This was the cell it had called home for years, centuries, driven utterly insane by the lust for sustenance and tormented by the hissing, caterwauling animals the guards hurled into his cell. When the citadel was abandoned and the tunnels lost to history, it went into hibernation for centuries. Occasionally, it woke and fed on any rat that wasn’t quick enough to escape its clutches. Then, it returned to its state of stasis until the starvation became too great once again.
Well, that was the story. Flynn had listened, but up until about five minutes ago, he really hadn’t bought any of this BS. As an ex-soldier he had seen enough horror in his life to be open to the idea of the manifestation of evil. Getting chased through slime-covered corridors by that a snarling, salivating monstrosity meant he was getting more open-minded by the second…
They’d found the cell. And behind the stones lurked a creature that had wandered the dark desert of madness for more lifetimes than it could count. When the archaeologists had unblocked the tomb it had burst forth in a howling, screaming frenzy, tearing the first man it saw to pieces. It had sucked the young man – a research fellow in the final year of his doctorate – dry, gorging itself and likely relishing the feeling of drunken power. Sated, it had slumped to the floor for a moment, laughing maniacally. The first taste awoke the hunger. Now? It wanted more.
This was what Colby Flynn and the archaeologist were running from. Not an alcohol-fuelled story. A very real, very hungry and very angry creature from the pit of mankind’s nightmares.
But this was no simple medieval terror, released from its prison at last, and free to unleash its maddened, blackened rage once again on the world. Once, it had been a sentient, passionate young man, a visionary and military genius. But fate had been cruel to Vlad and the Black Prince had eventually been imprisoned in the stone-lined cell of Tokat Castle, a broken tooth of a citadel that towered high above the city.
The Seljuk Turks who had conquered Tokate in the 12th Century had discovered a maze of underground passages and stone-lined cells, and had turned it into their own stronghold. In 1442 they were given their most dangerous prize, Prince Vlad III. But the young boy and his brother were political hostages, not prisoners. So, during his internment the Ottomans had attempted to create an ally out of him. They taught him military strategy. They nurtured his natural ability for warfare and combat, taught him the classics, languages, geography, mathematics and science. They had given him every advantage.
But they also brutalised him, beating and humiliating this prince’s son who would not bend his knee to the Turk’s rule.
And that was a big, big mistake.
They turned an intelligent, bright boy into a sadistic, vicious man – a military savant whose ability to strategise played a major part in his success as a ruler later on. But his brutalised, blackened heart became darker and more infested with evil until he created a monster that would resonate through the centuries.
Dracula.
The Impaler.
The devourer of children and sucker of souls.
This was to be his prison – firstly in life, and later, when the monks of Comana had brought his bloated corpse back from their monastery to the one place on earth they knew would hold him.
And it had held him. The monks’ plan had worked – right up until the moment when well-meaning academics with no understanding of true evil and a firm if totally misguided belief that knowledge would be their shield, had torn down the stones that kept Vlad from unleashing his unique brand of horror on the world.
To modern minds, especially those belonging to academics and military specialists that had indulged in the local hooch for a couple of hours, vampires were nothing more than a myth. One that had been responsible for some of both the best and the worst literary endeavours, and that echoed down through the ages to become sanitised by Hollywood into sparkly vampires with sickly complexions, beloved of swooning and incredibly stupid teenage girls. All of the archaeologist’s tales were merely that. Just tales. Stories. Pseudo-romantic embellishments of the history of an otherwise ordinary Ottoman castle.
Yeah. Tell that to the ragged, bloody remains of a twenty-five-year-old research fellow who had been Vlad’s first real meal in over five hundred long, long years. He had taken the full brunt of Vlad’s maddened rage. Flynn and the archaeologist had watched helplessly as a whirling maelstrom of hatred, blood-lust and utter fury swirled around the screaming student, tearing and shredding his skin, ripping it from his face and spraying blood in an arc around the corridor. It moved too fast to see clearly; just a tornado of rage that dismembered the student in a heartbeat.
And then?
Silence.
For a few fleeting seconds, a lull had descended on the corridors, allowing the echoes of the research student’s screams to fade into the stone and join the entombed chorus of thousands of other victims locked into the granite blocks for eternity. But then slowly, after the savagery and the silence, came a growing, rolling, maniacal laugh that reached out beyond the walls that had entombed the monster for so long. In the nearby village, the not-quite-so-ignorant-as-everybody-thought peasants who had grown up on fireside stories of the demon that was entombed in the citadel’s secret tunnels, bolted their doors, pulled the shutters closed and huddled together, gripped with an ancient fear that their ancestors had passed to them in their very genes. They knew. They knew that Vlad was free. The Dracul, the Black Prince, the Impaler. He was free…
* * *
Flynn had been the first to snap out of the terror trance and realise that they weren’t dealing with some damn fairy story here, but a real threat. A real nasty threat that was just about to turn its attention onto Flynn and the one remaining and utterly freaked out archaeologist. Flynn didn’t care whether this monster was the real Vlad, some crazy, inbred village idiot or the damn Devil himself. So he’d reacted in the only way he knew how. Natural or supernatural, this son of a bitch was flesh and blood. So a Glock should have an effect on it, even if it was only to slow the fucker down for a few seconds and give them that chance they needed to put more than twenty feet between it and them. He emptied an entire clip into the thing and watched as its body twitched and danced.
The blood-daubed creature recoiled for a few seconds and then stopped its snapped-marionette-string dance. It smiled, white teeth emphasised by the gore-covered skin. It stood, unfurling and flexing taloned fingers.
“Oh, shit…” Flynn grabbed his charge by the shoulders and screamed one word at him. “Run!”
Whatever that thing behind them was, it kept pace. Flynn got the distinct impression it could quite easily overtake and overwhelm them. But it was toying with them like a cat would play with a mouse. It was watching how they reacted, determining how well they knew the terrain. It was assessing them, learning their tactics, and letting them draw it along. Flynn had the distinctly unpleasant feeling that the little the archaeologist had told him about the legend of the Black Prince being a military genius was just the tip of a blood-soaked iceberg. His skin prickled. Back in Afghanistan there had been this one Taliban chieftain that had made all the others look like complete amateurs. He had had that cold, detached way of disciplining his men that revolved around ‘making examples’. The examples were bloody remains left swinging in trees in the savage winter gales that swept through the Tora Bora caves and the White mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan. He had mounted an IED campaign so successful that it had claimed the lives of twenty regulars and seven Special Forces troops. He had been known for his extraordinary ability to pre-empt when and where the SF teams would go in on a ‘flush out’, and vanish like a wraith into the mountains, forever one step ahead. He had retained that arrogant, smug smile and defiance right up to the moment Flynn put two bullets between his bloodshot, hate-filled eyes.
Flynn then had to run for his life as the man’s two radicalised and equally insanely-violent sons pursued him and his team through the badlands, promises of revenge screamed in Pashto ringing in their ears. He
learned then that when you cut the head from the Hydra, two more grow back. Evil is never conquered. It’s merely subdued until a greater evil comes to take its place. He had seen that same evil in the eyes of… whatever the fuck that thing was when it paused in its bullet-dance, dropped the mushed-up, ruined heart of the research fellow, and locked its gaze with him. An evil allowed to fester in a dark, vile place for centuries had become focused into a singularity that, when unleashed, would sweep everything before it. And Flynn’s Glock17 was going to do fuck-all to stop the bastard, no matter how many clips he emptied into its emaciated, putrefying body…
* * *
Vlad watched the soldier and his charge scuttle away down the corridor and smiled a chilling, venom-filled smile. Cold. Calculating. A military strategist like no other before or since. Stalking its prey at its leisure. It had waited hundreds of years. It could wait a few moments longer. Blood was only half the meal. It wanted to savour the fear as well. It wanted to hear their hearts pounding in anticipation of the terror that was about to befall them. It relished the futile attempts of a little man with a pop-gun trying to comprehend the evil he faced. That sweet, satisfying moment when the man realised that there was no escape. There was no fate other than the one the Black Prince had chosen for him. The Black Prince smiled a virginal white smile. Soldiers rarely operated alone. So there were more. So he would make sure the little soldier with his useless gun stayed alive long enough to watch any comrades he may have devoured in front of him. The anguish, the rage, the pathetic howling and screaming as he watched the Black Prince’s teeth rip into the throats of men he loved like brothers would be almost as delicious as the blood itself.
‘Lead on, little soldier. Lead on…’
* * *
Flynn and the archaeologist pelted down the slippery corridors that twisted and turned under the citadel and carried them deeper into the labyrinth. A line of gaffer-taped cables acted like a trail of breadcrumbs leading them back towards the sanctuary of the armoury. Without that advantage they would have become completely turned around in the myriad of tunnels that weaved and meandered beneath the ruined towers and crumbling walls. A wrong turn would take you into a dead end. And a dead end had a very literal sense when you were being pursued by an insane and bloodthirsty monster.
As he shoved the archaeologist again in the small of the back, Flynn pulled out a radio and pressed the squawk button. “Micky, get ready with everything we’ve got ordnance wise. We’re coming in fucking hot!”
“Don’t tell me those boffins have gone rogue on your arse? Coo, there ain’t nothing worse than a cocky egghead, fella!” Micky Cox’s cheerful voice crackled out of the hand-held and bounced off the stones.
“Don’t fuck about, Micky! I’m serious! FUBAR! FUBAR like you wouldn’t fucking believe!”
“Fuck… copy that.” Micky’s light-hearted tone instantly changed.
Flynn felt himself losing step as the archaeologist, not the fittest of academics, started to slow. The adrenaline was wearing off and panic was starting to take hold. Flynn knew from experience that he had seconds before the bloody fool froze up and probably went foetal on him. He reached out and grabbed the man’s shirt, overtook him and ignored the protestations as his coaching method changed from snarled encouragement and threats to brute-force dragging. “Move! We’ve got a few more turns before we get to the control room. I’ll lay money that your bitey friend back there won’t be able to get through that door once we’ve locked it, right?”
The archaeologist gasped as he tried to keep pace with Flynn. “And once we’re locked in with nowhere to run, what do you suggest then?”
“I’m not thinking that far ahead right now, fella. Priority number one is to stay away from Count Chompula, okay?” He yanked hard at the archaeologist’s multi-pocketed waistcoat, hauling him around another corner and a few steps closer towards safety.
They were close.
They were so damn close…
Flynn and the archaeologist rounded the next corner and skidded to a halt, flailing wildly to try and keep themselves from tumbling into the waiting arms of the Black Prince. It stood stooped and filling the corridor, disproportionately long arms full of muscle and sinews ending in talons that would rip through flesh and bone like it was paper. White teeth shone in the flickering light. Unlike those dopey movie vampires, this vicious fucker didn’t have two slightly longer canine teeth and a mouthful of perfect orthodontry. It had a whole mouthful of dazzlingly-white points bathed in saliva and dripping with toxins. It opened its maw and hissed like an angry cat. Eyes fixed on the two stumbling men, eyes filled with insanity, hatred and a raging hunger beyond anything Flynn had seen during his humanitarian missions to Sudan. “Shit! Back! Back! Back!” Flynn shoved the archaeologist backwards, trying to twist him around. The academic, unaccustomed to any physical activity more strenuous than reaching for a book on a top shelf, lost his balance and collapsed in a heap directly behind Flynn’s legs. Flynn toppled backwards, and the archaeologist and CPP bodyguard became entangled in a mess of flailing arms and legs.
Flynn extracted himself and rolled backwards, coming up and drawing the Glock in one smooth move. He knew it wouldn’t stop the laughing, blood-smeared monstrosity, but at least it might slow the fucker down a bit again.
The archaeologist had gone foetal, curled up on the floor, whimpering like a baby with bellyache.
‘Fuck him. Focus on the target.’ Flynn’s eyes narrowed and he squeezed the trigger. Two shots rang out and the monster twitched briefly. Then on the third squeeze the Glock, normally a stalwart of reliability, did nothing other than issue a mocking ‘click’. “Shit!” Memory gave him a hard slap in the face. He’d emptied most of the clip into the bastard back in the corridor earlier. Damn, damn, damn!
Most people would have railed against fact that the clip was empty and pulled the trigger again and again, as if the action would magic some spare ordnance from out of the sky and into the weapon. Flynn had spent six years in Special Forces. He’d spent more time behind enemy lines than the enemy had. So he knew better. The clip was empty; don’t fuck about trying to deny the bloody obvious, just reload, prime and fire. Flynn jettisoned the empty clip and fumbled in his vest pocket for a new one, ignoring the old magazine as it clattered against the stones. Normally, he’d be able to reload, prime and start shooting again in a split second. Put him up against a bunch of howling Afghans armed with AKs, bad personal hygiene and angry intent and it would have been a walk in the park. But this? This guffawing, cackling monstrosity? It had him rattled.
So he did the unthinkable.
He dropped the damn clip.
Time demonstrated that whole ‘fluidity’ concept in glorious technicolour, and decelerated to a crawl. Man and monster watched the clip fall in slow motion, fleeting, flashing glimpses of the jacketed hollow-point bullets emphasised by the matt black of the clip. It hit the ground end on, bounced and spun through three-sixty in mid-air, spewing one bullet off at a right-angle. The clip and stray bullet clattered back down, shuddered and finally came to rest. The errant JHP rolled away into the darkness, lost in the shadows.
Flynn tore his gaze away from the clip and refocused on the grinning face of the monster. He knew, didn’t he? The smarmy, grinning motherfucker! He just damn well knew that was Flynn’s last spare clip. He fucking knew.
Flynn was determined to go down fighting. He stuffed the Glock17 back in his belt and pulled out his trusty Blackhawk blade from the drop-down leg holster it liked to call home. No self-respecting SF squaddie would be caught dead without one of these black beauties. The six-inch symmetrical blade was precision ground D-2 steel. It would cut through skin, bone, and flesh, and didn’t differentiate between the dead or the undead. Flipping it around so the blade w edge-on against the inside of his forearm and hidden from the monster’s line of sight, he smiled back at the monster like a man with nothing left to lose but his life. “Wanna dance, fuck nuts? Huh?” He beckoned with his outstretched lef
t hand. “C’mon, you ugly fuck! Let’s do it, let’s fucking dance! C’mon!”
He knew it was hopeless.
He knew he was going to lose. And that losing meant dying. Badly.
He knew that as soon as that cackling, guffawing bipolar son-of-a-bitch flip-flopped back into black fury and bloodthirsty rage, he’d be facing an enemy whose savagery was beyond all comprehension. Savagery of that level made an opponent practically invincible. He’d seen how fast the thing was when it launched itself out of the cell. Nothing Flynn had ever encountered moved that quickly. His only consolation was that while mister bitey here was getting busy with him, it would give the archaeologist a chance to get out of danger, at least for a few moments. But it might just be enough.
Flynn may have appeared to have scant regard for his charge, but he was a good man. And good men care about those who can’t fight for themselves…
* * *
The monster stopped its insane cackling. The hunger was burning in it once more. And this time it lusted after the blood of a warrior, not that of a screaming, pissing boy. It wanted blood filled with passion and fire. Blood that had been spilled on the battlefield. Blood that sang out to him like a war trumpet. The blood of a soldier.
It could sense the man’s heart beating, a slow, steady rhythm, not the usual frantic pounding that its victims normally demonstrated. Ah, delightful! A true, battle-hardened warrior. They were always the most satisfying, especially at the very end when they knew they had lost their final conflict.
It would also give the Black Prince an insight into modern combat tactics. It knew it was capable of tearing the soldier to pieces as easily as it had devoured the screeching boy earlier. But it wanted to ‘dance’, as the mocking soldier said. It wanted to see just what kind of a ‘dance’ these modern warriors engaged in, and how things had changed in the five hundred years it had been locked away in that stinking cell.
SNAFU: Survival of the Fittest Page 17
