Knights of the Blood (24 page)

“Yes?”

“They’re headed for Luxembourg,” Magda reported.

“I see,” Kluge said. “And who are ‘they’?”

“Drummond and an old American priest. Drummond met him at the airport this morning.”

Kluge did not answer right away, and Magda sensed that he was thinking, deciding what to do next.

“Very good, Magda, Stay with them–and call me, once they reach their destination.”

“I will, Master. Thank you.”

The line went dead, and Magda slowly replaced the receiver in the rack. For a moment she stood motionless, basking in the warmth of the Master’s compliment. Then, withdrawing her phone card, she walked over to her motorcycle, kicked it into life, and roared off after Drummond’s white Mercedes.

Back on the autobahn, Drummond dropped the stubby gear lever into fifth and settled back to cruise at a rock—steady one hundred miles per hour, following the signs toward Augsburg, Dim, and Stuttgart. Freise started nodding off after only a few miles, his jet lag catching up with him, so Drummond explained how to make the seat crank back to a semi—reclining position. Soon the priest was dead to the world, leaving Drummond to brood by himself as the lines on the road flashed by and the Mercedes ate up the miles.

The skies opened up as they bypassed Augsburg, and a torrential downpour forced Drummond to slow down to a sluglike fifty. Finally, on the outskirts of Stuttgart, after nearly two hours of slogging along in the rain, Drummond decided to call a halt, if only for long enough to stretch and grab a fast lunch. When he had pulled in at a roadside service plaza and turned off the ignition–and paused to lock the Beretta into the glove—box, lest he cause a panic in the café–he shook Freise awake and they went inside, running to dodge the rain.

Meanwhile, Magda Krebs also wanted to get out of the rain. Pulling her Suzuki under the shelter of an overpass, numb to the bone, she resigned herself to a miserable wait. She shivered in her damp leathers, imagining the hot lunch that Drummond and the priest must be enjoying, and she tried to put her own hunger out of mind, consoling herself with the memory of Kluge’s praise.

Less than an hour behind, the Euro Plasma van and its lumbering rear escort rolled on through the worst of the storm without bothering to stop. Inside the vans, Kluge had provided small, half—liter bags of liquid refreshment for the storm troopers of his new order, and charged the two SS men driving the larger van to make sure that no one overindulged–only enough to keep each at the peak of efficiency. He had no such worries about those in the van with him, of course. They ail were his knights, sitting quietly and conserving their energy–cool professionals, biding their time until ordered to proceed.

Kluge sat back in the passenger seat of the lead van and watched the woods roll by, supremely confident. He was gaining on Drummond and the priest, although neither of them realized it yet, or even that they were being pursued. And he now knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, exactly where Drummond and the priest were headed in Luxembourg.

That also told him who the priest was. Kluge remembered him from the war, that long—ago night when Kluge first had tasted immortality. The priest had
seen.
He had been among the American prisoners working in the triage camp–young, hardly old enough to be a priest, Kluge remembered thinking at the time. The Knights of the Sword–or the Knights of the Blood, as Kluge preferred to think of them–the knights had captured the priest along with a handful of Kluge’s men, and hauled them back to the castle where all of them now were headed. Kluge couldn’t remember the priest’s name, if he’d ever even heard it, but he called up the memory of the face, and pictured how it might have changed after nearly fifty years.

Kluge had not changed, of course. Kluge smiled as he imagined the priest’s reaction, when they eventually met–very mortal priest, nearing the end of his days, and immortal Master of a coming new world order. It had to be the priest who somehow had put all the pieces together and set the American policeman onto Kluge–the priest or that nosy Jew! At least Kluge had drunk
that
vessel to the dregs. The vengeance had been sweet, even if it
had
been Jewish blood ... .

But
why
was the priest taking Drummond to the castle? The question gnawed at Kluge.

The most dangerous possibility was that Drummond somehow had gotten information out of Stucke before Kluge was able to silence him, and knew that Hans Hartmann was Wilhelm Kluge, and a vampire, somehow putting the Stucke information together with whatever he must have learned from the priest, back in America. If the two had decided to hunt down vampires, maybe they were going to the castle to try to kill the knights who had made Kluge what he was–
if
they still lived there, of course.

If that
was
their purpose, then Kluge’s arrival would be construed as reinforcements by the beleaguered warriors. Once Kluge had finished off Drummond and the priest, the knights would be happy to form an alliance with him.
Those
were the sorts of knights Kluge really wanted for his new order–not miserable, mouth—breathing punks like the ones following him in the larger van.

But what if Drummond and the priest had decided that Kluge was the danger, not the knights, and were going to ask the knights’ help in destroying Kluge? What if Drummond and the priest convinced the knights to join forces against Kluge and his followers?

Kluge lifted the car rug tucked between the front seats of the van and patted the breech of the 9mm Walther submachine gun hidden beneath it.

Well, in that case,
he thought.
it will be a triumph o
f
the will.
Then, chuckling to himself, he added,
Of will, and superior firepower ... .

IN THE
cafe, perhaps an hour ahead of Kluge, Freise pored over his road atlas as Drummond finished his second cup of coffee.

“About how far do you think we are from Luxembourg?” Drummond asked over the rim of his cup.

“Hard to say,” Freise said, studying the map.

“It’s autobahn from here to a little past Karlsruhe–maybe forty or fifty miles–but then there’s about a thirty—mile stretch of
route régionale
between there and the Euroroute around Saarbrücken.

“After that, I’d suggest that we skirt the French border instead of going into France, heading northwest out of Saarbrücken to pick up this Euroroute to cross into Luxembourg. That looks to be–oh, another fifty or sixty miles to the border, and then a bit beyond that, to where we’re going. Ordinarily, I’d say three to four hours.” Freise feigned a scowl. “But the way you drive, my guess is we’ll be there in two. Even if this rain lets up, it’ll be dark by then, in any case.”

The unspoken menace of that last statement kept both men silent until they were back in the car and accelerating back onto the autobahn.

“What
about
it being dark by the time we get there, Frank?” Drummond said, deliberately keeping his eyes on the road. “You gave me a rosary that first time we met at the sanitarium. Is that kind of thing going to give me any protection? While you were asleep, I kept scaring myself with all the horror films I’ve ever seen about vampires. Somehow, I don’t get the impression that the standard protections are going to do too much good.”

Freise nodded slowly, exhaling with a sigh. “I wish I could reassure you, John. All I can tell you is what I know from my own experience. A stake through the heart will kill them. Cutting their heads off will kill them, too, if I’m remembering correctly from that battle in the castle, back in ‘44. None of the Germans actually
cut
their heads off, with a blade–but blowing someone’s head off with a grenade, or shearing it off with a machine gun, accomplishes the same thing. Other than that, I saw some of those knights take some
terrible
wounds and just keep coming.”

Drummond felt a chill creep up his spine, and he forced himself to keep his eyes focused on the road ahead.

“What about crosses, holy water, all that stuff?”

Sighing, Friese shook his head. “I honestly don’t know. I can’t imagine that they affect the knights, at any rate. They asked me to say Mass, for God’s sake! There were crosses all over their chapel–they
wear
crosses on their surcoats!

“And if the Germans hadn’t come bursting in when they did, I would have given them all communion. You explain
that
one for me! Unless they were trying to commit suicide, I have to conclude that a consecrated host doesn’t harm them. At least not our vampire knights.”

Drummond felt like he’d just been kicked in the stomach.

“Jesus, Frank!” he whispered. “You sure know how to reassure a guy. What about Kluge’s bunch?”

“Well, they aren’t going to bite you in the neck like Count Dracula, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Freise replied. “I’ve never once seen that MO, as you police call it. The ones in Los Angeles drained blood from their victims in blood banks.”

“Yeah, and the ones in Vienna use a straight razor,” Drummond interjected with a grimace. “Are they evil, or are they deranged?”

“Well, I don’t. think the ones in the castle are either ,” Freise said after a thoughtful pause, “or the Church wouldn’t have protected them all these years.

“Kluge, now–he’s another case, entirely. I
watched
him coldly cut the throat of one of the injured knights and drink his blood. If the knights are vampires, that has to be how Kluge became one–unless he was one to start with.” He shuddered and shook his head.

“I don’t think I’m ready to think about that just yet. If someone can become a vampire simply by drinking another vampire’s blood, and there’s none of this un—dead nonsense, it begins to sound more like a disease than an evil curse. The whole notion of good and evil goes out the window. We’ll just have to wait and see.”

He fell silent again after that, and Drummond returned his full attention to the road, little more enlightened or reassured than he had been before their latest conversation. The rain continued for another half hour, Freise dozing while Drummond continued to hold their pace to a steady fifty, until suddenly the rain stopped and the late afternoon sun came out with a vengeance.

Accelerating back up to a hundred, Drummond let Freise sleep until they had skirted Saarbrücken and the border with France and were approaching the crossing into Luxembourg. The forest of the Ardennes had closed in thick and black as they headed north. The border crossing looked more like a toll booth for the Golden Gate Bridge than a national frontier, and Drummond slowed to the mandatory ten miles per hour and nudged Freise awake as he approached the border checkpoint. He was prepared to produce his passport, but the German border guard in the kiosk hardly bothered to look at Drummond as he waved him through, and the booth on the Luxembourg side didn’t even seem to be occupied.

“I guess this European Community stuff is working,” Drummond remarked, as the frontier post disappeared from his rearview mirror. “That was about as complicated as crossing an American state line. “

Freise chuckled. “It’s a far cry from what it was the
last
time I was here,” he said.

A few minutes later, Magda Krebs eased her Suzuki through the barriers with no more formality than Drummond had encountered, and within forty minutes, Kluge’s two vans also had been waved through the checkpoint.

* * *

After another half hour, following Freise’s directions, Drummond headed the white Mercedes north out of the city of Luxembourg. They were on a rural road now, and Drummond had to keep his speed to a modest thirty to forty miles per hour. After they had ridden in silence for about fifteen minutes, Drummond looked over at Freise, who was glancing out the window and consulting the map. Twilight was approaching, and Drummond was beginning to become concerned.

“Do you know where we are?” Drummond asked.

“Oh, certainly,” the priest said distractedly, tipping the map slightly as he scanned it up and down. “I know exactly where we are.”

“Let me rephrase that,” Drummond replied. “Do you remember where we go from here?”

“That,” said Freise, “is a more difficult question. Everything has changed since I was here in ’44–not that that’s particularly surprising.”

“Well, then, what do you propose we do?”

Drummond pulled the car into a lay—by that presented itself and took the car out of gear.

“Wen, I was captured just south of Clervaux ... “ Freise said uncertainly. “Ah!” The priest jabbed his finger against the map. “There should be a turn to the left, sign—posted ‘Marbourg’.” He closed the atlas and tossed it on the back seat. “Just stay on this road and keep heading north. Once we get closer, I’ll find it. Don’t worry.”

“ ‘Don’t worry,’ the man says,” Drummond murmured, rolling his eyes heavenward as he put the car back into gear.

About forty miles north from where they had crossed into Luxembourg, a small sign pointed the way toward Marbourg and Clervaux.

“Turn there!” Freise said.

Slowing, Drummond made the left turn and carried on, heading them westward into the densely forested mountains of the Ardennes.

“Slow down,” Freise said, as the road started to climb up toward the mountain village of Clervaux. “It was along in here that I was captured.
This
road hasn’t changed that much since then.”

Hoping to catch sight of some familiar landmark, Freise craned his neck out the window as they continued, occasionally shaking his head, until finally he said, “Stop the car.”

Drummond pulled off onto the grassy verge and looked at Friese expectantly.

“Is this it?”

“I’ll let you know in a minute. Stand by.”

Hopping out, Freise backtracked for several yards, then disappeared into the undergrowth. He was gone for only a couple of minutes, but to Drummond it seemed like hours. The priest was grinning as he trotted back to the car.

“I found it–my old jeep.” His smile went suddenly somber as the memory came flooding back. “That’s been nearly fifty years ago,” he said. “Back in ‘44, I was racing up this road when we hit a land mine. The jeep was blown off the road. My driver, Corporal Costanza, was killed.” He blinked and looked away briefly. “The Germans picked me up about ten minutes later, and marched me off to the camp where I was taken prisoner by the knights.”

“So, how far do you reckon we are from the castle?” Drummond asked.

“Well, we’ll have to go on foot from here,” the priest replied, recovering his composure. “I’d say half an hour or so, maybe a bit more. If we hustle, we should be there before it gets completely dark.” Freise walked around to the back of the Mercedes. “Open the trunk, will you? I need my stuff.”

Wondering what he was letting himself in for, Drummond opened the glove—box to pull the trunk—release and also retrieved the Beretta. He was wishing he had a holster, if they were going to be covering any kind of rough ground, but he decided to be grateful that he even
had
a gun as he got out of the car and went around to help Father Freise, grabbing his leather jacket from the back seat.

Fortunately, Freise didn’t want his whole suitcase. By the time Drummond got around to the trunk, the priest had stuffed what he thought he needed into a lightweight nylon zipper bag that he’d apparently packed flat for just such a purpose. He had also buttoned his collar and put back the collar tab, returning to clerical uniform for the coming venture. A flashlight and a pair of binoculars were going in on top, and Drummond nodded approvingly as he reached into the leather—bound box to scoop the rest of the ammunition into his pocket. The zip bag wasn’t very heavy, and Drummond took it from the priest and slung it over his shoulder before slamming the trunk lid to follow Freise into the woods.

Half a dozen yards off the road, they came to the twisted hulk of an old jeep, slowly rusting into the earth. Freise started to lead them past it, then paused, turning slightly to Drummond.

“If you don’t mind, I like to say a little prayer for Tommy Costanza.”

Drummond nodded, waiting silently while the priest knelt down next to the rusted remains of the jeep, one hand caressing a twisted fender. After a few minutes, he crossed himself and stood up, reaching blindly into a pocket for a handkerchief, with which he wiped his eyes and gave his nose a good blow.

“Thank you,” he murmured, not looking at Drummond. “He was a good kid.”

Without further comment, he headed on deeper into the woods, Drummond silently following.

Their passage had not gone unnoticed. Magda Krebs had watched the two men abandon their car and plunge into the woods, lugging a zipper bag. When they did not emerge after several minutes, she parked her motorcycle and cautiously approached the Mercedes on foot.

Far back in the woods, almost beyond the range even of
her
heightened senses, she could just hear the sound of their passage receding into the other sounds of the twilight–twigs snapping underfoot, the crackle of trodden leaves, a muffled cough. When she could hear them no longer, she returned to her machine and doubled back the way she had come, returning to the main road to intercept Kluge.

She had traveled south on the main road for only about ten miles when the vans carrying Kluge and the others passed her going the other way. They slowed as they saw her, and she slowed, too, making a U—turn in the middle of the two—lane road and then racing back to overhaul Kluge just before the junction with the Clervaux turn—off.

Pulling alongside the lead van, she signaled it to pull over. Slowing, the convoy pulled off to the side of the road, allowing several other vehicles to overtake them before they finally stopped in a bus turn—out.

Kluge watched through the windshield of his van as Magda switched off her motorcycle and, tugging off her helmet, ran back to where he and the others were parked. She arrived at Kluge’s van breathless from the exertion of running in the heavy motorcycle leathers.

“Drummond and the priest,” she gasped. “They’ve headed into the woods on foot. “ She slumped against the van, gulping air.

“Where?” Kluge demanded.

“Up–“ Magda had to take several deep breaths before she could continue. “Up the road, then turn left. Their car is parked where they entered the forest. You can’t miss it. It’s a white Mercedes.”

Kluge reached under his seat and brought out a battered German Army map case. Snapping it open, he looked at the faded yellow Wehrmacht map and, with a gloved finger, traced an invisible path through the woods. Closing the map case, he looked back at Magda.

“Take us to where you left them.”

Magda blinked uncomprehendingly, still numb from two days on her motorcycle.

“I told you wh–“

“Now!” shouted Kluge. “Now, you bitch, or I’ll kill you!”

Magda reeled as though she’d been hit. Stunned, and on the verge of hysteria, she staggered back to her motorcycle, swinging a leg over the machine and dropping into the saddle. After a moment’s hesitation, she pressed the starter button, pulling on her helmet as she looked back at Kluge in his van. Then she pulled out on to the highway, the others following along behind.