At Sword's Point (22 page)

De Beq was in his dreams, he and his knights fighting Kluge and his men—a horrible baptism of gore as swords slashed and hacked into the bodies of adversaries. As they fought, the flesh began to slough off of de Beq and his knights, falling away from their faces and arms, leaving the white bones exposed. In their agony they screamed as they fought on, slowly pushed back by Kluge's disciplined Nazis.

Somehow, Drummond remained detached from the slaughter that raged around him. With his dream-self clad in a flowing white robe and holding de Beq's family sword, he stood unable to move, until suddenly a red shadow fell over him, and he found himself facing the cardinal he had met at Maria's party.

"Your blood," the cardinal kept repeating, as Drummond began striking at him over and over again with the sword. "It is your blood, John de Beq, that will stop the slaughter."

Drummond closed his eyes and swung the sword for all he was worth. He felt the sword send a shudder through his arms as the blade connected, and he opened his eyes.

He could not see the cardinal, but all around him the dead were rising up, their flesh melting away as they stood up and began moving toward Drummond. He tried to defend himself, but his sword was embedded in something—something red, something he could almost recognize. He tried desperately to pull his sword free as the vampires closed on him, touching him, pulling him toward greedy skeletal mouths. Somehow the vampires vanished, and Drummond found himself alone with Kluge, shrinking from the vampires touch.

Kluge held Drummond the way a young man would hold the woman he loved, tenderly, caressing her body. Desperately Drummond tried to wrench his sword from the red mass that held it, but he couldn't get it free. Kluge bent down and softly bit Drummond's throat, lapping with an obscene black tongue the blood that welled up. The horror of it lent Drummond new strength. Suddenly his sword was free, and with a single swipe of his blade he decapitated Kluge, a fountain of blood spraying out of the severed neck.

The blood sprayed higher and higher until it changed and took on the shape of the cardinal in his scarlet robes. "I want your blood, John de Beq. I want your blood…"

Drummond woke with a start. A thin sliver of light speared through the lancet window and reflected off the hilt of his sword leaning against the corner, illuminating the tiny room. There was no one else in the room, either Kluge or the cardinal.

Still breathing hard, Drummond looked at his watch: 7:15. Climbing out of his sleeping bag, he went over to the window and looked out to where he thought he had seen the movement the night before. In the clear morning light, it was impossible to tell what he had seen, or what he had dreamed…

Drummond dressed in some of the new clothes he had bought at Kettner's and then headed down to the great hall in the hope that there would be food of some sort for breakfast. Although it was seven-thirty in the morning, the knights appeared to have been up and active for some time, although Drummond had heard not a sound up in the tower.

Father Freise was sitting at a long trestle table sipping a cup of coffee when Drummond came in.

"Good morning, John," he called out, as Drummond emerged from the turnpike stair. "There's coffee on the griddle, and you'll find a mug on the shelf."

"Thanks," Drummond said, crossing over to the hearth of the fireplace in the great hall. On a ledge just above the griddle was a variety of mugs of various sizes and shapes. Drummond took a large one emblazoned with the bug-eyed face of Bart Simpson and filled it with coffee.

"Any milk or sugar?" he asked.

"Sugar is in the tin can," Father Freise replied. "We haven't got milk, but there's some nondairy creamer stuff up there in a jar someplace."

Drummond found the necessary additives and doctored his coffee. Stirring it with the blade of his pocket knife, he walked over to where Freise was sitting. A large loaf of solid-looking brown bread was on the table in front of him, with a dagger alongside it. As Drummond sat down beside the priest, he decided that was probably the extent of breakfast.

"I spoke to de Beq this morning," Father Freise began without preamble. "He told me about last night. I knew something was going on, but I didn't want to intrude."

"Yeah," Drummond said. "I didn't know what to say, or do, when he shoved this ring on my finger." He held up the index finger of his left hand. The soft light of the great hall gave the carnelian a special glowing radiance of its own. "I'm not even sure I thanked him."

"Well, thanked or not, Henri de Beq is quite happy to have you as his adopted heir." Father Friese took another sip of his coffee. "It means that he can die now."

"Die?" Drummond asked, the vision of the dying vampire in the dungeon springing to his mind. "My God, he's not going to…"

"Starve himself?" Father Freise shook his head. "No, he won't do that. What he is going to do is let the rogue vampire kill him—or almost kill him. He's going to stake himself out in the woods tonight, and when attacked, offer little resistance. He plans on gutting the vampire with that fancy knife you gave him, just before he dies."

Drummond's coffee seemed to have gone cold in his cup, and he set it down in distaste.

"Christ, Frank, you can't let him do that," he said. "Who'll hold this place together once he's gone? And what if some of the other knights decide they don't want to die? We've both seen what happens when they starve. Suppose some more of them become rogues? What then?

Father Freise pushed his cup away from him. "Well, John, just what options have these men got? Do you think I haven't worried myself sick, wondering what's to become of them? Counting de Beq, there are twelve knights left, and that includes the rogue who is out there somewhere in the woods. Did I say 'knights'? Let me rephrase that. There are twelve vampires left. Oh, sure, they were good men once—pious, even. But now? Well, I just don't know. They've changed, John. They're not even the same as when we found them a few weeks ago."

Drummond ran his hand over his face, trying to clear his mind. "So what do you suggest? Kill them all before they go bad? Treat them like some sort of benign horror that has reached its 'sell by' date? And what about Kluge? Have you forgotten about him? How do we deal with Kluge, if we don't have de Beq and his men?"

Silence descended between the two men like an impenetrable wall, and Drummond realized that he was angry—not at Father Freise, but at his growing impotence in dealing with the situation. The Mossad had tried to kill him simply because he knew about Kluge—and because, thanks to them, he now knew about the virus that had made Kluge a vampire.

The virus. That was it, or at least part of it. It had to be. The virus had been some sort of top secret project with the Russian military. Now, the doctor who had headed that project was working with the Mossad to track down Kluge on the pretext that he was a war criminal. But why?

Suddenly Drummond understood why. Rubinsky had told him how the virus would turn ordinary soldiers into supermen. Supermen, Drummond realized, who could live off their enemies. Supermen like the thing in the dungeon of the castle that he had watched die last night.

The realization sent a chill through his body. Somewhere in Israel, a madman planned to create an army of vampires. An army that would decimate their neighbors, creating Lebensraum far beyond the Israeli-occupied territories.

That's why he had been kidnapped by the Mossad: to see if he would become their willing agent. And that's why they had tried to kill him: because they must have sensed he wouldn't. Now that Drummond knew what they were after, one thing was obvious. No matter what, as long as even one vampire remained alive, the Mossad would not rest until he was a dead man.

"Are you all right, John?"

Father Freise's voice made him jump. "Yes," he said distractedly. "I'm fine. I'm sorry I snapped at you like that."

The priest smiled at him. "That's all right. I suppose we're both a mite touchy, right about now."

The sound of a motorbike interrupted them, coming from the courtyard outside.

"Oh, no, not again," Father Freise said, jumping up from the table and dashing for the door.

Drummond followed Father Freise out into the courtyard, where several of the knights were clustered around the red motorbike he had bought for Freise. Armand du Gaz was straddling the machine, a half-crazed look in his eye.

"If I can ride a horse," he bellowed, "I can ride a priest's machine!"

Cracking the throttle wide open, he crunched the motorbike into gear and lurched crazily forward, weaving to avoid his companions. Gaining a degree of balance, he pointed the red machine toward the gates and shot out across the drawbridge.

Drummond and Friese ran along with the other knights, following du Gaz out into the meadow that surrounded the castle.

"
Du Gaz et Victoire
!" the short Lyonaisse knight shouted, as he wobbled around in a circle, now headed back toward the castle.

The tempo of the engine increased, and the knight raced forward at an even greater speed. Bumping across the meadow, mounted on a mechanical charger, the look on du Gaz' face was one of wide-eyed confusion.

"Whoa!" he shouted, pulling back on the handle bars in an attempt to slow the machine, now headed for the castle moat. "Whoa!"

Du Gaz and the machine hit a bump that sent it airborne, flying over the water.

"
Merrrrrrrrde
!" he shouted as the machine plunged downward, splashing into the moat, spattering the hysterical onlookers with mud and bits of lily pad.

A large bubble broke the surface of the moat, followed a moment later by du Gaz, gasping and sputtering as he floundered his way to the edge of the moat. Several hands grabbed him and dragged him onto the grassy berm between the drawbridge and the moat, where they left him spitting out brackish water and chunks of mud.

"That's the second time this week," Father Freise said, shaking his head.

"The second time in a week?" Drummond asked incredulously, as they walked back into the castle.

"Yup. Now, let's see, where'd I leave the recovery gear?" He lifted the lid of a barrel and reached in, bringing out a rope with a crude grappling hook on it. "Yes, here we are.

"You see, John, right after the battle with Kluge, a kind of change started coming over the knights. At first I thought it had to do with—well, with me. That they were delighted to be back in communion with the Church.

"After a few days, though, some of the knights started grumbling about staying in the castle. They thought they should head out to their own lands. Of course, most of them realized that everyone they knew was long gone, and de Beq reminded them of their vow to the Order of the Sword. They didn't like it, but after seven centuries of discipline they grumbled a lot but stayed in line.

"Then, a couple of days after you left, half the garrison decided to go on a hunger strike. You saw the last of them yesterday. Other members of the order saw them, too, and one of them decided to head out on his own, as I told you, to live forever as a vampire rather than die as a monster in the dungeon."

"So, what do you think caused this change to come over them?" Drummond asked.

"Well, at first I thought it was the reaction of warriors who had been cooped up for too long, a desire for action on their part. But now I'm not so sure. They're acting childish, almost like inmates in an old people's home. If I didn't know better, I'd think they were showing signs of senility. I wouldn't have thought vampires could go senile."

"I'm no doctor, Frank, but I don't think they're going senile," Drummond said. "I'd say it's more like sensory overload. This happens to a lot of inmates when they get out of prison. Some of them are giddy for days, even weeks after." He glanced at his watch. "I've got to get out to the car and make a call. We're going to have a guest tonight, so I'm afraid we'll need another room with a bed."

"No problem," Father Friese said, handing Drummond the rope with the hook on the end of it. "Just see if you can rescue my motorbike, okay?"

As Drummond took the coiled rope and headed out the door, Father Freise said to himself, "Now then, where the hell am I going to find another bed?"

Outside, Drummond crossed over the drawbridge to his car. Not quite sure about the cellular telephone, he started the engine of the Rover before dialing Eberle's home number.

The number in Vienna rang half a dozen times before Eberle answered.

"Hello, Markus, John Drummond here."

"Glad you caught me, John, I was just leaving for Graz," Eberle said.

"Graz?"

"Yes, police business," Eberle went on smoothly. "Not to worry, though. I'll still meet you for dinner at the Bristol this evening."

"Okay," Drummond said cautiously. "See you in the bar."

"Right you are. Cheers." Eberle hung up.

Drummond slowly replaced the receiver back on its cradle. Something was wrong. Eberle's mention of Graz, which was south of Vienna, didn't make any sense. He couldn't fathom the reference to Bristol, either.

Puzzled, he pulled out the Austrian Automobile Club touring guide. Looking at the listings for Luxembourg City, he found it: the Bristol Hotel, 11 Rue de Strassbourg. Flipping to Vienna, he found another listing for the Hotel Bristol on Karntner Ring. Clever. Eberle was taking no risks on the off chance that the line might be tapped.

Drummond looked at his watch. It was almost eight-thirty. In the ten hours before he needed to leave for his meeting with Eberle, he decided he would unpack his belongings and get organized, and then get in some practice with the crossbow—if he could get it away from the knights for long enough.

* * * *

In Vienna, Eberle backed the red Corvette out of its garage, navigated the driveway and gate posts, and headed across the city toward the autobahn. Checking his rear-view mirror every few minutes, he spotted a white Volkswagen GTi that seemed to be staying right with him through the city traffic. At the traffic signals that controlled the traffic headed onto the ring, Eberle was able to get the number of the car's license.

Once the lights changed, he drove to his office and phoned the border police at Salzburg.

"Hello, this is Inspector Markus Eberle, Vienna. May I speak with your supervisor, please?" He waited for a moment until the supervisor came to the phone.

"Kleinmann here," said a raspy voice.

"This is Inspector Eberle. I'm looking for a white VW GTi that may try to cross into Germany later today. The number is 2179 V 1104. If it comes through, detain it and call my office, would you?"

"Certainly, Herr Inspektor. Are they to be arrested?" Kleinmann asked.

"Only if they resist, Inspector Kleinmann." Eberle grinned to himself. "Thank you," he said, and then hung up.

Pulling out of the parking lot at police headquarters, he was almost pleased to see the white GTi pull away from the curb down the street and tuck into traffic behind him. He flashed a stainless steel smile at his rear-view mirror as he pulled onto the autobahn.

"Okay, asshole," he said to the reflection of the white GTi, "let's see how fast your little wheels roll."

Putting his foot down on the accelerator, he took the 350-horsepower Corvette up to 130 miles an hour before leveling off to 120-miles-an-hour cruising speed. "Don't want to lose you, little buddy," he said. "Just wear you out."

Eberle held that speed for nearly an hour, all the way to Linz, the VW breathlessly chasing half a mile behind. As he changed smoothly onto the Salzburg autobahn and began climbing into the mountains, he slowed the Corvette slightly until the white car was once again in his rearview mirror. After another twenty minutes, as they approached Salzburg and the German frontier, he slowed to 75 miles per hour.

At the border, Eberle halted only long enough to show his ID and have the guard wave him on. Once in Germany, still within sight of the border crossing, he pulled into a rest area and got out of his car, walking over to a drinking fountain by the side of the road. Taking a slow drink, he watched the Austrian Border Police stop the white Volkswagen and direct it toward the impound yard. In the morning sun, he thought he saw the gleam of weapons being displayed.

Smiling, he walked back to his Corvette just as the dark blue Saab driven by the partner of the man in the white GTi crossed the Austrian border into Germany. Three kilometers down the road, Eberle passed the blue Saab at speed, not noticing how it tucked in behind him.