The Dragon Coin (12 page)

“Hang on, Rod!”

What seemed like an eternity likely lasted only a few seconds. I cradled him as I did my boy when he was young, or even Beatrice when she forgave my desertion of her and Alistair nearly two years ago. Then we smashed into the unforgiving floor. Not the same grade of stone as utilized above, but just as painful. However, a blow that could’ve proved fatal was minimized by the fact my shoulder hit and then we rolled.

I couldn’t breathe, and I wheezed, painfully sucking air while the bones and tissues that were obliterated began their miraculous regeneration. I wanted to cry out—especially when I realized I had damaged several lower internal organs and smashed my hip as well. But my head and heart were spared, which was why I was writhing on the ground, instead of waking up whole someplace else.

“Keep quiet for another minute, and they will leave us be,” whispered Roderick from just above my face. I couldn’t see him, but I pictured his pained smile as he fought to ignore his latest injuries. I wondered if he would make it, telling myself I was going to be seriously pissed if I went through the agony on his behalf and he succumbed to his wounds. “I owe you my life, Judas.”

“I think this makes us even,” I said, grimacing despite waves of healing traveling across my body. “You owe me nothing.”

“On the contrary, I see things differently…. They’re gone, by the way,” he said, and then pressed a grimy hand over mine to keep me from speaking. He waited a minute or two before releasing his gag over my mouth. “Dracul may resume his search for us soon, but everyone has withdrawn for now.”

“Lovely. Just frigging lovely,” I said, feeling more like my old, endearing self again. “So, I wonder where the hell we are now?”

“Hard to say.” He chuckled. “But the floor’s texture feels like granite, and…. Oh shit, this feel’s like a bar. It is! We’re in a frigging dungeon!”

He started to laugh, until we both heard movement roughly thirty feet to our right. Probably a rat, or maybe a sea snake or other marine critter flapping around on the puddle floor, since this place had to be sea level in elevation, or lower. Hell, it could be—

“Pops?”

“Huh? Alistair?!”

Chapter Twelve

“My God, Ali, are you all right? Is your mother and Amy there, with you, too? And, are they okay?!”

The questions came out rapid-fire, as my surprise and fears were heightened. I was especially alarmed by my son’s weak sounding voice, as if something had frightened him terribly.

“They haven’t harmed us yet, if that’s what you’re asking,” he said. It sounded as if he attempted to scoot closer to Roderick and me, the soles of his shoes scuffing the stone floor. “They ambushed us at the hotel.”

“Dracul’s agents? What, were they waiting inside your rooms at the hotel in Rome?”

“Yes, that’s where they were.”

My heart sunk at the sound of Beatrice’s frightened tone, as she answered me instead of Alistair. Doubtless, she had been served a heavy and unforeseen dose of extreme unpleasantness, the very thing I had always strived to protect her from. And, we were merely talking about Dracul’s henchmen. If he had sent his vampires to Rome instead, or if he had handled the visitation himself, it might’ve turned out far worse.

“Beatrice, my love, are you all right?”

“I’m not sure,” she said, and I heard a soft rustling near where her voice emanated. Picturing dinginess similar to what Roderick and I found ourselves immersed in, I knew it could be no better. “They treated us roughly after first telling us we needed to cooperate or never see you alive again. They said you were here, and that Dracul would torture you to death if we didn’t come along peacefully.”

It broke my heart to hear her like this, and I resisted a powerful wave of incensed rage churning up from my solar plexus. An indignant wrath, I should say, toward whoever specifically had lied about Roderick’s and my whereabouts. I pictured Arso and his human buddies being involved with this cruel farce. Vesuvius couldn’t produce worse violence than what brewed within me at that moment, and the urge to brutally retaliate threatened to consume my spirit.

“Don’t worry and hang on! I’ll get you out of here as soon as I can figure out where ‘here’ is.” I felt Roderick’s accusing look, as I put forth every ounce of courage I held within my heart to have faith that good would prevail. “Where’s Amy?”

“I’m right here…sitting next to Bea.”

Similar to the weakened spirits of my wife and only child, Ms. Golden Eagle’s vibrant personality sounded as if she had become a terrified shell.

What in the hell happened…what did they do to my family?!

“I’m so sorry, Pops, so
very
sorry,” said Alistair. He was weeping, and immediately the tears spread to his fiancée and my beloved wife. “We should never have ventured away from where the feds took us, to Roderick’s home. I
should’ve insisted we stay put and waited as you instructed….
He
killed a young girl in front of us, and said you would tell us how much worse things will be when it’s our time to die.”

I could easily imagine the terror of not only being given a death sentence by this fiend, but to watch another, presumably innocent victim be sacrificed to make a point.
A mere child!
Certainly, there were screams of agony and the obligatory rush of nubile blood to feed the monster Vlad Tepes. The image in my mind not only came from my current knowledge of this unholy fiend, but also from my personal experiences with Dracul when he masqueraded as a Roman Catholic inquisitor five hundred years earlier. It’s impossible to forget the agonized screams I heard from his endless victims back then, along with the flickering silhouettes in adjacent dungeon cells as men and women slowly slid down poles with sharpened tips that had been treated with the blacksmith’s fire prior to insertion.

“Let it go, William,” whispered Roderick, addressing me by the name I had favored since the turn of the twentieth century. “That’s what he wants. Dracul draws pleasure and energy from your rage and disgust. Until we leave this place with Beatrice, Ali, and Amy, we can ill afford to react to his heinous deeds in any way. You know this is true.”

Yes, I knew it well. Our nemesis greedily coveted the total suffering of his victims, and had always enjoyed drawing out pain on every level of a person’s physical and spiritual makeup. But, honestly, I had forgotten the extremes he would pursue to destroy a human being’s core essence.

“Okay, Roderick’s right. This isn’t the time or place to dwell on what has brought us here.” I paused to look up from where we fell. Maybe it had been only thirty to forty feet, since judging from the voices and other noises coming from where we fell, we would have company very soon. “We need to get you all out of there while we can.”

“How?” Alistair sounded closer, and I heard him grasping the cold iron bars that separated him from Roderick and me. “We are all as good as
fucked
, if you ask me!”

“Calm down, Ali. You know better than to sport that attitude, if you want to leave here alive,” I chided him, gently, although his assessment matched the honest analysis in my head. Without a major miracle from The Almighty and his finest angels, we were indeed in trouble. “I’ve got an idea…I’ll be back in a moment.”

His protests continued, but became muffled when Beatrice implored him to shut the hell up about it. Tough love from his momma, and I must say it made me proud to hear her trying to hold it together. It gave me hope that she wasn’t as damaged as I had feared. No doubt, Amy would follow her lead, at least I hoped. Still, whatever escape route we managed to come up with would be difficult at best. Having everyone pulling in the same direction was direly important.

I scurried up the bars, hoping for the oft chance that the cells were fourteen to fifteen feet tall, and not all of them connected to the ceiling. At first, it appeared the only thing working out was the dungeon cell’s height. But as I moved from bar to bar, I finally found a gap, and one wide enough for the ladies and my boy to squeeze through to join us on our side.

“Okay, I found a way for the three of you to leave your cell and join us here,” I announced, when I returned. “I’ll guide you up the bars to the top, and then you’ll climb through to where we are.”

“Pops, that’s nuts!”

“Have you got a better idea?” I honestly didn’t see another viable option.

“What are we supposed to do when they come down here?”

I could tell from Alistair’s voice he had turned his attention to a spot above us, where the whispered voices echoed toward us. Hungry vampires and trigger-happy thugs approached the edge of the abyss.

“Quickly, get your mother over here, son!” I whispered, forcefully, and for the moment ignoring his growing panic.

“She’ll never make it to you before they show up!” he hissed, more worriedly. “None of us—”

“Stop it, Ali!” Roderick interrupted. He had crawled quietly to the far side of our dungeon cell. The sound of a pebble he threw bouncing off the walls of the chasm indicated a deep and promising passageway lay there. “There’s a tunnel over here. If everyone can climb over to our side quickly and quietly.”

Roderick and I heard it at the same time. The hushed voices above had ceased to converse with one another. The silence likely meant one thing.

“You all need to scale the bars, now!”

“But, Pops.”

“Now!”

“William, help me!”
cried Beatrice. I could hear her stand up, slapping at herself.
“Something’s on my head, crawling in my hair!”

My wife was never afraid of the creepy-crawly critters in the world, and in fact, the very night she and I first met she had killed a poisonous snake that had wandered into the Scottish pub, where she worked as a no-nonsense barmaid. Even during her age regression, I had never seen her squeamish about anything. Yet, here she was, acting like a fragile princess.

Dracul must’ve gotten to her and invaded her psyche somehow.

“Help your mother climb the bars, Ali, and I’ll catch her over here!” I urged him. “Then Amy and you will need to quickly follow.”

How I wished for a damned flashlight to help guide them, as the only thing we had thought to bring along were hunting knives from a local store that resembled machetes. Very foolish, in hindsight, though we truly were pressed for time. There wasn’t near enough to secure firearms, since neither Roderick nor I had black market contacts in this region. Or, we no longer had them, I should say.

“Maybe this will help,” said Roderick, pulling out a small penlight and turning it on. After a cautionary pass with the small beam into the darkness above, which surprisingly revealed we remained alone for the moment, he pointed it to where our beleaguered trio’s voices had originated.

“Oh my God!...”
I whispered.

Alistair shielded his eyes from the light’s bright beam, as did Amy. Apparently, they had been down here since shortly after their arrival in the castle. My son’s mouth had been bloodied and both he and Amy sported red welts under their eyes. It wasn’t the first thing I noticed, since both were disheveled and soiled, as if they had rolled around in the muddy ground on their side of the ancient, rusted bars that separated us from each other.

As for Beatrice, my initial gasp was mostly on account of what had happened to her. Disheveled like my boy and his fiancée, she also sported the same welts under her eyes, and her hair was tousled into an unruly mess. Admittedly, it could’ve been related to her screaming fit from just moments ago. But, the fact her blouse had been nearly torn away told me otherwise.

“What happened, my love?” I asked, finding it incredibly hard to stay calm while I motioned for Alistair to meet me at the bars, with the intent to help the women scale the obstacle first. “Are you all right?”

“Let me see you, William,” she said, her voice shaking as she approached the spot where her son and I waited. “Shine the light in your face,
please!”

Roderick and I exchanged baffled looks in the light’s dimness, and I could tell he was just as disturbed by Beatrice’s unstable behavior. Despite knowing we could be attacked at any time, I motioned for Roderick to illuminate my face for my beloved wife.

“There, you see? It’s me….”

Ear piercing screeches filled the air above our heads, and when Roderick pointed the tiny flashlight in that direction, several pale faces greeted us.

Beatrice and Amy screamed, and several short blasts of gunfire sent bullets ricocheting off a wall behind us.

“Get your mom and Amy up on the bars, Ali, and don’t let them stop climbing until they make it over!”

It was all I could get out before the wave of bloodsuckers struck.

Chapter Thirteen

“Look out!”

Roderick called out as a vampire descended upon me. A strong sucker—literally—but unprepared for someone with my skill set. Skills I had spent centuries perfecting, and that at one time the CIA found indispensable. The face that greeted me belonged to a young man, not quite twenty when he was turned. The perfect age, according to Dracul’s standards, since subservience was made easier by youth. His eyes were as black as midnight, an initial result of the germ that causes all vampirism. Manifesting itself in a variety of ways, for this vampire the germ produced several fangs, as opposed to the standard two. The demon’s youthful bravado apparently was enhanced by his knowledge of the defect, and he smiled as if privy to my musings about him.

A very good development for me. Especially since my aforementioned skills were of the killing kind, and had become part of my instinctive repertoire centuries ago.

The vampire ripped through my shirt with his razor-sharp fingernails, and certainly intended to rip away my shoulder to get to my neck. But as he moved in to secure his powerful grip upon me, I slid away and climbed onto his back, using my long knife’s serrated edge to sever his throat from ear to ear. Blood erupted in all directions, and before the monster’s garbled screeches reached their crescendo, I plunged the knife’s edge through his back, slicing his heart in two.