CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Carter Decamp had miscalculated. He had thought the half-ruined buildings of the old granite quarry a possible resting place for Cotton and his vampires, but instead they had been sleeping in the dark waters of the quarry itself. As a result, when the creatures rose and started up the slope toward where Griffin and Price waited, Decamp was on the far side of the quarry. That was bad.

It wasn’t that Decamp didn’t have faith in the two men. For a couple of guys who had only recently been introduced to the reality of the supernatural they had done amazingly well. The fact that they had survived their encounter with the Moon-Eyes proved them capable. But the Moon-Eyes, at least the majority of them, could be killed with conventional weapons.

Griffin and Price were gunmen. They knew their way around ordnance, maybe even better than Decamp. Here though, they were out of their depth. Griffin perhaps less than Price because he spent a lot of time training in various martial arts. However, though he was good with hand weapons, he didn’t know how to deal with the nosferatu, and that was half the battle.

Decamp had seen several run-ins with the undead and they still amazed him sometimes. He still didn’t entirely understand them. No one did. He had spent many hours in discussion with his various colleagues about just what the things were.

‘Supernatural’ didn’t really explain it. Some considered them spirits and others thought they were reanimated corpses – not like zombies, but some other form of living dead.

One occult specialist thought the vampires were a sort of plague. A disease that was transferred by the mixing of a vampire’s blood with that of their victim, but only taking effect after the victim was dead, and going dormant after a while if the victim survived. It was an interesting theory, but it didn’t explain the various folklore elements about what vampires could and could not do or what would and would not kill them. If the vampires were some form of ambulatory virus, then why would iron hurt them but not wood? Why could they do some things that were physically impossible? A virus couldn’t generate the extra matter necessary for the teeth to expand and it couldn’t explain the vampire’s strength, which was beyond anything human muscle mass was capable of.

Decamp crossed the ground as quickly as he could, skirting the edge of the black water, being careful not to slip on the loose rock. It wouldn’t do to break his ankle at this point. He had just reached the other side of the lake when he caught a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye. Decamp spun away, drawing his sword from the sheath on his back as he moved. A dark blur shot past him, narrowly missing him.

The blur morphed into the figure of a tall man with straw-colored hair and burning red eyes. “You’re the one that killed Deacon Street at the funeral,” the vampire said.

“He didn’t give me much choice,” said Decamp.

“We all have a choice, my friend. You’ve made the wrong one, siding with Satan and reveling in your powers of witchcraft.”

Decamp said, “As opposed to your choice, which is killing innocent people in the name of your faith.”

“I do the Lord’s work and His plans are not for the mind of man.”

“That’s handy isn’t it? Anything you can’t explain is one of those mysterious ways the Lord works in.”

The vampire looked pained. “Will you add blasphemy to your sins?”

“Yes, Deacon,” Decamp said, smiling. “I rather think I will.” It had the desired effect. The Deacon leaped forward, again becoming a blur of motion. Decamp had learned the hard way that there was little point in attacking a master vampire. Their speed and reaction time allowed them to evade most attacks with ease. The trick was to get them off balance. To catch them in motion. Not that this was by any means an easy thing to do, but Decamp had been a gold medalist Olympic fencer, and his reflexes, though slowed a bit now that he was in his fifties, were still far better than average. And he had other advantages. As the Deacon leaped, Decamp sidestepped and tossed a handful of powder into the air. He spoke a word in a long-forgotten language. The powder burst into flame as the Deacon passed through it.

The master vampire fell to the ground, screeching and trying to put out the flames. Decamp watched for an opening, and when the vampire rolled to his back Decamp drove his silver edged sword through the Deacon’s heart. The vampire was still screaming as he fell to dust. Decamp didn’t waste time admiring his work. He turned and started up the slope where he could now see two flares burning. He hoped Griffin and Price were still alive.

* * *

The vampire was too close for Griffin to make an effective swing of the ax. There was a long point on the top of the weapon, and he shifted his grip on the haft so he could stab with it like a spear. The point penetrated deeply enough to reach the creature’s heart and it expired with a whispering scream.

Griffin looked back to where he had last seen Carl and cursed. One of the master vampires, the ones Fry had called Deacons, stood there and he had somehow gotten hold of Carl’s sword. Griffin started cutting his way toward his friend, letting his reflexes take over so that he slashed and cut anything that came across his path. He almost wanted to laugh at his situation. He was trained with virtually every modern piece of death-dealing equipment known, and here he was, chopping his way through a bunch of rotting vampires like someone escaped from an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie.

He sent the head of a short, fat vampire rolling and then hurled himself toward the Deacon with the sword. The iron blade rang on Griffin’s ax, sending shock waves down his arms and knocking the weapon from his grasp. Griffin snatched the iron spike from his belt and lunged. The Deacon backhanded him and Griffin went rolling across the ground. He came to rest near the water’s edge, and managed to get to hands and knees, but his head was spinning and he was sure at least a couple of ribs were cracked or broken.

The Deacon smiled, showing his long teeth. “So may all your enemies perish, oh Lord.”

“Judges, chapter five, verse thirty one,” said Carter Decamp, stepping into the flickering crimson light thrown by the flares.

“The devil may quote the scriptures, witch,” said the Deacon. “I see you bear a sword. As you can see, the Lord has seen fit to give me an instrument of justice as well.”

“That blade was blessed by a god, but not yours,” Decamp said.

“There is no other God!”

“There’s something else you should know about that sword too, Deacon. It’s made of iron. Cold iron. Ancient iron, forged before the memory of man. Something that a creature such as you should never, ever touch.”

Griffin heard Decamp mutter some words in what sounded like the same language Charon had used at the funeral. The sword began to glow with a baleful light, and the Deacon started to scream. His scream was cut short as his body went rigid, as if he were caught in the grip of some paralyzing seizure. As Griffin watched, fine lines began to appear all over the vampire’s body like cracks in a volcano. Light glared through those cracks as if the Deacon were burning up from within. The master vampire toppled over and his body, instead of crumbling to dust like the others, shattered as it struck the ground.

Decamp turned toward Carl and said, “Are you all right, Sheriff?”

The next instant Decamp seemed to disappear. A moment later Griffin saw him tumbling across the rocky ground as if he had been thrown by some lunatic giant. Then Griffin saw the third Deacon. He was an elegant looking man with iron-gray hair and beard and he was standing where Decamp had been only seconds before. Griffin looked back at Decamp. He wasn’t moving and some of the remaining half dozen or so rotting vampires were headed his way. Griffin tried to get to his feet, stumbled, and fell. He began trying to crawl up the slope, but Carl and Decamp might as well have been a thousand miles away.