by David Bishop
"You know sometimes when you're dreaming, it's as if your spirit has left your body and you can float free, totally weightless? I closed my eyes and tried to imagine myself doing that... I was part of the air, lighter than everything around me. Just as I felt myself coming apart, the first gas tank exploded." Eisenstein grimaced.
"That's when I lost my thumb and fingers, the skin and hair. But it could have been worse. I wasn't a mist when the laboratory blew apart, but I wasn't whole either. The explosions hurt me but didn't kill me. It must have been hours, maybe even a day or two, before I regained my senses. The vampyr taint was already healing my body, repairing the damage Gorgo, the fire and the explosions had done. The blast destroyed the laboratory, but it also levelled the building overhead, giving me a way out.
"I climbed up into the daylight. It stung my skin, but didn't burn me. Drinking Rainer's blood made me more like a vampyr, but it didn't complete the transition. I don't know why. Perhaps because I didn't drink living human blood, or perhaps the explosion purged some of the infection from my body. Or maybe my faith kept some tiny part of me pure. I don't know, and it doesn't seem to matter. I can still walk in daylight but now I can also move unnoticed among vampyr. They see me as one of their own, whereas I recognise them for the monsters they are. I have a rather unique viewpoint; one foot in both worlds."
By my calculation at least ten days had elapsed between Eisenstein's escape from Gottow and his timely intervention at Berlin. I couldn't help wondering what he'd been doing during that time.
"Preparing for this journey," he said. "Our enemy is remarkably candid about their plans when they believe no outsiders can hear them. I've been busy this past week gathering intelligence. At first what I learned filled me with dread, especially when I heard Gorgo had delivered the blueprints for Rainer's bomb to Constanta. No matter how hard I tried, I could never get close to the vampyr lord. He was always surrounded by bodyguards and knew my face. Besides, until his blood-sire is destroyed, Constanta can always resurrect himself, and I'll still be eternally cursed. But, as I learned more about what the undead have planned, I realised there was still an opportunity to stop them, to save mankind and myself. We have one chance to strike back, to stop the blood war before it starts."
"How?"
"All we have to do is destroy the most powerful vampyr on earth."
The Vollmer brothers returned from helping Smirnov fix our truck's engine. Ralf marched across to Eisenstein and demanded to be told the mission objective.
"Our driver knows more about the target than us!"
"Smirnov needed to know," my former mentor replied, "so he could steal the right kind of transportation. But you're right; everyone should hear what we're up against. Where's Mariya?"
"Here," she said, emerging from the darkness. "I was counting the crates of ammunition in the back of our truck. Where did you find so much silver?"
"While the Wehrmacht was busy teaching the rest of Europe the meaning of Blitzkrieg, their Nazi masters were looting each country as it was conquered, taking fine art, jewellery, gold and silver. The vampyr are not above theft, either. They discovered where much of this treasure trove was stored in Berlin. Unsurprisingly, they wanted nothing to do with the silver, so I had my associates visit that cache. Sometimes it pays to have thieves and murderers on your side."
"Tell us about this grand plan of yours," Ralf said. "What's our target in Transylvania?"
"The father of all vampyr; a creature the Rumanians fear so much they will not even speak its name aloud after dark," Eisenstein replied.
"The Sire?" Hans asked, his eyes widening.
"Precisely. According to legend, it has slept beneath the mountains of Transylvania for a thousand years, waiting to be awakened. Through all that time the Sire's presence was protected by the family Constanta. Centuries ago they were humble goatherds, until one of their number, Vlad, fell into a deep cave while searching for a lost animal. The herdsman came face to face with evil incarnate and survived, but only by selling his soul. In exchange, Constanta became all but immortal. He was made vampyr by the Sire, giving him power over all other undead. He was also able to bend others to his will, accumulating immense wealth and power.
"The people built their new master a mighty castle, near the mountains where his master slept. Little was known or heard of the vampyr outside Transylvania for centuries. There were tales about a fearsome, terrifying warrior fond of driving a stake through the heart of his foes. Some called him Vlad the Impaler, while others claimed he drank the blood of enemies to make himself stronger. In another story, Constanta visited England in the last century, using an old Rumanian name as an alias: Drac. His exploits there are said to have inspired a novelist called Stoker. How much truth there is to these tales, who knows? All I do know for certain is that most people in Rumania had all but forgotten the Sire and his unholy kin, until someone started drilling for oil in the Transylvanian Alps."
"You think they woke the Sire?" Ralf asked, making no effort to hide his scepticism.
"Yes, I do. The lord of all vampyr decided the time had come to claim the earth for his own kind. He sent forth his blood-spawn to bring this about. That's why the vampyr chose to fight on the Ostfront, as you Germans called it. They wanted to prepare themselves for the next war, the war upon humanity. Now that conflict is about to start."
Hans was rubbing a finger across his lips, deep in thought. "Our brother stayed at Castle Constanta in 1941 when it was a rehabilitation centre for German troops. He heard about atrocities committed against Russian prisoners of war at a nearby POW camp. Soviet soldiers were being drained of blood and their bodies burnt afterwards. Klaus was told the blood was taken into the mountains for 'purification', but he also heard dark mutterings about a lake of blood close to Castle Constanta. It seemed hard to believe when he told us, but after everything we've seen..."
Eisenstein nodded. "The lake of blood exists. It is where the Sire slumbers, waiting to rise again. According to other vampyr, the Sire resembles a gigantic bat with a wingspan in excess of thirty metres and a face that's half-human, half-jackal. When the time comes, the Sire will fly out of the lake and sweep across Europe. It is said devastation follows wherever his shadows falls. Nothing mortal can survive: not animals, not plants, not humans. If the Sire rises, mankind will be nothing more than cattle, farmed as sustenance for the vampyr." Eisenstein grimaced. "The coming conflict isn't a war, it's genocide... Unless we stop it."
"How?" Ralf demanded. "There are only a few of us to fight an army of vampyr. If this Sire is so powerful, what hope do we have of stopping it?"
"I have secured a weapon that - if properly delivered - can strike a killing blow against the Sire. But we need time to make that happen. Most of us will embark on a suicide mission into Constanta's domain as a diversionary tactic. When his castle is properly defended, an army would struggle to penetrate the walls. But a small squad can break in via the tunnel you and Hans found last August. Those who make it inside must find the set of blueprints Gorgo took from the German laboratory near Gottow. With these the vampyr could build a bomb that would turn day into night for weeks on end. I don't need to tell you what that would mean. Finding and destroying those blueprints is important, but the attack is essentially a ruse designed to draw out the Sire."
"Then what?" Ralf asked.
When Eisenstein explained the rest of his plan, even Ralf had to admit it might work.
TWELVE
We abandoned the truck twenty kilometres from Sighisoara and marched the rest of the way, carrying the heavy crates of ammunition between us. I hadn't seen any other soldiers since we crossed the border into Transylvania, and certainly no vampyr. The war had long since moved on to other regions as the noose tightened round Hitler's Third Reich. Civilians working the fields glanced up as we passed but made no comment nor questioned why we might be crossing through their land. War had taught the peoples of Europe to stay quiet if they wanted to survive.
The closer we g
ot to our destination, the fewer civilians we saw. No birds flew in the sky and no animals moved on the ground. It felt as if we were walking into a dead zone, an area where nothing grew and nothing lived. I thought back to Eisenstein's description of legends about the Sire, of how its shadow left devastation behind. Had the Sire flown over this land long ago, rendering it uninhabitable? If so, I dreaded to think what such a monster could do to a city like Moscow.
We met the rest of Eisenstein's insurgents at midday about a kilometre north of Castle Constanta. Five men from Smirnov's penal company were waiting for us, each of them fearsome brutes with grim faces and no shortage of scars. There was no doubting their steely resolve for the fight ahead. Eisenstein did not bother with introductions.
"Better we don't share names in case one of us is taken by the vampyr and interrogated. The undead are as fond of using torture on their captives as the NKVD."
Each of us took as much ammunition as we could usefully carry. We would need every silver-tipped round to make our mission work. Eisenstein abandoned his sword and crossbow for a PPSh.
"What lies ahead needs firepower, not finesse," he explained.
Eisenstein said he would have to stay with our secret weapon. "If I set foot inside the castle, my tainted blood would give us away in moments. I need two volunteers to help safeguard the secondary site. Who's with me?"
Nobody replied. I hoped Mariya would raise her hand. Whatever happened to me, I wanted her to have a chance of surviving what was to come.
Eisenstein sighed. "Very well. I'll choose the two to stay with me. Smirnov, I might need your talent with engines before this is done."
The driver scowled even more than usual, if such a thing were possible. I felt Eisenstein's gaze shift towards me. We had been through so much together, rescued each other many times, perhaps he felt obliged to exempt me from the suicide mission. I gave a slight shake of my head, subtly indicating Mariya should be chosen in my place.
"And Mariya," Eisenstein announced. "I need someone with good German as interpreter for the other members of our team. We leave in two minutes. Make ready for the mission."
The gathering broke up, Smirnov saying goodbye to his fellow convicts while I talked with Mariya.
"Good luck," she said, stroking one side of my face with her right hand. "You'll need it."
"We all will," I agreed. The urge to kiss her was strong, but I fought it back. This wasn't the time or place to consummate our feelings for each other, not when we were so close to such evil. Behind us I could hear Eisenstein talking with the Vollmer brothers.
"Ralf, I want you to lead the men into the castle. You and Hans know the way inside as well as anyone. Zunetov can translate your words to Smirnov's comrades, and he knows what the blueprints look like so try to keep him alive if you can. Agreed?"
Ralf nodded.
"Whatever happens, I wanted to say it's been an honour serving with you," Eisenstein added.
"Likewise," Hans replied. "Funny, I never thought I'd be thanking a Russian soldier when Operation Barbarossa began. Four years seems like a lifetime now."
The two groups marched in opposite directions, Eisenstein leading Mariya and Smirnov to the east of Castle Constanta while the rest of us went west. I kept looking over my shoulder at Mariya, certain I would never see her again. When she was out of sight, I concentrated on recalling what I could about the castle's layout. The dungeon, dining hall and concealed staircase that linked them were burnt into my brain, but the rest of the interior was something of a blur. We'd seen and done so much since then that it was difficult to recall specific details. Both Ralf and Hans had also been inside the castle. Between the three of us we should remember enough.
To my relief, Ralf had little trouble finding the low ditch leading to the hidden tunnel. All eight of us crawled half a kilometre along the ditch, staying low to keep out of sight from the castle battlements. The tunnel's entrance was open and an uneasy smell of rotting flesh seeped from the entrance. Ralf led the way into the dark, narrow space, crawling along the floor of the tunnel while pushing his MP38 ahead of him.
There was barely enough space for each of us to shimmy along one at a time. I let two of Smirnov's comrades go next before following them into the cramped tunnel. The rest of the convicts came after me and Hans brought up the rear. I could hear my countrymen whispering to each other in Russian, one of them praying that the tunnel didn't collapse on top of us. The thought haunted me for the rest of our long crawl.
Finally, after what seemed like hours of inching our way forward, Ralf whispered to us that he'd reached the hatch to the dungeon. When he opened the small wooden door, the smell of rotting corpses surged along the tunnel, filling our nostrils and choking our lungs. Ralf told the rest of us to wait while he lowered himself into the dungeon. I lay in the darkness, breathing as shallowly as I could, straining to hear what was happening ahead of me. I could see faint glimmers of light from the dungeon but nothing else.
"God in heaven!" Ralf whispered hoarsely. "I'd forgotten how bad it was in here."
I heard careful footsteps then the creaking of a door. Good, that meant we had a way up into the castle. If the dungeon door had been bolted shut from the other side, we would have been forced to retreat back along the tunnel and faced the near impossible task of finding another way inside.
"It's safe," Ralf quietly told us through the hatch. "The floor is still covered with bodies but some of them look fresh. The vampyr must be using this place as a larder."
The two convicts ahead of me crawled to the hatchway and pulled themselves out. I followed close behind, not wanting to spend any longer in that narrow, dirt-lined tunnel. Ralf helped me climb down into the dungeon. Diffuse light leaked into the chamber through greasy windows, providing meagre illumination for the horrific interior. It was much as Ralf had described, with corpses fresh and old strewn across the floor. At least these bodies were not writhing with maggots as they had been on my last visit to this hellhole.
The convicts were examining the bodies, pulling open mouths to peer inside. I saw one of the men grinning as he ripped a gold-filled tooth from a corpse.
"Leave them be," I said. "Haven't they suffered enough without you robbing their bodies?"
"They're already dead, why should they care?" he retorted.
By then the rest of our raiding party was inside the dungeon, Hans closing the hatch after him before climbing down. Ralf drew his pistol.
"Zunetov, tell that thief to leave the corpses alone, or else he'll soon be one of them. That goes for all of Smirnov's convict friends. Tell them!"
"I wouldn't worry if I were you," a German voice replied. "You'll be dead soon enough. Let the thief have his fun."
We spun round to see Karl Richter waiting for us in a corner of the dungeon standing behind two vampyr.
"Traitor!" Hans shouted, opening fire with his MP38.
The two vampyr burst into dust and ash but Karl had transformed himself into a thin white mist, the mocking outline of his features still visible in the centre of the cloud.
"As you can see, my Lord Constanta has rewarded my loyalty by making me a full-fledged vampyr. His elite cadre has suffered several losses lately." Karl let himself solidify for a moment. "You should never have come here. All that awaits you is doom." He snapped his fingers and the corpses around us slowly rose from the floor. They were not dead - they were the undead, and we were to be their next victims.
"Kill them," Karl ordered.
"Fire at will!" Ralf shouted, sweeping his machine pistol from side to side, spraying the vampyr with silver-tipped bullets.
The rest of us followed his example, emptying our weapons into the chests and heads of the advancing creatures. Those closest to us exploded first, then the next line of vampyr, and then the next. But there were simply too many of the fiends, forcing the eight of us together in a tight ring so we were standing shoulder to shoulder as the vampyr encircled us. When one of us ran out of ammunition, he stepped back into
the centre of the circle, giving himself a moment's grace to reload. But still the undead pressed closer until there was no room left within the circle, no sanctuary from the monsters.
The convict who had stolen the tooth died first, talons raking across his throat as he tried to reload, cutting open his jugular. He fell forward, crimson spraying the air, unable even to scream because his vocal chords had been severed. The convict to my right died next, then the convict on my left succumbed to the vampyr onslaught.
I heard a Russian scream for mercy behind me, suggesting that another of Smirnov's comrades had perished. Still our circle shrunk, each lost man falling forward to the floor. After a minute of this bloody combat, a voice called for the vampyr to cease. They stopped where they stood, a circle of undead perhaps a metre away from us.
We used the respite to reload and catch our breath, the air around us filled with dust and ash, our senses assaulted by iron and cordite, the twin scents of gunfire and bloodshed. I could see Constanta in the dungeon doorway, signalling to Karl. The turncoat hurried to his master's side, receiving instructions from the vampyr lord. Karl smiled as Constanta pointed towards our group, but I couldn't hear the words passed between them.
The brief pause gave me a chance to notice who was standing on either side of me: Ralf at my right, Hans on my left. A glance over my shoulder confirmed that the surviving convict was behind me.
"What are we waiting for?" I whispered out the side of my mouth to Ralf. "There's no reason for us to stop shooting."
"Good point," he agreed and opened fire once more, his weapon dispensing silver-tipped death to the vampyr five-deep around us.
We all joined in, determined to take as many of the undead with us as possible. Karl bellowed an order to his brethren but the words were drowned out by our gunfire. So much shooting in such a confined space made a deafening cacophony.