Twilight of the Dead Read online

"Even if you don't hit the target this is suicide," she said to Eisenstein.

  "I'm dead already," he said with no trace of regret in his voice. "I was dead the moment Constanta sunk his fangs into me at Leningrad. It's long past the time I should have let the afterlife claim me."

  "Are you sure about this?" I asked.

  "As sure as I've been about anything in my life, Victor." He reached out a hand to shake mine, his face splitting into a broad smile. "Wish me luck. I'll need it to fly this damn thing!"

  I couldn't reply since my throat was too choked with emotions. I went back to the starter, determined to ensure all was ready. I saw Eisenstein hand something to Mariya who accepted it gratefully.

  A moment later the air was filled with a screaming unlike anything I'd ever heard before. It sounded as if the earth was about to crack apart, so loud and violent was the wailing, like a thousand jagged knives stabbing into my mind. I clamped my hands over my ears trying to block out the noise, but realised the sound was inside my mind. Mariya tumbled off the wing of the Reichenberg and rolled down the slope, just as badly afflicted by the inhuman screeching. She crawled across the ground towards me, shouting to be heard above the noise.

  "What is that?"

  Before I could speak the screaming stopped and a new sound took its place: the hissing of steam as if liquid was being boiled in a gigantic cauldron.

  "This is it!" Eisenstein shouted. "The Sire. He's coming out of the lake. Get ready to launch!"

  I held a trembling hand over the control that would catapult the Reichenberg into the air.

  "Ready!" I bellowed to Eisenstein.

  He stuck an arm out the cockpit and gave us the thumbs up signal before closing the canopy over himself. At that moment it began to rain blood. I looked past the missile and saw a black shape take to the air, its outline silhouetted against the darkening blue sky. The Sire was much as legend had described it: a vast vampyr bat with an elongated head and evil, glinting eyes. The creature howled at us, each flap of its wings like a thunderclap in the air, its cry tearing through our minds like razors - pure hatred, made incarnate.

  "Now!" Mariya screamed. "Do it!"

  I slammed my fist down on the control and then flung Mariya and myself to one side, away from the roaring jet pulse engine. Moments later the missile shot into the sky, swerving as it cleared the top of the bluff. Mariya and I clung to each other as we watched the Reichenberg streak towards the Sire. The creature hung in the sky, its wings beating the air, watching the silver arrow hurtling towards it. The Sire roared at the missile as if affronted by this strange object daring to come near. Still the Reichenberg raced at its target, flying straight and true. Perhaps realising the danger, the Sire twisted sideways in the air, turning out of the missile's path.

  "Bojemoi," I whispered. "He's going to miss!'

  The V1 jerked sideways, desperately trying to follow the Sire. I watched, horrified, as one of the wings came away, sheared off by the sudden change of trajectory. The cataclysmic failure threw the missile out of alignment, sending it tumbling end over end through the air. The Sire looked back to see what had happened and, in doing so, its torso twisted round slightly.

  Grigori Eisenstein flew the V1 into the über-vampyr's chest, embedding the silver nose cone deep in the monster's heart. The impact detonated the fuses packed around the warhead, and the missile exploded. Night turned to day as a blazing white light engulfed everything within twenty kilometres. Next came the sound of the explosion, accompanied by an unearthly howl of torment. The last thing I remember was Mariya and I tumbling over and over as the concussion wave threw us across the hillside. After that was only darkness.

  FOURTEEN

  Mariya and I woke the next morning to find the landscape around us utterly changed. It was as if the explosion that destroyed the Sire also lifted the curse from the countryside. Green shoots were poking up from below the ground and we could hear birdsong for the first time in days. Both of us were covered in scratches and bruises and Mariya bore angry red marks around her neck where Karl had tried to strangle her, but we were otherwise unhurt. I climbed up the bluff to see if there was any evidence of what had happened to the vampyr. No trace of the Sire remained, but the lake was now merely dark, murky water instead of a vast blood pool. Perhaps the Sire's presence had kept the lake as pure blood. Whatever the reason, the water was returning to its natural state.

  I climbed back down to Mariya. "It's over. Grigori did it."

  She smiled. "I know. Somehow I can feel it." She rested a hand on her chest. "In here."

  I noticed something metallic glinting in her grasp. "What did he give you?"

  Mariya opened her palm to reveal the Star of David emblem. "He said it had helped him fight off the vampyr taint. He wanted us to have it no matter what happened."

  We walked slowly to Castle Constanta, not sure what to expect. We were still a kilometre away when it became obvious that there was nothing more to fear inside. The building had been torn apart by the explosion; so devastated that not a single stone stood atop another. When we got close enough, I could see even the dungeon had been exposed to the sunlight. There was no sign of Ralf, Hans, or the others. Perhaps their bodies were destroyed in the explosion. The ruins of the castle were filled with hundreds of piles of dust and ash, mute evidence of all the vampyr wiped out by the Sire's destruction.

  It was Mariya who found the remnants of the canister Constanta had shown me. The metal had collapsed in on itself and scraps of singed blueprint fused into the melted mess. Rainer's bomb would never be a threat again, that much was certain.

  "What about Constanta?" Mariya asked. "Can we be sure he's gone, too?"

  I shrugged. "He once told Grigori and me that he could never be completely destroyed; not while the Sire lived. Even if Constanta did somehow escape the firestorm, he is vulnerable now, diminished, possibly even mortal, like the rest of us. He'd have all the curses of being a vampyr but few of the strengths now. I doubt we'll hear of him again in our lifetimes."

  "Good."

  "There are other vampyr out there, you know. The undead didn't restrict themselves to the Eastern Front. Constanta used to brag about having his brethren and thralls active in other theatres of the war. For all we know they're still out there somewhere. God only knows what those fiends might be planning."

  "What should we do about them?"

  "Our war's over," I decided. "Let's go home." We walked away from the ruins of Castle Constanta, Mariya slipping her hand inside mine as we left.

  "I seem to recall talk about what we might do after all this was over," she said playfully.

  "I was wondering if you'd remember that."

  "Oh yes. I never forget a promise."

  That was the end of my involvement with the vampyr. Mariya and I both made it home to Russia, surviving many deprivations and danger on our long trek back to the motherland. Our passion for each other was born in the midst of a horrific war, but our love was strong enough to outlive the horrors we had seen. In time, we had a family, two daughters and a son. Mariya named the girls after our mothers but I took the responsibility for naming our boy. The choice was obvious and little Grigori has grown into a fine man, a brave soldier and a courageous fighter, no matter how insurmountable the odds - just like his namesake.

  For decades after the war I did my best not to think about what I'd witnessed in those dark days and nights at Leningrad and Berlin, the comrades I'd lost to Constanta and his unholy kinsmen. Mariya forbade all talk about the war from our modest home and I was happy to respect her wishes. We'd been through too much to spend the rest of our lives resurrecting the greatest horrors we ever experienced. My beloved wife died in 1959, far too young for one so beautiful, leaving me to raise our children alone. Once they had become adults in their own right, all three of them left home and I found myself alone with my memories. At the back of my mind, I still had nagging doubts about what had happened to Constanta in that final, apocalyptic firestorm that destroyed the Sir
e. Eventually those doubts started to invade my dreams, turning my time of rest into a recurring nightmare of blood and pain and the Rumanian's mesmerizing eyes, staring deep into my soul, taunting me even in sleep.

  Finally the nightmares became too much and I decided the only way to purge them was by writing about my experiences during the war. I soon discovered publishers had little stomach for such a fantastical tale, not if it was presented as fact. Try writing it as a novel, one editor suggested - people will believe anything if it happens in a novel. So, I wrote this volume and the book that preceded it, about my experiences during the Siege of Leningrad. My accounts of events may be fictionalised, but the facts are all too true.

  To help job my own memories of those long past days, I started attending annual reunions of smert krofpeet units. Mariya had forbade me from taking part in such gatherings while she was alive, but that restriction no longer applied, sadly. Not many members of the vampyr hunting units had survived the war, but those that did gathered every summer near the Baltic to swap tall tales about encounters with the undead. As the years went by there were fewer and fewer of us left but I kept in touch with the families of several former vampyr-hunters and sometimes heard whispers about outbreaks of the undead. I was even sent reports of Constanta resurfacing in other countries, decades after the war had ended, posing as a senior military figure. According to one story, he died in the British sector of Berlin during 1980, but I had my doubts. If Constanta survived the Sire's destruction, why emerge from hiding twenty-five years later?

  I was more interested in discovering what the vampyr lord did during the times when he wasn't active in the Great Patriotic War. Slowly I began piecing together a timeline for sightings of Constanta along what Germans had called the Ostfront using intelligence gathered from my brothers in arms, and also from the few former Wehrmacht soldiers willing to talk about their experiences fighting with, and against, the undead. I discovered there were key moments during the war when Constanta was conspicuous by his absence from the Eastern Front. For example, when the Japanese launched their attack upon the American Navy at Pearl Harbour in 1941, the vampyr lord was missing from our battlefront. Several times I'd heard him bragging about the undead's involvement in other parts of the world. Could Constanta have been sent by Hitler to aide his Oriental Axis partners in their savage surprise raid on the US forces?

  During June of 1942, undead activity at the blockades surrounding Leningrad fell to an all time low. Maybe Constanta was busy elsewhere, trying to tip the balance in favour of Axis forces at the crucial Battle of Midway? Tales of atrocities committed by some Japanese units sounded suspiciously like the work of Constanta's kinsmen - Allied prisoners of war in captured Pacific countries tortured and tormented by creatures they equated with monsters. One word came up repeatedly in the fragmented accounts I was able to read with my broken English: Kyuuketsuki - the Japanese for vampire, I've since discovered. Could Constanta have create an undead army among the Japanese warriors and unleashed them upon the American GIs and other Allied soldiers fighting in places like Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima?

  If that was the case, what if the Rumanian lord had survived the destruction of his blood father, the Sire? Where was Constanta when America dropped its atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Could his presence in Japan have been the reason such a devastating weapon was unleashed not once, but twice? I don't know the answers to these questions, perhaps nobody does. But I now know I witnessed only a small part of the horrors Constanta and his kind committed during the Second World War. I never saw the vampyr lord after 1945 and for that I am grateful. I pray upon the soul of my beloved Mariya and the lives of my children that I never see the Rumanian again.

  Chapter Fifteen

  AUGUST 25TH, 1941

  The rehabilitation centre in Rumania was based at an abandoned private school on the outskirts of Sighisoara, housed in an old baronial castle. Klaus was grateful to reach the towering stone structure during the hours of daylight. It stood on the brow of a hill that offered magnificent views of the black, brooding Transylvanian mountains. Klaus shuddered involuntarily as he was wheeled inside. There was something malevolent about those peaks, almost as if they were alive.

  Inside it was cold and draughty, with high ceilings and plaster crumbling from the walls. The acrid stench of disinfectant filled the rooms, mingling with the stale scent of dust and mouse droppings. The building had seen better days, as had most of the staff. Wehrmacht medics were responsible for overseeing the patients. Only those with a realistic chance of full recovery came to the centre, while more serious injuries were invalided back to Germany. Klaus soon noticed menial jobs such as cooking and cleaning were done by a handful of elderly Rumanians. He tried asking them about the local area, but they refused to answer or did not understand his questions. He mentioned the name Constanta to a wrinkled washerwoman. The colour drained from her face and she kissed a crucifix, which was hanging round her neck.

  Klaus's curiosity soon came to the attention of the centre's director, Doctor Sheybal. The thin-faced, pallid physician paid an early morning visit to the pilot's bedside, waking him from a dreamless sleep. "I understand you've been asking my staff a lot of questions. May I ask why?"

  The pilot shrugged, wincing at the pain that he still felt in his chest. His wounds were healing well, but that didn't stop them hurting. "Those mountains outside intrigue me. Where I come from in, it Germany is mostly flatland, we don't have anything to rival such peaks."

  Sheybal pondered his reply, one hand nervously smoothing a few greasy strands of hair across his balding pate. "Perhaps that is true, but I'm told you've also been asking about a local dignitary, Lord Constanta."

  Klaus fought to keep the panic from his face. "One of my brothers met Hauptmann Constanta on the Ostfront and they talked about Sighisoara. When Hans heard I was coming here, he asked me to pass his regards to the Hauptmann's family."

  "Did he?" The doctor pursed his lips thoughtfully. "Well then, you are in luck, Oberleutnant Vollmer. Lord Constanta is passing through Sighisoara today. In view of your interest, I shall make a request for him to visit us. I'm sure he will want to meet you in person."

  "I'll look forward to that," Klaus replied, forcing a smile until Sheybal left the private room. His mind raced, trying to plot some way out of this situation before realising the encounter was unavoidable. Klaus closed a trembling hand around the silver cross on his bedside table.

  I'll simply have to hope this does its job, he decided, gripping the crucifix tightly between his fingers.

  It was dark when Klaus stirred from sleep, the last light of the day tinting clouds red. The pilot watched night claiming the sky for its own though the tall, lead-lined windows of his room. Something was nagging at the back of his mind, trying to force its way past the drowsiness clouding his thoughts. Then a voice in the darkness jolted him awake.

  "I understand you've been asking for me."

  A lone figure appeared from the shadows. A high-collared cloak of black surrounded the man like a shroud, casting darkness across his clothes. Black leather gloves encased his hands, creaking as the newcomer clenched and unclenched his fists. A peaked cap above the cold, patrician features bore the familiar emblem of the vampyrs. There could be little doubt that this was Hauptmann Constanta. Cold, numbing fear chilled Klaus as he stared into the stranger's face, unable to tear his gaze from those hooded eyes. The pilot felt himself drawn deeper into those black pupils, as if they were somehow sucking the spirit from his body.

  Klaus forced himself to blink, breaking contact between them. He looked at his open hands, but the cross was gone. A hurried glance confirmed it had not fallen from his grasp while he slept, or slipped to the floor. It must have been taken while he dozed, his sole form of protection deliberately removed. He realised that he was alone, with no means of fighting off this monster. Constanta was glaring at him, so Klaus repeated what he had said to Doctor Sheybal about passing on Hans's regards.

  "Is that
so?" the Hauptmann replied. "Private Vollmer is your brother? How interesting. I wonder, do you have another sibling fighting in this war?"

  Klaus tried to lie, but was unable to with Constanta's gaze boring into his own. The Rumanian's eyes seemed to scour his soul.

  "Yes," Klaus said. "Ralf, my elder brother. He's a Panzer commander."

  Constanta smiled. "I thought as much. One of my underlings reported an icident involving an Obergefreiter Vollmer. The same surname, recurring so many times... I knew it had to be more than mere coincidence." He stepped closer to Klaus, gently resting a gloved hand on the edge of the bed. "A trio of brothers, all stationed along the Ostfront, all causing trouble for or asking questions about me and my men. One might almost think the three of you were planning to pit yourselves against us."

  "Why would we?" Klaus asked, struggling to keep the fear from his voice. "We're all on the same side in this war, we share a common enemy."

  "Precisely." Constanta smiled wide enough for Klaus to see the tips of his fangs. "We are allies, we should act that way."

  "Then my brothers and I have no reason to fear you or your men."

  "Fear us? Why should you fear us?"

  "One of your pilots tried to kill me," Klaus said, his anger over the death of Heinrich finding an outlet at last. "He crashed his plane into mine, murdering my gunner in the process."

  "The official inquiry found the collision was an unfortunate accident."

  "It was no accident," Klaus snapped.

  Constanta's hands flashed forward and grabbed Klaus by the neck, gloved fingers closing over his windpipe. The Rumanian leaned closer, fixing the pilot's gaze. "You will listen to me, Oberleutnant Vollmer. I am a patient man. When you have lived as long as I in the service of my sire, you learn these passing conflicts are but a moment in the vast span of history. Millions will die in this war, as millions have died in wars past and wars yet to begin. Your life and the lives of your brothers are less than nothing in a conflict of this scale. Whether or not you see the end of this war is in your hands. Keep silent about what you think you know and you might survive. Continue spreading sedition about my men and you will leave me with no alternative. Do I make myself clear?"