The Greyfriar (Vampire Empire, Book 1) by Clay & Susan Griffith;Clay Griffith;Susan Griffith (3 page)

Adele reached up absently and through her heavy blouse damp with
perspiration she felt the small stone talisman hanging around her neck.
She wore it instead of the beautiful gold locket with a photo of her
Intended, which was buried deep in her luggage. Her revered mentor,
Mamoru, had given her the religious stone talisman for protection, and
it gave her a sense of solemnity and calm. But Adele kept it hidden; no
one could know that their princess wore such a superstitious item. Members of court already suspected that her youthful exuberance was a
dreadful portent of her failure as empress. Surely they didn't need to
know that she had a penchant for the occult and miraculous. The
"better" class of people in Equatoria put religion and magic in the same
category. Churches and mosques and temples still existed, and services
were still held, but those who attended were viewed as quaint at best
and deranged at worst. Mamoru was a very spiritual man, and Adele
found that part of him fascinating. He claimed that spirituality and naturalism, as much as steel and steam, would destroy the vampires. It was
only a matter of firm belief and correct practice.

Ptolemy began to glow with the quavering blurs of chemical bulbs.
The other ships in the fleet appeared as vague yellow smudges in the
night sky. Far beneath the ship the earth was hidden in a swallowing
blackness that had fascinated and terrified Adele since they had left the
civilizing lights of the Empire for the vampire frontier of southern
France.

Prince Simon's urgent voice interrupted Adele's thoughts. "Do you
think we'll meet the Greyfriar out here?"

Adele shook her head with confusion. "What? The Greyfriar? What
in the world are you talking about now?"

"The Greyfriar! He's a hero who fights the vampires in the north."

"Oh, yes. No, of course not. He's not even real, Simon. Just a story
to make people feel better."

Simon narrowed his eyes at his sister's ignorance. "He's not a story.
He's real. I saw pictures in a book. He carries swords and guns and wears a mask. People say he killed a hundred vampires in Brussels. A hundred!" The young prince began to wave his arm around as if he had a
sword, striking and slashing. "He's a master fencer with all blades! His
swords move so fast vampires can't see them! Whoosh whoosh whoosh!
Their heads are rolling before they even know the Greyfriar is there!
Hah! Colonel Anhalt, you believe in the Greyfriar, don't you?"

The soldier said over his shoulder with mock solemnity, "Indeed I do,
Your Highness. I heard he killed a hundred vampires in Brussels too."

"You see, Adele! I told you!"

Adele replied, "Simon, be still."

"Why can't we meet him? I'll bet if we told him we were coming,
he'd meet us. We're the royal family of Equatoria."

"We can't see him because he's not real! Now stand still and mind me!"

Simon huffed. "Well, then, will they let me command the ship?"

"No, of course not," Adele snapped irritably. Then she blinked and
said more softly, "Not now. Perhaps tomorrow when it's light."

Adele wanted to nurture Simon's youthful curiosity and excitement,
not stifle it. His enthusiasm was important. The Empire needed men
like Simon, brazen and curious. Currently at court, to her dismay, there
already were far too many of the venal type of man he would become if
the palace drudges got their talons on him.

"Why not?" Simon wandered from her side, intent on exploring the
ship's wheel, where blazingly bright copper pneumatic tubes gathered
to form something like a Baroque organ. Prince Simon was due to
become an officer in the Imperial Navy, and this idea excited him.

Colonel Anhalt coughed commandingly at the young prince as
small hands played over the pneumo tubes.

Adele darted from the rail and grabbed her brother's arm. "Simon,
don't get in the way!"

"I'm not going to hurt anything!" the boy retorted.

They were interrupted by the clack of a pneumo arriving from the
tops.

With his back straight, Colonel Anhalt said to Simon, "Would
Your Highness care to retrieve that signal from the chief of the top
mizzenmast?"

With a yelp of joy, Simon lifted a round copper flap, and a rubber
cylinder dropped out into his hand along with a splash of dark liquid.
"Ew. What's this?" He lifted his stained fingers into the yellow light.

Oil or grease, Adele thought with mild exasperation, automatically
reaching into her pocket for a handkerchief. Anhalt stared at Simon's
hand with furrowed brows. He pulled the pneumo cylinder from the
boy's grasp and sniffed it.

"Blood," the rough soldier murmured. Abruptly his stern visage
turned on a horrified Princess Adele. His voice was firm and demanding.
"Your Highness, take your brother below, if you please."

Adele put one hand instinctively on the hilt of her dagger and with
the other tugged Simon toward the main hatch as Colonel Anhalt gazed
up at the vast dirigible one hundred feet over his head as if trying to see
through it to the invisible topmasts above. Several naval officers on the
quarterdeck stopped chatting among themselves and watched with
growing interest.

Suddenly the airship lurched. Adele grabbed a pneumatic tube for
support and pulled her brother back to his feet. In the rigging high
above, she saw a figure tumble sickeningly, flipping this way and that,
unable to grasp a safe hold, until he shot past the deck into the black
atmosphere below the ship. Before Adele could understand that sudden
tragedy, another man fell and then another. Then she saw strange
shadowy things moving with unnatural agility down through the lines,
pulling hand over hand toward the deck.

Two dark cadaverous figures settled to the deck amidships with no
sound and lifted their bloodstained faces into the light. Adele saw true
savagery for the first time. These vampires were not stories or frightening figures in the distance; they were real, covered in blood that glistened in the lamplight. She clutched her brother close.

Sailors stared at the horrific intruders. A squad of redjackets raised
their rifles and opened an erratic fire. One vampire was blown off his
feet. The other streaked forward, a blur in the half-light, and two soldiers screamed. The wounded vampire then bounded to his feet and also
rushed into the fight. It was a short, bloody affair.

Two other vampires dropped onto the quarterdeck, hissing like cats, only yards from Adele and Simon. One leapt at Simon, too fast for Adele
to scream or react.

The vampire's head exploded and the body tumbled.

Anhalt appeared at Adele's side with a smoking revolver extended
and Fahrenheit saber in hand. "Get below! Quickly!" He fired twice, hitting the second vampire in the head, and it dropped palsied to the deck.

"Form square!" Anhalt bellowed over the staccato gunfire erupting
across the deck. "Fix bayonets! Up and out! Up and out!" Soldiers
scrambled for the quarterdeck and gathered into a ragged square around
the main hatch. The men fumbled with bayonets and tried to work their
rifles as they'd been drilled, each trooper alternating his aim out or up
to cover both ground and air. Some young faces were blank, others
stained with horror and blood.

Adele sent her brother down into the companionway. She saw the
rigging over her head was full of vampires, perhaps a hundred of them
squirming and crawling, like a dead tree full of caterpillars. Then the
two royals were below, where soldiers and sailors raced frantically
through the corridors. Officers shouted orders and counterorders that
were lost in the din of tramping feet. Anhalt dropped quickly through
the hatchway and detailed five soldiers to accompany Adele and Simon
into the bowels of the ship.

They went down and down, past the acrid-smelling chemical room,
into the reeking orlop deck. They were taken to a small dark chamber,
fore or aft Adele could no longer say, inhabited by goats, pigs, and crates
of chickens.

"You'll be safe here, Your Highness." A soldier shoved the royal siblings into the manger, then slammed the door shut.

For a long time, neither Adele nor Simon spoke in the blackness.
She hugged her brother, noticing that he was shivering, his unblinking
eyes staring at a small goat that stood in the straw nearby. They strained
to hear traces of the battle, hoping for hints of victory. Surely, the finest
troops of the Equatorian Empire could defeat vampire raiders. The vampires would flee like vermin once they realized that this was not a lazy
merchant vessel that had strayed too far north.

The room shuddered and made a heart-sickening lurch to starboard. Simon screeched and squeezed Adele as they tumbled across the manger.
Trying to cushion Simon's body, she hit the bulkhead amid a pile of
chicken crates. Adele lifted a crate off her brother and brought him
closer.

After several frightening minutes in the dark, the door flew open
and Colonel Anhalt appeared with a horrid gash marring his dark face,
his tunic torn and drenched in blood. He carried a trooper's carbine and
his saber, smoking with boiling blood. "Highness, quickly if you please.
The ship is going down."

Adele climbed to her feet. "Lifeboats?"

"No." Anhalt shepherded the royal pair from the room. "Too
unsafe." Airship lifeboats were small gondolas attached to chemically
inflated balloons; easy prey to vampires. Three soldiers moved ahead and
four fell in behind. As the group climbed to the gun deck the chemical
lighting went out, plunging the ship into pitch black. The hallway was
listing at a rough angle, and footing was treacherous. Ahead, sailors were
filling a room with mattresses and rolled hammocks. Anhalt indicated
for Adele and Simon to go inside. "Stay here, Your Highness. And don't
worry. "

Adele pushed Simon to the floor, where he stayed compliantly.
Sliding her hand off her brother's stiff shoulder, she moved back to her
trusted Gurkha colonel and whispered, "What's our situation?"

Anhalt hesitated, but after staring into the steady eyes of the young
woman he admired, and again realizing why he admired her, he said,
"The vampires have destroyed most of the sails and damaged the dirigible. And we can no longer stay aloft. The White Guard is losing the
deck."

"How is this possible?" she asked, incredulous. "Raiders don't-"

"These aren't raiders, Your Highness. This is a full-scale attack by
clan packs. They mean to destroy this ship. Perhaps the entire convoy."

"That's incredible! Surely we have the firepower to stop them."

"I hope so. Vampires are desperately hard to kill. The monsters do
not know they are injured until they are in pieces. Even with a Fahrenheit blade, you have to destroy a vital organ or sever the head."

"How many are there?"

He shook his head and hefted his red saber without outward emotion. "Fewer now."

"How many men have we lost?"

"Many," Anhalt answered, and turned to leave.

Adele noticed the bloody footprints left by the colonel and his four
White Guardsmen, and anger raced through her. The door closed and
she knelt beside Simon, dragging a mattress over them. She sang softly
to her brother, a lullaby she used to sing to him when he was a baby.
They waited.

Adele heard a strange sound mixed with her own voice.

But there was so much noise enveloping the ship that at first Adele
dismissed the sound as just part of the battle. Then it came again from
just by her ear. It was coming from the other side of the bulkhead. She
strained to hear. Men running? The creaking of stressed timber? Rats
scurrying for safety? There was something about it that didn't seem to
fit any of those.

"What is that noise?" asked Simon in a small voice.

"Nothing," Adele responded. "It's nothing." But the anxiety inside
her wouldn't go away. She shifted and eased Simon away from the wall.
From within her cape emerged her Fahrenheit khukri dagger. The glow
from the blade gave her some small comfort, but couldn't stop the wild
pounding of her heart.

Then the wall started to break apart.

D AND S were showered with splinters as a hole
was punched in the wall and a thin object snaked through.
Something sharp dug into the young woman's side. There was a horrible
hissing noise, almost one of pain as it grabbed her. Arching back with a
cry, Adele instinctively slashed at what held her. Her blade came into
contact with something long and bony. An arm!