dracula shrugged. “Both. Neither. I served the Cross—aye, and the Crescent as well, in my time—and I burn in fire for my service,” he said. He swept out an arm to the bodies dangling from the stakes. “See. My enemies are here with me. Even in death, I conquer. Even in Hell, Dracula makes his enemies suffer.” His voice was soft. Almost feminine. A cat’s purr coming out of a bear’s throat and it made St. Cyprian feel ill. “My will cannot be thwarted by death or damnation. Even as a child, my will was all.”
St. Cyprian clutched his head and staggered back. The sky was bleeding. He couldn’t breathe. Dracula grabbed him. “Even in oblivion, I cling to existence.” Hooked nails carved circles in the flesh of St. Cyprian’s face as Dracula pulled him close. “And even if the Devil himself should bar my way, Dracula will live again. Would you match your mind and will against mine? I, who rode through the cannons of the Turk, who swam in the blood of the Janissaries, and aye, Hungarians, Serbs and Cossacks?”
Dracula dragged his eyelids up. “Look—see! See how they came and slew me, as assassins. Harker and Holmwood and the wild Dutchman, and aye, the sorcerer Drood, as well.” The world became as water, and shapes swam forward like puppets in a shadow play. A house—English, he thought, then, Purfleet—filled with noise and fire. Men and a woman, locked in a struggle for survival with something monstrous.
Then, a lean shape, striding through the flames, cloak swirling, holding aloft a spear of hawthorn. He recognized the face of Edwin Drood—pale and stiff with fear, but determined. The black shadow that was Dracula turned, eyes glinting like hell-suns, jaws agape, and Drood thrust his spear into the heart of the roiling nightmare.
St. Cyprian thrashed, trying to free himself from Dracula’s grip. The vampire began to laugh, and that laughter became a woman’s voice. Yelling, rather than laughing. He blinked, and batted weakly at the hands clutching at him. “What?” he mumbled. He felt as if he were back at Eton, and someone had taken a cricket bat to his skull. He looked around.
The roadster was a smoking wreck. It sat up on its rear wheels, the hood bent around the remains of what he thought must have once been a stone gatepost. Harker was shaking him. “Up, you fool, get up!” she said.
“What?” He shook his head, trying to focus. He reached automatically for the sack containing Dracula’s bones, and dragged it out from under the seat. Harker stared at it, and then at him. She shook her head.
“We need to get out of here—up there,” she said, pointing towards the ruin of the monastery, where it clung, limpet-like, to the side of the slope. “Come on.” She dragged him out of his seat. He looked around for Ruthven, as he stumbled after her, the bag in his hand, but saw nothing save a smear of blood on the gatepost.
“Is he…?” he began.
“He was gone when I came to,” she said, without looking at him. “He’s no fanatic. If he was hurt, he’ll run away to try again another day. But there are still members of the Drachenorden hunting for us. We must hide the bones, before they stumble on this place. Now come on.” She climbed the trail with surefooted grace, leaving him gasping and stumbling in her wake.
As he climbed the steep path, he glanced over his shoulder, and saw the plume of smoke which marked where the plane had crashed. He could hear gunfire somewhere back in the trees, and wondered who was winning. More than that, he wondered where Gallowglass was. He immediately shied away from the obvious answer. She’s fine, he thought, has to be. He looked up at the monastery again…it was a rounded, kiln-like structure of stone and brick and wood. From a distance, one might not even know it was there at all.
“You didn’t say how you know about this place,” he called.
Harker didn’t look back. “No. I didn’t,” she said. “It belonged to a small order. They helped my—my mother’s husband when he fled Borgo Pass.”
“And now?”
“Dead,” Harker said, bluntly. “Dracula, or his servants, killed them all. But the monastery is still there, and what it contains…”
“What it…?” he stopped and shook his head as she put on a burst of speed and left him behind. A square brick archway, with a single, simple wooden doorway occupied the end of the path. Beyond it, the ruins of the monastery clung to the curve of the mountain like a barnacle. Harker kicked the remains of the door off of its hinges and stepped onto the wooden bridge which stretched from the archway to the monastery’s entrance. The bridge appeared to be the only way to reach the monastery, unless one could fly.
The planks of the bridge creaked alarmingly as they made their way across. He could make out the tops of the trees below, and see the flashes of light that marked a gun going off. The door to the monastery was a simple affair. It was made of thick wood and banded with iron. It was old and stout and Harker kicked it off of its hinges with barely a grunt of effort. St. Cyprian shook his head as the echo of the impact faded. “Hardly ladylike,” he murmured. “Still, I suppose it doesn’t matter.”
“There is a time and a place for being ladylike. This is neither,” Harker said. Moonlight speared down through the tiny windows and gaps in the walls, illuminating the silent stone walls and unadorned floor of the antechamber. There had been wooden levels above the antechamber once, but these had long since collapsed, leaving only splintered planks and other, less identifiable debris scattered all around. St. Cyprian could hear the steady drip of water, and feel the moth-flutter of restless spirits. The monks might have been dead, but something of them yet remained. “Come on,” Harker continued, starting in the direction of the water.
“Do you know where you’re going?” he asked, doubtfully. His wounded hand throbbed, and his other itched for the grip of his Webley.
“Lord Godalming brought me here, as a girl,” she said. “We spent the night here, exploring. My brother and I…” she trailed off, and shook her head. “Yes,” she added. “I know where I’m going.”
He followed her through an archway, and down a sloping, curved corridor. The walls and floor had been worn smooth long ago. The corridor wasn’t long and it soon opened up into a vast cave, dominated by a deep pool of water, fed from a heavy trickle which ran down a jumble of rocks on the back wall.
The walls of the cave were as smooth as the corridor, and porous, with hundreds of natural holes and shelves. Skulls and bones occupied almost all of the latter. “The inhumed their dead, here,” Harker said. She spoke softly, but her voice carried through the cavern. “It was a place of contemplation for them, where they communed with God.”
The water of the pool shone with an eerie light. It was as if it were lit from below, and a tremor ran through him. “What is this place?” he asked.
“A sacred pool. Supposedly, St. George cleansed his blade here, after slaying a dragon,” Harker said, reverentially.
“Big one for a bit of dragon-slaying, that fellow,” St. Cyprian sai
d.
Harker snorted. “There are legends concerning John Hunyadi and Alexander the Great as well. It was one of the reasons the monastery was built here—they thought the pool was a gift from God.” She hesitated, and then said, “Maybe it was.”
“And this is why you wanted to come here?” he asked.
“I hoped—I thought maybe…” She trailed off and looked around.
She hoped that it would contain me, a voice said, rising up from the depths of his soul. The words echoed through his head and he stumbled suddenly, clutching at his skull. She hoped, in her naiveté, that I would be burnt to cinders by the holiness of this place. Ha!
“What is it? Charles?” Harker said, reaching for him.
“In my head—I can hear him—he’s…” he began. Dracula’s laughter drowned out his thoughts. It reverberated through him, and he felt as if he might come apart at the seams. He sank to one knee, still holding his head.
Foolish girl. I am Dracula. I watered these stones with the blood of their caretakers and this place holds no power over me, the voice pulsed, sending a shiver through him. I am Dracula, and I will have what I am owed!
19.
“What is he doing? Is he…talking to you?” Harker demanded, stalking towards him. St. Cyprian staggered back, away from her, as Dracula’s voice thundered in his head.
Is that jealousy I wonder? Does she yearn for her father’s touch? Dracula laughed, and it sounded like the buzzing of flies. Will she tear out your throat, do you think? No. No, I think not.
“What do you want?” St. Cyprian hissed, eyes closed.
Why, to continue our conversation! This may be the last time we have to speak, and I would not send you to oblivion without revealing to you the reason for your death. It is the least I can do, for one who woke me from my grave-slumber. Soon, my loyal knights will come for us—for me. They wish to quicken my blood, and clothe these old bones once more in flesh, Dracula said. His words spread like oil across the inside of St. Cyprian’s head.
The Infernal Express Page 17