Aimee was the first to hear Father Trevelyan's shouts. She found him, in agony, on the vestibule floor. “Sacre,” she cried, helping him sit. “You have broken your arm!”
Luis, hearing the uproar, hurried to the vestibule. He was mortified to see the chapel door standing open and hurried to close it. But, before he could, he caught a glimpse outside – and it was as if time had reversed itself. It was the night that his mother and sister died, and here he was again helplessly watching the blood-thirsty killers.
He saw Felix attack a Templar; watched them fall. He heard the mummy laughing from the ground. He saw the others close in. And, unable to look away, he saw one of the knights decapitate Felix. Luis, his hands white gripping the door, yelled from the pit of his soul to release his horror and rage; for Felix, for Eve, for his parents, his sister, for his lost Micheline.
“I'm all right,” the priest said, a thousand miles away. He didn't sound all right. Somewhere closer he heard, “Help Luis. Close the door!” Luis suddenly remembered the here and now and knew his friends needed him. “I have it,” he told Aimee as he threw the chapel door closed.
No sooner was the locking bar back in place than the pounding started again.
Aimee guided Trevelyan into the nave, and to the sanctuary, as she called out the materials she'd need for a splint. Luis hurried to collect them.
The priest offered no resistance and seemed resigned – to everything. “A life in hiding. Back in Cornwall, here in Paradis,” Trevelyan said wistfully. “A cowardly life in hiding.” Tears rolled down cheeks now showing their age. “Waiting, I told myself. I was waiting for the proper moment. To see… something. To experience… anything. To join the world. Just as soon as the fear was gone.” Father Trevelyan, cradling his broken arm, sagged onto the steps. Defeated, exhausted, trembling with pain or fear (Aimee didn't know which). She braced his arm and held him while he cried.
“I guess I waited too long.”
Twenty
A large web barred their path and wavered in the candlelight. A clammy current of air brought goose flesh to Brandy's arm. The damp of the tunnel deepened to a cloying mustiness. She pushed through the web and, only then, realized its floor dropped away and the passage opened into black nothingness. “Hold up,” Brandy called back in a whisper. “We're at the end of the tunnel. Let me see where we are.” She bent, as her overstuffed clothing allowed, and extended the candle beyond the mouth of the tunnel. It flickered with the foul damp air and Brandy peered through the gloom.
“It looks… dungeon-y,” Brandy whispered.
“Dungeony?”
She nodded. “It's a wreck.”
Ray, still crouching, didn't care how it looked. His calves, the backs of his thighs and his ass cheeks screamed with shooting pains. He just wanted to stand. “If there aren't any vampires or alligators… let's go.”
Brandy almost stepped out - when something told her to look again. She lowered the candle and saw the tunnel opened into the cellar near the ceiling, seven or eight feet above the floor. She gasped.
“What's the matter?”
“At the risk of sounding cliché; that first step's a doozy.”
Brandy turned her fanny to the mouth of the tunnel. She set her monster bag and candle to the side and extended her hand to Ray. “Lower me.”
Ray did and, when she was fully extended, let her drop the last few feet to the floor. He handed down her bag, the candle (incredibly still lit), and his bag. Mindful of the breakables in his pockets, Ray nursemaided the hem of his cassock over the tunnel's edge and dangled himself. His height brought the floor closer; an easy drop. Brandy took up bag and candle. Ray, squinting through the gloom, laid his hand on her shoulder and allowed himself to be led into the cold stone enclosure.
That's just what it was; a stone box that, in its day, was inescapable and impenetrable. Massive, squat arches, built of round river stones in white mortar to support the weight of a fortress. The fortress was gone, the mortar discolored and in patches fallen away over the centuries.
“You can almost hear the ghosts of the old prisoners.”
Brandy lit his face with the candle. “Let's hope that's what you're hearing,” she whispered. Then she laid a finger to her lips. “We'd better be quiet now. They can reach us if they hear us and Luis says they have good hearing.”
Ray raised his hands; a silent oath.
The dark made the dungeon appear larger than it was and crossing was hazardous. They slipped and tripped over broken floors, rotted wood splintered and jutting, and dislodged and broken stones exposed by time, coated with slime owing (probably) to the old well. It stank, not of the grave, but of low tide and Brandy knew they were close. She found the far side of the enclosure and the tunnel to the well where Luis said it would be. She examined it, stifled a laugh and whispered to Ray, “You're gonna love this.”
He followed Brandy's firelight to - a rabbit hole. Ray sagged, physically and mentally, as his earlier complaints about the tiny ossuary tunnel faded to mist. Brandy lowered the candle to the hole.
“Don't!” Ray grabbed her arm.
“I'm just trying to see what's ahead.”
“It doesn't matter. The light could give us away. And we're going regardless, aren't we? It's moonlight from here on out.” Brandy nodded. “Follow me when we get outside and stay close. We'll circle the back…”
“Do you think we can outrun them dressed this way?”
“Maybe we don't have to.” Ray hesitated. “When we were on the balcony discussing the car keys, I heard them. The horses, I mean. I heard them whinnying and got to thinking, maybe we could use them.”
“Templar horses?” Brandy said doubtfully. “Dead horses?”
“Dead,” Ray agreed, “but they don't need keys.”
“This is all too… I can ride but can you?”
“I can ride anything on God's earth.”
“Can we get to them?”
“A minute ago you were wondering if we could outrun them for a half-mile. Now you're doubting we can outrun them for thirty yards?”
“I'm wondering why we're doing this at all,” Brandy said.
“It's your idea.”
“Yeah. I know.” Brandy reluctantly extinguished the candle.
In the dark, they agreed they were ready and started for the well. Ray led now, through the hole and short tunnel, crawling, with Brandy on his heels. It was horrid going, blackness and slime, with only their labored breathing and the soft clink of the wine bottles as accompaniment.
Moonlight, reaching into the well, exposed the end of the tunnel. Ray reached it, peeked out, and was slapped in the face by a rising dankness. His stomach rolled, but he kept going. He reached into the well and ran his hand across the stones…
“Gaaaaah, it's slimy!”
“Ray, shhhhhh!”
…searching for the cavities described by Luis; specific stones omitted during construction that created a ladder in the well wall. Ray grabbed hold. He found his footing. “Be careful. It's slippery.” And, with the cincture around his wrist and the alb bag over his shoulder, started up.
The full moon starkly lit the top five feet of the well interior and bathed the shaft around Ray in a blue glow. As he climbed, he looked below to just make out Brandy as she poked her head from the dungeon tunnel, and above to see a million stars glisten in the night. He neared the top and Ray felt the cool fresh air. Another step and he took in a deep, delicious lung full. At the top, he reached for the rim.
A vampire grabbed his wrist.
Ray screamed, startled, and lost his grip on the ladder. He would have fallen had it not been for the hold on him; a hold so tight he feared his wrist would snap.
Several hours earlier, his attacker had been Aurore Vasser, the little sister of the Gendarmerie. Then, for a short while, she was dead. Now, staring down with a voracious look in her brilliant yellow eyes, hissing like a snake, she was something else altogether.
“Ray!” Brandy's cry echoed from
below.
Ray kicked up. He caught his feet on opposite sides of the well, braced them as best he could on the slime, jammed his back against the wall and bridged his body with all the pressure he could muster. At the same time, he clutched the vampire's wrist and yanked down with all his might. The vampire fell into the well on top of him. Ray dropped one foot, rolled and shoved the grasping creature down past him.
“Look out!” Ray yelled as she fell screaming.
Brandy pulled back into the tunnel and just avoided being hit as the vampire hurtled past her. The monster disappeared into the dark. Then a splash reverberated up from the depths.
Ray dug into the walls, righted himself and scrambled up out of the well. He called to Brandy and, hearing she was safe, told her to follow. She slipped from the tunnel and started up the slimy ladder. In the dark below the vampire surfaced. Though Ray couldn't see her, and Brandy was too busy to look, they had no trouble hearing. She was screaming and slapping the water like a cat thrown in a river. Brandy reached the top and Ray hoisted her, and her bag o' plenty, up over the edge.
Outside of the vampire in the well, it appeared they were alone. Both knew it wouldn't last long. “She's going to bring them down on us.” As if in answer, the screaming and splashing stopped.
But any hopes they had were dashed when it was replaced by a series of snicks below. The vampire was crawling up the inside of the well.
Ray pulled one of the bottles from the cassock pocket. “Might as well give one a try.” The creature, as it scaled the slippery wall, was nearly invisible. But Ray could clearly see her reflective eyes. Targeting them, he pitched the bottle into the depths. It broke on the stones above her and rained down. The vampire hissed as the holy water soaked her. Then, unharmed, continued her climb.
“I knew it was all bullshit,” he said. “We're screwed.”
He scooped the alb bag up and, taking no pains to be quiet, heaved it over his shoulder and into the well as if it were trash.
“Ray!” Brandy reached - too late to stop him.
Halfway down the shaft, the bag hit the vampire in the head. A lucky accident, it knocked her off the wall and sent her, angry and screaming, plummeting. The vampire, bag, and bottles splashed, crashed and splintered in the cold water of the pit.
“Are you out of your mind?” Brandy cried, still whispering. “We need that holy water. Not to mention the noise!”
There was noise. The well roiled; splashing, scratching, an angry hiss echoing as the gendarme-thing escaped the water and started up again.
“They don't work,” Ray said, too loudly. “It's a joke. You and that priest are a couple of kids.”
“No!” Brandy shoved Ray from the well. She saw the eyes of the hellish creature below, coming on, and drew one of her own bottles.
“Brandy!”
“No!” she screamed again. “I believe! I believe!” Brandy hurled her bottle into the pit.
In the moonlight, in the well, it smashed against the creature's head. Shattered glass flew. Holy water splashed. The vampire shrieked. As if soaked in acid, she clawed at her blinded eyes. She dropped from the wall and, by the time she hit the water, burst into flames. Then followed a massive explosion. Ray's holy water, like so much floating gasoline, ignited across the surface and rose in a ball of flame.
Brandy and Ray ducked away as flames, smoke, heat and the acrid smell of burning flesh erupted from the well. Brandy took a deep breath; exhaled slowly. She tugged her layered clothing into place. Then she picked up her purse and told Ray, “You've got to believe.”
Tongue-tied, Ray could only nod.
The well was on the far west side of the castle. Brandy moved to the edge of the ruin wall, in shadow, and looked to the courtyard. Ray remained, dumbstruck and unmoving, by the well. She pulled him into the darkness beside her.
Twenty One
Aimee carried a full case of bottles into the nave. Father Trevelyan, still on the sanctuary steps in a cloud of depression, hugged his broken arm. She plopped the case down beside him and asked, “Do you believe in these things? These holy waters? Do you think they will work?”
It took him a moment then, barely audibly, he said, “I don't know.”
“I did not expect you to know, Father. I wondered what you thought.”
When he didn't answer, Aimee plunked down beside him. (Brandy's jeans climbed nearly to her knees.)
“Forgive me, Aimee,” he said. “I don't feel much like talking.”
“You feel like crying.” It was not a question. “I told Brandy I wanted to cry. She agreed; said she felt like it too. But she would not let me. She said there were things to do. She is risking her life to do them.” She stood and stretched her hand to the priest. He didn't take it, but looked past it to Aimee. “I can not let you cry either,” she said. “Not now. There are things to do. Brandy and Ray need our help. We need your help.”
Brandy and Ray crouched (as their clothes allowed) at the mouth of the alley running between the castle ruin and the stable. They had a clear view of the Templars feeding on Felix and the undead soldiers, like parasites, awaiting their turn.
Whether they were seen or heard first neither Brandy nor Ray knew but one of the Templars stood, stretched a boney finger their direction, and alerted the others. The rest of the blood-drenched knights rose from Felix's corpse to stare. And, as they stepped away, the gendarmes dove on the body - to drink the dregs.
Brandy swallowed. Ray inhaled deeply to keep from vomiting. Both knew it was best not to react. But Brandy promised herself a world-shaking breakdown in the near future. If only she could promise herself a near future.
“On the left.” Ray pointed, without being obvious, at two Templar horses just off the courtyard. Brandy caught a glimpse and nodded.
But the Templars began to spread out. Two (as if they'd read Ray's mind) headed for a spot between them and the stable. Once there, Ray knew, they'd prevent escape to the north and, worse, cut them off from the horses. The others would flank them.
Ray could have kicked himself for underestimating them. Whatever else these things were; they were soldiers. And, if Clive was to be believed, well-trained soldiers at that. He knew, and Brandy knew as well, it was now or never. Both tensed to dash for the horses, when…
Across the courtyard the door on the chapel balcony burst open and Father Trevelyan rushed out.
He was a sight even at that distance in clerical collar and shirt sleeves, with his arm in a sling, standing beside the four-foot crucifix at the rail. He held a smaller crucifix, awkwardly, in his bad hand and carried a wine bottle in the good one. Then he shouted, “I command you, unclean spirits…”
The Templars turned from Brandy and Ray, to Trevelyan's shouts, while the gendarme things began to shriek and race about the courtyard. Several jumped on the walls of the chapel and clung there; howling. All of them, the mummies and their vampire offspring, stole glances at the priest. But the crucifix prevented their staring or drawing too near.
“Whoever you are,” Trevelyan shouted, “along with your minions attacking these servants of God, by the mysteries of the incarnation, passion, resurrection and ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ, by the descent of the Holy Spirit, by the coming of our Lord for judgment, tell me by some sign your name, and the day and hour of your departure.”
The Templar leader had apparently heard the speech before. He decided Trevelyan was a gnat and turned back to Brandy and Ray. He drew his sword and started forward. The other knights followed.
“It was nice while it lasted,” Brandy said. She quietly drew a bottle from her apron. Ray, for all the good he thought it would do, pulled one himself.
The Templar knights advanced.
Then came the sound of smashing glass and a high-pitched shriek.
One of the gendarme vampires was on fire. His feet were in flames, his blood-stained pants spattered with holes, and black smoke rolled off his legs. The creature jumped around, trying to extinguish himself, screaming. Shatt
ered glass and a puddle of bubbling holy water bathed the cobbles beneath him.
On the balcony Trevelyan stood with his mouth agape – startled by the results of his actions. Then he smiled and lifted another bottle above his head. He threw it into the courtyard; smashing it at the feet of the same beleaguered vampire. The flying shards of glass were shrapnel as, wet from holy water, they ripped through his legs. The splash hit him and the vampire burst into flames. He screamed - and flopped over like a rag doll.
“I command you to obey me,” Father Trevelyan shouted, working it. “I who am a minister of God despite my unworthiness; nor shall you be emboldened to harm in any way these creatures of God or any of their possessions.” More breaking glass as another bottle busted. Something undead howled.
“Depart transgressor. Depart, seducer, full of lies and cunning, foe of virtue, persecutor of the innocent. Give place, abominable creature, give way, you monster, give way to Christ, in whom you found none of your works. For he has already stripped you of your powers and laid waste your kingdom, bound you prisoner and plundered your weapons. He has cast you forth into the outer darkness, where everlasting ruin awaits you and your abettors.”
Brandy was agog; Ray laughed. The priest was creating a diversion and having a good time. “In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.”
The Templars had backed away. Their minions were running like hell.
Brandy and Ray raced past the two nearest Templars, who swung, missed them and clashed swords. Ray pulled out two bottles, one in each hand, while Brandy jumped into the saddle of one of the horses.
The knights extricated their weapons and turned on Ray. One swung his sword and Ray blocked the blow with a bottle. Glass and holy water flew. The knight backed away; wanting no part of it. Emboldened, Ray spun and hurled the other bottle at the one-armed Templar who'd been making a nuisance of himself all night. He defended himself with his stump. The bottle bounced, hit him a glancing blow on his rotting chest, slid down his mantle, off his boot and onto the ground without breaking. The holy 'grenade' rolled away intact.
The Devil's Bed Page 26
