Immanuel's Veins (29 page)

When I finally staggered back to my feet, I was still clueless about what I must do.
Woo her
, the old man had said.
Win her
. But how, when she was up there with the devil and I was down here with nothing but a useless sword?

The answer had to be in the journal, so I changed out the dim candle, splashed some red wine in a glass, and pored over the book.

It wasn't until the last few pages that I read the words I longed to see. Here Thomas had written a simple guide for slowing or killing these kind.

Alucard's blood extended their lives. Depending on how pure their blood, a half-breed might live a few hundred years or more. They possessed incredible strength and such speed that one might not see them move. Seeing the distance of their leaps, one might think they could fly. Over time, many other traits had been attributed to them, most of which were exaggerations spun in fantasy, Thomas said, but it was true that the half-breeds had intoxicating powers of seduction. Even lesser descendants with only a hint of that blood would turn heads when they walked into a room.

In the end it was all about this: the wooing of the heart and the power in the blood. But at least in this manifested contest between good and evil there were ways to slow or kill the half-breeds.

They were terrified of any water associated with their great enemy.

Wood could affect them profoundly if it came in contact with their hearts, something to do with their origin in a black forest.

They preferred to sleep underground where the Nephilim lairs were hidden. Many had attributes that betrayed their bloodline: longer fingers and nails, sharper features, pale skin revealed by a shedding of their old skin. Their eyes were also dark, often rimmed in gray, though in sunlight the irises could look quite normal.

If ingested, their blood was like a potent drug that might weaken the mind, but the effects would soon pass. If their blood was injected directly into any person's bloodstream, however, that person would be infected and transformed.

And that is what I know
, Thomas had written on the last page.

They go by many names, including Shataiki. I've never heard of one being restored, but neither is there evidence that souls infected by this scourge have no chance of finding their way back to humanity.

What I do know is that evil has manifested itself physically and must be dealt with in the same manner, physically. This is not church business where a crucifix can be waved and words uttered. The love, the blood, life and death, everything—it must all be real and in hand, or you surely have no hope to prevail.

May God have mercy on your soul.

— Thomas

I closed the cover and stood. I paced. Then I sat again and I peeled back the pages. There had to be a clearer way! I had learned much, but this wasn't a blueprint for battle. If my instructor had never killed one of these half-breeds, how was I supposed to do it?

Yet the old man had said that everything I needed to know was there, in the Blood Book.

So I read and reread it, and each time I discovered a little more. I understood that religion, however faulty, wasn't based on nonsense. That there raged a war between good and evil that made my own wars pale by comparison. I was somehow a central figure in the history of that battle, even if I ended up only a stake in the ground to mark where these forces of darkness were first flushed out of hiding.

When I finally closed the book, a thin crack of light showed through the drawn curtains. So late?

I rushed to the drape and pulled it open a few inches. What I saw there sent a chill down my spine. Dozens of troops sat upon their horses about the estate. Regular army, not only the church's guard. One of them was walking my stallion toward the barn.

I dropped the curtain, frozen. I had been found out.

THIRTY

T
o do the unexpected is often one's only hope of survival. I had learned the lesson more times than I cared to recall. You must know that I felt no fear for my own life in that moment, but I confess to feeling more fright than I had courted in many years, thinking only that if I went down, Lucine would lose her savior.

I grabbed my pistol, my sword, and the book, and after checking the hall, I ran out of the room, straight for Kesia's quarters. She had a storage closet well secured with heavy timbers, and I'd told her that if there was any trouble, she must take hiding there until the danger passed. Anyone firing upon the house would send balls of lead through windows and doorways, and anyone inside would be in danger of being killed—except in this closet.

The hall that led to her room passed an opening to the great ballroom, and as I flew by they saw me. Shouts gave the warning, but I ran on, because I had seen what I wanted to see: Kesia wasn't with them.

Her door was locked, but I knew that the mechanism was made of wood and I easily smashed through with my shoulder.

Behind me the soldiers gave chase, boots thudding on the stone. I slammed the door shut, leaped to the dresser, and shoved it into position to block any easy access.

“If you come in, she dies!” I cried.

Then I rushed to the closet, threw the door wide, and came face-to-face with Kesia, whose hands shook with the weight of a pistol.

“I swear I won't harm you,” I said, lifting both arms. “I only want you to hear me, because I swear, I am your only hope.”

“You're the devil,” she cried. But her voice wasn't firm.

“If you still think so after I've said my piece, then shoot this devil. But please”—I withdrew the book from my waist and held it up—“I have something you must see.”

Her eyes shifted to the book, then back to my face. “What is it?”

“An ancient journal that explains in great detail who Vlad van Valerik really is.”

“He's royalty.”

Fists pounded on the door.

“He is. But he's more, far more, and far less. Tell them that if they try to come in I will kill you.”

“I have the pistol.”

“And I have the book. Say it.”

She hesitated, then yelled for them to stop or she would die. The fists stopped beating.

Kesia slowly lowered her weapon. “I swear on my first husband's grave, Toma, if this is some trick you will pay with your life.”

“Have you known me to be the kind who would play a trick for my own gain?”

Kesia put the pistol on her shelf.

“Thank you.” And then I told her what had happened to me in the dungeon, about Thomas the saint, and I carefully outlined my case for the existence of creatures of the night who were made by the unholy union of fallen angels and human women. And as I laid it out she began to quiet and her eyes grew wide.

“And now this book, Kesia.” I handed it to her and she opened it carefully. “There you'll find drawings, and near the end, the way to slow these beasts. Even kill them.”

“You can't seriously think that the duke is one of these!” she whispered.

“Come with me, then. See for yourself. Saint Thomas told me in no uncertain terms that Valerik was such a beast! And your daughters are both in his grip. Dead to this world.”

Her mouth remained parted and her fingers trembled as she stared through sections of the book. She lifted her eyes to me.

“Is it possible? These are the stories of peasants!”

“Believe me, a week ago I would have said the same. But now this is a story that I have seen and lived. Because, as God is my witness, Lady Kesia, I love Lucine with all of my heart and flesh. If I must, I will rush out of this house into a hailstorm of slugs for the chance to save her. And if I die, then you will have lost your daughter as well.”

I watched as her resistance faded from her eyes. They misted with tears and she held the book out to me.

“Then go to her. Bring them both back to me. Forgive me for my ignorance.”

“Think nothing of it.” I paced out of that closet and scanned the room.

The fist pounded on the door again. “Lady Kesia, please—”

“Leave us!” she cried. “Do you want him to slit my throat? I'll blame you, oaf!”

Silence.

“I need blessed water, they're bothered by it. Wood . . .” I whirled to her. “Do you have stakes?”

“Whatever for?” She rushed to her desk. “This is absurd; you're surrounded. How will you get out?”

“With you. They wouldn't dare shoot at you.”

“Me? I can't go with you! I believe you. I don't think it's necessary I go up there to see with my own eyes.”

“Then I won't take you up there.”

“If not with me, how will you—”

“I only need your cooperation to get out,” I explained. “We'll head south toward Crysk. As soon as we're clear of the estate, I'll drop you off and circle around to the north, back to the Castle Castile. Tell the bishop I've fled to find the general. They'll believe you.”

“While you go up against the Castle Castile. Alone?”

“Alone. Water. A crucifix. And fire. Quickly, I need them all!”

Once the decision was made, Kesia threw herself into helping me. She fetched a leather bag from her closet into which I placed some candles with fire starter, a bottle of oil, and a crucifix from her wall. The crucifix was over a foot tall and stuck out the top of the bag a few inches.

The blessed water was a problem without a priest, naturally, but I did take a jelly jar filled with water from the basin.

“Don't worry, I won't cut you,” I said, withdrawing my blade.

“Please don't.”

I nodded once and shoved the dresser away from the entrance. The door swung open and I held the lady from behind, placed the blade against her throat, and shoved her forward.

“Hold your ground! I have her.”

“Back, you oafs!” she cried. “Don't fire!”

Eight of them were in the hall, and their eyes grew round when they saw the knife. They retreated into the ballroom as we hurried forward.

“Drop your weapons!”

They hesitated until Kesia reinforced the demand. With my blade at her throat they hardly had a choice. A single misfired musket ball could end her life.

The soldiers outside had even more distance to contend with, and they could only watch hopelessly as I pushed my prisoner past them to the stable, where I collected my horse and mounted behind her.

Five minutes later the estate fell out of sight as we crested and descended the hill on the property's south side. I left her there, by the side of the road.

“Tell them I've gone south to find the general. Don't worry, they'll pass by this place soon enough.”

She looked up at me. “All of this is still hard to believe.”

“Very hard.” I pulled my steed around.

“Bring them back to me, Toma. Fulfill your duty. Please.”

I kicked the horse and headed into the trees without an answer.

It took me three hours to reach the crest that looked down at the Castle Castile from the north. The road approached from the southeast, but I knew they had a watch over that path, so I guided my stallion down into the ravine a full mile from the bend that first brought the fortress into view.

The ground was steep and treacherous, and dark clouds had blown in and hugged the Carpathian peaks, but almost two days had passed since the heavy rain, so the ground wasn't as slick as it could have been. There was no way to stop the tumbling of gravel loosed by my horse. I could only hope I was far enough away for even those creatures to hear.

I stopped for a long spell at the creek in that ravine and fashioned from the young trunks of saplings five stakes, each just over a foot long and an inch thick. Using my knife I sharpened each to a needle point. I hoped this would satisfy Thomas's suggestion that these creatures feared wood, however strange that might seem.

Regardless, the whole mess was far beyond strange. Sitting there in the ravine with a gurgling brook at my feet, I wondered what kind of madness had captured my mind. But the evidence of all I had felt and seen and heard battered away all that madness.

Had I not fallen completely and inexplicably in love with Lucine?

Did I not see Natasha leap far over her head and walk the air? Or drink their blood and wake up in my bed having misplaced the day?

Was Thomas a figment of my imagination? And the book . . . I reached for my belt to be sure it was still there. Were these the words of a fool?

But above it all was the horror I felt at the prospect of any harm coming to Lucine.

I mounted and left that mountain brook with my leather bag full of strange weapons. Five wooden stakes. A bottle of water blessed only by me at the creek. A large crucifix. The makings for fire. A long rope with a hook. One pistol in my belt. And the journal, though I saw no use for it now.

The climb up the far side was even worse than the descent into the ravine. A lesser horse would surely have slipped and tumbled back to the creek. But we managed.