by Peter Nealen
“Karen Trudeau,” Father intoned grimly. “My business is with you, not with the thing that holds sway over you. Can you hear me?”
Her eyes were rolling back in her head. Her back was arched, and she was quivering with tension. “It hurts,” she whimpered.
“I know,” Father said quietly. “But it only hurts because of the path you have taken. You turned aside to dwell in darkness, and now the light stings when you look on it again.”
Her eyes refocused, a bewildered look in them, though her body lost none of its shaking tautness. “He showed me,” she whispered. “He showed me the truth, I thought. That this was the real way, what the ministers and the priests were just too small and stupid and afraid to acknowledge. Why… Why isn’t it…?”
“Why isn’t it working?” Father replied. “Because the demons are liars, and they always have been. They are rebels and traitors, who abandoned their birthright for the sake of their own pride, and are far weaker than even they could be because of it. And even what they were made to be was still insignificant compared to the Master who died on the Cross.”
She shuddered then. Her eyes rolled in her head. “No,” she moaned. “No, I don’t believe you.”
“You have to,” Father said. “It’s the truth. And the fact that I have driven your patron away and hold you immobile by the power of God is all the proof you should need. Now, this is your last chance, Karen Trudeau. Renounce Satan and his minions, repent of your sins and your bargain, and accept redemption before you die.”
“No,” she said, in a small voice. “Even if you’re right, God doesn’t want me. If he did, He wouldn’t have let my father hurt me. If I hold to the deal, at least I’ll stay alive for a while longer, before your God throws me away like the trash He’s always treated me as. If I renounce the deal, I’ll die.”
“You are going to die,” Father explained quietly. “All of us do. From the day you were born, you were marked to die.”
“But I don’t have to,” she replied. “Not yet.” She pronounced a name that almost set my nose to bleeding again. “He promised that he could forestall my death for years. Maybe even centuries.”
“Maybe it can, maybe it can’t,” Father said grimly. “Like I said, the demons are liars. It could betray you to death and damnation at any time. It is only biding its time until you have passed the point of no return, when the weight of your sins makes it impossible for you to raise your head and look to the Light above. When you are so crushed beneath them that you no longer even think of repentance, because you believe it impossible.”
There was fear in her eyes, as flooded with blood as they still were, and as much as she was trying to cover it with rage. “It’s already too late,” she breathed. “It was too late when my worthless, stupid father beat me just because I loved a boy.”
But Father Ignacio shook his head. “That’s another lie,” he said. “As long as there is life, there is still hope, and you aren’t dead yet. Not quite. You can still reject it and repent before you die.”
She tried to shake her head, against the pressure of the crucifix that held her immobile. “No,” she whispered again. “I don’t want to die. I don’t want to. Why do you want me to die? He said he would keep me alive! Why are you trying to kill me?!”
“Trudeau!” Eryn cried, “we don’t want to kill you! We don’t!” But Trudeau wasn’t listening.
“You’re just like all the rest!” she shrieked. I wasn’t sure who “all the rest” were, but I suspected that she meant believers. “Beat people into submission! Kill the ones you can’t control!”
“That’s a lie and you know it,” Father Ignacio said harshly. “We weren’t the ones who listened to the promptings of a vampire, and went to it despite all warnings. We didn’t bite you and put that venom into you, that sentenced you to death as soon as it entered your body. We’re trying to offer you a chance to save your soul before you die.”
She only screamed, a long, drawn out cry of hate and despair.
“We’ve got company coming,” Frank called out.
I glanced over my shoulder. It was still too dark to see much detail, but I could see movement in and around the rock formations below us. The Worms, driven by their terrible masters, were beginning to close in, despite their terror. And, even though I couldn’t see it, I knew that the other vampire was out there, circling.
“We don’t have much more time,” Father Ignacio growled. “You have to make the decision, Karen, and you have to make it now. Do you reject the Devil and all his minions, and all their works and promises, and all of your own sins?”
She screamed at him again. It didn’t sound like an affirmation of repentance to me.
“Please, Karen,” Miller pleaded. “Don’t do this. I don’t…I don’t want to see…”
She suddenly dissolved into tears. “Simon,” she pleaded, in a small, lost voice. “Please, Simon, you can’t let them do this to me. They’re hurting me, Simon. They’re hurting me. Please, make them stop.”
This was about to go very, very wrong.
Miller was suddenly staring down at his pistol. The stench of sulfur got a little stronger, even as the crackling tension in the air redoubled. The demon was fighting to get back at her.
“Karen, please,” Eryn urged. “You have to turn back. Don’t let this happen. Don’t make us do this.”
Those were the wrong words. Pure, undiluted, white-hot hate erupted in Trudeau’s eyes. “Make you do this?” she hissed. “That was what he said! That’s what all you vicious hypocrites say!” She called out the evil name again, in a raw-throated scream. “Help me!” she shrieked.
“Jed! Ray!” Father yelled. “We’re losing her!”
Without taking it away altogether, Father moved the crucifix from her forehead to her upper chest. Her neck was now exposed.
I slung my rifle and drew my big Bowie. Ray had his tomahawk in his hand already. Miller was openly weeping now.
“Please, Karen!” he begged. But she was screaming her hate at everyone by then. She probably didn’t even hear him.
As if from a great distance, or a great depth, I heard a deep, sonorous chuckle. It was an awful sound, bearing an infinity of malice in a simple laugh.
Even as I stood over her, Bowie in hand, she stared up at me. “I’d rather go straight to Hell with,” she spat the demonic name, “than ever see your God. What has He ever given me?”
“He gave you everything,” I said grimly. “The breath in your lungs, the beating of your heart. Even the very ability to reject Him, because He didn’t coddle you, but let you endure the bad along with the good, so that you might grow stronger from it.” I lifted the big knife to strike. “He didn’t damn you. You did that yourself.”
The blade was razor sharp, but even so, it takes some effort to get through a human spinal column. Between Ray and me, it took about three blows to sever her head. It was awful work, and I wanted to retch when it was done, but finally it was finished. Karen Trudeau was dead.
There was no celebration of the fact, there in our little hole in the rocks. Miller was sobbing. Father stood, made the Sign of the Cross, and prayed, “Father, she was a wounded soul, harmed by those whose responsibility it was to bring her closer to You, and led astray because of it. Have mercy on her soul, Lord, and if it be Your Will, bring her finally home.” It seemed like a futile prayer, after her last words, but I reminded myself that there had been a moment between that scream of hate and when her spinal cord had finally been cut. You never know.
A snarling hiss resounded from the surrounding dark. The older vampire was still out there. And it wasn’t going to be nearly so easy to deal with.
Chapter 23
Moving to the edge of the little cup in the rock, I could see more of the movement around us. The Worms were closing in. And a pair of red eyes gleamed suddenly in the light of Eryn’s flashlight, out in the dark. The vampire was closer than we’d hoped.
“Am I supposed to be impressed?” it hissed. “Sh
e was weak. You never would have been able to repulse her in the tunnels if she had been half as strong as I.”
“Keep telling yourself that,” I barked in reply. It probably wasn’t that smart, starting to argue with a vampire, but I was getting sick of its blabbering. “But I probably shouldn’t expect clear thinking from someone who invited a demon to whisper in his ear for the last, what? Century? Century and a half?” When there was no reply, I continued. “You’re no stronger than she was; you’re just a frightened puppet, clinging to a demon’s apron strings, desperate to put off the inevitable as long as possible, by any means it suggests to you, no matter how gruesome.”
It snarled at that, and the Worms suddenly surged toward us. A volley of gunfire forced them back, but, without saying it, we all realized that that wasn’t going to work for too much longer; we were getting very, very low on ammunition. We’d be back to using our rifle butts soon. And I didn’t think there was any hope of getting clear that way. We could only sell ourselves as dearly as we could, once we were reduced to that extremity.
“I hope your sense of moral superiority is of great comfort to you in your last moments,” the vampire sneered after another moment’s tense silence. “The Worms will keep you there, while I offer your friend to the Ancient One. Hopefully they won’t kill you, at least not most of you, though they might hurt you. They are rather wild and savage, and there is only so much that my influence can do. But if I need more blood, I will come back for you. And I will not be so easily trapped as that stupid tramp.”
Though I still couldn’t see it, I knew that the vampire was gone. It had gone back to the pit in the Worms’ colony where it had stashed Charlie.
“I think that means that Charlie hasn’t been bitten yet,” Frank said hopefully.
“Let us hope not,” Kolya said. “But it will be small comfort to Charlie, if we do not get to him soon.”
I peered out into the dark. I couldn’t see much, but for a plan as desperate as the one forming in my mind, I didn’t really have to. “We need to break through that circle of the Worms,” I said. “We’ll keep close together, volley fire into a single group, then charge. Nobody get separated. We’ve got to stay tight. Anyone who falls behind is going to get taken, and we won’t be able to get them back.”
As I was speaking, I looked down at Miller. He was still crouched over Trudeau’s corpse, his body wracked with sobs and shaking. Then, abruptly, he stopped. He stood up. I couldn’t see much of his face, but there was something in his demeanor that wasn’t quite right.
“Miller?” I started, but then he lunged.
He snatched the hatchet out of Ray’s hand, and, with a strangled yell, ran for the edge of the cup.
He was coming almost directly toward me, and I almost shot him, thinking that he was going to try to bury that tomahawk in my skull for beheading his partner, even though she’d been a vampire. But he plunged past me, and ran, bellowing, down into the clustered Worms.
His pistol barked, the muzzle flash brief but bright in the darkness of the cavern. It momentarily illuminated the troglodyte he had shot at point-blank range. Then he fired again. And again. He was so close to them that he couldn’t miss, and they were going down, though more were pouring into the gaps as the first ones fell. Long-fingered, claw-tipped hands were already gripping him, as he lashed out with the tomahawk in his off hand.
He wasn’t very good with it; the flat of the head bounced off of a frog-like skull, and it was nearly wrenched out of his hand when another of the Worms tried to grab it. He fired again, and his pistol’s slide locked back on an empty mag. The Worms surged at him, piling on faster than he could fight. They were in a howling frenzy by then; I doubted that any of them still remembered that the vampire wanted us alive. Remembered, or cared.
We had already started moving as soon as I’d realized what he was doing. There was no way we could save him, as much as it went against the grain to leave him to his own devices. We didn’t have the numbers or the ammunition, and besides, if the vampire woke the Thing up, there wouldn’t be any point in trying to save Miller anyway.
We still had to fight our way through some of the Worms, even though most of them were flowing toward the press into which Miller had now disappeared. He was screaming at the top of his lungs, though it was muffled by the growing mound of writhing, rubbery flesh that was trying to crush the life out of him.
I shot one high in the chest, then was close enough to the next one to lash it across the face with my rifle barrel. The heavy steel barrel was a potent weapon all by itself. The troglodyte spun away, spitting dark, foul-smelling blood. Then we were through and heading for the balefires.
But before we could get there, there was a flitter of movement past one of the fires. I caught a brief glimpse of the vampire, its frock coat flying out behind it, silhouetted against one of the wavering green flames. It had Charlie by the neck.
Charlie was fighting, but he may as well have tried to fight an iron vise. “Charlie!” I yelled hoarsely. “Hang in there! We’re coming!”
“Just shoot me!” he screamed. “Get it over with before it’s too late!”
I didn’t answer, but sprinted as fast as I could, dodging between humped stalagmites and through runnels cut by water through the flowstone. Footing was tricky, and I slipped more than once, catching myself with a painful jar against the rock. I was starting to pull ahead of the rest, but I wasn’t gaining on the vampire.
I could still vaguely see them ahead of me from time to time, in the dim light of the Worms’ fires. Charlie was fighting, all right. He grabbed hold of a stalagmite, only to be ripped away from it, apparently with little effort on the vampire’s part. Then they vanished into the gloom again.
The groove in the stone led me down the wrong path, and I found myself curving away from the vampire’s course, heading down toward the lake and back the way we’d come, away from the Worms’ encampment and the fires. Frustrated, I found what purchase I could on the flowstone and hauled myself up and over. My boots slipped and slid as I tried to climb, and I almost had to flatten myself against the rock a few times, slowing down to an agonizing crawl, knowing that Charlie’s chances depended on my speed.
“Just do it, Jed!” he pleaded, his voice choked and strangled. The vampire was cutting off most of his air, but he was desperate enough to yell past it. He was closer, but not close enough. “I’m not going to be able to fight soon! It’s getting to me; I can feel its claws, sinking into my brain! It wants to wake up! It’s going to turn me into a puppet. Make me offer myself to it! For Heaven’s sake, hurry up and shoot me!”
I still didn’t answer. I didn’t know how much of that was really Charlie, and how much was the vampire playing games. Maybe the Thing, too. I didn’t know what kind of influence it really could wield, even in its dormant state. It certainly sounded like Charlie, and given his request almost as soon as we’d entered the cavern, it kind of fit. But I wasn’t going to murder Charlie, not even to keep the vampire from rousing the Thing. And I wasn’t going to give the vampire the satisfaction of playing along with its sick games.
Father in Heaven, I prayed, be with us and help us to finish this.
I got over the mound of stone, and found myself on a relatively flat, level stretch of damp rock, leading down to the dark waters of the lake. Was the water rippling and stirring, or was it just my imagination, fueled by the horror and the darkness that we’d seen down there, deep underground?
A faint red glow suffused a narrow spit that struck out into the lake. At first, it looked like there was just a cairn of stones on the end of the spit, but after a moment, I could see, in the weird, unearthly glow, that it was a crude altar. And there was an idol perched atop it, chipped from some glassy black stone, in the rough shape of the Thing as I’d seen it in the vision that The Captain and Sam had showed me.
The vampire became visible as the glow brightened, even though it didn’t seem to cast much illumination past the spit. I almost thought it was
something to do with the spit itself, or maybe the altar, but the vampire might have been conjuring it, itself.
It was still dragging Charlie. His struggles were getting feebler and feebler. But he was still struggling. I took some small comfort in that fact. Unless it was some kind of vampiric trick, it meant that Charlie hadn’t been bitten.
Unless he was only slowly succumbing to the vampire’s venom.
It was possible, given the anguish that he’d felt, that he had been so weakened that he might turn. I doubted it. But who knew what the Walker had done to him, much less what the Thing was doing to him even then? Hang in there, Charlie. We’re coming.
With the worst of the obstacles out of the way, I broke into a run, pursuing the monster and its victim onto the spit. I could hear heaving breath and pounding footsteps behind me. I hadn’t outpaced the rest, at least not by much.
The vampire suddenly stopped and turned, just short of the altar. It was still holding Charlie up off the ground, it’s hand now wrapped around his neck and the base of his skull. Its fingers looked too long, I suddenly noticed. It was clearly visible in that strange, red illumination around the grotesque altar.
Its eyes, red with blood, reflecting the crimson light so intensely that they seemed to glow, burned into me. I advanced slowly on it, my rifle now slung across my back. Bullets wouldn’t hurt this thing, much less kill it.
“Ah, ah, ah!” it cautioned, lifting Charlie a little bit higher. His eyes were closed and he was breathing quickly and shallowly. Tremors passed through his limbs. “You wouldn’t want me to accidentally snap his neck, would you?”
“You’re planning on killing him anyway,” I retorted, though I felt a faint chill as I did so. I was gambling with Charlie’s life, and I knew it, and I hated myself for it. But what other choice did I have? I had to get close to it in order to strike at it. If it killed Charlie, but we stopped it, then his sacrifice would be remembered.