The House on Blackstone Moor (The Blackstone Vampires) (32 page)

“If you do not want my son, you will burn in Hell!”

I was trying to resign myself to such a fate. but then someone shouted, “She will not!”

I turned to see Louis flying straight toward us. In a moment he was upon us and tearing me from my enemy’s death grip. How good it felt to be in the haven of his strong arms.

Eco’s father went to join Satan, his grisly face mottled with rage.

Yet, if I was saved, Louis’ father was not for he was involved in a terrible battle with Satan.

“His hatred is the strongest for my father, for he loved him the most!” Louis wanted to go to him but I held him back.

“Louis, it’s too late. Please, I can’t lose you now.”

Satan was too strong. His threatening gaze bore into Louis. “If you wish to burn with your compatriot, be my guest.”

Here Satan was joined by his own loyal angels along with Eco’s father.

“Come and taste the flames of Hell, they burn for you all!”

Though I was nowhere near, I could feel the horrific intensity of those blood-red flames. I have never known any heat like it. Truly it was not of this world.

“Those traitors to Satan have neither the protection of Heaven nor of Hell, go to your destiny and burn!”

This was Satan’s cry.

Louis’ sorrow burst forth when his father and the rest of his angels were pushed ever closer to the mouth of Hell until they were inside. 

How awful were their anguished cries.

“Father, I come!” Louis shouted as again he rushed to help before I could stop him.

But he was ordered back by his father who, though burning, tried to protect him. “My son, Hell is not for you. You were damned through no fault of your own!” he wailed in agony.

Yet Eco was headed for Louis now with Satan at his side, for they were determined that Louis too should go to Hell.

With none of his angels to protect him, Louis was seized and carried to the flames.

Just as they neared this opening to Hell, Louis’ father reached out and drew them in until they were also engulfed in flame: all of Satan’s angels along with Eco and Satan and Eco’s father, too.

We watched as the flames swallowed them up, and Louis still safe, with me.

“Satan and his demons will not feel Hell’s flames.” Louis murmured. “My father and his angels will.”

Poor Louis had been helpless to save his father—as though his power counted for nothing.

His father would burn there, neither being destroyed nor harmed—but enduring the agony of Hell.

I reached out to comfort him. “I am sorry,” I said.

“Yes, Father is gone from this world. It was his destiny, it always had been.”

He was silent for a moment. And I saw how overcome he was with emotion. He nodded. “This battle at last has ended, for now at least. But be assured there will be countless more battles between good and evil for it has always been so.”

We sat there, weary but undefeated. The church was little more than a ruin, and the smoke from the sulfurous fires still billowed about. Yet, sunlight had begun to stream in, as though to reclaim the church from the dreaded darkness of evil.

The maids were weeping and praying to God for their deliverance. A lump lodged in my throat at the sight of these helpless girls who were now free to live their lives.

Louis must have read the emotion on my face. “Yes,” he smiled.  “They do right, I would thank him too if he would let me.”

My heart was touched by his words for there was such poignant truth about them.

My Louis would always yearn for forgiveness, despite knowing it was an impossibility—an outcome that would never happen.

“Come, Rose. Let us leave here.”

We would make our way to the Lodge sisters with me laid out in the back of a wagon, kindly provided for us by a grateful Egton resident.

There was so much I wished to tell him, nearly all of it about leaving him behind in Blackstone House. But he would not listen. “Rose, I wished you and Marta to leave. That is the end of it. Do not dwell on such horror, there has been far too much of it.”

I began to sob at the mention of her name
,
only to hear Louis say he knew of her fate for his father had told him of her horrible death. “I cannot see the future as he was able to…” he said grimly.

If he had, we would have been prepared for the horror we were about to discover.

It was nearly evening as we made our way to the Lodge cottage
. Neither of us could wait to see the children or our friends.

We spoke of that but we spoke of other things as well. I wondered how Louis came to find me there in Egton, so I asked him.

“Eco actually told me where you were. He even told me about Egton and what he had been doing there, how he had formed a coven and elicited the cooperation of the vicar; a man he claimed was so weak he could have been sold any bill of goods. Eco then proceeded to tell me some filthy stuff he had found out about the vicar and some of his cohorts. ‘He was riddled with sin so I knew I should have some fun there.’ Those were his very words!”

Louis looked hard into my face and though the light was already fading, I could just make out his features. “Rose, he
wanted
the battle to happen.”

“But wouldn’t that have defeated his plans in Egton, like it did?”

Louis shrugged. “He has always done this. And as for our battles, his and mine, I think he just thought the time was right for one. But he’s gone now to Hell to serve his master there.”

“But he could leave, couldn’t he?”

Louis sighed. “Those who serve Satan are often surprised, for Satan uses his servants and will keep those he takes to Hell for thousands of years, so he shall probably keep Eco.”

I thought of Louis’ father then. “And your father, what of his fate?”

“Friend and foe alike shall know Hell’s heat, Rose, though for the good, the heat is agony.”

It was nearly impossible to imagine such a thing, immortal beings enduring in hell, feeling the heat without perishing, but such was their existence.

“Come now, we must journey on for it will soon be dusk.”

I nodded and before I knew it I had fallen asleep.

*

The cottage came into view at last, tucked as it was amongst trees and woodland for it bordered a forest.

Just as we neared it Louis suddenly stiffened. Clearly something was wrong. I felt it too, but after he did.

“What is it, Louis?”

He didn’t answer; instead he just jumped from the wagon. I followed as quickly as I could.

He was some yards ahead of me, bent and staring down at something.

His terrible scream caused me to stumble. It was the like the cry of an animal in pain.

I called to him but he didn’t answer. Picking myself up I rushed to him only to find the horror he first saw—the mutilated corpses of Dr. Antor and the sisters scattered obscenely upon the ground.

They each looked as if they had been torn apart from limb to limb, even their heads were off. Clearly, they had deliberately been destroyed so they could never be returned to the world of the living.

I wondered if it was vampire killers, but Louis’ pronouncement told me otherwise. He only said one word: “Eco.”

We rushed to the cottage to find him with the children. They lay near him, covered as if asleep. Neither Ada nor Simon moved.

From the expression on Eco’s face we knew something was very wrong.

“They are not yet destroyed, nearly but not yet.”

Louis cried out and Eco put his hand up. “Not another step or I will deal the final death blow!”

Before Louis could reply, a swarm of his vampiric children appeared.

Eco smiled evilly. “Gain some, lose some, I can always conjure more if I wish.”

Louis and I stared at one another. I started for the children for I wished to see how they were.

“Not you either. They will attack you and I shall destroy them.” He nodded toward the children.

It was a stalemate. 

“You beast from Hell!” Louis cried.

Though I knew to whom I pleaded, I begged anyway. “Isn’t it bad enough you destroyed our friends, must you torture the children?”

“They are not tortured, they are merely staked,” he replied, now uncovering them.

Small wooden stakes stuck out of their bloodied chests. “No! What have you done?” I fell to my knees as my heart broke in tiny pieces.

Eco smiled back, that maddening, heartless smile. “I have punctured their hearts, but it is not fatal—if I decide it should be, it will be.”

I pleaded with him not to punish them. He didn’t even answer me. His mad eyes were fixed upon Louis.

“Don’t you understand what I have done, Louis? Do not hate me, you can save them. Not you, not with
your
blood, for your blood is not entirely human or entirely vampiric.” He nodded toward me. “
She
is human though,
her
blood can save them. You know it can, Louis. Therefore you must know what you should do!”

Louis lunged at him, and in an instant Eco had ordered his beasts to attack. 

I screamed for the horror at Blackstone House was still fresh in my mind. “No!” I cried as their teeth tore into my still healing flesh.

Louis pried them away from my body, but the pain was brutal. I cried out; he felt my agony. I wept for him as well as for myself.

Suddenly, Eco ordered them off and Louis tended my wounds. “You are a monster and deserve the vilest of deaths.”

“No Louis, there is no reason for rage—you can turn this around. It is what you really want, you know you do. She can’t take much more. Look at her!”

Louis gazed into my eyes. “Please, Louis,” I begged. “Save them!”

He sat frozen at first. Only after Eco pushed the stakes further did he move.

The creatures hissed and spat. I thought Eco would order them to attack me again, but he didn’t.

Instead, he made for the door. “I will take my leave now. Come, children.”

They were gone in a moment.

Louis hurried to the children. He reached out and touched them.

“Aren’t you going to do anything?” I said weakly.

I couldn’t stand his inaction. They would perish unless he acted soon.

“Please, Louis!” I coughed, the exertion causing a sharper, unbearable pain. “There isn’t a moment to spare. We must save them!”

He sighed.  “It is no good, don’t you see? It is a curse and only that, my love.”

“But, Louis, you mustn’t let them be destroyed!”

“I would die with them.”

“But you cannot… you cannot leave me. No more words, just these, please, I beg you! My blood would save them—you know it would.”

I managed to lift myself up and go to the children with great difficulty. But my determination gave me a new strength to carry on, and pull the stake from Ada’s little chest. I turned toward Simon but Louis had already removed that stake. “You know what this will mean?”

I smiled sadly. “My death—so what? I only half-lived anyway.”

“I will not kill you or force my existence upon you, Rose. That is one sin I shall not commit. I love you too much.” His eyes shone with an unholy light. A fierce glow.

“Really? Well if you won’t, then I shall!” I cried as I tore open my own wrists with one of the stakes.

I held my bleeding wrists over Ada’s mouth first. “Drink, my dearest darlings, for this is all I have to give you.”

I heard their voices, they sounded weak but I heard them
, first Ada and then Simon crying out in pain. I remember calling to them and then hearing Louis shout my name but then it all stopped and I could hear nothing.

And then I felt myself being pulled away into a place I didn’t know, a place of shadows and silence. There amongst the shadows were fleeting glimmers of light.

I knew I was dead.

I saw a bridge that spanned two spheres, one filled with light, the other filled with flames. The question was, could I choose my direction?

I heard my name then. “Rose! Rose!”

I turned to see my mother and sisters and my brother calling to me. They were bathed in light—beautiful light that had warm comfort and love imbued within its glittering rays. I wished to go to them, yet as I tried to move, I found I could not.

Truly, I am not certain if I had a body, all I know is I felt they were too far from me and impossible to reach.

“I cannot come!” It was agony to be apart from them but the more upset I felt, the greater love I sensed from them, my family—not evil spirits pretending to be them.

“Mother!”

Yet even as I called to her, I heard another voice answer, a voice both frightening and familiar at the same time.
“Rose!”

It was my father—calling to me in the most piteous tones.