Knights of the Blood (25 page)

* * *

Drummond and Freise had hiked through the woods for nearly three miles before they came to the edge of the grassy meadow that surrounded the castle of the Order of the Sword on all sides. In the fading dusk, the castle loomed dark and eerily silent, with just a sheen of dying sunset washing the western aspect with rose—gold. A moat followed the circumference of the castle wall, its murky water darkly reflecting the darkening sky.

Keeping low, they had circled all around the edge of the meadow, looking for the entrance, but they had come to no road leading toward it. The entrance was in the south wall, and looked firmly closed and barred but disused. The drawbridge was down, but didn’t look like it had moved for decades. As Drummond scanned it with the field glasses, he wondered whether the place was deserted or if the vampires were simply asleep until the darkness fell–though Freise had assured him that these vampires did not shun the light. Twilight had deepened into darkness as the two men huddled in the murky shadows of the woods, contemplating their next move.

“What do you think?” Freise whispered, as Drummond lifted the binoculars to scan the front of the castle again.

“I think we’re crazy to even be
thinking
about going in there at night,” Drummond replied. “You’re sure this is the place? It looks as quiet as a–forget I said that. I don’t suppose you’ve got any garlic tucked away in that bag of yours?”

“No, ‘fraid not. Why do you ask?”

“Well,” said Drummond, continuing to scan with the binoculars, “in all the movies, they use garlic to keep vampires at bay. Even your friend Lupe had it all over her house. Since I’m going in there, I thought some garlic might come in handy.” He looked over at Father Freise and grinned. “You’ve assured me these vampires are good guys. Well, the only one I’ve ever met was a real bad sonofabitch, so I’d rather not take too many chances.”

Freise gave him an odd look and shrugged. “If I thought that garlic might help, I’d have brought some,” he said. “I know what all the legends say, but I haven’t a clue how it might work.”

“What about Lupe Gonzales, then?” Drummond asked, remembering the woman’s tidy house, with its festoons of garlic, and crucifixes on every wall.

Freise smiled wistfully. “Well, she
thought
it might give her some protection–and I don’t suppose it did any harm. She’s a good woman, John–very devout.”

Yeah, and she let you put a stake through her husband’s heart,
Drummond thought to himself, though he didn’t say it. He still wasn’t sure whether he believed the priest’s story or not; it all seemed so very farfetched. And yet–

“Guess I’ll just have to put my faith in firepower, then, if you haven’t got any garlic,” Drummond finally said, lowering his binoculars and handing them off to Freise.

“Oh, I think we can do better than that,” Freise replied. He was struggling out of his jacket, starting to rummage in the top of his bag. “God will be with us.”

“Well, God might be, but you won’t,” Drummond said. “I’m going in alone.”

“The hell you are ... .”

Sighing, Drummond rocked back on his haunches, wondering if he was going to have to slug the priest to make him listen to reason.

“Frank, listen to me. You’re in great shape, but you’ve
got
to be over seventy. If anything goes wrong–“ Drummond bit off what he had been about to say and stood up, checking his watch.

“Look. You wait here, and I’ll scout out the castle. We don’t even know if we can get in, for God’s sake. If we can’t, it’s over–at least for now. If I
can
get in, and there
is
somebody there–well, I can’t tell you what to do, but if I’m not back in–say, ten minutes–then if I were you, I’d haul ass back to the car and head for the nearest Catholic church I could find, and then I’d call my boss in Rome.” Drummond gave Freise the steadiest look he could manage. “Listen, it’s more than I could do for
you,
if positions were reversed.”

With obvious reluctance, Father Freise nodded.

“I suppose you’d better give me the car keys, then,” he said.

“They’re in the ignition,” Drummond replied. “Okay, dammit. Ten minutes. Just one thing, though.” Freise reached across to hug Drummond, pressing his forehead against the younger man’s shoulder for just a second.

“Go with God,” he whispered.

Drummond let the old man hold him for a second or two more, then patted him awkwardly on the shoulder and pulled away, not looking back as he stood and moved off into the darkness, keeping low. He had shifted the Beretta into the pocket of his leather jacket as he crouched with Freise back in the forest, and now he shoved his right hand into the pocket to steady the weapon as he broke into a jog, his other hand going into the left—hand pocket to balance himself as he ran. Along with the extra ammo he had put there, the hand closed unexpectedly on the rosary Father Freise had given him what seemed like a lifetime ago. He pulled it out as he flattened himself against the side of the barbican arch that guarded the approach across the castle’s drawbridge.

With the rosary beads in one hand and Beretta at the ready in the other, close beside his head, he thumbed off the safety and listened, straining for any hint of sound that might be reaction to his approach. Nothing moved. When he had counted to twenty by his racing pulse, he cast a quick look back the way he had come, then looped the rosary beads over his head and tucked the cross inside his jacket–it
might
help!–and began slowly sidling along the barbican wall toward the open arch.

Back at the edge of the meadow, Freise watched Drummond through the field glasses until he passed from the moonlight to the shadow of the barbican arch, then put the glasses aside and pulled a black cassock from his bag. His fingers trembled a little as he put it on and did up the buttons, and for courage he made himself recite the proper prayers as he started donning the other priestly garments that he hoped would reassure the men inside–for they had seemed to value the fact he was a priest, fifty years before.

“Place upon my head, O Lord, the helmet of salvation,” he murmured, as he laid the white rectangle of the amice over his head like a hood, “that Thy servant may be free from evil.” He pushed it back around his neck and tied the strings across his chest, then pulled an alb over his head.

“Endow me, O Lord, with the garment of innocence and the vesture of light, that I may worthily receive Thy gifts and worthily dispense them,” he whispered.

Over the long white alb with its white cord cincture he donned a stole, the set prayers turning to wordless supplications for protection as he kissed the cross on the center and looped it over his head, crossing the ends on his chest and securing the ends under the cincture, the way priests had done since before the Order of the Sword was founded, more than seven hundred years ago.

What had happened to the order was clear, reading between the lines of the history of the order that Freise had seen that morning. The document had never mentioned the word
vampire,
but putting the account together with what Freise knew from his own experience, that had to be the nature of the offense which had put them beyond the pale for 700 years–though their undoubted piety and repentance during that time had mitigated against the Church actually setting out to destroy them.

Of course, the Church
could
be wrong; the knights
could
be evil, as Kluge and his minions undoubtedly were. But Freise didn’t want to believe that; and was willing to wager his life–and indeed, his soul, if the old legends about vampires were true–on the supposition that the Knights of the Sword were
not
evil.

And if he was wrong? Well, he had God’s armor to protect him. As he drew the white cope around his shoulders, snapping the clasp of the cross—adorned morse that was almost like a breastplate, he hoped it was more effective than garlic or sunlight or crosses ... .

Thus adorned in the whole armor of God, he ducked his head to look at his watch, then squared his shoulders and turned to look out at the castle in the moonlight.

“Never
could
tell time by the moonlight,” he grumbled to himself, by way of excusing what he was about to do–for he knew Drummond had not been gone for more than five minutes, at the most.

Then, pocketing the flashlight he had brought, he set out across the meadow after Drummond.

* * *

Back at the road, Kluge walked over to the white Mercedes and opened the door, leaning in to pull the keys from the ignition. He had shed his Euro Plasma coverall, and he slipped the keys to the Mercedes into one of the outside pockets of his black SS tunic as he walked back to where his followers were waiting obediently by the van, his knights and the rabble in two distinct groups. It was nearly dark, but he had no need of light, for he could see as well as other men saw on a rainy afternoon, and knew that they could, too.

He had allowed his “expendables” another round of “refreshment” before disembarking from the van, and they were restless, keen for the hunt. The eighteen leather—clad punkers were armed with a variety of weapons, mostly left over from the Second World War. The girl in the fishnet stockings and Doc Martins cradled a Schmeisser submachine gun under her arm, as did one or two others. A thin, ascetic—looking boy with closely cropped hair held a Mauser machine pistol and had a pair of Lugers stuffed into the waistband of his red plaid trousers. Magda and the rest were similarly armed, and all carried knives in imitation of Kluge, although none of them dared to carry the sacred black SS dagger like the one worn by their master and the knights.

Kluge studied their faces, looking for any sign of weakness before he spoke.

“When we go into the woods, spread out, but keep in sight of one another. If you stumble upon Drummond and the priest,
take them alive,
understand? I need to know how much they know about us before they die. If you disobey, it will not be nice. “

Looking at their faces as he spoke, Kluge knew that the lesson they had learned as Jurg’s executioners had not been forgotten. And the knights standing silently behind them, with folded hands resting on their sword hilts, would be certain that no one forgot in the heat of battle.

“When we get to the castle,” he continued, “no one shoots unless I give the command. Got it?”

The punkers nodded in mute agreement.

“All right, then. Let’s go.”

Cocking his Walther submachine gun, Kluge led his followers into the woods.

* * *

Drummond crouched down on his haunches and kept as low as possible as he slowly worked his way toward the barbican arch. At the drawbridge he paused, testing it with only part of his weight, then slowly proceeded on tip—toe, careful not to make any sound.

Across the drawbridge, Drummond came to the gates themselves. Shoving against one and then the other, first tentatively and then with all his might, he failed to budge either of the massive, iron—studded doors. Looking around, he noticed another, much smaller door to the left of the gates, so he glided silently over to that.

Pistol at the ready, Drummond flattened himself against the wall next to the SIn all door. Crouching down, he leaned slightly forward and used his free hand to shove experimentally against the bottom of the door. The door swung open easily and bumped against the inside wall. The hollow bang sounded like a thunder—clap to Drummond’s taut senses.

Straining every muscle in his body, Drummond tried to hear hear any sound coming from beyond the open door, but nothing stirred the silence of the night. Still crouching, Drummond leaped into the doorway, assuming a combat stance, eyes and pistol sweeping the darkness ahead, ready to blast anything that moved.

Nothing.

Slowly Drummond stood, raising the muzzle of the pistol close beside his face again, and stepped through the open doorway. He found himself in a small room at the base of a narrow turnpike stair that led upward into even greater darkness.

Drummond’s mouth was dry with fear as he slowly began to climb the winding stairs. The absolute blackness was pierced only by the occasional shaft of moonlight that edged in through the arrow slits in the curved wall. The steps were uneven, and he stumbled. Fear had become a tangible, coppery taste in Drummond’s mouth by the time he reached the top of the stairs.

There was no landing at the top—just another small door set into the wall, Drummond turned the stirrup—shaped latch and gently pressed against the door. Silently, on well—greased hinge pegs, the door swung open. The high—ceilinged room beyond was filled with the machinery used to raise and lower the portcullis of the castle. Two large, cross—shaped arrow slits admitted a flood of moonlight to the room, casting an eerie checkerboard pattern on the floor as it passed, wraithlike, through the raised portcullis. Barely visible in the half—light was another small door on the opposite wall.

Carefully, his back to the wall, Drummond made his way past the first of the two huge windlasses used to raise the portcullis—and had just about reached the center of the room when he felt the floor vanish beneath him.

Throwing his arms out wide, Drummond let out a yelp as he tried to catch himself. His knee banged sharply against the stone edge of the murder hole set into the floor above the castle’s gates, as he careened into an awkward half—sitting position and somehow managed not to fall through.

He was still gasping with panic by the time he became sure he was not going to fall any farther. After carefully feeling about him in the gloom, he managed to shift his footing and scramble precariously to a standing position again, feet straddling the opening. But as he blessed his good fortune at not having fallen victim to the hole, he realized that he no longer held his pistol.

Drummond felt around on the floor for what seemed like hours trying to find his gun, but with no success. Finally, fearing the worst, he peered down through the hole. There, twenty feet below, lying in a brightly illuminated patch of grass, Drummond could see the Beretta.