They Thirst (70 page)

Something that looked like a gray bull mastiff came charging out of the storm, rearing up on powerful, muscle-corded hind legs. It towered as high as Wes, showing teeth that could rip his throat out. Wes was about to fire when the dog vanished off to his right. He looked up and could see shapes gathered on the boulders that hung over the road. They crouched low, like wolves about to leap. Dogs came snapping at Silvera's legs, backed away, and charged again. A black mongrel with dull, deadly eyes leaped high from the pack, fangs closing on the sleeve of his gun hand. He almost lost the .22, but then he kicked the dog with his uninjured leg, heard cloth rip, and his arm was free. He fired a shot into the snapping pack and instantly they split apart, leaping to both sides and scurrying away. "Keep moving!" he shouted to Wes. "Don't let them stop you!"

There was a brown blur in the corner of Wes's eye. A slat-ribbed mongrel was tracking him, looking for an opening. He shot at it and heard it yip. The dogs began coming down from the rocks, circling the two men. Silvera saw a huge, bluish-gray dog that could have been a Siberian husky or some kind of wolf. It wore a nail-studded collar, and when its eyes caught the priest's, they burned with demonic hunger. The wolf-dog was stalking him, letting the smaller dogs rush in first and waiting to see what would happen. When a couple of them came at Silvera's left and he whirled to meet them, the wolf-dog leaped from the right, soundlessly, its jaws opening wide to crush the human's gun arm.

Silvera saw the gray streak and pulled his arm back, but the massive dog hit him so hard he was thrown to the ground on his side, the breath whistling painfully from between his teeth. The dog straddled him, fangs going up under the mask to rip his throat. He could feel the hot wetness of its muzzle and saw the glittering eyes pressed right up to his own with triumphant defiance.

In the next instant the dog's face caved in, teeth and bone disintegrating; blood splattered across Silvera's mask and goggles. He heard Wes's second shot, the .45's barrel less than three feet away, and then there wasn't much left of the wolf-dog's head but ooze and broken bone. Silvera pushed the heavy corpse aside and staggered to his feet, wiping the blood off his goggles so he could see the next attackers. The shapes darted and danced around them, but they wouldn't come in close. Silvera thought the wolf-dog might've been the pack's leader, and now they seemed disorganized and much less confident. The circle of snapping animals slowly widened, and then they were swallowed up by the storm. Wes and Silvera could hear the animals howling up in the rocks, like subjects mourning their dead king. "They may be back!" Silvera said. "We've got to hurrry!" He only had two bullets left and, as they walked, Silvera took the .45 and slapped in a new clip, then handed it back to Wes.

The road began to level off. They sensed the castle before they saw it, a huge turreted thing of dark stone just beyond the storm's whirling curtain. The wind was terrible, ripping past Wes and Silvera with a vengeance, almost casting them off the cliffs edge and down into a series of rocky ravines below. They moved carefully, making sure one step was firm before they tried the next. Mountains of sand grew and fell all around them, hissing and sliding and then finally falling off the cliff, leaving diaphanous trails across the muddy sky. At first Silvera thought he was looking at an extension of the mountain, a jumble of stones that loomed up in fearsome peaks, but as he moved closer, he saw the high wall, and the chinks between the gray blocks like rough scales on the hide of a leviathan. He saw towers, parapets, sloping roofs whitened with sand, saw teeth of glass glittering in high window frames, dunce-cap spires spiking the sky. The castle looked like a grinning stone skull capped with Satanic horns. The place was huge, as dark and forbidding as a nightmare. Silvera stopped in his tracks, overwhelmed.
Go on,
he told himself.
This has to be faced. It has to be done.

As they neared the wall, the wind stopped, blocked off by the mass of stone. Mounds of sand had heaped up against the enormous wooden gate and covered the driveway as well to a depth of perhaps six inches. Wes and Silvera looked up, dwarfed by the structure; the parapets and towers seemed to be leaning slightly, the windows set at odd angles and none of them quite the same size. Some of the stones protruded and some of them were recessed, cracked, and crumbling.

"What are we going to do?" Wes asked. "How do we get over that wall?"

Silvera moved along the driveway toward the gate, stopped, and looked up at the tangle of barbed wire six feet above. "I think I can climb over that if you'll help me," he said.

Wes paused, looking at the balconies and windows for a sign of activity; the place looked dead, deceptively so.
Maybe they're still sleeping!
he thought.
If we hurry, we can get in, find Solange, and get out before they're up!
He watched Silvera walk to the gate. In the distance he could hear a chorus of howls, as if the dogs were gathering for another attack. Silvera looked over his shoulder into the darkness, the flesh at the back of his neck crawling.

And with his next step he heard the quiet
click!
of a disengaging spring. He realized what it was
a split-second before the trap's gleaming, serrated jaws burst up from the sand around his left foot and snapped shut on his ankle. There was no pain at first, just die brittle sound of cracking bone, and he then knew what he should've guessed before he started along the driveway. The sand had been spread thickly and deliberately here to hide the iron traps that lay in wait for intruders. Now the pain hit, a white-hot wave that made him cry out in the mask. He was staggering backward, but slowly—so slowly—like in a nightmare where all motion seems crazy and useless. He tried to brace his fall with a hand and saw with horror another trap's jaws snapping shut, missing his wrist by several inches. He hit the ground on his side; a third trap cracked together just beside his face. Then it seemed he could see the castle from the corner of his eye, and he was watching the towers tumble toward him. The towers fell, smothering him in agonizing darkness.

Prince Vulkan's eyes opened. At once he was fully alert, like any wild animal eager to hunt. Tonight, he'd decided, he would go down into Los Angeles and join his troops rather than wait for food to be brought up to the castle. He would hunt with his soldiers and race with the wind, seeking out the scent of warm blood, the noises of humans whimpering in their attics and basements. He was chilled with the need for food, though the cold wasn't yet painful.

Uneasiness ached within him, a strange kind of confusion and uncertainty that he hadn't known in a very long time. In his dreams he'd stood at the center of a huge stadium, even larger than the Coliseum in Rome, with high banks of bright lights shining down. He was on a platform, the green field marked off in columns on each side, and the waves of frantic adulation had swept down, crashing on him, hot and sweet, from the thousands who filled the stadium around him. They were all calling him
Master,
and when they started leaping onto the field End running toward him to kiss his hands, his lieutenants and their attack dogs had formed a ring around him for protection. It was at that moment that he knew the city had fallen. Los Angeles was theirs, the first conquest of the invincible vampiric army. The first of many.

The shouting swelled. His name cracked through the sky like thunder, rolling ominously in all directions. His hour was at hand; next would be the fall of San Francisco and San Diego, securing a hold on the West. Then the army would begin crawling eastward, advance parties moving into the major cities, one wing swinging north into Canada and one south into Mexico. It was the beginning of a new age, and he would be its rising star.

But amid the joyful celebration, he felt a gnarled hand fall upon his shoulder, and he turned to face the Headmaster.

But a different Headmaster. Its eyes had dimmed somewhat, the black lips were tightly drawn. "Beware, Conrad," the Headmaster had said. "Be careful, and guard yourself."

"My hour has come!" Vulkan said. "Beware of what? Listen to them scream my name!
My
name!"

"You stand in a dream," the Headmaster whispered, the hand gripping the prince's shoulder. "You lie at sleep, and these things have not yet come to pass . . ."

"They
will!
I know they will! Listen to them shouting!"

"I hear the wind." The Headmaster blinked, and when its eyes opened again, Vulkan sensed a weariness about his old teacher, a . . . weakness. "My opponent moves His pieces, Conrad. We've not yet won the game."

"Game?" Vulkan asked. The shouting died to a whisper and was swept away. Now he stood alone in the center of the stadium with the Headmaster, and the glaring lights were beginning to hurt his eyes. "What pieces do you mean?"

"They're strong, Conrad, don't you understand that? They refuse to accept defeat! They refuse to be broken! You've barely scratched the surface of humanity in this city, and you think the whole world is already yours! It is
not!"
The Headmaster's voice came out as a growl, rumbling down the length of the field. "They're escaping by the thousands, Conrad . . ."

"NO! The storm won't let them!"

The Headmaster's eyes flared. "There are limits to all tilings, Conrad, even to the powers I possess. And the power you have as well. But it is endurance that will win the game. And if nothing else they know how to endure."

"I've crushed them!" Vulkan shouted. "The city is mine!"

The Headmaster shook its dark head and stared at him sadly. "You've learned all the lessons but one, and that is the most important. Never consider your position safe.
Never!
You may destroy a knight or a bishop, and be struck down by a pawn."

"Nothing can touch me!" Vulkan cried out defiantly. "I'm not. . .
weak!"

"There are four who would destroy you," the Headmaster said. "They approach even now, as you lie dreaming of glory. Four pieces—one is a knight, another is a bishop, a third is a rook, and the fourth is a pawn. With- out fully realizing it they have come together in a deadly combination, Conrad. I've done all I can to stop them, but they
endure.
And they advance. We can still destroy them. We can still win the game, but you must know them and beware . . ."

"We?"
Vulkan shook free of the Headmaster's grip.
"We?
Didn't you hear them shouting? Whose name did they call? Mine! Prince Conrad Vulkan, King of the Vampires! They call me
Master.
They recognize me as the highest power!"

"I have given you and your kind life. I have taught you the secrets of power, the sorcery of Aba-aner, Nectanebus, and Solomon. I have taught you what it means to be a king. But you're not invincible, Conrad . .

Vulkan stared at him for a long time, then said coldly, "Who would dare to test me?"

"Four humans," the Headmaster replied.

"Four humans!"
Vulkan said disdainfully, and when he grinned he showed his fangs. "Don't you understand the size of my army now? Before the sun rises again, they
'll
number twice a million! And tomorrow night . . ." He lifted a hand and curled it into a fist, his eyes wild and bright green. And then his grin suddenly contorted with the realization. "You're . . . afraid, aren't you? You're scared! Of what? Those
four?
Why don't you find them? Why don't you tear them to pieces for me?"

"Because," the Headmaster said softly, "our enemy is using them, working through them just as we work through all the others. I can't. . . touch them . . ."

"You're afraid!" the prince shouted. "Well, I'm not! I've learned all the lessons now, my troops call out for me, and we still advance! Nothing can stop us now. Are you afraid because . . ." He stopped, thinking the unutterable, but now he knew the truth, and the words burst from his throat. "That's it, isn't it? You're afraid of
me.
You don't want me to get too strong, do you? You're afraid of what I've learned!"

The Headmaster watched him silently. Its eyes began to burn like pools of slag flowing out of a volcanic furnace.

"I'm going to live forever," Vulkan said, "and I'll always be young, always! So you've seen what I can do, and you've come to make me doubt myself, haven't you? You've come to make me afraid of four humans, just like you are!"

"Forever is too long," the Headmaster said, "and never long enough. I came to warn you, Conrad. I've done all I can for you, the rest will have to be ..

"I don't need you anymore!" the prince said. "School's out!"

The Headmaster seemed to tremble with rage. Its body began to gather into a hulking mass, like a thick blight of shadow. It neared Vulkan, covering him over with the force of a freezing wind. "Fool," it whispered. "Little boy. Little fool. . ."

"I'm not a little boy, I'm not, I'm not, I'm NOT!" Vulkan shouted, but when he tried to step away from the Headmaster, he felt locked into its shadow.

"Did you think you were my only pupil, Conrad? You're not. I have other ones with the potential to be even stronger than you. It's not your strength I fear, Conrad, but your weakness. I see this city falling before your kind, but not by their power. You've done what we wanted to do; now time has come to retreat. . ."