The Stein & Candle Detective Agency, Vol. 3: Red Reunion (The Stein & Candle Detective Agency #3) (16 page)

“Mort!” Weatherby pointed into the dark sky. “I believe he’s using his mastery over nature to stop us! He’s sending the denizens of the forest, the Children of the Night, to halt our progress!” He gripped tightly to the edges of his seat. “And by that, I mean he’s sending the bats!”

Sure enough, that big cloud of bats above Castle Dracula was heading our way. They swept down, squeaking like mad as they hurled themselves at the truck. I couldn’t see because they were smashing themselves against the windshield. They flew in through the windows, biting and tearing at me and Weatherby. I held onto the wheel with one hand, hoping that the road didn’t turn as I kept pushing on the gas.

Weatherby had his revolver out, and waving it uselessly at the bats. They flapped around, an endless shifting curtain that flapped and squeaked and bit. And the bats weren’t alone. I managed to get a glimpse out the side window, and saw a pack of great gray wolves running alongside the truck, closing in as they howled at their prey. I brought up the submachine gun and started firing wildly, cutting down some of the wolves as they started leaping for the truck’s cabin.

One came in and fixed its teeth on my arm. I thrashed, trying to hold to the wheel as the wolf’s hind legs kicked wildly in open air. Weatherby was yelling something but I couldn’t hear him over the roar of the engine and the shrieks of the bats. Then the curtain of bats parted for just a second. Through the pain of the wolf’s teeth rending my flesh, I saw a thick oak tree speeding toward the front of our truck.

I twisted the wheel. The side of the truck crashed against the tree. Wheels tore against dirt and then air as they left the ground. The dashboard slammed up and cracked into my head. I didn’t see much but darkness and flashes of light, and then I tumbled out of the open door and fell heavily to the ground. The wolves were howling and they sounded far away.

I cracked my eyes open. I was sprawled in the dirt, the sub-gun lying near my hands. I stood up, feeling each bone scrape against muscle and skin while I moved. The truck was bust-o. It was lying on its side, one of the tires still spinning. Soon as I could think, I thought of Weatherby.

“Kiddo?” I asked, standing up and turning around. I saw the wolves at the edge of the road, watching me from under the boughs of the trees. The bats hovered above us, a black shifting halo.  I turned around and then I saw Weatherby. He was sprawled out on the ground, staring up at the dark sky.

I ran to him. “You were right,” I whispered, wiping blood from his forehead and holding him up. “Good Christ, kiddo. You were right. We never should’ve have gotten mixed up this business. Oh Christ.” He wasn’t moving. I feared the worse. “You deserve better than this. You deserve better than me.”

His eyes fluttered open. He looked up at me and clasped my hand. “Nonsense,” Weatherby said, his voice a quiet breath. “There’s no one better.” He smiled weakly and I grinned back.

Then we looked up and saw Dracula. He was walking down the narrow dirt road, his sword resting on his shoulder. The wolves ran and played about him. He slowly reached down, scratching behind the ears of the nearest wolf. The bats fluttered over his head. My finger tightened on the sub-gun’s handle.

But I knew I couldn’t stop him. He was a force of nature, a creature of total evil. I might as well take on an avalanche or a tidal wave. But I had to try. I looked down to Weatherby. “Can you walk?” I asked. “Or run?”

“I… suppose so.” He sat up, sucking in air as he touched his chest. The fall had left him battered and broken. I had a feeling some ribs were cracked or bruised at the least, and there was no telling how much other damage was under the surface. But Weatherby didn’t complain as he rested a scraped hand on the road and pushed himself up. “I’ll try move as speedily as possible.”

“Good. We’re gonna have to.” I turned around to face Dracula. I raised the sub-gun. “All right!” I squeezed the trigger, kicking up the dark earth around Dracula’s feet. He stopped walking. “No further! I’ll put you down, stick a knife in your heart and turn you to dust again!” For some reason, all of my wise cracks and snappy remarks dried up the moment I looked into Dracula’s red eyes. “I mean it!”

He cocked his head. “I’m certain you do.” He kept on walking. I started shooting. My bullets tore through the air around him, and even managed to rip past his shoulder. But then our eyes met and I realized I couldn’t hold the gun any more. The sub-gun clattered to the ground. I looked into those red eyes, pitiless as the pit of Hell, and felt every impulse and instinct I had washing away.

Weatherby grabbed my arm. “Mort!” he shouted. “Morton! He’s trying to hypnotize you! He’s clouding your mind! We must run!” He tugged and pulled at me, as Dracula got closer and closer. I heard Weatherby, but I couldn’t piece together what he was saying. Then he grabbed my arm and yanked me back, out of the vampire’s gaze, and it all came back to me.

We turned to run. Dracula followed, never breaking into even a jog. His long stride covered ground quickly. Weatherby and I were busted up and broken from a car accident, and he gained on us quickly. I kept running, breathing heavily as I reached for my pistols. Weatherby had it even worse. The poor kid matched my stride, but he was hurt worse than I was, and after a few minutes he tripped over an exposed root and hit the dirt.

He rolled over, crying out loud as he clutched his leg. “Sprained, Mort!” he cried. “I don’t think… I don’t think I can go much further!”

I didn’t leave him. I turned around and went for my knife, facing Dracula. He came toward us slowly, as tireless as death. Dracula’s eyes flashed down to my knife. I didn’t meet his gaze. “You’ve still got all the weaknesses of your kind, Drac,” I told him. “Come a little closer and I’ll show you what I mean.”

His lips curled back. It could be mistaken for a smile at a distance. “Come now,” he replied. “The ant cannot stand against the boot that crushes it. Press yourself against my foot, little ant. Let me show you how weak you are.”

I ran toward him, stabbing out with the Ka-Bar. I wanted to ram it into his chest and puncture his rotten heart in a single motion. But it was like trying to fight a bolt of lightning. He grabbed my arm and hauled me in the air. I didn’t realize how tall he was. He squeezed my wrist and I dropped the knife. Then his mouth opened and I saw his fangs. I didn’t have time to yell.

He was going to suck my life out. The fangs got closer and closer. I looked up at the black starless sky of Transylvania, and waited for the end. It didn’t come. Dracula was frozen, his iron grip holding me while his mind was elsewhere. Then he dropped me.

I fell heavily to the ground and recovered my knife. I rolled over and saw what had got Dracula worried. It was the monks of the Order of Reprobus. A dozen of them stood on the road, all armed with large wooden crucifixes.

Dracula released an animal hiss and turned away. I would have moved after him, but I felt like standing up would be impossible. I watched as the monks advanced, their crosses held high. Dracula snarled and slashed his sword through the air, a cornered wild beast standing before the hunters. Suddenly, he turned on his heel and leapt into the forest. His dark cape fluttered around him, and he lost himself under the branches. He broke into a run, moving at an inhuman speed. He was gone in seconds.

The monks looked over me and Weatherby. I saw the guns and knives on their belts, ready to be used. I sat up. “Please,” I said. “I’m Mort Candle and the kid’s name is Weatherby Stein. We’re not vampires. We’re humans, and Weatherby’s just a kid. You gotta help us.”

The monk closest to me pulled back his hood. He was an old man, completely bald with a gray goatee. His face had more scars than I could count, joining his wrinkles to make a strange map of his life. “I am Father Nikolai,” he told me. “Tell me why I should help you and your friend. You rode with the vampires. You fired on our brothers.”

“No hard feelings, buddy,” I said. “We were hired to do a job and we did it. We didn’t know Dracula—”

“No!” Weatherby cried out loud. He came to his feet, his face red with pain and his eyes full of tears. He wiped them on his sleeve. “We knew,” he told the monks. “Maybe we told ourselves otherwise, but we knew. We needed the money, and so we agreed to the vampires’ plans. And now the entire world is jeopardized because of our greed. I am Weatherby Stein and I should have known better. My parents taught me to be better than this.” He held out his hand to the old monk. “But that’s why you have to help us. Please, sir. We unleashed this monster on the world. We have to help destroy him.”

He lost his strength and stumbled. The monks caught him. The elder monk held out his hand and took mine, while other strong hands hauled me to my feet. Weatherby’s words must have gotten through to them. They took us out of the forest, carrying us to a couple of rickety automobiles hidden in the woods.

Soon after they tossed me and Weatherby in the back seat, my body decided it had taken enough damage for one night. My eyes closed and they didn’t open for a while.

When I did wake up, I felt soft sheets on my chest and a warm bed on my back. I blinked my eyes open and sat up. I was in my shirtsleeves, sitting on a bed in a small cottage, somewhere in the Transylvanian woods. My throat burned and my eyes were blurry.

Father Nikolai stepped inside, holding a wooden cup of cold clear water and bowl of soup. I took both with a grateful nod and started eating while I looked over my wounds. The monks had done a decent job of patching me up. There were bandages on my chest and legs, and another on my forehead. I closed my eyes for a while, and focused on getting breath in and out of my body.

“Your injuries are not so severe,” the Father Nikolai said. “You are lucky.”

“Yeah,” I muttered. “That’s me. Real lucky. Where’s Weatherby?”

The kid poked his head into the room and stepped inside. He had been slammed around worse than me, and more white bandages marked his pale skin. He sat down heavily in a chair in the corner and smiled at me. He reached out and gripped my hand. I gave his a squeeze. “I’m all right, Mort,” Weatherby said. “You saved my life. Again.”

“After placing it in danger, because of my greed and stupidity.” I sat up and rubbed my forehead. “Christ. It wasn’t exactly our fault, but we went along with it, and let it happen.” I stepped out of the bed, placing my feet on the floor and trying to stand. I steadied myself and managed it. “So now we’ll stop him. Any idea where he’s going, Father?”

Nikolai shook his head. “He has vanished, Mr. Candle. Like a shadow into the night sky, Count Dracula has vanished.” He walked over to the window his cabin, looking out into the forest. It was midday and the sun was bright above us. “And I think America will be his destination.”

“It makes sense,” Weatherby agreed. “In the Victorian Age, Dracula attempted to conquer England, the most powerful nation at the time. Now that the sun has set on the British Empire, Dracula will turn his attentions to America. We’ll have to go back there, to be ready for him.”

“One thing you’re forgetting.” I reached for my coat and started working on my tie. The collar burned against my neck, but I didn’t mind. “The KGB is still looking to close the book on this operation. By now, they’ve probably heard how badly they’ve fouled up. Karlov will want it to go away quickly. That means removing us.” I turned to Weatherby as I reached for my twin shoulder-holsters and slid them on. “They’ll be watching the ports.”

“What do you propose?” Father Nikolai asked.

I considered my options, sliding my automatics into their holsters. “Let’s not keep them waiting.” I turned back to Nikolai. “What’s the nearest port?”

He thought for a few minutes. “Zadar, in Dalmatia. The Yugoslavians do not care much for the Soviets, but the KGB has its fingers there too. It will be difficult. I am certain it will be violent.”

I patted my pistols. After getting beaten by Dracula, I wanted to get some killing done. “Fine by me. Let’s leave as soon as we can. These pistols and my knife should be enough to get me through. Dracula will hear about it. Let it make him afraid.” I turned to Weatherby. “You feeling up to it, kiddo?”

He nodded. “I believe so, Mort. And I’m anxious to put an end to Dracula.” He sighed, lowering his head and looking at the floor. “Damn it, Mort,” he whispered. “I should be smarter. I should be stronger and better. My parents would not—”

“Hey.” I walked over to him as I slid my arms into the sleeves of my suit jacket. “Your parents would be proud of you. Sometimes a fellow gets suckered into making a boneheaded play. Sometimes that play leads to evil getting the upper hand. But you know what separates a stand-up guy from a chump? The stand-up guy has the courage to put evil back into the Hell where it belongs.” I held out my hand to Weatherby. “How about it?”

He took my hand and I pulled him up. Father Nikolai watched us and pointed to the door. “The Order of Reprobus will take you to Zadar. The road is long, and the KGB will be looking for you. But the peasants here care for us, and they will help us.” He looked over me and Weatherby. “I will pray for you, Mort Candle and Weatherby Stein. The Order grows old. New evils arrive that traditional vampire hunters like us cannot defeat. So God must find new weapons in men like you.”