For a moment, Simon was paralyzed, a man trapped in a nightmare, powerless. His lord, the man who’d raised him and his father up from slavery to knighthood, lay dead and bleeding at his feet; his sworn companions were being slaughtered all around him, their throats torn out by red-eyed demons from hell. Even the priest was dying, gasping, on his knees, blood gushing through his fingers as he clutched at the wound in his throat. A vampire in a woman’s shape crawled toward him, fangs exposed, her torn veil soaked with blood. She caught hold of the cleric’s robe and climbed him like a cat, lapping the blood from his skin as she held him, his eyes glazed and desperate with fright.
“No!” Simon barely heard the roar from his own throat, barely realized what he meant to do as he moved toward them, raising his sword. He beheaded
the creature with a single stroke, the blade passing through her to cleave the priest as well, but the man of God barely shivered, his broken body sinking to the floor, dead as the duke.
Lucan Kivar was laughing, a high-pitched, lunatic giggle that carried to every corner of the hall over the screams of the dying. “Did I not promise you, my children?” he cried out, arms spread wide. “Behold, I provide you fresh blood!”
Simon felt a snap inside his head, one final shred of reason giving way. He raised his sword like a man in a trance, moving through the pandemonium, and though inside his head he seemed to barely move at all, in truth, he struck like lightning. The guard who fed on the boy looked up, blood smeared across his mouth, and Simon cut him like a blade of grass, his torso falling, split in two, then his head flying upward with another deadly stroke. Barely seeing, Simon whirled around, his blade stabbing up into the belly of another monster, female this time, as she sprang at him, hands outstretched like claws. This one screamed as Simon butchered her, the blood she had just stolen from an English knight bathing them both. Her lips drew back, exposing her fangs, and Simon jerked his broadsword free, pushing her back with his knee. The vampire staggered, clutching her belly, and he brought the blade down like an executioner’s axe, slicing off her head.
“That one,” Kivar said, laughing with delight as he pointed at Simon. “Forget the others; that’s the one I want.”
“Then co
me and take me!” Simon shouted back, his voice hoarse in his ears. “Or must I come to you?” He advanced on the caliph, cutting through the others as they struck at him, barely slowing. One sank her fangs into his wrist, and pain shot up his arm, a freezing fire.
“Take him, children!” the ruler of these undead monsters ordered, laughing still. “Take all but his heart!” Simon struck the head from the woman feeding from his wrist, and another creature clamped on to his leg, teeth tearing through his leather leggings to reach his flesh. Looking down, he saw the boy the guard had killed, his baby’s mouth stretched in a leer.
“Holy Christ,” Simon said, breathless with horror, frozen at the sight.
“No!” Roxanna struck the child first with her open hand, and he let Simon go with an offended cry, then she struck his tender throat with her dagger, cleaving off his head. “Don’t stop,” she ordered Simon, her own eyes glowing scarlet like the others but tears of blood still streaming down her cheeks. “Kill us all—pierce the heart with wood or take the head.” One of the other women leapt at her with a scream, and the two of them went rolling, fighting like cats. His paralysis broken, Simon raised his sword again, cutting through the vampires like a reaper cuts through wheat, his own blood flowing from a half a dozen gashes in his flesh.
Their leader was not laughing anymore. His pale blue eyes glowed red, then green, as his own fangs were exposed. They were longer than the others and more deadly, more like the fangs of a poisonous snake than of any warm-blooded creature. Simon stepped onto the dais, tossing his sword into the air and catching it upside down, his hands wrapped tightly around the hilt, the tip pointed downward. “You wanted me,” he said through gritted teeth, driving it with all his strength straight into the vampire’s heart. “Here I am.”
Kivar smiled, fangs glistening ivory white. “So you are.” He seized the knight by the shoulders, his fingers like talons as they dug into his flesh, and as the sword plunged deeper, he yanked Simon closer in a deadly embrace. Simon twisted the blade, and Kivar screamed in pain, but his eyes still glowed with triumph. Smiling as they fell together, he plunged his fangs deep into Simon’s throat.
Sudden thunder roared inside Simon’s ears, and for a moment he couldn’t think what it was. Then he realized it was the pounding of his own heart. Agony like nothing he had ever felt engulfed him, spreading from his throat so quickly that in an instant he could barely sense himself at all. His body, the shape of his limbs, or his consciousness, these things meant nothing; all he knew was pain, both fire and ice. He willed his grip to tighten on the sword, but he could no longer feel its hilt between his hands or see it as he pulled it from the vampire’s chest—all the world was blinding, blood-red light and pounding heart and pain. Only when he raised the blade did consciousness return. Kivar released him from the bite and raised his head, Simon’s own blood dripping from his mouth. “No,” he snarled, a serpent’s hiss. “Not yet.” Grabbing the cowl of Simon’s tunic in his clawlike fist, he crushed him close again and kissed him full on the mouth.
Revulsion struck the knight like a wave, but another feeling followed hard upon it, a joyous warmth that raced along his veins, more potent than the strongest wine. All his sadness, all his fury, all his fear, seemed to evaporate at once. He would not have known the duke if he had seen him, could not have told a stranger his own name. Strong arms enfolded him, lifting him up like a child, and for that moment he allowed it, too weak to resist. He felt the fire leave his lips, and he moaned, bereft, his vision beginning to clear. Then another, purer source was pressed against his mouth, ecstasy poured down his throat, and he fed eagerly, sucking like an infant at his mother’s breast. Visions rose before his eyes, a village in flames, and suddenly his fury was returning. Rage without a purpose pounded through him, an overwhelming need to hurt, to kill, to feel the suffering of living souls, consume them as he now consumed this blood.
“Stop, warrior!” The girl, Roxanna, was clutching at his shoulders, tearing at his clothes. “Stop it! You must fight!”
Simon raised his face from Kivar’s throat, the rage still coursing through him, stronger still in shame. The creature was a ravaged husk, thin as a skeleton within his robe, his chest and throat ripped open and bleeding, his face dry and wrinkled like some dead thing buried in the sand. But his eyes were bright and knowing, and his ruined lips were twisted in a smile around his fangs. “Mine,” he whispered, the rasp of the wind in the trees. “You are mine.”
Simon raised his sword again and struck. The skull-like head flew backward, spinning end over end as the body crumpled to the floor. Roxanna rushed forward with a wooden stake, the handle broken from some Englishman’s pike, and plunged it into the wasted vampire’s breast. A rushing wind swept through the hall, and a wail went up from the monsters still remaining, screams of fear and grief. “Kill us,” she was begging as she thrust the stake in again. “Kill us all.” Vile-smelling mist rose all around the ruined corpse, and a viscous fluid poured across the dais from the golden robe, the shape of the body and head dissolving.
Another vampire cried out, “Master!” and Simon turned, the sword still trailing from his hand. The hall was thick with corpses, all of his companions dead, but he could not seem to weep for them, could not seem to feel anything at all. A numbing cold was spreading outward from his heart, a stiffness stealing through his limbs as if he were falling asleep. He lifted up his sword, still coated with the creature’s blood, and his minions scuttled back in horror, scattering like insects and breaking through the windows to escape.
“You are their master now,” Roxanna said behind him, sprawled on the floor. “You are one of us.” She looked up at him with pity in her eyes, the dark brown eyes of a woman again. Even smeared with blood, her face was lovely, framed with long, black hair—the duke had found her beautiful. But Simon felt only revulsion, remembering the truth of what she was. “You are a vampire,” she said with a sad, fragile smile.
“A vampire,” he repeated. “And what is that?”
Her smile turned bitter as she looked around the room at the creatures that were pouring from the hall. “What you have killed,” she answered, turning back to him. “What you see before you now.”
“No!” He raised the sword to her this time, and the dwarf he had seen before Kivar’s attack rushed forward, putting himself between them with another wooden stake held out before him. “You lie,” Simon murmured, dropping the sword, suddenly too weak to hold it. The dwarf bent over the girl on the floor, soothing her with words the knight could not understand, stroking her hair. He turned and trudged away from them, past the ruined corpses staring up at him, their faces still frozen in shock.
The gardens were as awful as the hall. Every living creature had been slaughtered, soldiers, horses, even the goats the cook had kept for milk. All lay bloodless on the grass, eyes staring without seeing at the moon. Simon crumpled to his knees, dry sobs wracking through him. He wanted to be sick; his guts were twist ing like a nest of vipers, but his body refused to obey. He looked down at the wound in his arm where the female vampire had bitten him, or rather, the spot on his arm where a wound ought to have been. His sleeve was torn, the edges bloodied, but the flesh underneath was unmarked—no tearing in the skin, no bruise from the blow, remained. It wasn’t even sore anymore. With dizzy horror, he realized the rest of his wounds were the same, even his throat—he pressed a hand to the spot where Kivar had bitten him and found it whole.
“Boy! Simon!” Sascha came staggering toward him, limping from a deep, bloody gash in his thigh. “Thank Christ, you are alive.” Simon climbed back to his feet, and the Russian embraced him like a long-lost brother. “Come.” Leaning on Simon for support, he led him toward the garden’s high stone gate. “We must leave here now.”
“Yes.” The roar of thunder filled his ears again as it had when Kivar had bitten him, the deafening drum of a heartbeat. “We have to go home.” He tried to think of Ireland, the green fields and the salt wind from the sea. But the heartbeat’s thunder filled his consciousness, not from himself this time but from Sascha, and a terrible thirst grew inside him, a hunger that consumed his every thought. “I want to go home.”
“I know, boy,” Sascha said, patting his cheek, smiling though his face was slick with sweat as if he were in pain. “So you will.” He stopped to lean on the gate, panting with exertion, and Simon could smell him, his sweat and his fear as delicious and inviting as the smell of roast venison after a long day’s fast. “Just give me one more moment.”
“It’s all right,” Simon answered, his own voice hollow in his ears. “I am all right.” The hunger was like a sword piercing his belly—he had never felt such hunger in his life. “I can carry you.”
“No,” Sascha said, waving him off—or so he thought Sascha must have said; it was becoming hard to hear anything over the pounding rhythm. He felt dizzy and drunk, but a strange, exhilarating strength was rushing through him, too. Indeed, he could have ripped the trees up by the roots, he felt so powerful.
“You are whole?” The Russian was staring at him in wonder. “How can that be?” Dear Sascha, his friend… he must save him. He put a hand on Sascha’s arm to hold him up, to support him. He was his only friend, the only other man left alive of their company; he must save him.