Twilight of the Dead Read online

  "Please, you must protect me," the hollow-eyed Rumanian begged. "If the nightwalkers know I am talking with you, they will come, they will bleed me dry. One of their leaders is not far from here, waiting until dark for his chance to retreat. You must protect me!"

  "One of their leaders?" Eisenstein asked, his eyes glinting in the harsh August sun. "Victor, ask him if it's Constanta."

  Horezu paled at the mention of the vampyr lord's name. The Rumanian soldier's quivering hands made the sign of the cross before his cracked lips kissed a silver crucifix he had hidden inside his shabby uniform. "Not him, Gorgo."

  "Sergeant Gorgo?" Eisenstein demanded.

  Horezu nodded in response.

  "Scheisse," I heard myself whisper. "That's Constanta's second-in-command!"

  Between us, Eisenstein and I had hunted down and slain seven members of the Rumanian vampyr lord's inner circle, along with dozens of their unholy acolytes and hundreds of thralls. But the leader of the vampyr horde and his second-in-command had always eluded us. Intelligence reports passed to smert krofpeet units indicated that Constanta and Gorgo were busy spreading their undead taint in other theatres of the war, fighting alongside the Japanese forces in the Pacific or strengthening the resolve of German U-boat crews in their battle for control of the Atlantic. Wilder claims suggested that Constanta had been sighted alongside Rommel in North Africa, or had been smuggled into England on a covert mission to assassinate the British prime minister, Winston Churchill.

  To us it did not matter whether these tales were true or not. All we cared about was destroying Constanta. Eisenstein would remain forever tainted until the vampyr lord was no more, and I had seen too many good men and women die at the hands of Constanta's underlings to rest until the monster behind this campaign of terror was destroyed. The news that Constanta's second-in-command was so close came as something of a shock. Eisenstein and I had heard much about Gorgo's loyalty and his murderous methods of enforcing the will of Constanta, but neither of us had ever encountered the Rumanian sergeant. Now, if our informant was telling the truth, Gorgo was within our sights.

  "Where is he?" I asked Horezu in German. "Where?"

  The frightened private rattled off a set of directions in his native tongue. I had spent several years as a student in Berlin before the war, something that had saved my life on more than one occasion, but the Rumanian language was completely new to me. I asked Horezu to slow down, but was still unable to interpret his words. Finally the youth asked me in German for a map. Eisenstein cautiously produced his field map and Horezu pointed to a hilltop less than twenty kilometres away from their position, in the no-man's-land between our troops and the retreating Axis forces.

  "How many vampyr?' Eisenstein asked through me.

  "Only Gorgo," Horezu replied. He frowned. "You want more?"

  "No. He'll do." Eisenstein glanced across at me, his eyes alive with excitement.

  We needed no words. Both of us knew the significance of Gorgo's presence in this area. If we could interrogate him, the information gained would be invaluable. But capturing a creature capable of turning itself into a bat, a wolf or a translucent mist was no mean feat. We would need every skill we'd gained since Leningrad, all the luck we'd ever possessed, and the element of surprise.

  I grimaced as the resurrected German soldiers advanced on us from two directions. So much for luck and the element of surprise. Whoever was inside the farmhouse knew we were coming and had sent these corpses to kill us. All we had to combat them were our skills, our weapons, and our courage.

  Eisenstein was in a crouch, facing downhill. "Concentrate on those coming up towards us," he shouted at the rest of our unit. "Aim for the head!"

  Komarov responded first, dropping three of the enemy with shots from his Moisin rifle by the time I'd twisted round to open fire.

  "What about the corpses coming down from the farmhouse?" Gorky asked, his voice a high-pitched whimper of terror.

  "Those corpses are keeping us alive," I shouted. "They're between us and the sniper!" I glanced sideways and realised Horezu was missing. "Komarov! Where'd the prisoner go?"

  "I don't know and I don't care," he snarled, taking aim at another of our slowly shuffling enemies. "The little bastard fled when he saw what was coming for us."

  A scream of pain answered my question better than Komarov. I glanced over my shoulder in time to see Horezu struggling among the resurrected. One of the dead was biting the Rumanian's right thigh while another was gnawing at the private's throat. The screaming stopped when the corpse ate through Horezu's vocal chords, blood spurting from the wound. I put a bullet through Horezu's forehead and he slumped to the ground, his torment at an end - for now.

  Eisenstein and Komarov had finished off the resurrected below us and turned to face those above. Several of the walking corpses had stopped to feast on Horezu's body, but most were still advancing on our position.

  "We should fall back," Gorky bleated, his PPSh trembling in his hands. "There's too many of them... We should fall back!"

  "Haven't you been listening to Comrade Stalin's pronouncements from Moscow?" Eisenstein asked. "Not one step back is permitted for the Red Army. No retreats, no surrender."

  "But we-"

  "Are you questioning our orders?" I snarled at Gorky. The fearful newcomer shook his head. "Good. Then you stay here with Komarov and keep the resurrected occupied while we circle round to the farmhouse." Gorky opened his mouth to protest but thought better of it.

  "Try to keep a few of the enemy between you and that sniper," Eisenstein advised, "otherwise he'll realise we're trying to outflank him."

  "Get moving," Komarov urged. "We've less than an hour to sundown."

  Ten minutes later Eisenstein and I had circled round the eastern slope of the hill and had come up alongside the farmhouse. It was little more than a dilapidated log cabin, the thatched roof badly in need of repair and most of the windows covered by wooden shutters. One of the shutters hung open and the barrel of a rifle protruded from it, aiming at our comrades down the slope. We couldn't see the sniper from our position, but occasional shots were still being fired at Komarov and Gorky through the shambling crowd of resurrected corpses. Eisenstein tapped me on the shoulder and jerked a thumb towards the back of the farmhouse. We crept silently round the structure, our weapons ready to fire, fingers tensed over the trigger. On the northern side of the farmhouse was a closed door, apparently the only entrance. As we got nearer to the door, a woman cried out a Russian curse from inside the building.

  Eisenstein and I took up positions on either side of the entrance, suddenly uncertain of our ground. What the hell was a woman doing inside the farmhouse, and a Russian woman at that? Female soldiers were a common enough sight in the Red Army among medical, communications and transportation staff. Women had also proven themselves adept as snipers during the battle for Stalingrad, thanks to their patience and capacity to withstand great personal discomfort. But men were still the frontline troops of the Great Patriotic War, and the first choice for specialist units like ours that often went behind enemy lines. Eisenstein was particularly resistant to having women in his smert krofpeet squad after what had happened to his lover Sofia in Leningrad.

  We listened at the farmhouse door, straining to hear what was happening within. A low, guttural voice was hissing and snarling, demanding answers in a mixture of Russian, German and what sounded like a dialect of Rumanian. But no reply came and after a few moments I heard the unmistakable sound of a fist striking flesh, the crack of bone breaking and a female cry of pain. Again the questions were asked, this time loud enough for me to hear them clearly. I whispered a translation to Eisenstein, careful to keep my voice low enough to escape detection.

  "He wants to know why she came here, how she knew about this place, who sent her. What's her connection to those soldiers outside?"

  "All good questions," Eisenstein muttered under his breath. "I wish she'd answer them."

  Another voice spoke inside th
e farmhouse, harsh and sibilant. I recognised none of the words, but the accent was all too familiar: Transylvanian.

  "That's one of Constanta's men. It could be Gorgo, if he's still inside."

  "Good, then let's join him," Eisenstein replied, switching the magazine in his submachine gun to one loaded with silver-tipped rounds. I retrieved a small crossbow slung across my back, slotting a clip of five sharpened wooden stakes into position and making sure the weapon was primed and ready to fire. My spare hand reached for the antique silver flask held in a clip on my right hip, fingers quietly loosening the lid with its black enamel cross. I never drank from the flask, keeping the holy water inside it for those who would find its touch far more corrosive. Consecrated liquid would not kill a vampyr unless you drowned them in it, but a single drop of holy water was like acid to the undead, a valuable tool during interrogations. Finally, I pulled a string of garlic bulbs from inside my knapsack and slipped it over my head like a necklace.

  Eisenstein smiled. Both of us knew we could be dead within moments.

  "Ready?" he asked.

  I nodded before smashing the heel of my boot hard against the brittle farmhouse door. It shattered inwards like so much kindling and Eisenstein burst through the space where the door had been, firing silver-tipped death in a horizontal spray across the room. I followed him in a second later, loosing off three bolts at smears of movement on the other side of the room, always expecting to feel the final, fatal stab of death at any moment. All around us the air was filled with screams and pain and ashes, a sure sign of the undead being exterminated. Vampyr exploded into a cloud of dust when destroyed, a fact that hid their true form from sceptics.

  When no return fire came, I let myself relax long enough to take in our surroundings. The sniper at the open window was dead, his body punctured by two bullets and a wooden bolt from my crossbow. He must have been an ordinary German soldier, since his corpse remained intact. Nearer the centre of the room floated a cloud of dust where one of the interrogators had been standing. His captive was tied to a wooden chair, her face blackened by bruises. One of her eyes was swollen shut and blood dripped from her broken noise. Her dark brown hair was pulled back from her face, revealing pale skin that provided a stark contrast to all the blood and bruises.

  Even through the pain and suffering, I could see she had a simple, striking beauty. Like Eisenstein and me, her Red Army uniform bore the insignia of the smert krofpeet. She, too, was a vampyr hunter. The bodies of four male smert krofpeet were splayed across the farmhouse floor like broken, discarded rag dolls, each of them with savage wounds evident on their necks, and a pool of blood spilling out from beneath their bodies. All four had been brutally murdered, no doubt by the creature standing next to the captive. It took no great wit to realise this was our quarry.

  Gorgo was a powerfully built figure clad in the uniform of a Rumanian soldier, the rank of sergeant evident from his insignia, pain and anger etched into his malevolent features. Two dark eyes gleamed at us with an animal's cunning and his lips were drawn back in a snarl, revealing elongated fangs. He had snatched one of my wooden bolts out of the air, no doubt aided by the lightning fast reflexes vampyr possess, but two smoking holes were visible where Eisenstein's silver-tipped bullets had torn through the Rumanian's tunic.

  I did not need to see the insignia of a bat clutching a swastika in its talons over a mountain peak to recognise the creature as one of Constanta's inner circle; only the strongest of vampyr could sustain such injuries and yet live. Like all his kind, Gorgo was careful to stay away from the sunlight spilling in through the window. He hissed at us through bloodstained teeth, cursing in a variety of languages and dialects.

  "You must be Gorgo," Eisenstein replied, aiming his PPSh at the vampyr's heart. "Don't even think about trying to escape or transform yourself. We know all your tricks, fiend."

  "Who are you?" the monster sneered back at us in Russian.

  "An old acquaintance of your friend Constanta. We met him near Leningrad."

  Eisenstein pulled aside the collar of his uniform to expose the area where the vampyr commander had bitten him two years earlier. The wound was heavily bandaged but infected blood and black pus had still soaked through the bindings. In the centre of the malodorous mess was a void, a patch in the shape of a six-pointed star where the bandage remained clean. Eisenstein possessed a silver Star of David emblem which he kept pressed against Constanta's bite marks. Though it burned and tormented him, the icon also held the vampyr taint in check.

  "He did this to me," Eisenstein said.

  "The Jew," Gorgo breathed, chuckling under his breath. "Lord Constanta told me about you. How you gave yourself to him, but then tried to fight off the bloodlust. Your feeble attempts to deny his dominion over your body are pitiful indeed!"

  "Really? I'm surprised the mighty Constanta even bothered to mention me if I'm as insignificant as you say." Eisenstein stepped closer to Gorgo before speaking again. "Where is he? Where's your lordship hiding himself these days?"

  "I do not answer to you, mortal."

  "Haven't you heard? I'm not a mere mortal anymore. I'm a daywalker. I have all the strengths of your kind, but none of the weaknesses. Holy water and silver mean nothing to me. You hide from the sunlight but I bask in it, and I welcome its warmth upon my face."

  "You lie," Gorgo sneered.

  "We'll see," Eisenstein said. "Victor?"

  I moved closer but was careful to stay beyond Gorgo's reach. I retrieved the flask from my hip, fingers brushing across its engraved surface as I unscrewed the crucifix lid. Eisenstein opened his lips and I tipped a mouthful of holy water inside.

  "Hmm, tastes good," he said with a smile. "Would you like some?"

  When Gorgo didn't reply, Eisenstein spat the liquid into the vampyr's face. The monster howled in agony, skin sizzling as it was burned away by the holy water. While Gorgo convulsed with pain, I slipped the necklace of garlic from my shoulders and draped it over his head instead, before hurriedly moving away once more. The Rumanian tried to pull the bulbs away but his fingers burned whenever they touched the garlic. Curls of acrid smoke rose from the seared flesh where holy water had burned its way down to the bone. Eventually Gorgo gave up trying to escape the necklace, preferring to glare at us with venomous rage.

  "What do you want, Jew?"

  "The name's Eisenstein. Remember that. And I've already told you what I want: answers. Where's Constanta? Where is the ruler of the vampyr?"

  "He is our lord, but not our ruler," Gorgo snarled. "The Sire, the creator of us all, is the true ruler of the vampyr. Lord Constanta is his emissary, his ambassador to the outside world. In your human terms, Constanta is the Sire's general on the battlefield."

  I tipped some holy water into my left hand and flicked a few droplets at the fiend. "Where on the battlefield, djavoli? Where's Constanta?"

  Gorgo flinched, twisting his head from one side to the other, trying in vain to keep the holy water from striking his face. When he finally stopped thrashing about, utter hatred and contempt were all too evident in his scarred, scorched features.

  "Enough!"

  Eisenstein smiled with satisfaction. "Well?"

  "Sighisoara. He's at Sighisoara," Gorgo said. "Constanta has gone home to prepare for the next phase of our glorious crusade."

  "There, that wasn't so difficult, was it?"

  "Don't trust him," another voice croaked. Gorgo's prisoner had been silent since we burst into the farmhouse, but now she stirred. "He's a liar. They all are."

  "All of them?" I asked. "Gorgo's the only one here."

  "Not for long," she replied, blood bubbling from between her lips. "That cry you heard earlier, that was their summoning call. This place will be crawling with the undead and their thralls soon. We'll be dead less than an hour after sunset unless we leave now."

  "Untie her," Eisenstein told me. As I moved to cut the captive's bindings, footsteps became audible outside the farmhouse. Eisenstein and I spun round, ready to f
ire, but relaxed when we saw it was our comrades Komarov and Gorky in the shadows by the doorway.

  "I was wondering when you'd get here," Eisenstein said. "Have you dealt with all the walking dead?"

  Komarov lurched forward into the light, revealing a gaping hole where his right eye had been. Gorky looked just as bad, with most of his throat torn out and intestines spilling from a gaping wound where his stomach had been.

  "The resurrected must have got them," I whispered.

  "Now it's your turn," Gorgo announced, a throaty chuckle resonating in his chest. "Take them, my children. Feast on their flesh! Drench yourselves in their blood!"

  At Gorgo's command the corpses of the smert krofpeet soldiers on the floor rose up, hissing and clawing at us, their lips drawing back as if to smile, revealing freshly grown fangs. Komarov and Gorky lurched forward to join them, trapping us in the centre of the farmhouse.

  Eisenstein spat a curse at Gorgo before opening fire with his PPSh, sweeping round in a complete circle. I threw myself at the female prisoner, knocking her to the farmhouse floor. Once we were both beneath Eisenstein's line of fire, I took aim at the nearest vampyr and emptied my remaining wooden bolts into its heart. The creature exploded into dust while Eisenstein's silver-tipped bullets accounted for two more of the bloodsuckers. The last of the smert krofpeet threw itself between Eisenstein and Gorgo, shielding the Rumanian with its body. The newly converted vampyr exploded into ash as silver-tipped bullets punctured it, but the delay gave Komarov and Gorky enough time to attack Eisenstein, preventing him from finishing off Gorgo. Meanwhile the Rumanian was ripping the garlic necklace away from his neck and burning his fingers to the bone in the process, the stench of charred flesh suffusing the farmhouse. Screaming in agony, the vampyr staggered towards an internal door.