The Division of the Damned (22 page)

"Thank the Führer, German soldiers. We were so worried. We thought you were Russians or partisans.
German soldiers.
Look girls, German soldiers.
SS.
We’re safe
now,” the old man babbled in
obvious elation.

The women all stared at Rohleder in alarm. The German uniform did nothing to allay their suspicions and they said nothing. Only the old man animatedly handed out glasses and jabbered their story to no one in particular.

"We had a terrible time in Lemberg. The peasants hated us and nothing would grow. I’m convinced the partisans were poisoning the crops. Then, when we heard of the Russian advance, I knew we had to leave. All was well until our horse here went lame on us." He indicated an old nag, one eye closed and nothing but skin and bone.

"You’re German, then?" Von Struck asked the obvious to slow him down.

"Yes, Volksdeutsche.
We were given a farm not far from Lemberg in the Ukraine.
Only a smallholding
,
really.
Not very profitable, I’m afraid, but nevertheless, we didn’t make a loss. How far are we going to let the
Russians come?
Is it a feint to lure them into a trap? I was in Verdun. Those Frenchies never knew what hit them." He was off again,
so Von
Struck stopped him short.

"Can yo
u tell me if there are any enemies
in these parts
—
Communists, partisans, Russian soldiers?”

The old man paused and realised he’d been babbling. The soldier in him grasped what they needed to know and he visibly calmed down.

"We have been here for the last two weeks and we have seen no one. There is a small brook not far from here
."
H
e nodded to the entrances
.
"
And the mines there
are deserted, though we haven’t been inside because it looks too dangerous.”

"Fine, we’ll send out a patrol anyway but this will do, I think,” Von Struck said to nobody in particular. "Go and get the others, Matze.”

The women and the children hadn’t taken their eyes off Rohleder throughout the whole exchange and their mute, open staring had started to unsettle him. He was fond of children and once, in a different life, he and his wife had made plans to bring their own into the world. The flame-thrower had not only erased his face, but also the future he had once so ardently planned for.

The men in the
r
egiment were used to the sight of his disfigurement but now, under the horrified scrutiny of the women and children, Rohleder was forcefully reminded of what he had lost and of what he had become.

"What happened to your face?" It was the young boy. He approached Rohleder and candidly stared at him, waiting for a reply.

Taken off-guard, he was at first too stunned to answer.

"Did the Russians do that to you?” the boy persisted.

"Yes.” He nodded, trying to smile.

"I hate the Russians." It was said to himself more than to anyone else. "Did you kill them, the ones who did that to you?”

Rohleder tried to laugh but he felt somehow choked. A thought matured in him that this was the first person outside of his comrades in arms to speak to him as an equal and not as a figure of pity or horror. Taking their example from the boy, the three girls moved to stand in front of him. All gaped up at him as they listened to him speaking.

"I’m afraid to say I didn’t have the chance. But I’m still looking for them and if you see them, tell me so I can get them." He spoke in a mock-serious voice to hide the welling-up feeling he was going through.

"I will," the boy answered in all solemnity. "I will.”

Rohleder nodded to the boy and looked up to catch a softening in the eyes of one of the two women. He ruffled the boy’s hair and turned to walk away, appalled to find he was close to tears himself.

They set up a camp and patrolled the area. Von Struck decided to explore the mines to see
if they were suitable for the c
ount’s vampires. They crowded around the entrance as Von Struck pushed his way through the rotten timbers barring the way in. As if it were made of dust,
the wood crumbled around him.

"Not a good sign," Henning muttered.

Tho
ugh the entrance was small,
soon it opened up and was big enough for a man to walk erect. The wooden supports inside, in direct contrast to the wood barring the entrance, seemed solid. It was deep, dark and well hidden, and after following the path inside, Von Struck decided
it was spacious enough for the c
ount’s men. For the next couple of weeks the quarry and the mine would be their home, their base and perhaps their coffin.

*  *  *

T
hey now numbered over a hundred;
two packed trainloads of Russian prisoners had provided the rations and extra soldiers. The Ukrainians at the compound were now a well-oiled team and the segregation and containment of those not yet picked now ran smoothly and by the numbers. From delivery to selection, the process was gaining pace and routine.

Disciplined and silent, Arak’s
troops flitted through the tree
tops to the rendezvous at an extraordinary speed. They passed potential victims noiselessly overhead with only their destination and mission in mind.

Arak directed the move from the middle, telepathically issuing his orders to the scouts at the front of the march. What had taken Von Struck’s squad six days to reach was only allowed to take them a night; for the night was all they had.

It was still dark when they arrived. Arak alone approached the quarry. Ghostlike and silent, he dropped down in front of Muschinski who nearly cried out his terror. Arak growled the code, though Muschi didn’t need any verification of his identity.

"Where do we go?" His voice was grave and extremely deep, inhumanly so.

"Inside.
Wait. I’ll get the Standartenführer." Muschinski was not aware that he was talking to what was once his friend and ally, Muntner. Von Struck had opted not to tell the me
n of his conversation with the c
ount.

Von Struck was summoned and he showed Arak the mines.

"We’ll close it up during the daylight hours. We can talk about the mission plan tonight. It’ll be light soon." He studied Arak in the half-light as he addressed him. What had once been Jurgen Muntner was now so far removed from anything earthly that Von Struck had problems visualising his former comrade.

He was now a clone of the c
ou
nt’s ghouls he had seen at the c
astle. There seemed to be no difference between what stood before him and what they had watched burn on that cold January morning a million
years ago. It was only as Arak spoke that Von Struck caught a fleeting and buried glimpse of the old SS trooper.

Jurgen Muntner was no more and Von Struck decided not to tell the men who he had been.

Arak turned and evaporated silently into the night. The scene was deathly quiet. Nothing stirred. It seemed that neither bird nor beast dared draw attention to itself. The tension was not lost on Von Struck who cursed providence and the folly of his superiors.

"What the hell are we doing?” he asked himself.

Like a noiseless express train, the vampires zipped past him and into the mine. One after another they dived in at breakneck speed, like a swarm of monstrous hornets, until only Arak was left standing at the entrance. When all were inside, he turned and wordlessly followed them in.

Von Struck slowly shook his head. "This is so wrong,” he muttered, "so very, very wrong.”

They spent the day standing guard and transforming the quarry into a tactical hide. The horses were brought in and their area covered to protect them from the elements and prying Russian eyes. The civilians kept to themselves with only the old man and the boy showing any interest in what the squad were doing. The old man enviously eyed the soldiers’ horses. He knew his old beast was on its last legs and he secretly hoped that one of the squad would take a bullet and leave one of the horses to him.

The atmosphere was strained and the boy seemed to sense the uneasiness in Rohleder whom he’d taken to following around.

"What was all the noise last night?”

"Nothing for little boys to worry about.”
Rohleder smiled as he brushed Madame Le Peau down.

"Oh," he answered. He’d learnt a long time ago not to press for answers in wartime because sometimes the answers were better left unsaid and unheard.

That night, as was planned, the vampire soldiers left them to hunt and spread terror behind the Russian lines. They watched from the
entrance of the quarry as the c
ount’s men flew into the night. With their departure, the cloud of dread that had subdued them throughout the day magically lifted and it was Rohleder that voiced their feelings. "What have we gotten ourselves into, Boss? Is this right what we’re doing?”

"We haven’t been doing the right thing for the last five years, Mickey, so why should we start now?” With that, he left them to contemplate their next move.

Chapter 27

March

Maria’s body was arranged corpselike on her bed. Barely breathing, arms across her breasts, she lay frozen and beautiful like a perfect mannequin doll. Many years ago she had been a disciple of the cult that followed Lilith and the Book of Blood. Maria’s beauty had shone brighter than the Sirius star and she had been loved by priest and follower alike.

However Lilith too had coveted Maria and saw in her faultless lines the perfect vessel for herself. Thus, the same divine exquisiteness that had braided Maria’s golden life would now sentence her to be hollowed out and possessed by a demon. Now she was merely a shell, a human crust, to be used until Lilith bored of her and found a new host.

The entity Lilith had retreated into herself to gather her strength for what she now planned to do. The part of Maria’s body that was still human suddenly experienced, for the first time in over a century, a glimmer of freedom in a sudden spark of awareness. There was no question of control, just a
consciousness of whom she was
—
a mere undercurrent of humanity caught in the tidal wave of a demons’ will.

Lilith herself was angry. She had originally made her plans for power as the first stirrings of civilisation had infected humanity. Her Machiavellian intrigues had called on her to lay with deity and mortal alike, to start countless wars and conflicts between mankind and the
G
ods they followed, and had condemned her most loyal of followers to a living damnation. Now, just as the prophecies in the Book of Blood were about to come to fruition, disaster had struck.

The Book of Blood had been written in a past life that she could no longer recall. The reason why she’d been able to foretell the future was as f
a
int a memory as her own birth. She only knew that in its ancient text lay the key to her absolution and her expected path to power. Millennia had passed by as one-by-one her prophesies, those that she had written down at the genesis of humankind, had come true. The precision of those ancient predictions had shown her just how powerful she had been in the days before the curse.

The power she had wielded in those times of old had been overwhelming and she had relished her role as a semi-goddess. As the Book of Blood had been at the height of its popularity, the power and control of the supernatural it had given he
r had seemed limitless. Her new
found capabilities and confidence had been the catalyst for the second march against the Old Gods.

However, with faith in the book almost non-existent, she found her potency somewhat diminished and at present she could barely control Iullia whom she needed to carry the baby. Now that Michael had taken
the Book, her powers were weaker than ever before.

If only she had gone her own way from the first, she reflected. To have simply left Szaran as he was banished by the
God
s would have been the sensible, and demonic, thing to do. She deliberated on this for a while and decided that at that time she had needed an ally to help her win their would-be followers over. A demon on her own, with no backing from neither royalty nor
deity,
would have been despised and distrusted.

No, as she had long ago determined, Szaran had provided an acceptable front to the masses. It was just the weight of his ancestry now seemed too big a price to pay for that one mortal lifetime. Szaran’s bloodline had been sent to test her, she was sure.

This latest disaster was typical of the trials his lineage had put her through. Just as it seemed all was moving into the right constellation to bring her the supremacy she had toiled for, that damnable vampire had sent his brother out of her reach and thus endangered her entire design. The predictions in the Book stated that the child sired by Utu, or in reality his spiritual successor, would be the tenth name in the Book of Blood. Accordingly, all ten must be present at a ceremony on the Winter Solstice for the Dracyl to be set free from their nocturnal shackles. The only exception to them all being present was Szaran, the first name after Lilith and the only mortal in the list. He was dead and now all but dust, so only his earthly possessions, a suit of armour and his sword, would be laid out as if he were present. The others named who were not sentient would be raised to take part.