"I hate the Russians." It was said to himself more than to anyone else. "Did you kill them, the ones who did that to you?”
Rohleder tried to laugh but he felt somehow choked. A thought matured in him that this was the first person outside of his comrades in arms to speak to him as an equal and not as a figure of pity or horror. Taking their example from the boy, the three girls moved to stand in front of him. All gaped up at him as they listened to him speaking.
"I’m afraid to say I didn’t have the chance. But I’m still looking for them and if you see them, tell me so I can get them." He spoke in a mock-serious voice to hide the welling-up feeling he was going through.
"I will," the boy answered in all solemnity. "I will.”
Rohleder nodded to the boy and looked up to catch a softening in the eyes of one of the two women. He ruffled the boy’s hair and turned to walk away, appalled to find he was close to tears himself.
They set up a camp and patrolled the area. Von Struck decided to explore the mines to see if they were suitable for the Count’s vampires. They crowded around the entrance as Von Struck pushed his way through the rotten timbers barring the way in. As if it were made of dust, the wood crumbled around him.
"Not a good sign," Henning muttered.
Though the entrance was small, but soon it opened up and was big enough for a man to walk erect. The wooden supports inside, in direct contrast to the wood barring the entrance, seemed solid. It was deep, dark and well hidden, and after following the path inside, Von Struck decided it was spacious enough for the Count’s men. For the next couple of weeks the quarry and the mine would be their home, their base and perhaps their coffin.
* * *
They now numbered over a hundred, two packed trainloads of Russian prisoners had provided the rations and extra soldiers. The Ukrainians at the compound were now a well-oiled team and the segregation and containment of those not yet picked now ran smoothly and by the numbers. From delivery to selection, the process was gaining pace and routine.
Disciplined and silent, Arak’s troops flitted through the tree tops to the rendezvous at an extraordinary speed. They passed potential victims noiselessly overhead with only their destination and mission in mind.
Arak directed the move from the middle, telepathically issuing his orders to the scouts at the front of the march. What had taken Von Struck’s squad six days to reach was only allowed to take them a night; for the night was all they had.
It was still dark when they arrived. Arak alone approached the quarry. Ghostlike and silent, he dropped down in front of Muschinski who nearly cried out his terror. Arak growled the code, though Muschi didn’t need any verification of his identity.
"Where do we go?" His voice was grave and extremely deep, inhumanly so.
"Inside. Wait. I’ll get the Standartenführer." Muschinski was not aware that he was talking to what was once his friend and ally, Muntner. Von Struck had opted not to tell the men of his conversation with the Count.
Von Struck was summoned and he showed Arak the mines.
"We’ll close it up during the daylight hours. We can talk about the mission plan tonight. It’ll be light soon." He studied Arak in the half-light as he addressed him. What had once been Jurgen Muntner was now so far removed from anything earthly that Von Struck had problems visualising his former comrade.
He was now a clone of the Count’s ghouls he had seen at the Castle. There seemed to be no difference between what stood before him and what they had watched burn on that cold January morning a million years ago. It was only as Arak spoke that Von Struck caught a fleeting and buried glimpse of the old SS trooper.
Jurgen Muntner was no more and Von Struck decided not to tell the men who he had been.
Arak turned and evaporated silently into the night. The scene was deathly quiet. Nothing stirred. It seemed that neither bird nor beast dared draw attention to itself. The tension was not lost on Von Struck who cursed providence and the folly of his superiors.
"What the hell are we doing?” he asked himself.
Like a noiseless express train, the vampires zipped past him and into the mine. One after another they dived in at breakneck speed, like a swarm of monstrous hornets, until only Arak was left standing at the entrance. When all were inside, he turned and wordlessly followed them in.
Von Struck slowly shook his head. "This is so wrong,” he muttered, "so very, very wrong.”
They spent the day standing guard and transforming the quarry into a tactical hide. The horses were brought in and their area covered to protect them from the elements and prying Russian eyes. The civilians kept to themselves with only the old man and the boy showing any interest in what the squad were doing. The old man enviously eyed the soldiers’ horses. He knew his old beast was on its last legs and he secretly hoped that one of the squad would take a bullet and leave one of the horses to him.
The atmosphere was strained and the boy seemed to sense the uneasiness in Rohleder whom he’d taken to following around.
"What was all the noise last night?”
"Nothing for little boys to worry about.” Rohleder smiled as he brushed Madame Le Peau down.
"Oh," he answered. He’d learnt a long time ago not to press for answers in wartime because sometimes the answers were better left unsaid and unheard.
That night, as was planned, the vampire soldiers left them to hunt and spread terror behind the Russian lines. They watched from the entrance of the quarry as the Count’s men flew into the night. With their departure, the cloud of dread that had subdued them throughout the day magically lifted and it was Rohleder that voiced their feelings. "What have we gotten ourselves into, Boss? Is this right what we’re doing?”
"We haven’t been doing the right thing for the last five years, Mickey, so why should we start now?” With that, he left them to contemplate their next move.
Chapter 27
March
Maria’s body was arranged corpselike on her bed. Barely breathing, arms across her breasts, she lay frozen and beautiful like a perfect mannequin doll. Many years ago she had been a disciple of the cult that followed Lilith and the Book of Blood. Maria’s beauty had shone brighter than the Sirius star and she had been loved by priest and follower alike.
However Lilith too had coveted Maria and saw in her faultless lines the perfect vessel for herself. Thus, the same divine exquisiteness that had braided Maria’s golden life would now sentence her to be hollowed out and possessed by a demon. Now she was merely a shell, a human crust, to be used until Lilith bored of her and found a new host.
The entity Lilith had retreated into herself to gather her strength for what she now planned to do. The part of Maria’s body that was still human suddenly experienced, for the first time in over a century, a glimmer of freedom in a sudden spark of awareness. There was no question of control, just a consciousness of whom she was - a mere undercurrent of humanity caught in the tidal wave of a demons’ will.
Lilith herself was angry. She had originally made her plans for power as the first stirrings of civilisation had infected humanity. Her Machiavellian intrigues had called on her to lay with deity and mortal alike, to start countless wars and conflicts between mankind and the gods they followed, and had condemned her most loyal of followers to a living damnation. Now, just as the prophecies in the Book of Blood were about to come to fruition, disaster had struck.
The Book of Blood had been written in a past life that she could no longer recall. The reason why she’d been able to foretell the future was as feint a memory as her own birth. She only knew that in its ancient text lay the key to her absolution and her expected path to power. Millennia had passed by as one-by-one her prophesies, those that she had written down at the genesis of humankind, had come true. The precision of those ancient predictions had shown her just how powerful she had been in the days before the curse.
The power she had wielded in those times of old had been overwhelming and she had relished her role as a semi-goddess.
As the Book of Blood had been at the height of its popularity, the power and control of the supernatural it had given her had seemed limitless. Her new-found capabilities and confidence had been the catalyst for the second march against the Old Gods.
However, with faith in the book almost non-existent, she found her potency somewhat diminished and at present she could barely control Iullia whom she needed to carry the baby. Now that Michael had taken the Book, her powers were weaker than ever before.
If only she had gone her own way from the first, she reflected. To have simply left Szaran as he was banished by the gods would have been the sensible, and demonic, thing to do. She deliberated on this for a while and decided that at that time she had needed an ally to help her win their would-be followers over. A demon on her own, with no backing from neither royalty nor deity, would have been despised and distrusted.
No, as she had long ago determined, Szaran had provided an acceptable front to the masses. It was just the weight of his ancestry now seemed too big a price to pay for that one mortal lifetime. Szaran’s bloodline had been sent to test her, she was sure.
This latest disaster was typical of the trials his lineage had put her through. Just as it seemed all was moving into the right constellation to bring her the supremacy she had toiled for, that damnable vampire had sent his brother out of her reach and thus endangered her entire design. The predictions in the Book stated that the child sired by Utu, or in reality his spiritual successor, would be the tenth name in the Book of Blood. Accordingly, all ten must be present at a ceremony on the Winter Solstice for the Dracyl to be set free from their nocturnal shackles. The only exception to them all being present was Szaran, the first name after Lilith and the only mortal in the list. He was dead and now all but dust, so only his earthly possessions, a suit of armour and his sword, would be laid out as if he were present. The others named who were not sentient would be raised to take part.
Ten names were needed for the ceremony to work, ten being the number of universal potential. The concept of all things being possible manifested itself in the fact that all the numbers used by man are represented in the numbers zero to nine.
However, and more importantly to the vampire clan and Lilith, ten is the number of rebirth; one and zero equals one, the perfect and expected end, and thus new beginning, of the cycle. The ten names would symbolise the rebirth and continuation of the old ways before Utu’s curse and thus the return of Lilith’s powers.
Unfortunately for Lilith, with Utu’s curse broken, the vampire bloodline will once more be able to stalk the day and it was just that the demon needed to hinder. If that should happen, then the Dracyl would be too strong for Lilith and, once again, she would have to take second place to Szaran’s line.
The problem that Lilith needed to solve was how could she assemble all ten named ones in the Book of Blood and yet still disrupt the ceremony enough to harm the Dracyl?
The best method to surreptitiously sabotage the rite would be to kill Smith now that he was out of contact with his brother, So perhaps sending him away had not been such a bad idea, she mused.
Whilst under the Count’s protection, he had been safe. She could never have stood up to the Count, although she had known that her only hope for success lay in the disruption of his ceremony.
The Son of Utu was a key figure in the writings in the Book of Blood and his absence or silence during the proceedings could only be harmful for the Dracyl, she was sure of it. That meant she had to murder Smith.
Lilith had wanted to kill him after the conception but the Dracyl had forbidden it. If only Smith was somehow not functioning or ,even better, not present at the ceremony, then the consequences for Szaran’s ancestors could be catastrophic.
She thought about how she could pacify the Dracyl if Smith was killed and decided they could lay out his possessions like Szaran’s. She was sure the vampire would take Lilith’s word on the matter that he need not be present for the ritual. Lilith herself needed only that he be there in name.
So Lilith would be reborn as a result of the birth of a son fathered by the Son of Utu, a son that would reconcile her with the ancient sun god as she had prophesised all those many centuries ago. The Dracyl, however, would remain under the curse to forever roam the night and shun the day.
Well that was the plan anyway.
At the height of the ceremony, with all ten named ones present, she would be taken into the great tree at the centre of the circle. This would complete the cycle that had started all those eons ago in Inanna’s Tree of Life. Then her powers would be returned to her as they had been before Utu’s curse and the war with the gods.
Time is of the essence, she decided.
Then it hit her, the realisation that the ceremony was tainted already by the very fact that Smith was the father. She didn’t need to kill anybody because Smith had done all the work for her by fathering a child with her second body, Maria.
Chapter 28
Marienberg, East Prussia
His name was Raphael Czerolka but he was known to all as simply the Librarian. He had served the Order for sixty-two years, in armour and in sackcloth, and he had accomplished many things but this was his crowning achievement, the reading and deciphering of the prophesies laid down in the Book of Blood.
Michael had brought it from Transylvania to the castle at Marienberg six weeks before. He was a man of few words and had only given the bare outline of the story to the Brethren. The Grand Master of the Order put all to the study, translation and interpretation of the ancient texts. The majority of the book was written in the ancient Sumerian cuneiform and the translation had been ponderous and dense. Only the most learned of the brethren were allowed to take part and Raphael, the Librarian, was considered to be their most academic member.
The book consumed him. By day he read it through and made his notes, and by night he dreamt of vampire armies, furious gods and secret cults. Now finally, after weeks of hard work, he had in his grasp the knowledge to wipe out the pending vampire plague. He knew how to beat the Dracyl and Lilith.
He told the Grand Master his idea in a closed assembly. Only those that had been chosen to work the book were present, and Michael. All wore their ceremonial robes and swords.
"Are you sure on this, Librarian?” the Master asked. "It all sounds very heretical.”
"How can anybody be sure of anything? We’re talking about a book that was written over a period of thousands of years by a demon who was obsessed with a private war against a host of Sumerian gods. No Master, I am not sure. I can only surmise from what I’ve read." Brother Raphael was renowned for his sharp tongue and his dislike of earthly authority. It was one of the reasons why they had left him to rot on his own in the library. He was eighty-three now and all the signs were that he was not mellowing with age.
The brothers mumbled to themselves until the Grand Master called for silence.
"So there are no guarantees?”
"No." He stood before them, defiant and ready to defend his propositions. The floor was silent.
"Tell the story again, Librarian. I want to be clear on this.”
So he did.
* * *
The priest was renowned throughout the land for his bravery and daring. His name was legend and his deeds were retold in the cold winter months to frighten children into bed. It was said that his great-grandfather had eaten the flesh of the heretic at Ma'arra and had found the Holy Lance. His grandfather had survived the debacle at Damascus and his father had ridden with the Lionheart to take Acre. Of himself, it was said that he’d fought against the Egyptians at Damiette with such valour that his fellow knights had composed hymns to honour his glorious deeds in battle. So the myth would have it that his life, and the lives of his whole bloodline, had revolved around war and conflict in the Lord’s name. However, now he was just an old man, half blind and dressed in rags. With his wild hair and limping gait, he looked as much a warrior as a lame dog, and the villagers found it hard to conceal thei
r disappointment and doubt.
Barely managing to hide his cynicism, the village head finally told him of their problems. How every month their Lord and Master takes a victim to his castle to be no longer seen or heard of again. Defence against him with earthly means was useless. They needed divine help and guidance.
"Build a church," was the old man’s answer. "Hide there when he comes. The Lord will protect you.”
"He forbids a church," was the reply.
"Then a cross. The shadow of the cross will repel all evil if you believe strongly enough in its power.”
"A cross would be seen as an open act of defiance.”
The old man thought for a moment. He rubbed his whiskered chin and looked slyly at the village head. "Do you know your Bible?”
The headman looked shocked. He knew the stories but he had never seen a Bible; he had never even seen a book. The old man opened his sack and pulled out a huge leather-bound manuscript. The villagers crowded round, sighing as they looked on in admiration. He knew they couldn’t read Latin so he opened it up to the relevant page. He read slowly, translating after every line. The progress was slow but the villagers listened and their excitement grew. After he had finished reading, he looked up and asked if they had understood what had to be done.
"A tree." The headman answered.
"A tree." The old man confirmed.”
* * *
”Librarian … " All looked to see who had spoken. It was Michael. "I think I know the tree that you spoke of. I think you may be right.”
Raphael let a smile slip from his crabby demeanour and then scowled at the only man in the order he actually respected. The Librarian had once been a knight of the Order too, but now he was just a functionary.
The Division of the Damned Page 15