Dawn Thompson (34 page)

“Cassandra! Take my hand!” Jon thundered. His section of the grating was still intact. He threw down his sack, flattened himself prostrate on the grillework, and reached for her. “Quickly,” he commanded. “Before my side gives way as well.”

“I cannot let go!” she sobbed. “If I do, they will pull me in.”

“You must! Now, Cassandra!”

She tried, then quickly grabbed fast to the grating again. “Nooooo!” she wailed, shaking her head. “I cannot, Jon. They are too strong!”

“Trust me! You must or you are lost. I have the strength to pull you up!”

Cassandra shut her eyes and let go with her left hand, reaching for Jon above. She cried out as she felt his strong hand close around her wrist, then cried out again as he started to pull her up—the monsters below were pulling, too.

“Now the other hand. Now . . . I’ve got you. Kick your feet. We are stronger than these. They are sluggish, lethargic yet, because of the daylight. Their only advantage is in their number.”

“But there are so many,” she realized. “Too many for our weapons, and I’ve lost the holy water.”

“Never mind. Just concentrate on getting out of there.”

Cassandra did as he bade her, fisting her fingers in the sleeve of his greatcoat, and kicked wildly as he pulled her free of the grating. But one of the creatures came with her—a woman, clinging to her skirt. Jon had scarcely set Cassandra on her feet and shoved the creature back through the grating when three more climbed out of the chamber below, using the section that had fallen in as a ladder.

“You are right,” Jon agreed. Snatching his sack, he tossed it over his broad shoulder and grabbed Cassandra’s arm, pulling her along in the tunnel. “There are too many. Quickly!”

Running back the way they’d come, they plucked torches from their brackets one by one as they went and tossed them behind to slow their pursuers’ progress. Still the vampires came, moving like automatons, as if to the beat of a galley drum. They showed no fangs, but Cassandra took no comfort in that—neither had Jon in daylight hours before the blood moon, or she, either . . . until now.

They reached the door to the tunnel, which they had left open when they entered, and tried to close it on the advancing creatures, but the combined weight of the vampires was too great.

“It’s no use,” Jon gasped. “Leave it. Run.”

Together they raced through the alcove and up the stairs with the creatures close behind. They had nearly reached the Great Hall when another clamor met their ears. A mob of angry villagers was swarming through the open castle doorway, waving clubs and wattles, pistols, knives, and axes, their surly voices raised in righteous indignation. Cassandra screamed. They were caught.

“There they are!
” the leader of the villagers shouted, pointing. “She’s the one! Look! There are more . . . !”

“Where can we go? What can we do?” Cassandra cried. “We’re trapped here.”

Indeed they were, between the steady stream of vampires coming from one direction and the villagers advancing from the other.

Jon pointed at the blocked, free-standing staircase. “Jump,” he said. “The way I showed you before. “
Now,
Cassandra.”

Cassandra let go of his arm, focused on the all-but-invisible landing above the slag and fallen timbers, bent her knees, and leapt into the air. Jon followed after and grabbed her in his arms as she teetered on the edge of the landing. The far side of the balustrade was missing, and it was a long drop into darkness below.

“We need to jump again,” Jon said.

Cassandra stared over the edge. “You can’t mean down
there.
”

“We must,” he said. “Eventually they can scale that mess on the stairs. They’ll get up here. I searched this castle. I do not know what shape it’s in, but there is a corridor below.”

“But we don’t know what’s down there, Jon. Not after the fire.”

“No, but we do know what’ll be up here. On the count of three. Hold on to me this time, and scream. I want them to think . . . Never mind, just scream!”

Cassandra loosed a spate of mad laughter. She would need no coaxing to scream.

“One . . . two . . . threeeeeee!”

“They could not have survived such a fall,” one of the villagers barked, his coarse voice echoing from above. “Get the others! Hurry! They’re getting away!”

They dared not make a sound, and Jon clamped his hand over Cassandra’s mouth and moved her deeper into the shadows as debris drifted down, loosened by the villager’s feet above. He’d been right. They were in a corridor—a narrow one; his night vision picked it out clearly.

“Shhhhh. Not a word,” he whispered, removing his hand from her mouth. “They think we’re incapacitated. The others will distract them, which is only fitting. Let that mob up there destroy what the two of us alone could not. We will have fewer to contend with after . . .”

“What?” she whispered.

Jon hesitated. “The villagers will leave soon—the minute the sun sets. None will stay in this place after dark. That won’t be long, judging by the glimpse of sky I had when we were in the Great Hall. We cannot very
well go along with them, and they will surely post watchers outside. I wanted to have had done here and been away before dark, but that isn’t possible now. We shall have to spend the night.” As his wife shuddered in his arms, he pulled her closer. “If Sebastian’s resting place is here and we can find and destroy it before dawn, as I did the one in the dungeon, the sun might destroy him for us. That is the most we can hope for.”

“And the least?” Cassandra asked.

“That we elude him until dawn, find his resting place, and use the implements in this sack to destroy him there.”

“No doubt they have found the cart,” she said.

“Unfortunately, I believe you are right—unless Milosh came upon it. I wish I knew how he fares. I am not liking that he has not returned in either form.”

The screams of dying vampires and the raucous shouts of the mob funneled down the wounded staircase and were amplified by the acoustics from the castle’s construction. It was a bloodcurdling racket, and Jon pulled Cassandra closer, soothing her. The most horrible thing was that he could read her thoughts—technically they were like those unfortunate creatures being slaughtered by the mob, and had come frighteningly close to sharing their fate.

Flickering light blazed from above, throwing grotesque shadows on the walls along the corridor. Plumes of smoke and the stench of burning flesh filled Jon’s nostrils. It wasn’t safe to stay any longer; they could be seen now if someone looked below. He led her farther on to what had once served as servants’ chambers and whisked her inside one. It was small, the only furniture a Glastonbury chair and a straw pallet. One high-set window was shuttered on
the inside, like so many others he’d seen since they arrived in Moldovia. Standing on the chair, he cracked the shutter and squinted toward the setting sun.

“Just as I thought,” he said, latching the shutter again. “It will soon be dark.”

The terrible racket grew. Despite the closed door, shrieks and screams and angry voices filled the musty air. They had no means to make a light, and wouldn’t even if they could. Instead, Jon counted upon his night vision. He saw Cassandra’s wasn’t as advanced, and his heart went out to her, watched as she felt her way around the chamber, groping in the dark.

“What is happening up there?” she murmured, clapping her hands over her ears.

“They are burning bodies in the Great Hall.”

Cassandra blanched.

“You must remember, these creatures are not human any longer, Cass. They are undead—
his
creatures. Destroying them frees their souls and brings them peace. Fire is a way of doing this. It shan’t affect us here below. All that would burn already went up in flames when I set fire to the place. It will not spread; it will burn itself out. You will see.”

“It could be
us
up there,” she sobbed. “We are no different.”

“But we are, Cassandra,” he returned, shaking her gently. “Yes, we are infected, but we are not wholly undead like those unfortunates up there—not mindless minions of the one that made them. If we were, the blood moon ritual would not have worked. But it
did
, so no one ever need know. It is too late for that among these villagers, of course, but wherever else we go in the world, people will know us as vampire
hunters,
because that is what we have
become—and we have Milosh and the blood moon to thank for it.”

Cassandra dissolved into tears, and so he took her in his arms. “My God, what is it?” he asked.

“T-the blood moon,” she moaned. “It may have worked for you, but it hasn’t for me.”

He felt the blood drain from him. “What do you mean? Of course it worked for you. We made love without fighting back the feeding frenzy. How could you doubt?”

“It may have worked then, but no longer. It didn’t last, Jon.”

“That is absurd! How can you say that? What makes you think it?”

She hesitated. “Before, when I was trying to escape the creatures in that pit, my fangs . . . they came back.”

“Was there hunger, bloodlust?”

“N-no. They just . . . descended. I nearly lost my grip on the grating when it happened. They didn’t recede until we jumped down to the corridor outside. It happened to Milosh, too, don’t you remember? Could the effects of the blood moon have worn off in us both?”

“I have no idea,” Jon said, his brows beetled in a frown. “If only Milosh were here. There is so much we do not know that only he can tell us.”

“Has it happened to you?” she murmured.

“No,” he said. “The condition affects each of us differently, however. And that there was no feeding frenzy puzzles me. Are you certain?”

She nodded against his chest.

“Did it happen when we made love, Cassandra?”

“No,” she sobbed. “And I was so happy . . .”

“Shhhh. We will sort it out,” he soothed. “Milosh said that once the blood moon ritual was performed, we
would no longer be slaves to our infection—that it would curtail the bloodlust, the feeding frenzy.” He shook his head. “We need to finish what we’ve come to do here and then find Milosh.” He led her to the pallet. “Lie down and rest. I will keep watch. As soon as it is safe to go abroad, we will go and search together.”

It was some time before Cassandra fell asleep. Finally there were no more screams and shouts from above, and Jon drew a ragged breath. Night had fallen. The villagers had fled back to the foothills and all was still. Jon brushed back his hair. Cassandra was sleeping soundly. He hated to wake her. Still, he was anxious to finish what they’d come to do. Then they could concentrate on finding Milosh.

Twice, he opened the door a crack and closed it. There wasn’t a sound. The glow of the flames had disappeared, and once more the corridor had been plunged into darkness. No noises met his enhanced hearing, and yet he sensed a presence. He opened the door a third time, straining his eyes and ears. No, it wasn’t his imagination; though he could neither see, nor hear, nor smell the presence, something
was
there. Was it Sebastian?

He took up his sack and glanced behind toward Cassandra, who was sleeping soundly. Exhaustion—total, strength-draining exhaustion had overcome her. What she had told him was troubling, but he dared not let on that it was. And if he were to wake her, that fear would undermine his concentration. There was no room for distractions now. He stepped into the corridor and closed the door; he would stay in sight of it.

As he approached the hole from the staircase on the second floor, something fell—bits of debris sifting down drew his attention. Someone or something was standing
on the fallen timbers blocking the staircase. Jon’s heart skipped its rhythm. Gooseflesh puckered his scalp and raced down his spine. Stepping back into the shadows, he focused narrowed eyes on the timbers above. Something moved—something white. Backlit by a shaft of moonlight stabbing through the open doorway, a four-legged image took shape.

“Milosh?” Jon murmured.

A low, mournful howl broke the silence, and Jon leapt to the ground floor in a seamless bound; he was getting better at that. He’d scarcely landed when the wolf padded down the blocked staircase to the Great Hall below, and surged to his full height. Dropping the sack, Jon stripped off his greatcoat and gave it to Milosh, who stood naked before him. The Gypsy shrugged it on gingerly over his wounds.

“Where the devil have you been?” Jon spat through clenched teeth. “We feared you were dead.”

“You were nearly correct,” the Gypsy said. “I needed time to heal. You did a fine job, but that fall I took on the mountain weakened me. I needed time to regain my strength before I could change back. I probably should have waited a little longer as it is. I am still not at my most powerful.”

“What are you doing here? Don’t you know what just occurred?”

The Gypsy nodded. “I saw the light the fires gave off from below, and I came straightaway. I knew I would find you in the midst of it.”

“The cart? Have they burned it?”

Milosh shook his head. “No, I’d hidden it deep in the forest while they were at their carnage. Where is your lady wife? I owe her a great debt.”

Jon gave a start. “
Cassandra!
” he cried, striding back toward the staircase. “Good God, I left her sleeping below.”

The Gypsy followed. “My wounds made it necessary for me to take part in the blood moon ritual,” he said. “She has the gift of premonition—I doubt she understands it yet—and I was able to reach her with the help of the steam from the draught. It brings visions to some. It is a very potent elixir. I was too far gone to shapeshift. Technically, by human standards, I died from blood loss. Death cancels all things, Jon Hyde-White.”

They had reached the edge of the slag heap that once was a staircase, and Jon hesitated. “Is that why your fangs descended? We saw them.”

Milosh nodded. “Yes,” he said. “There is much I have yet to tell you. I believe that is why I fought so valiantly to live. I am so tired, my friend, and so lonely. It is different for you. You have your Cassandra. I have no one. But for you and your lady wife, I would have welcomed death at last.”