Vampire a Go-Go(31)

Kelley screamed but kept cranking.

Roderick pulled the lever again to close the box. He shouted back up the hall. “Finished!”

The sunbeam cut off. The hall went dead silent.

Kelley fell backward, landed hard on his ass. He was drenched in his own sweat, panting.

“Stay here,” the astrologer said.

Roderick entered the chamber. He didn’t come back right away. Kelley stayed on the floor. His shoulders ached from cranking at such high speed. He wished somebody bright and young and pretty would rub his shoulders. He wished he was back in Ireland, wished he’d never met Dee or Roderick or come to this place. How might his life have been different if he’d really studied the sciences, gone to the university? Instead he’d picked up dribs and drabs of knowledge, bits of science and the occult. This is where it had landed him. A sad little con man turning a crank for lunatics.

Roderick emerged from the chamber, cradled something in his hands. He stood without moving, his head upturned toward the ceiling, eyes closed. A wan smile played over his face. He stayed like that for such a long time that Kelley thought there might be something wrong with him.

Roderick turned his head slowly, smiled at Kelley. He walked to the alchemist, paused a second, then sat down on the floor across from him.

“What happened?” Kelley asked.

“Look.” Roderick opened his hands.

The bird bounced into Kelley’s lap, its head twitching from side to side. It peeped, flapped its wings. Kelley looked closely. It was not a zombie. It was a live, normal bird. Kelley reached for it, but the bird spread its wings, then darted into the air and into the depths of the dungeon. Kelley looked after it, mouth agape.

Roderick the astrologer had done it. He’d taken death and had turned it into life. Impossibly. Against the laws of man and God. The astrologer had done it.

And Kelley was terrified.





THIRTY-FOUR




The daily routine and attention to security within Prague Castle were obnoxiously irregular. On any given day, five guards in light armor might patrol the dungeons, or there might be twenty, depending on whether the emperor was scheduled for an inspection or if additional troops were needed to dispatch a fresh batch of zombies.

There were seven guards on duty the morning of the assault. The one constant was the guard at the main entrance of the dungeon whose job it was to lift the bar from the inside and allow entrance to anyone who spoke the proper password. This guard was Kelley’s responsibility.

The guard sat on a stool and watched Kelley approach. Kelley smiled, held up a tankard of mead. He’d stashed a dagger at the small of his back under his clothes, and he shuddered at the thought of using it. Hoped it wouldn’t be necessary. Couldn’t stand the thought he might have to jam it into this young fellow’s throat. Kelley didn’t want to kill anyone.

“Looks like a dull job.” Kelley had picked up more than enough Czech for casual conversation. “How about some refreshment?” He offered the tankard. Please take it.

The guard smiled crookedly, a tooth missing up front. He was maybe eighteen years old. “Much obliged.” He drank, slurped, drained the mug, looked at Kelley with appreciation.

Kelley chatted with him another two minutes. Soon the guard began to sway on the stool. His eyes rolled up and he fell backward, chain mail clinking on the stone floor.

Kelley took some mild satisfaction from knowing that his alchemy skills had not completely atrophied. He could still whip up a sleeping draught from basic ingredients.

He lifted the bar of the door and pulled the iron ring. The heavy door swung inward.

Edgar and a dozen hard-looking men crowded into the dungeon entrance, all carrying short, thick swords and hand axes. They were prepared to hack through chain mail. The men were dressed in the coarse brown clothing of laborers, but they had the broad, powerful builds of fighting men, steely eyes seeking opponents.

“Good work, Kelley.” Edgar handed him a sword. “Let’s go.”

Kelley looked at the blade in his hand. “I don’t want this!”

“No time to be squeamish, man. The bloody deeds are at hand!”

“I opened the door. Bloody deeds are your department.”

Two more guards appeared at the end of the hall. They drew swords. “Halt!”

“Have at them!” Edgar yelled.

Edgar’s mob collided with the guards, blades flashing, axes rising and falling, biting through chain mail. Blood spurted. Screams! An empty helmet flew through the air and clattered at Kelley’s feet. The guards were dead meat by the time Kelley caught up.

“There are only three more,” Kelley told them. “And Roderick the astrologer. He’s an old man, and I don’t think he’s armed.”

“Let’s go, then,” Edgar said.

“Wait.” Kelley grabbed Edgar’s tunic. “Don’t open the box. Take it out of here. Hide it far away. I don’t even want to know where. But don’t open it.”

“You’ve told us already,” Edgar said. “Now man up, Kelley. Bring that blade and let’s finish this.”

Kelley sighed. Okay, he could trail behind. No problem, bring the sword and jog along after them. He could hang back and not fight. “Lead on, then. I’ll follow.”

“Right. Let’s go!” Edgar raised his sword. “No prisoners!”

The mob cheered, followed Edgar. Kelley tried to jog after them.

Something tugged at his ankle.

Kelley looked down. One of the hacked guards was not quite dead, and he had latched onto Kelley’s ankle.

“Knock it off.” Kelley tried to kick free. “Stop that.”

The guard spit blood, lay on his back, one eye gouged out, the other fixed on Kelley. He coughed and wheezed, more blood foaming over his lips, but the hold on Kelley’s ankle was like iron.

“You’ve done your part, okay? The fight is over.” Kelley lifted the sword. “You want me to hack that hand off?”

No reply. From another part of the dungeon the sound of clashing steel reached him.

“Damn it.” He knelt, tried to pry the fingers loose, but they were locked on.

The guard croaked, spit more blood.

“Oh, shut up.” Kelley rapped the knuckles with the flat of the sword blade. Hard. He kept hitting until the hand let go. “Finally.”

He ran after Edgar’s mob and found three more dead guards. One of Edgar’s men lay dead as well. Kelley kept running, gripping the sword hilt firmly. He didn’t want any part of the violence, but he was determined to be ready.

A dozen steps from the Stone chamber and-

– an explosion.

Fire belched from the chamber, scorched bodies flying out, tumbling against the stone walls like dice.

The dungeon shook. The stone floor came up and smacked Kelley in the face, his sword clattering away, ringing in his ears, dust and screams and the smell of burnt fresh. He blinked his eyes, tried to see. Smoke filled the hall, crumpled blackened bodies, clothes still aflame.

Kelley forced himself to his feet, then shook his head and picked up his sword. He staggered into the stone chamber.

Roderick stood tall and straight in the center of the large room, a semicircle of blackened bodies in front of him. Edgar stood ten feet from Roderick, his face half bloody and charred, anger and pain alive in his one good eye. He lifted his sword, yelled, and charged the astrologer.

Roderick stretched out a hand, harsh words flying from his mouth. Jagged blue bolts left his fingers and slammed into Edgar’s body. He shook and twitched as the blue lightning coursed through his body. His eyeballs popped. Bile boiled from his mouth.

Roderick released him, and Edgar collapsed into a smoking pile.

Kelley blinked at the scene, mouth agape. Oh. My. God.

Roderick poked at Edgar’s body with a toe, satisfying himself that the man was gone. “Society do-gooders. I’d expected to see them long before now, I must admit. Fools.”

Roderick looked up at Kelley, spotted the sword in his hand. “I appreciate your coming to my rescue, Kelley, but as you can see, I’ve handled the situation.”

“Um… okay.”

Roderick went from body to body, examining each one. “Help me get these corpses into a pile, will you, Kelley? They’re a bit crispy, but they’ll make for an interesting experiment when we zombie-fy the next batch.”





THIRTY-FIVE




Three months passed like an eye blink. Even after the success with the bird, Roderick insisted on more odd experiments.

Kelley let himself go numb. He plodded through his daily routine with Roderick, adjusting lenses, lugging corpses, finding corners of the dungeon to fill with writhing zombies until they could be burned or hacked apart by castle guards. For about a week, Roderick called upon Kelley’s skills as an alchemist to concoct a series of potions. It was hoped injecting the corpses with these potions might promote various effects when they were exposed to the stone’s rays, but the astrologer soon grew tired of this avenue of experimentation.

They tried animals for a while. The dungeons echoed with the sound of fluttering wings as zombie pigeons filled the air, until their wings decayed and their feathers fell out and they could no longer stay aloft. The pigeons then scooted along the floor, flapping skeletal wings and going nowhere.

Zombie goats tried to butt Kelley, but there was no passion in it. They’d simply put their horns against Kelley’s leg and lean into him without zeal.