The Greyfriar (Vampire Empire, Book 1) by Clay & Susan Griffith;Clay Griffith;Susan Griffith

by Clay; Susan Griffith;Clay Griffith;Susan Griffith

  A maid appeared from below with Adele's heavy cape and a coat for Simon. The weather was too warm for a cloak, and Adele would have refused, but the maid was only following orders. If the poor girl returned below with the cloak still in her possession it would create a crisis that would envelop Adele's entire staff. The maid confidently informed Adele that dinner was in exactly twenty minutes. Then, on her way below, the servant exchanged light, bubbling words with the handsome Lieutenant Sayid. Adele watched them, fascinated by the mix of hesitance and boldness; a young woman, a handsome officer. Such charming simplicity.

  A sudden flash of moonlight reflected in the ostentatious diamond ring on Adele's left hand and forced her to remember her wedding was barely a month away. It wasn't so much a wedding as the starting gun for the war, the signal that Equatoria and the American Republic were one. All the linen, china, and warships would be bound to the same household. Adele thought of the beautiful gold locket that held a picture of her Intended, Senator Clark. War hero. Vampire killer. Scion of a great American house. Undeniably handsome. He had the open brashness of an American, which in another situation she might have found attractive.

  Still, the young woman had generally refused to think about the Impending Event because the thought of a stranger's weight on the other side of her bed caused many sleepless nights bathed in a frightened sweat and with a shortness of breath. She couldn't conceive of how her Intended's war-roughened hands would feel on her skin, nor did she want to. Her spy inside the Office of Court Protocol had confided to her that the issue of sexual commerce was still under negotiation and, although it probably could not be eliminated completely, it would at least be kept to the minimum necessary to conceive an heir. The marriage was a political necessity and, therefore, Adele's duty, but she doubted it would ever be more than that.

  Adele reached up absently and through her heavy blouse damp with perspiration she felt the small stone talisman hanging around her neck. She wore it instead of the beautiful gold locket with a photo of her Intended, which was buried deep in her luggage. Her revered mentor, Mamoru, had given her the religious stone talisman for protection, and it gave her a sense of solemnity and calm. But Adele kept it hidden; no one could know that their princess wore such a superstitious item. Members of court already suspected that her youthful exuberance was a dreadful portent of her failure as empress. Surely they didn't need to know that she had a penchant for the occult and miraculous. The "better" class of people in Equatoria put religion and magic in the same category. Churches and mosques and temples still existed, and services were still held, but those who attended were viewed as quaint at best and deranged at worst. Mamoru was a very spiritual man, and Adele found that part of him fascinating. He claimed that spirituality and naturalism, as much as steel and steam, would destroy the vampires. It was only a matter of firm belief and correct practice.

  Ptolemy began to glow with the quavering blurs of chemical bulbs. The other ships in the fleet appeared as vague yellow smudges in the night sky. Far beneath the ship the earth was hidden in a swallowing blackness that had fascinated and terrified Adele since they had left the civilizing lights of the Empire for the vampire frontier of southern France.

  Prince Simon's urgent voice interrupted Adele's thoughts. "Do you think we'll meet the Greyfriar out here?"

  Adele shook her head with confusion. "What? The Greyfriar? What in the world are you talking about now?"

  "The Greyfriar! He's a hero who fights the vampires in the north."

  "Oh, yes. No, of course not. He's not even real, Simon. Just a story to make people feel better."

  Simon narrowed his eyes at his sister's ignorance. "He's not a story. He's real. I saw pictures in a book. He carries swords and guns and wears a mask. People say he killed a hundred vampires in Brussels. A hundred!" The young prince began to wave his arm around as if he had a sword, striking and slashing. "He's a master fencer with all blades! His swords move so fast vampires can't see them! Whoosh whoosh whoosh! Their heads are rolling before they even know the Greyfriar is there! Hah! Colonel Anhalt, you believe in the Greyfriar, don't you?"

  The soldier said over his shoulder with mock solemnity, "Indeed I do, Your Highness. I heard he killed a hundred vampires in Brussels too."

  "You see, Adele! I told you!"

  Adele replied, "Simon, be still."

  "Why can't we meet him? I'll bet if we told him we were coming, he'd meet us. We're the royal family of Equatoria."

  "We can't see him because he's not real! Now stand still and mind me!"

  Simon huffed. "Well, then, will they let me command the ship?"

  "No, of course not," Adele snapped irritably. Then she blinked and said more softly, "Not now. Perhaps tomorrow when it's light."

  Adele wanted to nurture Simon's youthful curiosity and excitement, not stifle it. His enthusiasm was important. The Empire needed men like Simon, brazen and curious. Currently at court, to her dismay, there already were far too many of the venal type of man he would become if the palace drudges got their talons on him.

  "Why not?" Simon wandered from her side, intent on exploring the ship's wheel, where blazingly bright copper pneumatic tubes gathered to form something like a Baroque organ. Prince Simon was due to become an officer in the Imperial Navy, and this idea excited him.

  Colonel Anhalt coughed commandingly at the young prince as small hands played over the pneumo tubes.

  Adele darted from the rail and grabbed her brother's arm. "Simon, don't get in the way!"

  "I'm not going to hurt anything!" the boy retorted.

  They were interrupted by the clack of a pneumo arriving from the tops.

  With his back straight, Colonel Anhalt said to Simon, "Would Your Highness care to retrieve that signal from the chief of the top mizzenmast?"

  With a yelp of joy, Simon lifted a round copper flap, and a rubber cylinder dropped out into his hand along with a splash of dark liquid. "Ew. What's this?" He lifted his stained fingers into the yellow light.

  Oil or grease, Adele thought with mild exasperation, automatically reaching into her pocket for a handkerchief. Anhalt stared at Simon's hand with furrowed brows. He pulled the pneumo cylinder from the boy's grasp and sniffed it.

  "Blood," the rough soldier murmured. Abruptly his stern visage turned on a horrified Princess Adele. His voice was firm and demanding. "Your Highness, take your brother below, if you please."

  Adele put one hand instinctively on the hilt of her dagger and with the other tugged Simon toward the main hatch as Colonel Anhalt gazed up at the vast dirigible one hundred feet over his head as if trying to see through it to the invisible topmasts above. Several naval officers on the quarterdeck stopped chatting among themselves and watched with growing interest.

  Suddenly the airship lurched. Adele grabbed a pneumatic tube for support and pulled her brother back to his feet. In the rigging high above, she saw a figure tumble sickeningly, flipping this way and that, unable to grasp a safe hold, until he shot past the deck into the black atmosphere below the ship. Before Adele could understand that sudden tragedy, another man fell and then another. Then she saw strange shadowy things moving with unnatural agility down through the lines, pulling hand over hand toward the deck.

  Two dark cadaverous figures settled to the deck amidships with no sound and lifted their bloodstained faces into the light. Adele saw true savagery for the first time. These vampires were not stories or frightening figures in the distance; they were real, covered in blood that glistened in the lamplight. She clutched her brother close.

  Sailors stared at the horrific intruders. A squad of redjackets raised their rifles and opened an erratic fire. One vampire was blown off his feet. The other streaked forward, a blur in the half-light, and two soldiers screamed. The wounded vampire then bounded to his feet and also rushed into the fight. It was a short, bloody affair.

  Two other vampires dropped onto the quarterdeck, hissing like cats, only yards from Adele and Simon. One leapt at Simon, too fast fo
r Adele to scream or react.

  The vampire's head exploded and the body tumbled.

  Anhalt appeared at Adele's side with a smoking revolver extended and Fahrenheit saber in hand. "Get below! Quickly!" He fired twice, hitting the second vampire in the head, and it dropped palsied to the deck.

  "Form square!" Anhalt bellowed over the staccato gunfire erupting across the deck. "Fix bayonets! Up and out! Up and out!" Soldiers scrambled for the quarterdeck and gathered into a ragged square around the main hatch. The men fumbled with bayonets and tried to work their rifles as they'd been drilled, each trooper alternating his aim out or up to cover both ground and air. Some young faces were blank, others stained with horror and blood.

  Adele sent her brother down into the companionway. She saw the rigging over her head was full of vampires, perhaps a hundred of them squirming and crawling, like a dead tree full of caterpillars. Then the two royals were below, where soldiers and sailors raced frantically through the corridors. Officers shouted orders and counterorders that were lost in the din of tramping feet. Anhalt dropped quickly through the hatchway and detailed five soldiers to accompany Adele and Simon into the bowels of the ship.

  They went down and down, past the acrid-smelling chemical room, into the reeking orlop deck. They were taken to a small dark chamber, fore or aft Adele could no longer say, inhabited by goats, pigs, and crates of chickens.

  "You'll be safe here, Your Highness." A soldier shoved the royal siblings into the manger, then slammed the door shut.

  For a long time, neither Adele nor Simon spoke in the blackness. She hugged her brother, noticing that he was shivering, his unblinking eyes staring at a small goat that stood in the straw nearby. They strained to hear traces of the battle, hoping for hints of victory. Surely, the finest troops of the Equatorian Empire could defeat vampire raiders. The vampires would flee like vermin once they realized that this was not a lazy merchant vessel that had strayed too far north.

  The room shuddered and made a heart-sickening lurch to starboard. Simon screeched and squeezed Adele as they tumbled across the manger. Trying to cushion Simon's body, she hit the bulkhead amid a pile of chicken crates. Adele lifted a crate off her brother and brought him closer.

  After several frightening minutes in the dark, the door flew open and Colonel Anhalt appeared with a horrid gash marring his dark face, his tunic torn and drenched in blood. He carried a trooper's carbine and his saber, smoking with boiling blood. "Highness, quickly if you please. The ship is going down."

  Adele climbed to her feet. "Lifeboats?"

  "No." Anhalt shepherded the royal pair from the room. "Too unsafe." Airship lifeboats were small gondolas attached to chemically inflated balloons; easy prey to vampires. Three soldiers moved ahead and four fell in behind. As the group climbed to the gun deck the chemical lighting went out, plunging the ship into pitch black. The hallway was listing at a rough angle, and footing was treacherous. Ahead, sailors were filling a room with mattresses and rolled hammocks. Anhalt indicated for Adele and Simon to go inside. "Stay here, Your Highness. And don't worry. "

  Adele pushed Simon to the floor, where he stayed compliantly. Sliding her hand off her brother's stiff shoulder, she moved back to her trusted Gurkha colonel and whispered, "What's our situation?"

  Anhalt hesitated, but after staring into the steady eyes of the young woman he admired, and again realizing why he admired her, he said, "The vampires have destroyed most of the sails and damaged the dirigible. And we can no longer stay aloft. The White Guard is losing the deck."

  "How is this possible?" she asked, incredulous. "Raiders don't-"

  "These aren't raiders, Your Highness. This is a full-scale attack by clan packs. They mean to destroy this ship. Perhaps the entire convoy."

  "That's incredible! Surely we have the firepower to stop them."

  "I hope so. Vampires are desperately hard to kill. The monsters do not know they are injured until they are in pieces. Even with a Fahrenheit blade, you have to destroy a vital organ or sever the head."

  "How many are there?"

  He shook his head and hefted his red saber without outward emotion. "Fewer now."

  "How many men have we lost?"

  "Many," Anhalt answered, and turned to leave.

  Adele noticed the bloody footprints left by the colonel and his four White Guardsmen, and anger raced through her. The door closed and she knelt beside Simon, dragging a mattress over them. She sang softly to her brother, a lullaby she used to sing to him when he was a baby. They waited.

  Adele heard a strange sound mixed with her own voice.

  But there was so much noise enveloping the ship that at first Adele dismissed the sound as just part of the battle. Then it came again from just by her ear. It was coming from the other side of the bulkhead. She strained to hear. Men running? The creaking of stressed timber? Rats scurrying for safety? There was something about it that didn't seem to fit any of those.

  "What is that noise?" asked Simon in a small voice.

  "Nothing," Adele responded. "It's nothing." But the anxiety inside her wouldn't go away. She shifted and eased Simon away from the wall. From within her cape emerged her Fahrenheit khukri dagger. The glow from the blade gave her some small comfort, but couldn't stop the wild pounding of her heart.

  Then the wall started to break apart.

  CHAPTER

  D AND S were showered with splinters as a hole was punched in the wall and a thin object snaked through. Something sharp dug into the young woman's side. There was a horrible hissing noise, almost one of pain as it grabbed her. Arching back with a cry, Adele instinctively slashed at what held her. Her blade came into contact with something long and bony. An arm!

  Simon was shouting. The pale arm of another vampire had reached through another hole and was dragging him toward the bulkhead.

  "No!" Adele grabbed Simon and stabbed the arm holding him. There was no satisfying screech of pain from behind the wall, only the smoldering stench of burning flesh from the khukri's chemical, which would continue to burn for some time.

  A skeletal hand slapped the dagger from Adele's trembling fingers, sending it skittering across the floor. Simon was yanked away from her, and he crashed against the splintering bulkhead. Claws tore at the wood, widening the hole behind Simon.

  Adele staggered to her feet and tore through debris for another weapon. Without one, she and Simon would be lost. Her hand landed on something metal, slender, and over two feet long; it was a marlin spike. She spun it around and jabbed the closest vampire arm. The small grunt that echoed gave her hope that she could hurt them.

  "Adele!" Simon shouted in a panic as he struggled to keep himself from being pulled through the ever-widening hole. The vampire on the other side didn't seem to care that he didn't quite fit. It was desperate to have him.

  Adele struck again at the hand gripping Simon's shoulder. "Hold on, Simon!" There was less than an inch of space between her brother and her target, but the steel tooth hit its mark and plunged through the thin wrist. The claw released Simon, and the boy scrambled around his sister.

  Adele held onto the spike like she had gaffed a thrashing fish. The hand twisted unnaturally and grasped the tool, ripping itself free of the spike and tearing its own wrist to shreds before pulling its arm back through the wall to safety.

  Glancing wildly about for the direction of the next attack, the royal siblings backed away, though there was little space for them to go.

  Then a wide portion of the weakened bulkhead close to the deck shattered in a cloud of dust and wood splinters. Through the haze of smoke and dust Adele was looking at the female vampire face that she had seen through the spyglass while on deck earlier. Now there was nothing to stop the vampire from coming in.

  Adele dragged Simon with her as she retreated. He was softly crying against her. She could feel her brother's fear mixing with her own. But there was no time for comforting words, because the face of death appeared in the hole, head and shoulders visible as a lon
g bony arm clawed for purchase.

  Determined to protect her brother, Adele reared back with the spike and stabbed again. The spike sank through ribs and flesh and embedded deep into the wood, pinning the female to the deck. The creature bared her teeth and hissed, thrashing in anger, but she couldn't free herself.

  The ship shuddered and threw Adele and Simon to the deck. Their stomachs lurched as the big vessel dropped sharply. Everything in the cabin started a slow slide. Adele grabbed a mattress and tried to use it to shield them.

  "We're going down!"

  HMS Ptolemy hit the ground.

  The impact tore Adele and Simon from under the mattress, throwing them into the air and slamming them against bulkheads. Adele tumbled for what seemed hours. Her world was noise and pain. She no longer knew up or down.

  When everything finally stopped, Adele lay still in the flickering dark and choked, "Simon! Simon! Are you all right?" There was no answer. She heard nothing-no screaming, shooting, or explosions. Clawing at the mattresses and rolled hammocks around her, she struggled to stand but was unsure how or where to put her feet. She could smell smoke; the ship was on fire. They had to get out.

  Adele saw a small leg sticking up awkwardly into the air. The frantic girl scrambled to it and grabbed the ankle. Tearing at the wreckage, she reached down, feeling along her brother's torso, and gathered the front of his robe. With all her strength, she pulled Simon up out of the maw. She stared at his face; his eyes were open.

  "Are we dead?" he asked her, coughing against the smoke and dust.

  Adele pressed her face against his heaving chest. "No. We're fine. We made it. Now we just wait for another ship to come and pick us up." It was a pale attempt to reassure him, and her eyes darted around them. But no frightening faces stared back at her.

  Together, the imperial siblings took unsteady bouncing steps across the jumbled mattresses to the door of the cabin. A glint of light caught Adele's eye, and she saw her dagger lying amidst the debris, the chemically heated blade now cooled into a normal weapon. She snatched it up with a small yelp of triumph and slipped it back into the scabbard at her belt to be charged once more. Adele's shoulder and legs felt hot, but she didn't pause to look for injuries. Better not to know for now. They kicked wreckage away from the door, which she then wrenched open. The corridor outside was a world of debris. Wooden planks and metal rods, barrels, and broken beams created a jagged landscape. Redjackets who had been standing guard outside the door were trapped in the chaos. All were dead. Adele shielded Simon's eyes.