by Joel Jenkins
Jumping, the officers shook off their fears and began opening coffins.
“Come on,” Stagg said to Ravenwood as he started towards another rattling coffin. “Let’s get this freaking job over with.”
6
Fifty feet away, hidden in an expediter’s backroom alcove, Baron Henri Savigne heard the screams of his ghoulish pack and immediately knew they were under attack. He pushed up the cover to his more lavish coffin and sat up. Like all such mobile repositories, the satin cushions beneath him were covered with dirt from his French hometown. Quickly he climbed out and whipped his black cape about his shoulders. The noises from within the warehouse were growing louder. He could hear hammers pounding into cold flesh, the agonized screams of his children as they were set upon by unknown forces.
He moved through the darkness to a second, much larger coffin, set beside the room’s single door. He hurriedly pried it open to reveal his loyal servant, Berleze.
“Get up,” he whispered. “And be quiet. We are under attack.”
Clumsily the big vampire pulled himself from his own crate-sized coffin just as there was a chorus off shouts coming from the main hall. Both recognized them as human cries. They were followed by two loud gunshots.
Baron Savigne carefully opened the door and exited. To his right was the back door to the loading docks and back alleys. To his left was the warehouse itself and pressing himself against the wall he saw policemen moving about the coffins of his people like eerie death-dealing specters in the harsh flickering light of the moving candles.
But how had the authorities found them?
Then, as the light continued to move about he recognized the person with the hooded cloak. It was a woman…the woman! The countess herself! So that was how the police had found them out. The bitch had turned the tables on her hunters. She was as ruthless as she was clever, he mused. But now it became a matter of survival. There was no way he, even with Berleze’s strength, could overcome that many hunters.
They had only one recourse; to find shelter. And they had to go now before they were discovered!
6
Ravenwood held his Luger by his side ready for any other struggling vampires. The police had begun their work of destroying the odious beings and the first few went well enough. But when one pair opened the fifth coffin, the ravenous vampire inside lunged up at them before they could act. With frantic desperation he’d knocked down the officer with the mallet and stake and then sprung up out of the box and struck at the second man with his long sharpened nails. The cop’s cheek was cut open and he fell back dropping his flask of Holy Water.
Like a maddened clown, the freed vampire had cackled and turned around eyeing its foes, hands out ready to wreak more destruction. Ravenwood had immediately dropped his own tools and rushed to confront the crazed killer. He had drawn his pistol from its shoulder rig and shot the thing in the head…twice. It collapsed in front of the two shaken coppers.
“See why you have to work fast,” he reminded them holding his gun up. “Somebody help that officer and get those cuts on his face seen to. The rest of you keep at it!”
All of that had transpired in a less than a minute. Now the occult detective stood ready to assist any of the other teams should another bloodsucker prove too difficult to vanquish.
“Ravenwood!” Marya came up behind him and grabbed his elbow.
“What?”
“I thought a heard a door open and close back there, towards the rear of the building.”
He looked over and could just make out the outlines of a door. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” she said clutching his arm. “Right after you fired your pistol. I think some of them may have escaped.”
Seeing the worry on her face, Ravenwood had no choice but to believe her. He saw Stagg working with a pair of officers to open another coffin closer to the back wall and called out to him. “Stagg, some may have gotten out the back. We’re going to check it out. You and your men keep at it.”
The short inspector merely waved to him in acknowledgement as Ravenwood and Marya ran to the back of the building.
He was the first to reach the door and pulling it open was temporarily blinded by sunshine. He blinked several times and was stunned to see two figures hurrying down the middle of the alleyway. One was massive while the other was wrapped in a thick cape. Both of them were aflame as a gray smoke exuded from their bodies and their progress was clearly awkward and difficult.
“Dear God,” Marya exclaimed as she came alongside of him and sighted the fleeing vampires. “Where are they running to? There is nowhere for them to hide.”
But Marya was wrong. Ravenwood spotted the circular outline of a manhole cover in the middle of the street. That was obviously their goal; to get into the sewers away from the burning sun and then evade their pursuers.
Ravenwood fired at them but missed. Neither vampire looked back as both were totally focused on the round, heavy steel plate. Reaching it, the smaller of the two, turned and directed the big one to lift it up. In doing so his head was visible to Marya and she recognized him immediately.
“Baron Savigne! He was one of the men who approached us in Paris.”
Despite the awful pain he was suffering, Berleze squeezed his fingers under the edge of the manhole lid and easily tore off the gaping hole beneath. Ravenwood fired again and hit the undead behemoth in the back. Grunting in pain, Berleze spun about and with a mighty heave hurled the manhole cover.
It spun through the air like a top straight for Ravenwood and Marya. Ravenwood tackled her to the pavement seconds before the deadly disc flew by. It crashed into a pile of old trashcans, mashing them as if they were made of cardboard.
On the ground, Ravenwood dared lift his head just in time to see the baron starting to drop into the sewer opening. He looked back at them, his face bubbling red and yelled up at the big vampire, “STOP THEM!”
“Yes, master.” Berleze began to shamble towards Ravenwood and Marya. The unbearable heat was causing his entire body to combust with each stumbling step he took. But his dimwitted mind refused to accept his fate in carrying out his master’s order.
Ravenwood, still prone on the rough tar of the alleyway pointed his Luger at the oncoming mass of fiery hell and fired three more rounds into it with seemingly no effect. Then, only a few yards from them, the monster staggered, raised its arms skyward and cried out in anguished doom before crashing down. Its entire body burst asunder becoming nothing but black ash and skeletal pieces within seconds. A gust of wind blew over the remains as the flames died out and all that was left of Berleze were his bones and smoldering tatters of his clothes.
Warily Ravenwood put away his gun and got to his feet at the same time helping Marya up. Together they approached the smoking shape.
“Give me your knife,” Ravenwood said and Marya handed it over. With a fast stroke, the Stepson of Mystery detached the skull from the corpse and then kicked it down the alley. That done, the two of them approached the open manhole and peered down into its dark well.
“We have to go after him,” Marya urged.
“I know. But we need a light. Or else we’ll be sitting ducks down there.”
“There’s no time.”
Ravenwood looked at the long, fat butcher’s blade in his hand. “Then we’ll have to improvise.”
He raised the sharp cutting weapon and carefully put both his hands to either side of the clean, shiny blade. Then he closed his eyes and began to utter a Tibetan magic spell he had learned from the Nameless One. His voice was low as he softly repeated the foreign words over and over in a practiced cadence.
After a few seconds, the blade began to glow as if it held some inner electrical charge.
Marya’s eyes widened in awe at what she was seeing. There was much more to her new ally than she had suspected.
Ravenwood opened his eyes to a glimmering blade as bright as any torch.
“Now we’re ready.” Marya nodded. “Stay close to me.”
<
br /> “Yes, but please, Ravenwood, let’s hurry.”
Ravenwood gave her the glowing knife and started to climb down the rusty ladder just inside the manhole opening. At chest level he opened his hand and she once again passed the deadly weapon to him and he descended completely out of sight.
Steadying her resolve with a deep breath, Marya removed her cumbersome cloak, tossed it aside and began down the ladder into the black depths below.
6
Ravenwood stepped off the last rung of the ladder into fetid water that reached to his ankles—so much for his expensive Italian shoes. As Marya climbed down, he moved away from the ladder into the inky blackness around them, his feet making sloshing noises. The glowing butcher’s cleaver illuminated the red brick walls that made up the long narrow tunnel that ran into two different directions from the manhole entrance. The air was both cool and foul, the water a sickly brown color.
“Be careful,” he whispered as he used his free hand to assist Marya’s last few downward steps. “There is water here and the floor beneath is slick.”
The lovely brunette stepped down carefully holding on to his forearm. “Lovely. I wasn’t expecting a tour of the city’s nether regions.” She wrinkled her nose. “And that smell is overripe as well.”
“Methane,” Ravenwood said. “It’s a good thing we didn’t bring in any candles. The gas is dangerously flammable.”
Marya released his arm and put her index up over her lush lips to quiet him. She titled her head and listened. Ravenwood couldn’t hear at thing. Then he too heard a splashing sound coming from the tunnel to their right.
“Yes,” Marya softly agreed. “That way.”
Taking the lead, his glowing knife before him, Ravenwood began moving down the waterway. As he walked, doing his best to minimize the noise of the water sucking at his feet, he recalled the history of the city’s underground passages. Most of the current sewage tunnels had been constructed after the Civil War by returning veterans as the great urban metropolis’ population continued to grow with the constant influx of immigrants from around the world. The then newly christened Board of Health saw the threat of open sewage ditches and thus collected tax revenues to construct a major underground system in which to properly dispose of human waste and rainwater runoff. Being situated on an island, it was all too convenient to have the waste flow dumped into the rivers and harbor.
After a few minutes, Ravenwood and Marya came to a central juncture that joined two tunnels and once again stopped to survey the area. Ravenwood could hear cascading water coming from the tunnel to their left. It seemed to curve slightly and then he smelled the pungent odor of brine. They had to be approaching the river.
He heard footsteps moving away in that very direction. He signaled Marya and began increasing his pace. If that was Baron Savigne ahead of them, Ravenwood guessed he was in for a surprise. Marya kept up with him, being careful not to slip as she too was weary of the dirty water.
When they came around the bend in the tunnel, the blade’s knife illuminated Baron Henri Savigne standing at the edge of a twenty-foot precipice that dropped into a collecting pool alongside of a submerged iron grating beyond which extended a four foot pipe that jutted out over the river.
The baron spun around and without warning threw himself forward. He came off his feet and actually flew the ten-foot distance between them. Caught unprepared, Ravenwood was knocked backwards off his feet. In the process Marya was pushed into the wall banging her forehead. She collapsed in a swoon.
Savigne had landed atop the Stepson of Mystery and was now reaching for his throat with his hands while he opened his mouth to reveal his yellowish, extended fangs.
“Chase after me will you?” he spit out, drool falling from his open mouth. “I will make you suffer for such impudence.”
Ravenwood, still dazed by the assault, raised his head out of the foul water just as the vampire lord’s hands took hold of his neck and began to squeeze. He started to bring his hands up and realized the right still held Marya’s butcher blade. Just as Savigne’s head came down towards his face, Ravenwood swung out with the knife. The edge sliced across the vampire’s open mouth from side to side, tearing the flesh in the process.
Savigne screamed and fell back on his legs as Ravenwood tried to sit up. Filled with rage, the vampire’s left hand struck out and grabbing the blade tore it out of Ravenwood’s hand and tossed it away.
“BASTARD!!!” he roared. “Now I will suck every drop of blood from your worthless body.”
Baron Savigne once again pressed down on the struggling human, pushing down the struggling Ravenwood’s head, shoving it back into the water with one hand while exposing his jugular. For Ravenwood only one thought remained; if this was to be his end he would not die easily. He continued to bat away at the ancient fiend as it began to lower its fangs into his neck.
But Savigne never finished his attack for at that very moment Marya rose up behind him holding her thick knife in both hands and drove it in to the vampire’s back to the hilt. Again Savigne knew pain and reacted like the animal he was. He twisted about and backhanded Marya across the face propelling her back toward the lip of the tunnel’s end.
He tried to reach behind to take hold of the offending blade but couldn’t reach it no matter how hard he tried.
Jumping to his feet and ignoring Ravenwood completely, the French vampire pushed himself towards the semi-conscious woman.
“You bitch! All of this was your fault! You couldn’t just accept your fate. You had to run and bring about this folly.” As he drew closer, Savigne’s mindless rage filled his thoughts with the indignities he had been made to suffer because of Marya Dracula. “As if you could ever hope to win out. Foolish, stupid bitch!”
Standing over her, Baron Savigne reached down, grabbed a handful of Marya’s hair and pulled her head up roughly. She moaned in pain.
“Time to die.”
“NOOOOO!” Ravenwood came out of the darkness behind Savigne and tackled him causing him to let go of Marya and together they fell over the edge.
Into the catch pool they plunged all the way to its cement bottom only three feet deep.
Ravenwood lost his breath under the water but kept his hold on the vampire. Now Savigne was thrashing and somehow manage to find his feet so that he erupted out of the salty water in pure panic.
Salt! Ravenwood broke the surface and gasped for air. Of course, the Hudson was an estuary and it flowed both ways; fresh water from the north, salt water from the south. And it was this element that was consuming Baron Savigne. Just as the table salt had destroyed the vampire back in the diner the previous evening, so the Atlantic brine was having the same affect on the baron. Crazily he tried to pull at the iron grading facing the exit pipe as to climb out of the deadly water but Ravenwood wouldn’t let him.
With what strength he had left, he reached up and pulled the vampire back into the pool and then fell over him. It was like riding a slippery seal as Savigne flopped around in the burning pool, the flesh coming off his body in huge chunks. He managed to push Ravenwood off once but his face was nearly gone. Ravenwood felt him weakening and again pulled him down. There was one final convulsion and then the monster stopped moving. Holding him down, Ravenwood came out of the water and took a gulp of air. There was no more movement under his hands.
Releasing his hold, he watched as what remained of Baron Savigne floated to the surface. Most of the flesh had been burned away and only the skeletal frame was visible under the baron’s clothing. Though almost totally exhausted, the Stepson of Mystery reached over and pulled the butcher’s knife free and then turning the floating corpse around, held the skull while he cut it off at the neck. Once done, he moved to the iron bars and shoved it through one of the square gaps. It was washed away and out the pipe’s other end.
“Are you alright?”
Ravenwood turned from the grating and looked up at Marya, kneeling near the tunnel’s edge. Her face was bloodied and there were a few b
ruises he could make out. Luckily his spell on the knife was still active and lit the space.
“I think so.”
“Is there a way out of the pool?”
Ravenwood sloshed across the pool to the wall and holding the blade was thankful to see small iron rungs welded into it. “Yes. Hold on.”
Slowly, his feet slippery on the rungs, he climbed up to the tunnel floor and there Marya helped him over the lip where they both fell back and sat in silence, wet and cold...and mercifully alive.
Finally she turned to him, wiping a smear of blood off her cheek with her soaked sleeve of her dress and smiled. “Thank you.”
Ravenwood looked at her face in the eerie light of the blade, here in this dungeon-like place and thought it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
He touched her bruised cheek and leaned forward to kiss her.
Marya started to pull away only to look into his eyes. One was blue and one was green. Both held only warmth and love.
He leaned in again and their lips touched.
6
TWO MONTHS LATER –
The wind at the top of the world was always crying as it slipped through the ragged jutting teeth of the Himalayas. It was a mournful howl mostly unheard above five thousand feet where a desolate landscape of white threatened any that dared venture up into its frozen solitude.
Three such fools clung to the side of a mountain pass working their way along a rock ledge as the wind tugged at their burdensome clothing. Cleated boots came down purposefully wary of icy patches that could send the climber spiraling off into space and to a sure death far, far below amidst the gaping chasms.
At the lead, Ravenwood moved with his torso leaning forward, his face all but hidden by a heavy woolen scarf and furred hood. He, like Marya and Jazzy, wore goggles to protect his eyes from the bitter cold. They were tied together by a coarse horsehair rope given to them by the Sherpa guides who had accompanied them to the midpoint in their journey.
