The alley stinks. Piss and rotting vegetables, mainly, along with diesel smoke.
Mirsky looks out of the alley’s mouth to the boats tied to the wharf across the street. It’s the middle of the night, and cold and wet, but the harbor is still busy. Freighters are being offloaded as fast as they can with supplies for the Allied forces to the south and to the east. The workers are mainly North Africans of all nationalities and colors. Americans and British scurry around with clipboards in their hands, adding to the general sense of chaos with a chorus of yells and commands in English which very few of the longshoremen understand.
“Stop.” Bathory effortlessly projects her voice to the vampires moving in to kill Mirsky and Wetzel. Mirth echoes in her voice. “Not them. Not yet.” She doesn’t acknowledge their grinning acquiescence but instead turns to look down at Schefflen. “Your ‘machines’, are they damaged? Can they continue?”
Her mad scientist pulls his head from the guts of a bank of dials close to the vat. He blinks owlishly up at her, clearly gathering his thoughts. His fingers never stop coiling around each other, stained worms. “Oh, yes, Mistress! They only took minimal damage, just a few stray bullets. Easily repaired! And, with the readings that I took during the … ceremony…, I even have some ideas to increase their output.”
She waves him to silence, as he attempts to expound on his ideas. It would just be irritating babble. The important thing is that she can continue. She opens her mouth to give orders for the two men to be brought to her and something lands on her wrist. She hisses in pain as it burns her skin. A drop of something. Something hot that fell from the ceiling. She looks up.
Von Regensberg takes aim and shoots a German soldier in the head.
This isn’t going well. The vampire pulls back fast behind the table on its side that’s his current cover. He’d gotten a glimpse of the tactical situation in the quick instant it had taken him to kill the Wehrmacht soldier. The Germans weren’t a serious threat, not against vampires, not even armed with those damnably effective weapons. Those living shooting statues. They were what was making this fight turn against him and his forces.Continue reading “(Fangs of the SS) CHAPTER 29: The Ceremony Begins”→
His eyes start to glow. The light dribbling from his eye sockets pulses with the rhythm of his prayers.
He can’t stop her, him and his god. She knows that. But he can be a nuisance. She can’t afford any delays to her ceremony. She knows what she has to do. She doesn’t think about it. She doesn’t pause. She doesn’t do any human things like square her shoulders or take a deep breath.Continue reading “(Fangs of the SS) CHAPTER 28: The First Death Of Rabbi Judah Maccabbee”→
And that pisses him off. It’s not like he’s the handsomest golem, the Rabbi did his best but he’s a better occultist than sculptor, the handsomest is definitely Tipareth, but damn it, he’s going to be looking like the fucking Sphinx until he can find some glue or something. He hopes he doesn’t step on it. Continue reading “(Fangs of the SS) CHAPTER 27: Pieces Start To Fall”→
They had been just down the corridor when the door at the end of it had opened and the woman vampire in some weird uniform or costume had backed through. Malkuth had just enough time to move as quick as he could, as silently as he could, down the hallway before the leech closed the down and turned around. The impact of his fist on her pretty face, the sounds of breaking bones, are the best things that have happened to him in a long time. The gloom that he’s felt since Hesod’s death lifts just a little.
Malkuth drags the vampire to one side of the hallway. “Get in there! I’ll catch up when I can!” And that’s the last thing he can say for awhile.
The last time Illana had been hit that hard in the head, it had been by a war club in South India sometime in 1600s. She’d been so angry when that had happened that she’d killed everyone in the fort where it had occurred. Now she was even angrier. Now, not only was her face smashed to bits, lucky that she doesn’t need to breath as her jaw is smashed back into her throat, but her Mistress is threatened. Continue reading “(Fangs of the SS) CHAPTER 26: The Battle Begins”→
It’s been so long since she’s seen the face of her God.
Despite the urgency of the moment, she’s lost in thought. So like the remorseless powerful flow of the Nile, memory sweeps her away. She remembers the way it used to be. She remembers the quiet. Oh, the quiet! The quiet that lasted for centuries. Just the sound of the birds, sand against stone, water gurgling through reeds at the river’s edge, the same prayers chanted at exactly the same time each day, each year, each century.
She remembers the last time she saw the face of her God. The taste of blood, the way it pooled on the sandstone floor of the temple, the prayers and smoke from the censers both rising up to the painted ceiling. The shimmer that attached itself to the head of the statue that loomed over the altar at the front of the temple. The shimmer that sank into the stone of the statue. The pressure at her brow, the darkness that flared at the edges of the temple, the wind that swept from nowhere to whirl the smoke into strange shapes. This she remembers. This she has never forgotten when so much else of her past has eroded away in her mind. Continue reading “(Fangs of the SS) CHAPTER 25: Vampire Reverie”→
Sort of like this, but with fewer humans and more golems.
It hurts to breathe.
Bleick watches in dazed confusion as blood drops to the dirty flagstones underneath his boots. He’s afraid. Scared down to his bones. That he can feel. He’s a veteran, he knows the normal initial rush of fear that accompanies combat. This is different. Something like a pile driver or a piston, strength that can’t be denied, pushes him between his shoulder blades and he stumbles ahead. More fear. The monsters frighten him like he was a child, scared that Shock Headed Peter was going to leap out of the closet and cut off his thumbs. He’s afraid he might start to cry. He hugs himself as he stumbles towards the dungeon cell.
It hurts to breathe.
He hugs himself tighter and welcomes the pain. The pain drives away the fear, drives away the urge to cry. The pain reminds him that he’s a soldier of the Reich, a decorated veteran of the Wehrmacht. The Captain and the Sergeant are still free, they’ll figure a way out of this. He’s a soldier, he has to be ready when they call upon him. He straightens against the pain, wipes his bloody nose with the sleeve of his uniform, and starts to pay attention to his surroundings.
With the rest of survivors from the troop, Bleick is herded into a large dungeon cell. The front of the cell, looking out onto passageway, is made up of large iron bars, with the door cut out from the middle of the bars. Light is provided by a single flickering lightbulb strung from the ceiling. It smells of piss and shit and fear. There’s a narrow drain in the corner. There are no windows. One of the monsters in its black leather greatcoat, gasmask now slung around its neck, slams the door shut and locks it. The monster grins and licks its lips and leaves.Continue reading “(Fangs of the SS) CHAPTER 24: The Enemy Of My Enemy…”→
The sound of trucks making their way up the road to the castle and all the figures climbing the cliff pause simultaneously.
When the sound fades away as the trucks enter the castle, they start climbing again. Above them, built right on top of the cliff face, loom the walls of Bathory’s castle. Geburah is the highest, it moves with almost a scuttling motion, its four arms spread wide, taking advantage of every possible handhold. Below it and to either side climb the rest of the golems. As heavy as each of the golems is, they all take care on each hand hold. A constant patter of dust and pebbles rains down the cliff face.
Mirsky is in the middle of them, moving very slowly and carefully. His lips twist as he whispers every obscenity he knows in every language he knows. They’ve been climbing for 20 minutes now and he hasn’t repeated himself once. His foot slips, pebbles patter down onto Malkuth’s face, and something pungent in Yiddish, something having to do with well endowed donkeys and Lenin’s wife, comes out of his mouth. He blinks sweat out if his his eyes and reminds himself that for Leah he’ll do anything. Even this. At least it’s not raining. He turns his curses onto himself for thinking such a stupid thing and waits for the downpour to start.Continue reading “(Fangs of the SS) CHAPTER 23: Sneaking Into The Castle Of Blood”→
