by James Becker
The scene Bronson was witnessing was bizarre in the extreme. Above ground, and away from the isolated island, life in the twenty-first century continued unabated, but what he saw in front of him was mediaeval both in its appearance and, he was sure, in its objective. In that cellar, at that time, the modern world had simply ceased to exist, and the ritual about to take place was designed to produce a result that wasn’t even mediaeval in scope. It was far older, and far more evil, than that.
Suddenly he detected a change in the atmosphere. A sense of anticipation, of barely controlled excitement, filled the air.
And then he heard something: a soft, sibilant sound, coming from the stone staircase behind him. The noise could only be caused by the hem of one of the robes rubbing on the stone steps as someone else descended into the cellar. All the other hooded men who were now surrounding the stone table were wearing sandals, and he’d clearly heard their footsteps as they crossed the floor of the ruined church. Perhaps the new arrival was barefoot?
He detected a new and unpleasant odour, and then the thirteenth man entered the cellar. He moved silently to the opposite side of the stone table, his hands and face invisible in the folds of his black robe, and all the other men, including Bronson, bowed low in supplication.
For a few seconds, nothing happened, then the new arrival — the person Bronson now assumed was their leader — gestured to the man on his left, who bowed in acknowledgement and produced a small box which he raised above his head while the other men looked on with reverence. Bronson tried to keep his face in shadow as much as he could, but he knew he had to act just like one of the other acolytes in order to remain safely anonymous. So he moved the candle slightly to one side, so that its light no longer fell directly on his face, and looked up.
The man lowered the box, opened it and removed a skull, the bone dark brown and cracked with age, the lower jaw and parts of the cranium missing. There was a soft collective intake of breath at the sight of the relic.
‘Behold the skull of Nicodema Diluca himself,’ the man said, ‘the legitimate descendant of the Princess Eleonora Amalia, the relic for which we have searched for so long.’
What happened next made no sense to Bronson. He watched in fascination as the man used a pair of modern pliers to snap off a section of the cranium, and then proceeded to grind it up using a pestle and mortar, his movements slow and deliberate, almost ceremonial.
The operation took several minutes, because the man clearly wanted to reduce the fragment of bone to dust, but eventually he appeared to be satisfied and placed the pestle to one side. He lifted the mortar above his head, and again this action seemed to inspire a kind of rapture in the group around the table, the dozen men raising their heads to stare reverently at the stone container.
Finally, the man lowered the mortar and walked slowly around the table to show the contents to the leader, then he returned to his place in the circle and put the mortar to one side, on another, very much smaller, stone table behind him.
For a few seconds, nobody moved. Then the leader made another gesture, this time to the man on his right, who nodded and pointed towards the two men who were standing on Bronson’s left. They both bowed slightly, then stepped away from the stone table and walked slowly away into the darkness that shrouded the other part of the underground room.
As they did so, a scream ripped through the oppressive silence, and Bronson could sense an almost palpable ripple of excitement coursing through the men around him. Working by feel with his right hand, through the thick material of the robe, he checked the Browning, trying to make sure that the hammer was cocked and the weapon ready to fire.
Then he heard another voice from the darkness, laced with fury and yelling in English, which he recognized immediately. Angela was somewhere in the room, together with at least one other young woman.
The leader of the group turned his head slightly to look towards the sound of her voice, as did several other men around the table. Bronson stared in that direction as well, trying to build up a picture of the layout of the room, so that when he moved, he wouldn’t slam into a wall or trip over anything. As far as he could tell, in the fitful illumination provided by the candles, it had a low ceiling and no doors apart from the one leading to the spiral staircase. Along one side of the room were short dividing walls which formed small, door-less, internal rooms. Possibly they’d once been storerooms but now, even in poor candlelight, he could see that they were being used as cells.
He could just about see Angela, who was still shouting her defiance at the men. Bronson tensed, ready for action. And then he heard a sudden sharp crack and a brief flare of light from the darkness, and she fell silent. He didn’t know for sure, but it looked as if one of the men had used a taser on her. He would pay for that, Bronson vowed, his hands clenched, blood pounding in his temples.
The leader of the group held up his hand, and immediately the attention of all the men around the table snapped back to him. He whispered something to the man on his right, who’d been acting as his assistant during the first part of the ceremony. This man nodded and then he, too, lifted his hand.
‘Our master has made a decision,’ the man said, his Italian smooth and educated. ‘We have two subjects available to us tonight. As you know, one of these shares the holy bloodline of Nicodema Diluca, and she will enjoy the rapture of giving her lifeblood freely while two or three of our number offer their unworthy seed to her sacred womb.’
For a moment, Bronson didn’t understand what the man meant. Then it dawned on him: despite the almost literary expression he had used, what he was actually talking about was multiple rape. Bronson felt his whole body tense with loathing and disgust.
‘Our second subject,’ he continued, ‘has no direct connection with us, but has accidentally proved to be of enormous value to our quest. She was responsible for removing the diary of Carmelita Paganini from its resting place in her tomb. She has provided a translation of a part of that book, and this information in turn led us to the island of Poveglia, where we recovered the Source Document, the “Noble Vampyr” treatise written by our ancient and revered master, Amadeus. This holy text has confirmed the validity of our quest and the accuracy of our rituals, except in one important respect.’
There was a sudden silence in the chamber, and Bronson could tell that every man there was totally attentive, waiting for the explanation.
‘What we did not know until now was that, for the ritual to be successful, we needed to combine the blood of the descendant of Nicodema Diluca with that of a woman without connection to any of the sacred families. Our leader has decided that this Englishwoman, whose usefulness to us is now at an end and whose spirit must be released to the void for our own security, will fill that role. So this evening we will celebrate the passing of both spirits.’
The chill Bronson felt as he heard those words and understood what the man meant had nothing to do with the cool and clammy air of the cellar. Angela, it was clear, was also destined for multiple rape, and was then to be murdered. As if that wasn’t horrific enough, the man’s next statement showed the hideous depths of the cult’s brutality.
‘Afterwards, in accordance with the tenets of our quest and our sacred knowledge, we will then enjoy her directly, consuming her blood and her still-warm and ripe flesh in the manner prescribed by our sacred guide and master in spirit, the venerable and inspiring Amadeus.’
Several of the men appeared to nod, though the voluminous hoods that covered their heads and faces largely concealed any movement, and Bronson heard a faint murmur of approval.
‘Now let us begin. Bring forward the first subject.’
There was a howl of outrage and anguish, and then the two men walked back towards the circle and the stone altar, each gripping the arm of a dark-haired girl in her early twenties who was struggling violently, trying desperately to get away. They stopped a short distance away from the stone table and held her as still as possible.
Two other men then
left their places in the circle and stepped over to her, one in front and the other behind her.
His features invisible beneath the hood covering his head, Bronson glanced towards the girl, stark terror written all over her face, and then at the silent figures of the men surrounding the stone table. He knew he would have to make his move soon — he would not permit the men around him to do harm to this girl or to Angela. Or he would die trying.
73
But right then wasn’t the correct moment. When the bullets started flying, Bronson wanted the innocent parties — the girl standing a dozen feet from him and awaiting her fate and, of course, Angela — to be as far away from the firing line as possible. It looked to him as if the ceremony would require the girl to be tied down on the table, and that would probably be as safe a place as anywhere in the cellar. So his best option was to wait until she was immobilized, because then she wouldn’t panic and run into a stray bullet. And she would also be the focus of everybody in the room. That might give him time to step back to a suitable vantage point and cover the dozen men with his pistol. Quite how the scenario would pan out after that, Bronson didn’t know. He would just have to think on his feet, and play the cards he’d been dealt.
He switched his attention to the four men who now surrounded the dark-haired girl. The two who had dragged her from the cell by the wall were still holding her bare upper arms, keeping her in position. Bronson couldn’t see what the other two men were supposed to be doing. Then he found out.
Simultaneously, they both reached out, seized the material of her white robe and pulled violently on it. The Velcro seams ripped apart, the robe separating into two halves, front and back, which the men casually tossed aside before stepping backwards a couple of paces.
The girl emitted an even louder squeal of terror as her nakedness was revealed to all, and redoubled her struggles to get free. But it was an unequal contest, and the two men had no difficulty in keeping her still. They looked towards the leader of the group, and when he beckoned them, they strode forward, forcing the naked girl towards the end of the table almost directly in front of Bronson.
They turned her round so that her buttocks were resting against the old stone, then simply pushed her off her feet. The two men who’d removed her robe stepped forward and seized her legs, lifting her up and placing her writhing body flat on the table. In moments, the men had buckled the leather straps around her wrists and ankles, while another man tied a strap around her head as well.
He knew that it was time to stop this, before anything else could happen to the girl.
The men who’d been lashing the girl’s body to the table stepped back and resumed their places in the circle, and waited expectantly. Bronson knew without a shadow of doubt what the next act in these bizarrely mediaeval and simply monstrous proceedings was going to be. Somebody, one of the men around the table, was going to climb up on to the table, force himself on to the girl’s body and rape her. And he knew absolutely that he wasn’t going to stand by and let that happen.
Surreptitiously, he took a couple of steps backwards, moving slightly out of the circle, and took a firm hold of the Velcro seam of his robe, preparing to act.
Then the leader of the group spoke again to his assistant, and Bronson caught the faint sound of his voice, though not the words he spoke. The voice was weak and rasping, as if he hadn’t used it for a long time or was simply unused to talking. The assistant nodded, then looked up and extended his hand, pointing directly at Bronson. And suddenly, every man in the room was looking at him.
As he stared across the table at the figures opposite, Bronson could just make out the glint of the leader’s eyes under the hood, and below that the shine of his teeth, a faint horizontal bar of white in the gloom. But there was something else, something that sent a chill through Bronson’s soul and literally raised the hairs on the back of his neck. It looked as if the canine teeth in the man’s upper jaw were at least twice as long as they should have been, the ends sharply pointed.
But before he could react to the sight, the leader’s assistant spoke directly to him.
‘You go first,’ he murmured. ‘Give her something to scream about.’
74
Bronson knew that he was the focus of everyone’s attention. He assumed that there was some kind of sick prestige in being the first one chosen to violate the girl strapped down on the stone table, the girl whose desperate screams and moans were still echoing around the underground room. He had hoped that as soon as this part of the ritual began, he would be able to step further back, away from the group, and use the nine-millimetre persuasion afforded by the Browning to stop the action even before it started.
Clearly, that wasn’t going to work. He had to act immediately.
He had just started to pull apart the seam of his robe when the man who had been assisting the leader raised his hand and spoke to him.
‘Wait,’ he said. ‘You are eager enough, brother, but don’t forget there is one more step we have to complete.’
Bronson relaxed a little and eased his grip on the material.
The assistant gestured behind him, and two of the men left the circle and stepped across to the end wall of the cellar, returning in moments with a small jug and a funnel. As soon as he saw these two utensils, Bronson guessed what they were going to do, and knew he had a few more minutes.
The two black-clad figures walked across to the girl. One of them pulled down on her chin to force her mouth open, then pushed the end of the funnel between her teeth. He held it in position and nodded to his companion, who began dribbling a white fluid into the top of the funnel, forcing the girl to swallow it. She choked and coughed, but to no avail; the two men continued with their actions until the jug was empty.
As soon as Bronson could see that they’d finished force-feeding her the milk, he stepped slightly away from the circle, as if he was preparing to remove his robe and carry out the rape as he’d been instructed by the leader of the group.
The assistant saw that he was moving out of the circle, and called across the table to him: ‘Now we can begin. Prepare yourself, brother, for your appointed task, so that we may release the lifeblood from this willing subject — the blood that will allow us to fulfil our destiny.’
Bronson nodded, the movement barely perceptible because of his all-enveloping hood, and turned away from the table. Out of the corner of his eye, he could just make out the shadowy form of Angela climbing slowly to her feet as she recovered from the assault by the taser.
His plan was simple enough. He had to get out of the robe, because the garment was heavy and would restrict his movements, just as the robes would hamper the other men in the cellar. Being told to rape the girl actually provided him with an opportunity to dump the robe without arousing the suspicions of the rest of the group. Once he’d done that, he had the Browning and the spare magazines to control and, if it came to it, shoot down, the other men.
75
But before he could remove the robe, there was a sudden bang from somewhere behind him, and a hoarse shout echoed down the stone spiral staircase, followed immediately by the staircase lights coming on and the sound of somebody pounding down the steps. Then the single electric bulb over the stone table snapped on, flooding that end of the room with light. Seconds later, one of the two men Bronson had seen outside the church ran into the cellar, his face flushed and his breath coming in short gasps.
He blurted out something that Bronson didn’t catch, though he did make the words ‘naked’ and ‘robe’, and in that instant he knew they’d found the man he’d attacked in the church.
Immediately, all the men standing around the stone table looked at Bronson, identifying him as the impostor.
In a single movement, Bronson pulled open the front of his robe, pushed the hood back off his head and grabbed for his Browning.
In that instant, Angela called out his name, a single shrill syllable that echoed around the room. But two of the hooded men were already reachi
ng for their own weapons, and Bronson knew he’d be out-gunned in seconds.
There was only one thing he could do to save the situation and buy himself some time. Taking rapid aim, he pulled the trigger. But his target wasn’t one of the menacing hooded men advancing towards him. Despite the circumstances, Bronson still wasn’t prepared to shoot down a man in cold blood — at least, not until he had absolutely no alternative. Instead, he raised the pistol higher, aiming it towards the ceiling, and the single lamp dangling there, and squeezed the trigger.
The sound of the nine-millimetre cartridge firing in the confined space of the cellar was deafening, the noise of the explosion echoing from the walls. The copper-jacketed bullet missed the light bulb, smashed into the concrete ceiling and ricocheted on to the back wall. Still carrying a lot of kinetic energy, it then bounced off the stone and hit one of the robed figures. Bronson heard a man call out in pain and fall to the ground.
He fired again, and again, the crashing blast of each shot deafeningly loud, the bullets ricocheting off the walls and ceiling, fragments of stone and red-hot copper from the bullet flying everywhere.
The last bullet hit either the light bulb itself or, more likely, the lamp holder, because as well as extinguishing the single light in the cellar, there was a sudden flash and the staircase lights went out. Bronson guessed that the bullet’s impact had blown a fuse somewhere.
Instantly, the cellar was plunged into darkness, the only illumination being the candles held by the hooded figures, several of which had already been blown out.
But there was still enough light to see the men around the stone table, and two of them were already aiming pistols directly at Bronson. He shifted his aim, bringing down his weapon until the sights lined up with one of the two men. As he squeezed the trigger, the other man fired, and Bronson felt a tug on the left-hand side of the heavy robe he was wearing as the bullet ploughed through the material.
