The Nosferatu Scroll (35 page)

“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.

“Afterward, 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 toward 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 toward 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.

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 backward 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 toward the leader of the group, and when he beckoned them, they strode forward, forcing the naked girl toward 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 medieval and
simply monstrous proceedings was going to be. Somebody, one of the men around the table, was going to climb up onto the table, force himself onto 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 backward, 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 him, 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.”

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 farther back, away from the group, and use the nine-millimeter 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 fulfill 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.

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 out 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 reaching for their own weapons, and Bronson knew he’d be outgunned 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 toward 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 toward the ceiling, and the single lamp dangling there, and squeezed the trigger.

The sound of the nine-millimeter 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 lightbulb, smashed into the concrete ceiling and ricocheted onto 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 lightbulb 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 plowed through the material.

The shot may have missed him, but Bronson had taken an extra half-second to make sure he didn’t miss his target. The man gave a shriek of pain and fell backward, clutching at his shoulder while his weapon cartwheeled uselessly from his hand to clatter onto the stone floor.

One down, but eleven men were still facing him in the room. The second man fired, but Bronson was already moving. He ducked down and took a few steps over to his right, moving deeper into the shadows that danced around the far end of the cellar. He heard the impact of the bullet somewhere in the darkness behind him, took rapid aim at the armed man and squeezed the trigger.

His shot missed, and his target dived off to one side, finding cover behind the stone wall that marked the end of one of the cells built along the side of the cellar.

Then Bronson heard a sharp command, and almost immediately all the candles were extinguished.

For a few moments, the only sound in the room was the moaning of the man Bronson had shot. Angela, after her one yell of recognition, had said nothing else, and even the girl on the stone table had fallen silent.