Knights of the Blood (23 page)

Majestically, Kluge descended the dais steps to the altar, his escorts flanking him and diverting to head and foot, acolytes now, in the ritual about to unfold.

“Tonight one of us shares himself before joining Odin and the great heroes of Valhalla,” Kluge went on. “We shall drink to his glory as he carries our aspirations unto Valhalla’s halls.”

As Kluge held out a black—gloved hand, the knight at the head of the altar handed across an SS officer’s dagger, its broad, spear—shaped blade flashing in the torchlight. Egon, lying dreamily beneath it, only half—comprehended Kluge’s words. As Kluge held up the dagger like a sword at salute, pointing it then toward the stained glass window, Egon could only conceive that he was somehow being honored by the Master.

“Your Honor is True. You are a knight.”

Egon trembled at the words. As the Master’s eyes locked on his, a shiver of anticipation drained away his will and left him limbless, in ecstatic echo of that first time the Master had bade him drink his blood. As the dagger descended flat—bladed to touch his right shoulder, lifted over his head to touch the left, Egon knew only that his Master was according him the very highest honor. The noble music of Wagner swelled, and Egon hardly felt the dagger’s steel kiss as Kluge drew the edge sharply across the left jugular.

He did not see Kluge handing off the dagger, for tears of joy and pride were streaming down his cheeks. He was a knight! He was
Kluge’s
knight! He felt the blissful light—headedness of knowing he would live forever as a willing servant of this darkling god who now was receiving the most beautiful chalice from one of the knights beside him.

Gem—studded and beguiling in the torchlight, it winked and dazzled before Egon’s tear—blurred gaze, twice the size of a man’s cupped hands, with handles on either side by which to lift it and wonderful designs carved deeply in the ruddy gold. Golden eagles adorned the sides of the chalice, their wings outspread to bracket the brim, and each held a wreathed swastika in its claws, sapphire—set with gems the size of a man’s thumbnail. Egon got a very good look at it as Kluge brought it down past his left eye, tilting it a little to press its rim against Egon’s neck.

“Your honor is true,” Kluge repeated, the voice soothing as Kluge caught Egon’s gaze again. “You are a knight of the new Reich. And a knight is ever willing to lay down his life for his lord.”

Slowly it dawned on Egon what Kluge was saying, what the words meant, what the chalice was for. But by then it was too late to question, too late to object, too late to tell the Master that he did not want to die yet–that he wanted to live forever! He tried to move his chilling limbs, but the acolytes moved in to hold him at ankles and shoulders–not roughly, but not relenting, either.

Gradually any resistance at all became simply too much bother, and he let the lethargy wash over him in ever—increasing waves, gazing up into Kluge’s eyes in slack—jawed surrender as his life flowed into the chalice Kluge held. He managed to turn his head a little as the pressure of the chalice against his neck suddenly ceased, and before Kluge lifted it away, Egon caught just a glimpse of what it now contained, filled to the brim with his blood. As the strains of Wagner swelled in glorious paeans of victory, heralding the entry of the gods into Valhalla, Egon could summon no anger or resentment or even sorrow–only joy and pride, as Kluge raised the chalice high above his head with both hands.

“This is the blood of the new Reich!” Kluge thundered, as his holy knights looked on, and his awed disciples surged closer behind them, drawn by the power. “Through the bond of our blood, we attain Valhalla!
Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!”

The knights made no outward response to the exhortation, but the punkers took up the chant with ecstatic fervor, thrusting their right hands upward in stiff—armed salute as the words pounded at the hammer—beam ceiling like a slow, steady pulse—beat. As they chanted, Kluge drank deeply from the chalice, served his two assistants and the banner—bearer, who came down from the dais to meet him, then moved majestically to either side of the hall to administer the gory communion to the knights, denying the cup to the less exalted of his vampire army.

The chanting of the punkers slowly died away as they realized they had not yet earned the right to partake of this most coveted sacrament, of the blood of one of their own, so that by the time Kluge returned to the foot of the altar, he did so in silence–for the music of Wagner had come to an end during the chanting.

In utter silence, Kluge turned toward the
Blutfahne
on the dais beside his throne, raising the chalice in ultimate salute as he murmured,
“Die Fahnen hoch .
... “

His words were the cue for new music—the throbbing power of “Das Horst Wessel Lied,” the official song of the Nazi Party, sung by a massed choir of male voices, the powerful arrangement orchestrated by Carl Orff.
Die Fahnen hoch–the
flags are high, the ranks are tightly closed ... .

It pulsed and pounded among the rafters of the high—ceilinged hall as Kluge brought the chalice to his lips once more; the punkers joined their rougher voices to the choir’s, clenched fists hammering out the tempo, stamping their feet, all eyes fixed fervently on their
Führer.
In triumph, Kluge tipped back his head to drain the chalice to its dregs, raising it high once more, up—ended to show that it was empty, before setting it thus between the feet of the man who had filled it with his life’s blood.

That done, Kluge stood to rigid attention and gave Egon a final stiff—armed Nazi salute. The action was mirrored in unison by all the black—clad knights–their first movement since taking up their impassive sentinel positions–and then, raggedly, by the punkers as well. Kluge’s murmured,
“Sieg Heil!”
was not audible above the final strains of the Nazi hymn, but Egon no longer could have heard it anyway, as the final tears of pride rolled down his lifeless cheeks.

The sudden ending of the song left behind it an utter and profound silence, hardly broken as Kluge’s knights formed up smartly before the dais and escorted him and the
Blutfahne
from the hall by a side exit. The nearly twenty punkers remained subdued when the doors had closed behind the dark procession, only slowly daring to make their way outside to gather by a small moving van and await final instructions. When Kluge finally reappeared, he was carrying a cloak like those his knights wore, and two of them were lugging a large box.

“Put it down here,” Kluge said, indicating a place near one of the vans.

The knights obeyed, and one of them lifted the lid of the box to reveal a lethal assortment of pistols and submachine guns. Without changing expression, Kluge picked up one of the Schmeissers, pulled back the cocking lever, then raised the muzzle to fire a quick burst into the air. As intended, the sound got all of their attention.

“Toys,” Kluge said with a cold smile, by way of explanation. “It’s playtime, boys and girls–playtime.”

IN DRUMMOND’S
white Mercedes, Father Frank Freise paged quickly through the report supplied by Anton von Liebenfalz, spent rather more time on Kluge’s SS file–stiffening as he looked at the ID photo–then glanced up sharply at the direction signs flashing by on the autobahn.

“Where are you headed?” Freise demanded. “Back to Vienna. Why?”

“I think we’d better talk first,” Freise said, closing the folder and staring straight ahead. “Pull over at the next service plaza.” His tone of voice had the ring of a command, and Drummond shot the priest a cold glare in response. “Please,” Freise added, in a gentler tone. “It’s important.”

Drummond said nothing, merely easing the Mercedes into the slow lane and down—shifting to check their speed as they pulled into a rest area parking lot. When he had set the parking brake and switched off the ignition, he turned a cool, measured gaze on the priest.

“All right, Father. Let’s talk.”

“It’s Frank–please.” The priest looked down at his hands, clenched tautly around the edges of the file in his lap, and forced himself to take a deep breath.

“I’m sorry, John. I didn’t mean to sound imperious. But you’ve put it all together.”

“I have?”

“Yes. You’ve provided
me
with a vital missing link, too. This man–“ He hefted the SS file in his hand. “You aren’t going to want to believe this, but this Wilhelm Kluge is the same man who led the raid on the castle in 1944, and slit one of the knight’s throats, and drank his blood. He’s your master vampire, John.”

“You’re right. I don’t want to believe this.”

“All right. Let’s try another approach,” Freise said, squaring his shoulders. “Did you read this report that von Liebenfalz gave you?”

“Yes. “

“Did you know what you read?”

“By your tone of voice, apparently not,” Drummond replied. “It’s a history of the Order of the Sword. They were an order of crusader knights who fell out of grace with the Church in the thirteenth century. If I catch your drift, it sounds like you’re trying to suggest that they’re the knights in the castie, the same guys you met up with in the Ardennes in 1944, I’m not sure I can buy the idea of vampire knights, Frank.”

“Do you buy the idea that Wilhelm Kluge is a vampire?” Freise replied, staring bleakly out the windshield ahead.

Drummond looked at him in consternation for several seconds, then gave a grudging nod.

“Yeah, I guess I do. I guess that’s why I called and asked you to come.”

“I see.” Freise nodded slowly, “Well, I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but now that I’ve come, suppose you tell me what you’d planned to do next. “

The priest turned and looked him full in the face, and Drummond swallowed, quickly retreating from vampires to the more familiar territory of police work, where at least he knew where he stood.

“All right. I thought we should go back to Vienna. I did some checking on your story in America, before I came over here. You said that you spotted the first of your vampires at a local blood drive–and that it wasn’t run by the Red Cross.”

“That’s right.”

“Okay. So it had to be a private company. I did some digging and found out that about the time of the vampire killings in L.A., a blood products company called Euro Plasma Services went out of business. Could be just coincidence, right?”

“Right again.”

“However,” Drummond went on, “there have been companies with slight variations of that name in San Francisco, in Vancouver, British Columbia, and in Hamburg, Germany. I haven’t been able to tie anything to San Francisco–yet–but in Vancouver and Hamburg, there’s definite proof that
someone
has been killing people and draining their blood. And then there was Stucke’s murder, in Vienna, which also fits the pattern.”

Freise nodded. “Tell me about Stucke.”

Drummond wrapped his hands around the steering wheel and stared straight ahead. “I made a police contact right after I arrived in Vienna–a professional courtesy sort of thing—an inspector named Eberle. Nice guy, and seems to be a good cop. We hit if off. He invited me to go along on a call—out a couple of nights ago. It’s something cops do when they visit other departments–to compare notes, see how other departments do things.

“Anyway, the call—out was about a DB–“

“A what?” Father Friese interrupted.

“A dead body. The police were treating it as a probable suicide. The old guy gets in the shower and cuts his throat with a straight razor–body isn’t found for about a week, when the woman in the apartment below notices water coming through her ceiling and realizes the rent hasn’t been paid.” Drummond allowed himself a deep breath.

“It was the purest coincidence that I went along on this particular call, but guess what? The dead man has no blood in his body. None. And there’s none sprayed all over the bathroom, such as you’d expect if he did himself there. And that’s not all. Seems he’d been to the police three weeks earlier, swearing up and down that he’d seen a former SS officer in Vienna, name of Wilhelm Kluge.”

Freise nodded wordlessly, listening avidly to Drummond’s every word as he continued.

“The police did some checking; confirmed that there
had
been an SS officer named Kluge during the war, but that the guy Stucke’d seen was a successful Austrian businessman, name of Hartmann–who
couldn’t
be Kluge, because he was forty or fifty years too young–but Stucke wouldn’t accept that.

“So he went to the Simon Wiesenthal Center–the place that tracks down Nazi war criminals. He got a copy of Kluge’s SS file. That’s it you’ve been reading. I liberated it from Stucke’s apartment, when I went back the next morning after the police were through. I hadn’t put anything together yet, but something just didn’t feel right.”

“Do you think it was Kluge who attacked you?”

Freise asked.

Drummond shook his head. “No way. It wasn’t the guy the police say is Hartmann, either. Some skinhead punker.”

Drummond realized his clasp on the steering wheel had turned into a death—grip, and he consciously made himself relax, flexing and unflexing his fingers before he went on.

“I think that the man Stucke saw
is
Kluge, Frank. I think that Kluge found out he’d been spotted, so he killed Stucke–or had him killed. And once he thought I was on to him, he tried to have me killed as well.”

Freise nodded slowly. “I hope you realize what you’re implying. Do you have any idea how this Kluge covers his tracks in Vienna?”

Drummond reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper which he handed to Father Freise. “Before I left the hotel yesterday, I tore this out of the phone book. Look for yourself. “

Halfway down the page, circled in red, was a Vienna telephone listing for Euro Plasma Technik.

“I don’t suppose you had time to discover whether one of the directors is a man named Hartmann, did you?” Freise said mildly.

Drummond swallowed audibly and shook his head.

“No matter,” Freise went on. “I agree with everything you’ve said. It all begins to fit together. Except for one thing. The man who attacked you may not have been Kluge, but he had to be a vampire, to haul himself off that fence the way you described. That confirms that there are more of them than just Kluge. I guess I knew that twenty years ago, when I staked those six in L.A. But we’d be fools to try tackling him alone. We need help, and I know from experience that the police aren’t about to lend a hand.” Father Freise refolded the page from the phone book and handed it back to Drummond.

“Yes, that’s what we’ll have to do,” he said.

“We’ll go to Luxembourg.”

“Luxembourg?” Drummond repeated, not wanting to believe what Freise was suggesting.

“That’s right. We’ll ask the Order of the Sword to help us.”

“Jesus Christ, Frank, they’re
vampires,
the same as Kluge, if what you say is true!” Drummond retorted. He was stunned by Father Freise’s suggestion. “What makes you think they’re going to help us?”

“It doesn’t matter what I think, John. The Church sent me, and they think the Order of the Sword will help us.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, what makes them so sure that the Order of the Sword won’t kill us and then link up with Kluge?” Drummond was beginning to wonder if Freise wasn’t crazy after all.

Father Freise picked up the report from the Vatican Archives and brandished it between them.

“According to this, they’ve been under the special protection of the Church for nearly seven hundred years. I think that if we talk to them, they’ll listen. And if they listen, they’ll help.”

“Yeah, and if they don’t listen, we’re dead.” Drummond let out a long breath. “Besides, I don’t really think it’s such a hot idea to go looking for a castle full of seven—hundred—year—old vampires, alone and unarmed.”

Father Freise smiled at Drummond.

“Let’s go back to the trunk, John. There’s something there I want to show you.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet,” Drummond muttered under his breath, picturing a suitcase full of wooden stakes, or garlic, or God knew what an else.

But he got out of the car and unlocked the trunk for Freise, standing back then, while the old priest hefted the suitcase around and opened it. On top was the expected assortment of socks and underwear and neatly—folded priest—shirts, with the bright embroidery of some gold and white vestments showing beneath. Lifting those up, Freise rummaged under a neatly folded cassock and brought out a leather—bound box with a silver cross on the lid. He laid it on top of the spare tire, next to his suitcase.

“Go ahead,” he said. “Open it up.”

Drummond lifted the lid off the box. Inside was a compact 9mm Beretta pistol and a box of ammo. Freise look smugly at Drummond.

“How on earth ... “ Drummond’s voice trailed off in disbelief.

“I’m a regular reader of
Guns
&
Ammo,”
Father Freise explained. “Bit of a black powder enthusiast. Anyway, I read some time back that the LAPD had gone over from Smith and Wesson to the Beretta, and I thought it might come in handy.”

“But, where did you get it?” Drummond asked.

“New Hampshire. Remember? ‘Live Free or Die’?” Freise looked around furtively. “I guess I did take a bit of a chance, putting it in my luggage like that, but I figured–heck, what customs man is going to dig around in a priest’s suitcase? And I was right. Those Germans just waved me right through.” He snorted. “And they’re supposed to be efficient.”

Drummond popped the magazine out of the pistol and quickly thumbed in fourteen rounds of 9mm hollow—points, keeping the operation shielded behind the raised lid of the trunk. Slapping the magazine back into the pistol, he snapped the slide back, chambering the first round before he set the safety and tucked the pistol into the waistband of his trousers.

“Well, this helps,” Drummond said, zipping up his leather jacket, “but I wish we had some backup, just in case.”

“We do,” said Father Freise, pointing toward the heavens.

Still dubious, Drummond closed the old priest’s suitcase, slammed the trunk, and he and Freise got back into the car. There was a gas station across the parking lot from where they had stopped, and he moved the car over to the pumps.

“I don’t suppose you speak any German?” he said, getting out to start filling the tank.

“Are you kidding? My folks came from Düsseldorf. Why?” Freise asked.

Drummond nodded toward the small shop next to the gas pumps. “Why don’t you go in there and see if you can get us a map? I don’t even know which direction Luxembourg is in, much less how far it is.”

“Can do,” said Father Freise, climbing out of the car and heading into the shop.

Inside, next to the candy bars and magazines, was a rack filled with maps and road atlases. Overwhelmed by the selection, Father Friese looked at several, trying to decide which was best.

“Enschuldigen Sie mir, Vater, kann ich helfen Sie?”

Freise turned around to discover that the pleasant voice belonged to a plain, squat woman with mousy—brown hair, wearing motorcycle leathers.

“Ja, danke, das ist sehr gütlich, Fraulein,” Freise murmured gratefully. “Welches karte ...”

“Oh,” she said in excellent English. “You are American. Tell me, where do you go?”

“We’re headed toward Luxembourg,” Father Freise volunteered. “To the Ardennes.”

The woman pulled an oversized road atlas down off the rack. “Here is the one for you,” she said. “I use it myself. It is easy to read.”

“Well, thank you,” Freise said. “Not at all.
Auf wiedersehen:”

The woman turned and headed for the door, pulling on her helmet as Drummond came in to pay for the petrol.

“Did you find it?” he asked Freise.

“Sure did. Got it right here,” he said holding up the
Collins Road Atlas of Europe.

Outside, Magda Krebs went to the nearest phone, inserted her phone card in the slot, and dialed a long series of numbers. Nearly a hundred miles away, a cellular telephone rang in a pale green Mercedes van with the rear window blanked out. The doors bore the logo of Euro Plasma Technik, Hamburg. The moving van following half a mile behind bore no markings. The passenger in the front seat of the lead van, now wearing a white Euro Plasma coverall over his SS uniform, leaned forward and picked it up.