Authors: Scott G. Mariani
Joel raised the cross higher and dragged himself onwards.
Alex and Rumble had ducked out of sight of their captors and were running through the castle. Darting through an arched doorway, they found themselves in an armoury room filled with ancient cannons and suits of armour. Swords, battle shields, halberds and spears decorated the walls. Alex spotted a side door lying ajar, beyond it a long, dark passage. ‘I think this could be somewhere to hide, Harry.’
Rumble made no reply.
‘Harry?’ She turned around.
Just in time to see Rumble falling to his knees. His severed head blinked up at her in surprise before it rolled away across the floor; then his decapitated body slumped down on its belly.
Lillith stepped over him with a wild fire dancing in her eyes.
‘This is all your doing, bitch.’ As she spat out the words, she swung her bloody sabre hard and fast, and Alex only just managed to twist out of the way of the hissing blade. She somersaulted backwards and landed on her feet. An array of glittering weapons were mounted across a crimson shield on the wall just a few feet away. Leaping up, her fingers closed on the basket hilt of a long, curved sword.
Lillith’s teeth were bared as she took another vicious swing that would have lifted Alex’s head clean from her shoulders if she hadn’t parried the blow with her own blade. The high armoury room filled with the zinging clash of steel on steel as Lillith struck and slashed with ferocious energy. Alex desperately blocked every stroke.
‘You can’t beat me,’ Lillith sneered. Alex was backed up almost to the wall now, with nowhere to go. The sabre came whooshing at her sideways. She brought her own sword up to deflect it, but the angle was awkward and the crashing impact of the blades loosened her grip on her hilt. Her weapon clattered to the flagstones.
‘Ha! What did I tell you?’ Lillith backed off a step, grinning. She raised her sabre for the killing blow and was just about to strike, when she faltered and a cry of pain burst out of her lips.
As Lillith toppled over to the floor, Alex caught a glimpse of Joel Solomon framed in the archway on the far side of the armoury room. He was barely able to stand, covered in blood. Then she, too, felt the pain and began to scramble away in fear. Lillith crawled like a maimed insect towards the far exit. As Joel came on a step, dripping blood, Alex waited for the final surge of the cross’s power to destroy her. Their eyes met.
‘Go on, then,’ she shouted at him. ‘Finish me.’
A few steps, and the force of the cross would tear her apart. He seemed about to come running at her – then he stopped and leaned weakly against the archway.
‘I can’t,’ he mumbled. He screwed his eyes shut and for a moment he seemed about to faint. ‘I can’t.’
‘It’s what you want, isn’t it? You told me that next time you saw me, you’d destroy me. What are you waiting for?’
Tears ran through the blood on his tortured face. ‘Why you? Why did you have to be one?’
‘Finish it!’ she yelled. ‘Don’t draw it out. Get it done.’
He shook his head. Wearily raised his empty hand and pointed towards the side door and the winding, dark passage Alex had spotted earlier.
‘Get out of here. Don’t let me see you again.’ Then he stepped back, and kept moving away from her, lowering the cross.
Alex climbed shakily to her feet and stumbled through the arch into the echoing corridor. Her footsteps quickened, and she ran and ran until she was lost deep inside the castle’s hidden passages. As she stumbled onwards in the dark, a strange sound came from her throat. One she hadn’t heard herself make for over a hundred years.
She was crying.
Gabriel Stone stormed through his castle, cursing Lillith for having left his side. He shouted for his ghoul. Lonsdale appeared from behind some drapes.
‘What are you hiding there for?’ Stone yelled at him in fury. ‘You’re supposed to protect me, not go skulking off like a rat. Get back there and kill the human.’
Lonsdale swallowed and looked blank. ‘How?’
‘Zachary has a gun,’ Stone snapped. ‘Even you can work a gun, can’t you?’
They rushed into a hallway to find Zachary thundering down the grand staircase towards them, clutching the gun he’d been keeping in his quarters. The shiny, long-barrelled .357 magnum revolver was dwarfed in his fist. Stone grabbed it from him.
That was when Lillith appeared in the doorway behind them. Her eyes were ringed with black and she was unsteady on her feet. Her chest heaved with the effort to breathe.
‘He’s coming. He’s right behind me.’
Zachary’s eyes opened wide with horror, and he ran over to a window overlooking the outer wall.
‘I’m outta here,’ he rasped. He drew back his massive fist and smashed it through the glass, piled himself through the jagged hole and disappeared into the night.
Stone and Lillith were about to follow, when they both simultaneously felt the crippling power of the cross wash over them once more. Lillith fell back from the window, clutching herself and crying out in fear. Stone whirled round to see the human Joel Solomon limping towards them. Seizing Lillith’s arm, Stone took off at a staggering run, knocking over a table and shattering a vase in his haste to get away.
‘Help me, ghoul!’ he roared, tossing the gun to Lonsdale. But Lonsdale stared in terror at Joel, and fled in his master’s wake. The vampires crashed through a doorway and emerged on the castle’s upper battlement. A narrow walkway ran along the rim of the wall, leading to a round turret that had once been used to spot approaching enemy armies. Beyond the battlement wall, the sheer cliff face dropped away into the night.
Lillith screamed. The human had appeared on the battlement behind them.
Joel didn’t know how much longer he could go on. A black mist was rising up to cloud his vision, but he could still see the vampires frantically trying to escape along the battlement wall. Only one of them seemed unaffected, the haggard, wild-eyed man whom Gabriel Stone was clutching tightly behind him like a shield. His face looked familiar, but through the fog of his pain and nausea Joel couldn’t place it. He barely even registered the large, heavy handgun in the man’s fist.
As he staggered out onto the battlement after them, the biting wind almost knocked him off his feet. He steadied himself and took another step towards them. They were backing away towards the tall round turret, and he had them cornered.
‘You’re finished, Stone!’ he shouted through the roar of the wind, blinking the driving snowflakes out of his eyes. ‘It’s over!’
He took two more steps forward and heard the leather-clad woman vampire let out another tortured wail as she pressed herself desperately against the far wall of the turret.
Gabriel Stone seemed to have shrivelled with terror. He shoved his servant roughly onto the battlement.
‘Kill him! Shoot him! Don’t just stand there, Lonsdale!’
Lonsdale moved cautiously along the wall. Raised the pistol and took an unsteady aim at Joel.
‘Kill him!’ Stone roared.
Alex had lost all sense of where she was when she suddenly smelled the night air. She ran out of the winding passage to find herself standing on the high outer castle wall. The howling gale ripped at her hair.
Fifty yards away through the blizzard she could see Gabriel Stone and Lillith. They were cowering, cringing in terror and fury at the top of a tower at the very far corner of the opposite battlement wall. Running her eye along, she spotted Joel’s ragged, bloody figure, dragging himself along the walkway with the cross in his fist. She was out of its range, but Stone and Lillith were dangerously close to it and had nowhere left to run. A few more steps, and it was over for them.
Standing halfway between Joel and the two vampires was Stone’s ghoul, Lonsdale. In his hand was a big revolver. Alex watched helplessly as Lonsdale aimed it at Joel. Stone’s screaming commands to shoot were being snatched away by the wind.
Joel must have seen the gun, but he was behaving as if he no longer cared. He took another limping step and raised the cross higher.
There was nothing Alex could do to stop what was about to happen.
Lonsdale seemed to hesitate, then, half-turning his face away, he squeezed the trigger. The revolver recoiled up in his hand, a halo of white flame bursting from its muzzle.
Joel kept coming. Lonsdale fired again, and this time his bullet found its mark. Blood spattered on the snowy battlements. Joel flailed with his arms and went down on his back, still clutching the cross.
‘Joel!’ Alex screamed. But she was powerless to do anything – as long as he held the cross she couldn’t go near him. His body lay slumped on the battlement. Snowflakes were settling rapidly over him, turning red as they melted in his blood. He wasn’t moving.
Jeremy Lonsdale lowered the heavy pistol. He stared at the fallen man he’d just shot. Turned to look at Gabriel Stone in the tower behind him. The vampire was gesticulating wildly at him through the blizzard.
‘Pick up the cross, you cretin. Get it away from us! Throw it over the cliff!’ Stone’s voice was cracked with pain. Lillith was on her hands and knees beside him in the tower, her black hair plastered over her face as she clutched her head and her body shook violently.
Lonsdale nodded. He understood what he had to do. Still holding the gun, he walked slowly over to the body in the snow and bent down to pick up the cross from the limp fingers of his victim. Blood was seeping across the battlement, dripping down the wall; red on white under the black sky.
Lonsdale turned away, the cross still in his grasp. It seemed to thrum in his hand, and was warm to the touch. He looked out over the craggy castle wall, at the swirling snow and the distant mountains. The wind whipped at his clothes. He raised his arm to hurl it far over the battlement, where it would go spinning and tumbling a thousand feet before it smashed into a million pieces against the rocks below. His master would be saved. The war would be won – thanks to him, Jeremy Lonsdale. The power was his.
He grunted with effort as he hurled the heavy object in his fist. It sailed high up in an arc over the battlements and then dropped away into the night. Then, slowly, he turned to face Gabriel Stone.
Still holding the cross. It was the big revolver that he’d thrown away. He had no further need for it. But the cross…
He looked down at it. Its thrumming warmth spread up his arm.
‘No,’ he said softly. And took a step towards the two vampires.
‘Throw it, ghoul!’ Stone’s scream of desperation cut through the howling wind.
‘No,’ Lonsdale repeated, loudly this time, and took another step. ‘You’ve come into my life and poisoned everything. You’ve taken everything from me, taken away the one person I loved. Look at what I’ve become. And now you’ve made me a murderer for you.’
‘Jeremy, stay away from us. I’m commanding you—’
‘I’ve taken enough of your orders, vampire.’ Lonsdale stood straighten There was a glow in his eyes and his face was contorted as he slowly approached the turret. His knuckles were white on the shaft of the cross. ‘I don’t give a damn what happens to me any more,’ he shouted. ‘But by God I’m going to destroy you!’
Stone was frantically trying to shield Lillith with his body, absorbing the energy blast in a bid to save her. But the power of the cross, now just a few yards away, was too much for him. As Lonsdale came closer, Stone collapsed inside the turret beside Lillith. He cried out. Smoking blisters burst out across his skin. Lillith was writhing and shrieking. In one last desperate surge of energy she raised herself to her knees, drew out her sabre and hurled it with all the strength she had left.
The blade whirled hissing through the blizzard. Lonsdale flinched as he saw it flying towards him, but too late. Its point drove hard into his chest and went right through him, piercing his heart and sticking out of his back. He staggered, gasping, blood sputtering from his lips, and for a moment he seemed about to go tumbling down over the battlement, taking the cross with him.
But still he kept on coming, coughing blood, staggering towards them in a jerky dying gait, the hilt of the sabre protruding grotesquely from his chest. His bloody lips were spread into a lunatic grin.
The vampires screamed their fury. There was nowhere to run.
Unless…
Lillith grasped her brother’s arm. They looked at one another, and understanding flashed between them. Staggering to their feet in the last instant before the cross destroyed them utterly and forever, they linked hands and threw themselves off the turret.
Alex watched from a distance as their bodies went spinning down. After the first hundred feet their linked hands broke apart and they fell separately, turning over and over like tiny dolls. Then the shadows engulfed them and they vanished into the deep, dark valley.
Lonsdale had made it to the turret. Moving like a zombie now as he virtually died on his feet, he clambered up its steps and lurched to the spot where Stone and Lillith had jumped. With his dying breath, he threw the cross over the turret wall and it went tumbling down after them. Then he slumped face down. The weight of his body pushed the sabre through his chest up to the hilt so that the blade stuck up out of his back like a bloody flagpole. He didn’t move again.
Joel hadn’t moved either.
With a cry of despair, Alex leapt down from the opposite battlement and sprinted across the snowy courtyard to scramble up the wall and get to Joel. She shouted his name over and over as he lay there immobile. The snow was stained red all around him, but the sight of his blood meant nothing to her now – only that he was dying.
She turned him over. His eyes were shut. She said his name again, ran her fingers through his hair.
His eyes fluttered open. ‘Alex…’ he whispered.
‘You did it, Joel. Stone’s gone. It’s over.’
He smiled weakly, then closed his eyes again. His breathing was shallow. Alex knew he wouldn’t last long.