Afterglow (Brotherhood of the Blade Trilogy #2) (11 page)

Right off, Ambra killed one of the vamps, a big guy who rushed her. I guess he was the bouncer. He sure looked like one. She shoved that full-sized scythe right through the Kevlar vest and apparently into his heart. He fell down with a mighty boom and then vanished in wisps of smoke. What a clean kill!

Unfortunately, the others did not go down so easily.

The rest of the vampires made for the door, but I shoved a big desk against it, effectively blocking that exit. And mine.

I suddenly recognized someone. The main vamp from the cruise ship—he was dressed in the same stank clothing that he had worn on the ship, cape and all. His henchmen were all dressed in black, too, but modern clothing, not old-fashioned.

I saw old man vampire, stinky-crotch Vlad trying to sneak out of there, out the only other door, in order to let his henchman fight his battle for him.

No way was that effing mutha getting away from me this time!

I did a leap and slammed that door in his face. Now we were trapped in with him and him with us. And may the best fighters win!

There was space between Ambra and me, but I knew she was a good fighter and I didn’t want Vlad to get away.

“
Lucian!” she screamed. “We come in the name of your three children! Help us!”

I was shocked to see a vamp break ranks and switch sides.

He moved next to Ambra and started fighting his own kind. And he went back to back with her, guarding her! Helping us!

“
Thank you, God!” I said aloud.

Trusting Lucian to have Ambra’s back, I used the blowgun on Vlad as ran toward me in a blur. He moved at the last instant, and in great surprise, he gasped as the silver needle from my blowgun went into his eye. He screeched shrilly, a sound I will never forget! It nearly broke my eardrums, but…

Oh, hell!
I had missed his heart.

Now Vlad was insane with rage and pain.

He lunged at me and tried to bite my neck. I shoved my left hand up his Kevlar vest and tried to ram my silver dart home. It stuck, but apparently not in his heart. He tried to pull it out and it broke off, as they were meant to, by design. So, he had that silver inside of him, and was reeling with rage, chasing me.

I quickly got another dart out of my left boot and flung it at him, like a javelin. He ducked and it soared through the air. Miraculously, it hit at just the right angle and penetrated someone else’s Kevlar vest. That vamp fell and turned into smoke.

I stabbed at Vlad’s heart with my silver blade, but I couldn’t get through the vest. Maybe he had two of them on?

I felt a hand grab me from behind. I whirled around and cut off a vampire’s head with Aurora, and then I knew I’d better turn around and get Vlad. Before he got me.

He knocked me to the floor and held down my arm with the sword in it, with both of his arms.

I kicked and shouted and Ambra came from behind and stuck her scythe in his back. And still, his fangs, dripping with blood-lust, and murder in his eyes, came within a fraction of an inch as he screeched. I felt and smelled his fetid, cold breath on my skin.

“No!” Ambra screamed and grabbed Vlad by the hair, ripping out what little he had left.

He turned to her—furious—and I scrambled up and shoved my blade through the Kevlar and made an uppercut, to cut off the Kevlar vest. And when I did, I saw that he indeed had another Kevlar vest under the one on top.

Lucian threw himself on top of Vlad, the bravest thing I had ever seen. They tussled and rolled. And then Lucian was on top again.

Quickly, Ambra stabbed Vlad—she pinned one of his hands to the wooden floor with her Swiss Army knife, of all things.

While Vlad spit and struggled, roared and screeched, Lucian held him down and bashed in Vlad’s crooked old beak-nose with a vicious head butt.

I used another uppercut of Aurora to cut Vlad’s second Kevlar vest open. We had to apparently undress this vampire king to kill him!

With Ambra stepping on Vlad’s fingers, and punching his throat with all her might, with the hand-held scythe while his other hand was pinned to the floor by her Swiss Army knife, Lucian struggled to hold Vlad down. He was incredibly strong!

I had the privilege and the satisfaction of stabbing that now-exposed, skinny grayish-white, stove-in chest with my silver blade. He was so skinny and his skin was so translucent that I could see his tiny heart, ten sizes too small, beating between his ribs.

That was where I shoved my blade and held it, between those ribs, until he stopped moving and disappeared into a plume of stinky smoke that choked me so badly that I ended up puking on the floor.

When the rest of the vampire henchman saw their leader turn to smoke, they beat feet out of there, crashing right through the blocked doors.

I heard car doors slamming and vehicles peeling out from the woods next to the castle.

Lucian jumped up and looked at Ambra and I. We were both covered in blood, some of it our own. I wiped my bloody nose on my sleeve.

Lucian said in a terrifying voice, “You claimed you came here in the names of my children. I trusted you. So, now, what
are
their names?”

I answered for Ambra: “Erika, Anton and I forgot the baby’s name, but he’s your spittin’ image and he has a mad earache right now. Your wife is Uta, and makes stew that tastes like it came from an angel’s cookbook. She sent me here to save you and bring you home. She’s been here a lot of times and was never able to get to you.”

“I was afraid she might come. I have a problem. As you can see, I am a vampire,” Lucian said morosely.

I said, “She doesn’t fucking care. Just go home. Your kids need you. She needs you.”

“But I can’t live like this. With them.”

“
Yes, you can,” Ambra said. “We know a vampire with two kids and she drinks animal blood.”

“
Will that do it? Long term?” Lucian said.

“
She’s been like that for at least seven years,” I said. “She’s incredibly healthy.”

“
I didn’t know. God forgive me. I didn’t
know
.”

Ambra squeezed his shoulder. “It’s going to be okay.”

“Take me home,” Lucian said and wept silver vampire tears. “Please, take me home.”

“
We will. Just as soon as we let everyone else loose. Can you get the keys?” I asked.

“
I’m the jailer for the blood slaves,” he said, and handed me the ring of iron keys.

“
Did you make them sing those horrible songs?”

“
No. God no. That was Vlad’s doing. He was psychotic.”

“
What about the people chained up and tortured in the dungeon?”

“
That was Elizabeth Bathory’s territory and she’s been dead for a while. After her, a gentle vampire named Gabrielle tried to spirit them away. Like an Oskar Schindler of our times, she managed to free hundreds of them, and the ones who are left, her heart broke for them, that she was not able to save them all.”

Ambra gasped. “Gabrielle did all that?”

“Yes,” Lucian continued, “and for some of them, she traded sexual favors with Vlad, to make him not torture the children. Instead, she took their beatings and worse.”

Now I gasped.

I took a deep breath and let it out. If there had been anything left in my belly, I would have hurled again.

Lucian said, “There’s more. Gabrielle and I planned an uprising together, to save the ones who were left when Vlad suddenly realized they were disappearing. And then, I don’t know what happened to Mademoiselle Gabrielle, because she went away before we could launch our revolt. I have been petrified to act on my own and I knew I couldn’t act alone.”

“My God. Gabby,” I said. “What she went through. It was inhuman.”

“
You know her? I want to thank her personally.”

“
She died. Last week.”

“
No! What happened to her?”

“
It’s better if you don’t know,” I said.

“
Just tell me this. Did she ever…write that opera?”

“
Yes,” Ambra said, all choked up. “She wrote the opera.”

“
Good. Then she did not die in vain.”

“
No,” I said. “She did not.”

“
Let’s get every door unlocked, and look for Kristen,” Ambra suggested.

“
Kristen Sebastian?” Lucian asked.

My heart skipped about twenty beats and my knees went weak.

“Where’s my daughter, Lucian?”

“
She’s not here,” he said. “Kristen’s your daughter? The little blonde girl?”

“
Yes, where is she?!”

“
She was here, with two vampires I don’t know. A man and a woman. They tried to sell her, but Vlad didn’t have that much money. The male vampire wanted something like two million for her.”

“
Sell her? Two million dollars?”

“
No. Euros.”

“
Why?” I asked.

“
I don’t know.”

I took out my wallet and got the Roman coin out. “Is this one of them?”

“Yes. That’s him.”

“
My God, Nero kidnapped Kristen.” I took several deep breaths. “Is my daughter a vampire?”

“
I don’t know. It was months ago when I saw her.”

“
Where did Nero and the woman go?” I asked.

“
I don’t know. If I did, I would tell you.”

“
I believe you would,” I said.

Chapter Thirteen

We went through the dungeons in the ruins with a fine-toothed comb. Lucian unlocked doors, cabinets, cages, and closets. Some of the dead had been dead for years, decades. Some of the living were going to require serious medical attention.

The ones who were Lucian’s responsibility were the kids upstairs, and beyond the IVs in their hands and their brainwashing by Vlad, they were in much better shape than the teens and adults in the dungeons.

I had to know. I asked Lucian, “Did you drink the children’s blood?”

He gave a long sigh. “Yes. If I could, I would hang myself for that.” His eyes were full of pain. “You can ask any one of those children if I ever hurt them or was cruel to them. They will all stick up for me. Gabrielle and I spared them from Vlad’s more extreme…perversions. And they knew it.”

“Why were they so docile about giving their blood?”

“
They were told that there had been an apocalypse, an end-of-days sort of event in the world and that all their parents had died. They were told that the blood we took every day was being used to help other children who had been exposed to nuclear accidents. We showed them doctored footage from Chernobyl.”

I gasped.

Lucian continued, “They knew that we were vampires, but they were told that it was the only way we could survive and save precious children to begin the world anew. The things the children wrote in the illustrated books were all about the genesis of a new species on Earth, the vampires, and how they were there to help it start after an apocalypse that killed adults and spared only a few children whom God had chosen to save…mankind.”

“
Mon Dieu
,” Ambra said, appalled.

“
I know. It’s a horrible lie. But it worked on them. Most of them. The ones who denied it became…missing.”

I was sorrowful for the children, and for him. I couldn’t think of a thing to say. I was stunned.

He gulped. “I don’t know how to tell my wife what I did here.”

“
I can’t help you with that,” I said.

Ambra looked away. This time, it was Ambra who puked.

We went through the castle once more, making sure that we hadn’t missed anyone. And then we left the death of that place behind us.

Ambra rode the motorbike back to the little Renaissance-looking town by herself and Lucian and I rode back from the ruins in some ancient car that smelled of old-man vampire crotch.

On the way, we called the police from a public telephone, or at least Ambra did. She told them that there was a madman who had held people prisoner in the ruins at Raven Citadel but that he had left. She said that she was a hiker sightseeing in the area with a friend and had  stumbled on the place. She told them to send ambulances, that there were injured children, too.

After Ambra hung up on their request for her name and address, she asked Lucian, “Do any of the children know your name?”

“
No. None of them. And I always wore a mask when I saw any of them. There is no way they could know me on the street.”

“
What did they call you?” I asked.