The Greyfriar (Vampire Empire, Book 1) by Clay & Susan Griffith;Clay Griffith;Susan Griffith (4 page)

Simon was shouting. The pale arm of another vampire had reached
through another hole and was dragging him toward the bulkhead.

"No!" Adele grabbed Simon and stabbed the arm holding him.
There was no satisfying screech of pain from behind the wall, only the
smoldering stench of burning flesh from the khukri's chemical, which
would continue to burn for some time.

A skeletal hand slapped the dagger from Adele's trembling fingers,
sending it skittering across the floor. Simon was yanked away from her,
and he crashed against the splintering bulkhead. Claws tore at the wood,
widening the hole behind Simon.

Adele staggered to her feet and tore through debris for another
weapon. Without one, she and Simon would be lost. Her hand landed
on something metal, slender, and over two feet long; it was a marlin spike. She spun it around and jabbed the closest vampire arm. The small
grunt that echoed gave her hope that she could hurt them.

"Adele!" Simon shouted in a panic as he struggled to keep himself
from being pulled through the ever-widening hole. The vampire on the
other side didn't seem to care that he didn't quite fit. It was desperate to
have him.

Adele struck again at the hand gripping Simon's shoulder. "Hold on,
Simon!" There was less than an inch of space between her brother and her
target, but the steel tooth hit its mark and plunged through the thin
wrist. The claw released Simon, and the boy scrambled around his sister.

Adele held onto the spike like she had gaffed a thrashing fish. The
hand twisted unnaturally and grasped the tool, ripping itself free of the
spike and tearing its own wrist to shreds before pulling its arm back
through the wall to safety.

Glancing wildly about for the direction of the next attack, the royal
siblings backed away, though there was little space for them to go.

Then a wide portion of the weakened bulkhead close to the deck
shattered in a cloud of dust and wood splinters. Through the haze of
smoke and dust Adele was looking at the female vampire face that she
had seen through the spyglass while on deck earlier. Now there was
nothing to stop the vampire from coming in.

Adele dragged Simon with her as she retreated. He was softly crying
against her. She could feel her brother's fear mixing with her own. But
there was no time for comforting words, because the face of death
appeared in the hole, head and shoulders visible as a long bony arm
clawed for purchase.

Determined to protect her brother, Adele reared back with the spike
and stabbed again. The spike sank through ribs and flesh and embedded
deep into the wood, pinning the female to the deck. The creature bared
her teeth and hissed, thrashing in anger, but she couldn't free herself.

The ship shuddered and threw Adele and Simon to the deck. Their
stomachs lurched as the big vessel dropped sharply. Everything in the
cabin started a slow slide. Adele grabbed a mattress and tried to use it
to shield them.

"We're going down!"

HMS Ptolemy hit the ground.

The impact tore Adele and Simon from under the mattress,
throwing them into the air and slamming them against bulkheads.
Adele tumbled for what seemed hours. Her world was noise and pain.
She no longer knew up or down.

When everything finally stopped, Adele lay still in the flickering
dark and choked, "Simon! Simon! Are you all right?" There was no
answer. She heard nothing-no screaming, shooting, or explosions.
Clawing at the mattresses and rolled hammocks around her, she struggled to stand but was unsure how or where to put her feet. She could
smell smoke; the ship was on fire. They had to get out.

Adele saw a small leg sticking up awkwardly into the air. The
frantic girl scrambled to it and grabbed the ankle. Tearing at the
wreckage, she reached down, feeling along her brother's torso, and gathered the front of his robe. With all her strength, she pulled Simon up
out of the maw. She stared at his face; his eyes were open.

"Are we dead?" he asked her, coughing against the smoke and dust.

Adele pressed her face against his heaving chest. "No. We're fine.
We made it. Now we just wait for another ship to come and pick us up."
It was a pale attempt to reassure him, and her eyes darted around them.
But no frightening faces stared back at her.

Together, the imperial siblings took unsteady bouncing steps across
the jumbled mattresses to the door of the cabin. A glint of light caught
Adele's eye, and she saw her dagger lying amidst the debris, the chemically heated blade now cooled into a normal weapon. She snatched it up
with a small yelp of triumph and slipped it back into the scabbard at her
belt to be charged once more. Adele's shoulder and legs felt hot, but she
didn't pause to look for injuries. Better not to know for now. They
kicked wreckage away from the door, which she then wrenched open.
The corridor outside was a world of debris. Wooden planks and metal
rods, barrels, and broken beams created a jagged landscape. Redjackets
who had been standing guard outside the door were trapped in the
chaos. All were dead. Adele shielded Simon's eyes.

As quickly as they could, the two made their way from the remnants
of the cabins into the open gun deck. Massive iron cannons on their huge
wooden carriages, each weighing several tons, had broken loose and were
scattered like toys or carelessly thrown pieces of driftwood. Sailors stumbled through the wreckage, some helping comrades who were trapped
or injured. The hot dusty air was filled with muted moans of pain and
anguish, and the smell of smoke and blood.

Adele saw the night sky above through a long fissure in the ship's
bulkhead. "Up there," she told Simon. "Let's climb." She helped the boy
clamber his way up the tilted deck. They grabbed whatever handholds
they could find. Wreckage shifted suddenly, threatening to throw them
down, but they finally reached the jagged hole and emerged onto the
sloping hull of the overturned hulk.

Taking in great breaths of fresh air, Adele turned to her silent
brother. "Are you hurt?" She touched his limbs and head. She wanted
him to talk. She wanted him to react.

The young prince flexed his elbows and knees, then shook his head.
"No. Everything works."

"Me too." Adele laughed and kissed the top of her brother's head.
"We'll be okay."

The gem of the imperial fleet had smashed through a Provencal
forest, leaving behind a wasteland of uprooted trees. The airship was
heeled over on her starboard side with the dirigible and its metal shell
shredded. Masts were snapped and scattered across the great mounds of
earth the crashed ship had gouged up. Men crawled out of gashes across
the length of the hull and wandered over the vast beached wooden
whale. Adele helped several of them while speaking calmly and encouraging them as best she could. It was her duty in a crisis. Men also moved
around on the ground. She saw surviving White Guardsmen among
them and searched unsuccessfully for Colonel Anhalt and members of
her household staff. She prayed that Colonel Anhalt was still alive.

Adele turned her gaze up to the cloud-filled sky, searching for the
glows of the other ships in the fleet. She thought she saw a faint yellow
blur, but couldn't be sure. Then she noticed tiny, wavering shapes flitting over the face of the grey clouds.

How was this possible? It was even warmer on the ground. Why
were they still coming? What was driving them?

Adele tried to push Simon back inside the ship's hull as a vampire
landed near her. The creature seized Adele's arm, but immediately
released her with a screaming hiss. He stared intently at the young
woman with his head bobbing like an animal. The vampire wore a mixture of military uniforms, including a general's jacket replete with tarnished medals and badges of honor. But the weird uniform meant
nothing; vampires wore what clothes they could loot from cadavers or
wrecked homes. He continued to hiss in that language that no human
had ever penetrated. Adele realized, without understanding how, that
the thing was talking about her. She couldn't distinguish specifics in the
horrid language, but she suddenly perceived that this entire attack was
about her. The vampires were searching for her.

Even more incredibly, this vampire "general" was afraid to approach
her. Adele could sense his fear, and she used it. She came forward aggressively, and the thing shuffled back, brandishing his claws. Then Adele
heard a short but recognizable grunt from behind. She whirled to see
another vampire wrapping his pale, bony arms around her shell-shocked
young brother. She lurched toward them as the thing leapt from the
ship's hull with Simon in his grasp. Adele choked a scream as she
watched them plummet to the ground. The vampire landed hard on his
feet and carried Simon off through the high grass into the dark forest.

Adele climbed down the airship's ruptured hull. She ignored the
vampire general as he continued to hover threateningly. She missed
holds and slipped several times, but didn't panic. The hard-minded
princess didn't notice her bloody hands as she dropped to the ground
and sprinted after Simon, racing headlong past dazed soldiers and sailors
who were trying to fight the descending vampires. Pausing only long
enough to wrest a saber from a dead trooper, she plunged into the forest,
heedless of branches and thorns that scratched her face and body. Her
breath tore from her throat and her heart pounded.

The princess came to a stop in a grassy clearing. On the far side of
the glade stood a female vampire dressed in black knee breeches and
black silk stockings with no shoes, bare-breasted under a dark swallow tail coat with gold ribbons festooning the shoulders. The female was tall
and statuesque, but pale and blue-eyed, like all of her kind, and wore her
ebony black hair in a braid that hung long down her back. Simon lay at
her feet with his abductor kneeling nearby.

The tall female hissed and pointed with her well-formed hands. Her
clawlike nails, which Adele knew vampires could deploy like a cat's,
were retracted to display her lack of fear. The female smiled and said
with harsh sibilance, "Princess Adele."

Adele was shocked to hear a vampire speak English, particularly her
own name. She stared at this vile parasite, so much like a beautiful
woman.

Then she heard human voices, and two of her White Guardsmen ran
into the clearing beside her. The vampire who had abducted Simon was
already on the attack. Both soldiers fired, and his torso exploded.

The tall female vampire with the long black braid snarled and
moved. The dark creature seemed to appear in front of the two soldiers
as they frantically worked their rifle bolts. The two men disintegrated
into a shower of viscera and bone without another shot or sound. The
female paused to lick the hot blood off her hands.

Adele heard a sound just over her left shoulder and wheeled,
catching the image of a pale figure with no splash of soldier's red or
sailor's white. She cut through the target, feeling a brief tug on the saber
blade, and completed the spin to face the tall female vampire with the
saber already back to attack position. A vampire's head rolled on the
ground; the body made a slight sighing noise as it slumped to the dirt
behind her.

The princess felt neither exhilaration nor disgust-only duty, and
the weight of the sword in her hands. She was naturally aggressive,
bursting with relentlessness unexpected in a small girl, which had
always served as an advantage. But she had never mastered defensive
skills, earning her many a thumping from her tutor during fencing
matches.

She charged the tall female vampire, three strokes already mapped
in her mind. In the fleetest part of her brain she saw the female moving
at the same time.

Adele looked up from the dirt. Her hands were flat on the ground.
The saber was gone. Standing over her, the female vampire inspected a
raw stomach wound and a slash in her brocade coat.

The female said, "You struck me. No human has struck me in a hundred years." The creature was impassive, showing neither anger nor
desire for retribution. Still, she eyed Adele curiously.

"Please," Adele breathed, "take me if you wish. But release my
brother. He's just a boy."

"We will take you." The female strolled away from Adele and continued observing her wound with the minor annoyance of someone who
has lost a button from her coat. "But he's not just a boy. He is the heir
when you're gone." She raised her head and emitted a piercing cry like
the screech of a rusted cemetery gate, a scream that seemed to slice across
the countryside.

A male vampire slid into view between trees and reached for Simon.
Then the creature's head suddenly parted from his shoulders.

A booted foot shoved the decapitated carcass into the dirt.

A man stood over Simon. He was tall and thin, and his face was covered by a head wrap similar to that worn by the high desert Bedouins.
Over his eyes he wore smoked, dark glasses. His clothing was dark grey,
almost black, a short military-style jacket and cavalry pants with a red
stripe, and knee-high, black riding boots. Over it all he wore a long
cloak with a hood thrown back. He had a gun belt with two holstered
pistols. In his left hand was a basket-hilted longsword; in his right was
a well-blooded scimitar.