FORTY-NINE
Allen's shoulders and forearms burned with effort. The metal handles of the lead box dug harshly into his fingers, ground against the bones.
The girls were screeching something high-pitched and panicked behind him. He tuned it out. He had to deliver the stone or die trying. The compulsion throbbing within him was almost painful now.
Panting, he made it to the top of the stairs. He staggered through the cathedral to the front door, pausing only once to breathe deeply and lean against a pew.
"Wait!" Penny called after him. "We have to go back for Father Paul."
Allen didn't wait; he jogged to the front door and kicked it open.
And froze in his tracks.
A thick fog had rolled in, gray and damp. It completely shrouded the cathedral. Allen couldn't see three feet in front of him. Amy and Penny halted behind Allen, gaping at the fog.
"Where did this come from?" Penny asked.
Amy shook her head. "I don't think it's natural."
"I have to go." Allen began to walk into the fog.
Penny and Amy both grabbed him.
"What?" He shrugged them off. "Let me go."
"What's wrong with you?" Amy tightened her grip on Allen.
A steady gust of wind, nearly arctic, blew their hair back from their faces. They shrunk from it, startled.
The fog began to swirl. It split apart, a passage through the gray opening up before them. A tunnel in the mist.
There she stood at the end, an eerie blue glow around her.
"Cassandra," breathed Allen. He stumbled toward her.
Penny grabbed for him but missed. "What are you doing, idiot?"
"We've got to help him," Amy said. "She's controlling him."
Amy ran toward Allen, but Cassandra moved like a blur, was in front of the girl in a split second, catching her across the jaw with a sharp backhand. Amy yelped and crumpled to the ground.
Allen fell at Cassandra's feet, pushed the box toward her, panting, almost unconscious from the exertion. "I b-brought it. Please. Just like you asked."
Cassandra reached down, brushed her fingers against Allen's check. Her touch felt like ice. "My wonderful brave boy."
"Hands off, bitch." Penny stood twenty feet away. She kicked off her deck shoes. "He's mine."
Cassandra's slow smile didn't touch her eyes. "Go away, little girl. Before you get hurt."
"It's go time." Penny flexed her hands. Her face twitched. The transformation was abrupt and shocking, fur sprouting and spreading, mouth deforming, long savage teeth growing. Arms and shoulders stretching the fabric of the T-shirt but not ripping it. Razor claws at the ends of her long fingers.
Allen looked up from his place at the vampire's feet, eyes wide. He'd seen the wolf, but he hadn't seen her like this. She'd changed into some stage between human and wolf. It was still Penny's face, but vicious, snarling, covered in fur. Penny preferred the term lycanthrope, but there was no doubt in Allen's mind.
This was a werewolf.
Cassandra's smile showed genuine amusement this time. "One of the old lupine clan. I'd heard there were still some of your kind about. This might prove sporting after all."
Cassandra darted at Penny with lightning speed, hands outstretched, but the werewolf ducked under her reach raked claws across the vampire's belly. Cassandra hissed pain, retaliated with a swift backhand, a glancing blow to Penny's head. She growled, backed away. They squared off, circling around each other.
Penny leaped, claws out. Cassandra put a foot against her chest and fell back, kicked, used Penny's own weight to send her sailing into the fog. Cassandra stood, fists up. Everything went dead quiet. A sad little part of Allen's brain told him to get the hell up and run, but he only lay there. Watching and waiting.
Penny flew snarling out of the fog, striking at Cassandra's face, three long rents in the flesh of the vampire's cheek. No blood. Allen watched in amazement as the wounds closed over, the skin smooth once more.
The werewolf attacked again.
Cassandra stepped forward, caught Penny in midleap, held her by the throat, lifted her off the ground. The werewolf snarled and kicked. Cassandra balled up her fist and punched Penny with alarming might square in the forehead. Penny made the sound of a wounded animal, head flopped, dazed. Cassandra lifted the werewolf with both hands, hurled her flailing into the fog.
Allen heard her land with a crunch and a yelp.
The silence stretched. Penny didn't return.
Cassandra smiled down at Allen. "That little distraction has been taken care of. Come. Bring the stone."
Allen tried to lift the box. He had nothing left and collapsed to the ground. "I can't."
"Never mind, my darling." Cassandra lifted the box like it was a basket of laundry, tucked it under one arm. With her other hand she lifted Allen to his feet. "Let us be going."
Allen hesitated. "You have the stone. Can't I stay? I... I'm so tired."
Her eyes caught his. "Allen."
The bite mark on his inner thigh flared hot. Desire for her radiated from it, soaked into every part of his body.
"Come along, Allen."
A dreamy grin split Allen's face. "Yes, of course. I obey, mistress."
She took him by the hand, and they disappeared into the fog.
Amy felt a throbbing in her head, dirt and grit on her face. How long had she been lying there on the ground? Only a few minutes maybe. She started to push herself up, felt hands lifting her. She turned, fist ready to strike.
"It's just me," Father Paul said. "Easy does it."
He helped her up. She immediately looked around, peering into the fog. "Oh, God. Where are they?"
"I just got here," the priest said.
She told him about Cassandra. "I don't know what happened after that."
"The vampire took him," came a voice from the fog.
Penny limped through the mist. She looked pale, hair matted. She held her side. "I landed kind of far away."
Father Paul rushed to her side, helped hold her up. "What happened?"
"She has Allen. And the philosopher's stone."
"Damn."
Another figure emerged from the fog, startling them. It was Father Starkes.
"Where have you been?" Father Paul didn't try to hide his irritation. "I told you to guard the door."
"Sorry," Starkes said. "I thought I heard something out there and went to take a look."
Father Paul rubbed his eyes. "Forget it." He looked up. "The fog is clearing."
"Where's Finnegan?" Amy asked.
"He didn't make it."
Amy gasped. Penny hung her head.
"We need to regroup," Father Paul said. "And then we get Allen back. And the stone too."
They limped away, bruised but determined.
None of them saw the watchful raven following them.
FIFTY
Allen awoke in a cavern lit by torches. There was a waterwheel, and a contraption with lenses hanging over a raised dais. A memory triggered something he'd read in the Kelley diary.
This was it. The machine for the philosopher's stone.
The trip from the Vysehrad to the woods behind Prague Castle had been a blur. He only knew he had to follow Cassandra; his whole purpose in life was to serve her. He didn't know what she wanted with the stone. It didn't matter. Whatever it was, Allen would do his best to make it happen, to earn her love, her kisses, her touch.
They'd entered the caverns beneath the castle through a hidden entrance in the woods. Cassandra told him it had taken her about five years to find it, but that had been a century ago. She couldn't use the entrance beneath St. Vitus any more than she could enter the Cathedral of St. Paul and Peter. Hallowed ground.
His stomach rumbled. How long since he'd eaten?
Allen had fallen asleep poring over Kelley's diary, had tried to make sure he knew how to operate the machine, the proper order to pull the levers that positioned the lenses. He was pretty sure he'd installed the lead box properly. He'd barely overcome a perverse desire to open the box and look at the stone.
What would this do to his beloved Cassandra? He couldn't guess, but he was determined to do it right and please her. They needed only to wait for daylight in the aboveground world. The power of the stone in conjunction with sunlight-that was the trick according to the diary. Allen didn't need to understand. He just had to make sure he followed directions.
His stomach growled again. He couldn't remember ever being this hungry.
A little brown spider scurried between his shoes. He snatched it up, shoved it in his mouth, chewed, swallowed.
Wait. That's not right.
Allen strongly suspected he needed to be rescued.
It was just after dawn, and they'd barely had any rest-just a quick meal and cups of coffee. They were back in the KGB basement of the small Catholic church. Nuns had come in to wrap Penny's bruised ribs and bandage a deep scratch on her forehead.
They stood around a conference table filled with automatic weapons and various explosive devices.
"Soon they'll be able to use the machine," Father Paul said, checking the magazine on a.45 Colt. "God knows what will happen. Father Starkes and I have to go. It's our job. I won't think less of you two if you decide to sit this one out."
Amy and Penny exchanged glances.
"No offense, Father," Amy said, "but fuck you."
Penny's tone was somewhat more respectful. "Father Paul, I have to tell you, I've invested quite a lot of time into Allen. I'd hate to see him killed now. I think I'd better come along."
A wan smile unfolded across Father Paul's face. "Okay then. Let's gear up." He gestured at the arsenal spread across the table. "I don't know if we'll be up against animated suits of armor again. Frankly, I have no clue what we're in for. But Father Starkes and I are going to carry twelve-gauge shotguns. Maybe that can knock apart some armor plating. Select what you want."
Amy put her hand on an enormous pistol, lifted it. Heavy.
"That's a.50-caliber Desert Eagle," Father Paul said. "Might be a little too much gun for you."
Amy frowned. "Why?"
"The kick will knock you back into the last century." Father Paul handed her a small.32 revolver. "Maybe this."
She took the revolver but kept casting longing glances at the Desert Eagle.
In a quiet moment, Amy found herself standing shoulder to shoulder with Penny, going over the equipment, while Father Paul and Starkes were off doing something else. Amy cleared her throat and said, "I think I need to apologize to you. I think it's my fault about Allen."
Penny shot her a sideways glance. "What are you talking about?"
"Remember the morning in the art museum? God, that seems, like, a hundred years ago." Amy told Penny about Allen and Cassandra. "I suspected Allen might not be in full control of himself. I should have said something."
Penny lapsed into sickly silence.
"I'm sorry," Amy said.
"It's okay," Penny said. "I'm glad you told me."
They went about their business in silence. Starkes and Father Paul thumbed double-aught shells into their pump-action twelve-gauges. They hung bandoliers of additional shells over their shoulders. Shoulder holsters with.45 automatics. The priests pried open a crate, revealing a stash of hand grenades. They passed the grenades around, along with extra ammunition. Kevlar vests. Utility belts with flashlights and miniature, compact tools. Combat boots. Black fatigues with the Vatican Battle Jesuit patch on the sleeves.
"This stuff is weighing me down." Penny stripped off the Kevlar, kicked off the combat boots. "And I have to be able to transform quickly." She put the deck shoes back on, picked out a small black T-shirt with the Battle Jesuit crest over the pocket.
"I like the boots and the pants and the belt, but I want a T-shirt too," Amy said. "That stuff you wear is too hot."
"Fine," Father Paul said. "I'm not sure Kevlar is likely to stop what we might encounter anyway."
He grabbed a pair of pickaxes, handed one to Starkes. "Let's roll."
The morning sun was well into the sky when the four black-clad strangers armed with pistols and shotguns walked through the courtyards of Prague Castle toward St. Vitus Cathedral. Tourists scattered before them.
"We seem to be causing a scene," Penny said.
Father Paul didn't break stride. "No time to be subtle."
Two security guards in blue shirts with silver badges stopped in front of them, holding up their hands and yelling at them in Czech.
Father Paul flashed his Jesuit ID. "Vatican business, gentlemen. Stand aside."
The guards looked at each other. They stood aside.
"You can do that?" Penny asked.
"Apparently."
They entered the cathedral, more tourists scurrying out of their way. They headed for the entrance to the burial vault. A tour group stood aside to let them around the velvet rope and down the stairs to the chambers beneath St. Vitus.
"Allen told me it was all the way at the end," Father Paul said. "At least that's what he read in the diary."
They marched past the tombs, and the chamber ended in a black wall of whitewashed brick. Father Paul lifted a pickax. "Man, I hope this is the right place."
He swung the pickax and it bit deeply into brick and mortar. Starkes took his place next to him. They destroyed the wall in three minutes flat, opening a passage to the tunnel beyond, tall and wide enough for two people to pass through.
And that's when the zombies spilled out.
FIFTY-ONE
"I think it's time."
Allen looked up from the Kelley diary, beaming his adoration at Cassandra. "Yes?"
"Yes."
The vampire climbed the steps of the dais, unfastened her dress, and let it fall. She stood naked, smooth and white, the power of her sexuality radiating, seeming to fill the cavern. The bite mark on Allen's thigh flared again. His longing for her made him ache.
Cassandra lay on the table, folded her hands over her breasts. "Begin."
"Yes, mistress."
Allen rushed up the steps of the dais, the Kelley diary in his hands. He began to pull levers, always double-checking the diary as he went. The cavern echoed with the sound of reluctant machinery forced to move after being dormant for hundreds of years. The sound of rushing water filled their ears. At first the waterwheel didn't budge, but finally it groaned and creaked as it began to turn, slowly at first, but then more rapidly.
More levers. Allen's heart pounded so hard that it threatened to leap from his chest. The gizmo above the dais lowered, the lenses spinning into place to the racket of machinery and rushing water. Allen pushed another lever to activate the sunlight shafts and reflectors. The sunlight hit the lenses.
Then the sunlight hit Cassandra.
She screamed, writhing, on the table. Thin tendrils of smoke rose from her body.
Vampire + sunlight = bad idea.
"The stone!" she screamed. "Activate the stone."
Allen flew down the dais steps, stumbled and went down. He picked himself up, ran behind the protective lead wall, and pulled the final lever.
The cavern exploded with light. The sound of a thousand howling souls assaulted Allen's brain. He dove to the floor, eyes shut tight, hands over his ears. The floor shook, the cavern rumbled.
It felt like the end of the world.
He forced himself to stand. It had been long enough. He pushed the lever back into place, and the white light dimmed. He ran back to the dais, shut off the waterwheel. He pushed more levers, the lenses lifting back out of the way.
He backed down the steps, watched the woman on the table, his mouth hanging open, eyes wide. He waited.
At last, she sat up, swung her legs around slowly to stand on the floor. She looked at her own hand. It shook. She blinked away tears in her eyes. "Alive. Oh, my God. After a thousand years, walking the earth as undead." She laughed and cried at the same time.
"Allen, I'm alive again."
"They're dead!" Father Paul yelled.
He pumped a shell into the chamber and blasted a load of buckshot into the zombies that crowded the room. They kept coming, dozens of them, crawling over one another to reach the priests and the girls.
The zombies were half skeletal, leather chunks of flesh dropping off as they attacked. Mouths half full of yellow-brown teeth chewing at nothing.
Starkes and Father Paul kept pumping buckshot into the crowd, limbs and bits of flesh and teeth flying. Undead corpses piled up at their feet. A half dozen zombies surged past the priests to attack the girls.
Penny screamed.
A skeletal hand grabbed Amy by the shoulder. She gasped and jumped back. The zombie's arm came loose, hanging from her shoulder, where it still held on.
"I think the warranty has expired on these things." Amy pried the fingers from her shoulder. She used the zombie arm as a club, swung hard, knocking its undead head across the room. It bounced off a tomb, rolled around on the floor.
Penny kicked the leg of the zombie closest to her. The leg snapped and the zombie fell into a pile of bones and dried flesh. "She's right. These things are... well, kind of pathetic."
Amy reached into a zombie's mouth, pried out a tooth. "Souvenir."
Father Paul stopped firing the shotgun. The zombies crowded around him, pawed feebly at his chest. "Okay, this is just silly. These things have been decaying for centuries. They might as well be made out of tissue paper. Push them out of the way and let's get going."
They shoved the zombies aside, pushing them into piles of bones, kicking legs out from under them. They entered the hole Father Paul and Starkes had knocked into the wall, trudged through the dark passage beyond until they heard the sound of rushing water ahead.
Cassandra descended the dais steps to stand in front of Allen. She was as beautiful as ever, but there was something different about her too. A flush of pink in her cheeks. She touched Allen's face with warm fingers.
She was alive. She was a woman.
"You can't know what it was like, Allen." Her smile was warm, genuine. "Walking around, half cold to life, only half feeling everything that was happening to me." She ran both her hands over Allen's chest. "I can feel you. I mean really feel you, one human being to another." A pained expression struck her face. She looked away. "All the things I've done. A vampire can't feel remorse, Allen. God, I've done such terrible things. But I'm going to live now. It'll be different. Never again will I-"
A line of warm, red blood trickled from her left nostril. She wiped it away, surprised. "It must be some side effect. But look. It's warm. My blood is warm and human. Allen, this is the best thing that's ever-"
Another trickle of blood from the other nostril. Cassandra wiped it away, smearing red across her lips.
"Are you okay?" Allen asked.
"I don't know." She blinked, and blood ran from the corners of her eyes. She wiped it away, looked at the blood on her hands. "Something's wrong."
Do you remember when I used the machine to bring the emperor's cousin back to life? I suppose now is a good time to show you everything that happened.
Pay attention.
1601
Kelley looked at the cousin's smooth face again. Had he deserved to die so young? Was he a good person? Kelley had never met him in life. Maybe God had selected him for death. Perhaps he was wicked and cruel, and it was a kindness to the world to be rid of him. Who was Kelley to decide his life or death? Kelley tried to convince himself he wasn't deciding anything. Roderick had built the machine. Rudolph had given the orders.
Kelley was simply pulling the levers.
"What's happening over there?" Rudolph called from behind the wall.
Kelley frowned, ignoring the emperor.
The alchemist circled to the other side of the dais, where a row of twenty levers connected to gears and pulleys and flywheels. He pulled the first lever, and the sound of rushing water filled the cavern. The waterwheel turned, slowly at first, then more rapidly. The other levers determined the order of the lenses, the flow of light, lowering the whole apparatus. It all had to be done in the exact order. Kelley had been over the scribbled instructions in his journal a thousand times. He knew the procedure by heart.
"Do you hear me?" shouted the emperor. "What's happening?"
Shut up, you lunatic. I'm working.
Kelley began to pull levers. The lenses lowered, surrounded the table. Overhead, gears meshed. Powered by the waterwheel, they began to spin. The big lens in the middle lowered until it was directly over the emperor's cousin, three feet from his chest. Portals opened overhead. Sunlight from above, reflected and reflected through lenses and mirrors, poured through the shafts, struck the lenses brilliantly white.
Kelley had expected it, but he flinched anyway.
Rudolph stuck his head around the corner and squinted into the light. "Damn you, alchemist. Don't you hear me talking to you?"
"If you want to live, Highness, get back behind the protective barrier."
Rudolph frowned but ducked back behind the lead wall.
Arrogant fool. Hatred and resentment swelled within Kelley. Who was this insane ruler to defy the will of God, to squander the resources of an empire for his mad schemes? How many had died and suffered for Rudolph's vanity? Kelley's need to defy the emperor compelled him at that moment like no other force on earth, his need to rebel palpable.
Kelley glanced back over his shoulder. Rudolph and his men could not see him, would not witness what he was about to do. Roderick's words floated through Kelley's mind. Everything must be exact. Perfect. The smallest thing can ruin it all, prevent the light beams from flowing properly.
Kelley put his hand down the back of his pants and stuck his thumb up his own ass. He wiggled it around where it was moist and warm. He brought his hand out again, then stuck his thumb in the dead center of the lens hanging over the emperor's cousin. Kelley's every thought was bent on hatred for Rudolph. Kelley mashed his thumb hard against the glass, leaving a big, greasy thumbprint.
Fuck your immortality.
Not my most mature moment. But effective.
It seems the sweat and fecal matter had hardened over the years, the thumbprint crystallizing on the surface of the lens. Such a small thing, the tiniest imperfection. But it caused the beam to be off, kept the lens from doing its job exactly right. Roderick would have been able to explain the physics, would have been able to talk of particles and waves. I only know what happened in the simplest terms.
I fucked things up.
