As quickly as they could, the two made their way from the remnants of the cabins into the open gun deck. Massive iron cannons on their huge wooden carriages, each weighing several tons, had broken loose and were scattered like toys or carelessly thrown pieces of driftwood. Sailors stumbled through the wreckage, some helping comrades who were trapped or injured. The hot dusty air was filled with muted moans of pain and anguish, and the smell of smoke and blood.
Adele saw the night sky above through a long fissure in the ship's bulkhead. "Up there," she told Simon. "Let's climb." She helped the boy clamber his way up the tilted deck. They grabbed whatever handholds they could find. Wreckage shifted suddenly, threatening to throw them down, but they finally reached the jagged hole and emerged onto the sloping hull of the overturned hulk.
Taking in great breaths of fresh air, Adele turned to her silent brother. "Are you hurt?" She touched his limbs and head. She wanted him to talk. She wanted him to react.
The young prince flexed his elbows and knees, then shook his head. "No. Everything works."
"Me too." Adele laughed and kissed the top of her brother's head. "We'll be okay."
The gem of the imperial fleet had smashed through a Provencal forest, leaving behind a wasteland of uprooted trees. The airship was heeled over on her starboard side with the dirigible and its metal shell shredded. Masts were snapped and scattered across the great mounds of earth the crashed ship had gouged up. Men crawled out of gashes across the length of the hull and wandered over the vast beached wooden whale. Adele helped several of them while speaking calmly and encouraging them as best she could. It was her duty in a crisis. Men also moved around on the ground. She saw surviving White Guardsmen among them and searched unsuccessfully for Colonel Anhalt and members of her household staff. She prayed that Colonel Anhalt was still alive.
Adele turned her gaze up to the cloud-filled sky, searching for the glows of the other ships in the fleet. She thought she saw a faint yellow blur, but couldn't be sure. Then she noticed tiny, wavering shapes flitting over the face of the grey clouds.
How was this possible? It was even warmer on the ground. Why were they still coming? What was driving them?
Adele tried to push Simon back inside the ship's hull as a vampire landed near her. The creature seized Adele's arm, but immediately released her with a screaming hiss. He stared intently at the young woman with his head bobbing like an animal. The vampire wore a mixture of military uniforms, including a general's jacket replete with tarnished medals and badges of honor. But the weird uniform meant nothing; vampires wore what clothes they could loot from cadavers or wrecked homes. He continued to hiss in that language that no human had ever penetrated. Adele realized, without understanding how, that the thing was talking about her. She couldn't distinguish specifics in the horrid language, but she suddenly perceived that this entire attack was about her. The vampires were searching for her.
Even more incredibly, this vampire "general" was afraid to approach her. Adele could sense his fear, and she used it. She came forward aggressively, and the thing shuffled back, brandishing his claws. Then Adele heard a short but recognizable grunt from behind. She whirled to see another vampire wrapping his pale, bony arms around her shell-shocked young brother. She lurched toward them as the thing leapt from the ship's hull with Simon in his grasp. Adele choked a scream as she watched them plummet to the ground. The vampire landed hard on his feet and carried Simon off through the high grass into the dark forest.
Adele climbed down the airship's ruptured hull. She ignored the vampire general as he continued to hover threateningly. She missed holds and slipped several times, but didn't panic. The hard-minded princess didn't notice her bloody hands as she dropped to the ground and sprinted after Simon, racing headlong past dazed soldiers and sailors who were trying to fight the descending vampires. Pausing only long enough to wrest a saber from a dead trooper, she plunged into the forest, heedless of branches and thorns that scratched her face and body. Her breath tore from her throat and her heart pounded.
The princess came to a stop in a grassy clearing. On the far side of the glade stood a female vampire dressed in black knee breeches and black silk stockings with no shoes, bare-breasted under a dark swallow tail coat with gold ribbons festooning the shoulders. The female was tall and statuesque, but pale and blue-eyed, like all of her kind, and wore her ebony black hair in a braid that hung long down her back. Simon lay at her feet with his abductor kneeling nearby.
The tall female hissed and pointed with her well-formed hands. Her clawlike nails, which Adele knew vampires could deploy like a cat's, were retracted to display her lack of fear. The female smiled and said with harsh sibilance, "Princess Adele."
Adele was shocked to hear a vampire speak English, particularly her own name. She stared at this vile parasite, so much like a beautiful woman.
Then she heard human voices, and two of her White Guardsmen ran into the clearing beside her. The vampire who had abducted Simon was already on the attack. Both soldiers fired, and his torso exploded.
The tall female vampire with the long black braid snarled and moved. The dark creature seemed to appear in front of the two soldiers as they frantically worked their rifle bolts. The two men disintegrated into a shower of viscera and bone without another shot or sound. The female paused to lick the hot blood off her hands.
Adele heard a sound just over her left shoulder and wheeled, catching the image of a pale figure with no splash of soldier's red or sailor's white. She cut through the target, feeling a brief tug on the saber blade, and completed the spin to face the tall female vampire with the saber already back to attack position. A vampire's head rolled on the ground; the body made a slight sighing noise as it slumped to the dirt behind her.
The princess felt neither exhilaration nor disgust-only duty, and the weight of the sword in her hands. She was naturally aggressive, bursting with relentlessness unexpected in a small girl, which had always served as an advantage. But she had never mastered defensive skills, earning her many a thumping from her tutor during fencing matches.
She charged the tall female vampire, three strokes already mapped in her mind. In the fleetest part of her brain she saw the female moving at the same time.
Adele looked up from the dirt. Her hands were flat on the ground. The saber was gone. Standing over her, the female vampire inspected a raw stomach wound and a slash in her brocade coat.
The female said, "You struck me. No human has struck me in a hundred years." The creature was impassive, showing neither anger nor desire for retribution. Still, she eyed Adele curiously.
"Please," Adele breathed, "take me if you wish. But release my brother. He's just a boy."
"We will take you." The female strolled away from Adele and continued observing her wound with the minor annoyance of someone who has lost a button from her coat. "But he's not just a boy. He is the heir when you're gone." She raised her head and emitted a piercing cry like the screech of a rusted cemetery gate, a scream that seemed to slice across the countryside.
A male vampire slid into view between trees and reached for Simon. Then the creature's head suddenly parted from his shoulders.
A booted foot shoved the decapitated carcass into the dirt.
A man stood over Simon. He was tall and thin, and his face was covered by a head wrap similar to that worn by the high desert Bedouins. Over his eyes he wore smoked, dark glasses. His clothing was dark grey, almost black, a short military-style jacket and cavalry pants with a red stripe, and knee-high, black riding boots. Over it all he wore a long cloak with a hood thrown back. He had a gun belt with two holstered pistols. In his left hand was a basket-hilted longsword; in his right was a well-blooded scimitar.
The man bounded toward the tall female vampire. "Take the boy and run!"
Adele realized the mysterious swordsman was shouting at her. She scrambled to her feet and ran to her prone brother, already hearing the ringing of steel against claws. The stranger in grey seemed eeri
ly familiar. Inexplicably, she was afraid for him and afraid of him at the same time.
Adele gathered Simon in her arms and ran. A group of vampires dropped to the ground in front of her, but they were staring beyond her to the fight. As she stumbled past, two of them recovered their senses and flashed over to block her. Their movements were no longer blurs to her. Adele could see their actions with a clarity and purity that surprised her.
She had no purpose other than to protect Simon. Holding him awkwardly with one arm, she landed a staggering blow on the jaw of one vampire. She then drove curled fingers into the face of another. The princess blocked a swipe, locked the arm, and drove a foot into the vampire's knee. It would've been devastating against a human, but she instantly realized that she'd made a mistake, because the vampire showed no pain. The thing seized Adele's neck, but instantly yanked his hand back with a screech.
Clawed hands surrounded Adele and wrenched Simon from her grasp. He was lifted into the air. The boy screamed. The vampire reared back and threw Simon with all its horrible strength. The boy's little form flew through the air as if shot from a cannon and smashed sickeningly against a tree.
Adele's legs nearly gave out as she stared at the sight of her little brother lying motionless. The seemingly endless moments they had shared flashed in her brain, crowding out any conscious thought. All Simon had been, all he could have been, come to this? This was his end? A lifeless body in a forest in France. She started to move toward her brother, but slavering vampires crowded her way, reaching out, slapping sharply at her but hardly daring to touch her.
The swordsman drove his scimitar down through the tall female's shoulder. The force of the blow staggered her to her knees. He left the scimitar embedded in the vampire as he wheeled toward Adele. Three vampires moved to intercept the charging swordsman. Without breaking stride, he pulled a pistol with his free hand, aimed, and fired. One vampire spun from the impact and collapsed. The swordsman then shot a small female in the stomach and battered the other creature with the basket hilt of the longsword, knocking him onto his back. His foot pressed against the supine vampire's throat, he plunged the sword into his heart and then fired a shot into the head of the wounded small female, who was rising to her feet.
A clawed hand raked the swordsman's shoulder, tearing his cloak. He blocked the next swipe, kicking the attacker away. He aimed for a debilitating head shot, but he sensed something behind him and twisted to dodge a savage blow from the tall commanding female that would have torn off his head.
"You will die," the female told him, with one arm hanging limp.
He wasted no words but drove the palm of his hand flat against the female's bare chest, sending her airborne back toward the treeline. Midway she changed her density and hit the trunk of a tree with no more than a subtle bounce. Righting herself, she stepped to the ground.
The swordsman was already running toward the princess. He swung his blade and severed the top of a vampire's skull. With one hand he reached down to pluck a Guardsman's saber from a motionless body at his feet and flung it end over end toward the tall female. The blade plunged into the female's chest and into the tree behind her. The hilt of the vibrating blade stuck in her ribs. She screamed and clawed at it in a rage.
The swordsman grabbed Princess Adele roughly by the arm and dragged her into the dank forest.
CHAPTER
DELE DELE STUMBLED ALONGSIDE her rescuer.
"This way," he commanded.
"Simon ..." Adele gasped. "Go back ... my brother."
"Impossible. He is lost."
Her face immediately locked in an expression of horror and anguish.
"I'm sorry, Princess. I must keep you safe."
Tears grew in Adele's eyes, though her words were angry and sharp. "Why won't you help him? I don't care about me!"
"You are next in line. Your brother is most likely already-"
"Don't you dare say it!" Adele stopped running, forcing the swordsman to turn back to her. The top of her auburn head barely came to his chin, but her eyes snapped defiance. "He could be alive!"
"They want you."
"I demand we go back for him."
"No."
"My father will hear of this!"
He nodded without great interest. "We must go. Quickly. They're coming."
Adele took an involuntary breath of fear.
The swordsman stared at her, the glass lenses covering his eyes hard and cold. "Once we get you to safety, I will go back for your brother, if possible." Then he added without conviction, "With any luck your troops will have rallied and repelled the attack."
Adele squeezed her eyes shut and forced her emotions down. She needed to think clearly. She could hear the logic in his words; they echoed in her ears, especially what he wasn't telling her. It was better Simon die than fall into vampire hands. The swordsman crackled with a compelling urgency, and she knew she was slowing him down in more ways than one.
"Please, Princess, no more discussion."
She gathered her skirts again. "I'm ready."
The swordsman turned and was off, sprinting, practically flying over rocks and mossy, fallen trees.
A squad of determined White Guardmen broke through the trees in ragged formation. Colonel Anhalt was in the lead, a pistol and saber at the ready and two more pistols jammed in his waistband. The sturdy Gurkha had one objective: protect the royal family.
Laid out before him was a sight from his deepest nightmares. A clutch of vampires surrounded the tiny body of Prince Simon with their claws raised and teeth bared. Anhalt fired with a retort that silenced the triumphant cackle of the vampires. The head of the creature closest to the unconscious prince snapped back with a bullet lodged in his forehead, and he slammed to the ground. Anhalt shouted and ran toward his objective. He didn't know if his men were still behind him or not.
The pistol fired again, accurate to a fault, shattering the jaw of another vampire near the boy. Anhalt blasted the temple of a third vampire as he reached the prince, sweeping his Fahrenheit saber to knock aside a lifted claw coming from his right. A second later the creature was on the ground and two White Guardsmen were running it through with bayonets.
"Form square! Protect the prince! Or die trying!" Anhalt shouted with his feet firmly planted on either side of motionless Simon. His men quickly complied. There weren't nearly enough soldiers to form a proper barrier, but it didn't stop them from creating the barest of defense around the remaining heir to Equatoria.
More vampires descended from above, and the White Guardsmen lifted their rifles to the sky. Every man on the line fired, and the air filled with white smoke and blood. The front wave of monsters fell. Colonel Anhalt knelt low over his charge. When the next surge came from the vampires it too was a gruesome slaughter.
For the first time, the creatures faltered. But the male creature festooned like a general screeched in rage behind his brethren, and they came again swiftly and without mercy.
"Fire! Fire! Fire!" Anhalt shouted.
A cacophony of shrieking, hissing, and rifle discharge deafened the colonel. Then suddenly the vampires were among them. Bayonets slashed flesh to the bone; pistols shattered skulls to pulp. The fighting and dying all screamed.
Anhalt moved not an inch from his position and hacked relentlessly with his saber. It was not elegant or superb to see, merely effectual and lethal. A vampire came in low under his blade and slashed him on the left leg. Anhalt actually felt it strike bone. He grunted, and the whites of his eyes flashed at the agony, but he twisted his saber and drove down deep into the back of the vampire's neck, twisting and severing the spinal column. It slumped at his feet, tendrils of smoke rising from its mutilated neck.
Anhalt raised his head, searching for another target, but saw instead the vampires holding back. There were only a few of them now. All bloodied, with gaping wounds, some without arms or legs. They staggered and then took to the air. The Gurkha thought they were gaining altitude for another run at his ragtag squad,
but instead they veered off toward the north.
It was over.
Anhalt regarded his men. Most were dead, but seven were still standing, soaking in blood and gore.
"Well done," he rasped as he knelt to find whether they had been defending a dead boy or a live one.
The youngster stirred. His face was covered in blood. "Where's Adele?"
"Stay still, Your Highness," the soldier answered, laying a calming hand on the boy's small shoulder. The vampires were gone, and Anhalt could only assume they had what they wanted: the heir to the Empire. He feared the worst for the princess, but could not tell her brother yet.
"I want to see her," Simon gurgled.
"You can't."
"Where's our ship?"
"Don't worry about the ship." The colonel didn't know where the remainder of the fleet was or when they might come. Or if they would come at all. The frigates could well have been destroyed in the attack.
Anhalt knew the boy was gravely injured, but his cursory examination of the prince didn't show any mortal wounds. Still Simon had to receive medical attention soon. The ship's surgeon was lost, and none of his aides had been found in the hours since the crash. Marseilles was not far; reachable by foot. Although Anhalt was loath to strike out overland with so many vampires abroad, it was an even greater danger to stay where they were. The prince's life was even more crucial now, particularly if the princess was lost to them.
The Greyfriar (Vampire Empire, Book 1) by Clay & Susan Griffith;Clay Griffith;Susan Griffith Page 3