In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. - Friedrich Nietzsche
Part Four
The dark woman stood outside the destroyed wall as her children searched the wreckage of the building for her prize. Her fine silk dress was covered in ash from the explosion.
Her spell had taken down about half of the office, covering everything in soot and dust. It didn't take long for Tod, large and powerful, and Henry, a vampire shaped like a whip with limbs, to uncover their half-brother, curled protectively around the human he had been conversing with a few minutes before.
"Great King! You are a mess Peter." She shook her head in mock disapproval. Tod held him up with a massive arm wrapped around the much smaller man. Newkirk's head rolled against the other vampire's shoulder. He looked half dead, uniform torn and dirty. She studied him, looking for what made him so interesting to the King. She found it in his defiant blue stare.
She grinned wickedly, red stained lips twisting up towards her black eyes. It was fortunate that she found him so, injured and half starved. He had resisted the King as a fledgling, though the King had played fair. That was not a mistake she intended to make.
He managed to speak, a low class accent that clashed with the intelligence she saw in his face, intelligence and scorn. "Let me guess, you're Mum."
"No strength to stand but enough will to give me sass. I am a Countess!" She slapped him across the face, manicured nails slicing across his cheek. Tod was the only thing that kept him from tumbling over. "You will show the proper respect."
"I thought I already was." He bit back, trying to shake off the blow.
She licked the blood from her fingertips like fine chocolate. She tasted his linage.
He was in the dark and he couldn't breathe. That crackers scientist had given him something and now even the pain had stopped. It was all kind of numb, even the knife wound in his back felt like a kind of pressure.
Flashes came, feelings and images washed over him, trying to peel his sanity from his being like the skin off a grape. He was a man, strong and ancient. He was a woman, desirable and immortal. He was a million others besides. If he could have moved, could draw breath, he would have screamed until his throat bled. He would have given anything at that very moment for it to stop.
"All creatures have a breaking point, my dear Van Helsing. The truly courageous man reaches his when he is too far gone for it to do his enemy any good."
" I know your kind Countess Karnstein. You could drink the whole world dry and never be satisfied. No creature has ever been more suited to being a vampire."
"Lord Ruthven I thought you were dead!"
"Die Todten reiten schnell."
"On VonSchloss, you madman!" She grinned. "And we all assumed you only had two of the Grand Strains! How did he get all three? Though the third is less than pure." She twirled around in child like glee. "What is holding you together my boy? Your very blood should be at war with itself."
"Crackers." He mumbled. "Every single one of them, ruddy crackers." He tried to untangle himself from Tod, trying to look back towards the human, who had begun to wake.
She licked his face, healing the cuts there and tasting far more recent thoughts. "What makes them so important to you? This guv'ner? These humans?" She whispered into his ear. "Don't you realize what you are?"
"Well enough to realize what that makes you." He spat on her face, blood and saliva spattering against a perfect smoky eye. "Go to hell darling."
She snarled in rage, grabbing him by the front of his shirt, tearing him away from Tod. His feet left the ground as she threw him back into the ruined office where he hit the far wall with a crack.
Hogan was mostly uninjured but for the ringing in his ears and the aching in his head. Newkirk's body, Hogan had no idea how fast he had moved, had protected him from everything else.
He couldn't hear anything at all until Newkirk slid off the wall, tumbled off the cabinet and onto the floor (palming one of Carter's confinscated arrows on his way down). If Hogan hadn't seen it a thousand times before he wouldn't have noticed it at all.
And even though when Newkirk looked like death warmed over, the Englishman couldn't entirely disguise a smirk. Whatever was going on, Peter had more control over the situation than the beautiful, scary as Hades woman could imagine. But she had shown up expecting to deal with a prisoner of war. She hadn't expected to deal with a spy. It was a distinction Hogan and his men were used to exploiting.
She stalked back over on absurdly high heels, graceful even in her fury, and picked Newkirk back up like a doll. "I could have made this far more pleasurable." She hissed.
"I know what you're after love. It's just another form of what VonSchloss wanted." Newkirk struggled to free his arm, pinned between his own body and hers.
"Perhaps but there are other ways to get what I want." She body slammed him backwards, this time against the liquor cabinet. "You will take my blood if I have to drink every drop of yours first."
Hogan's brain kicked into full gear, searching for a way to distract her long enough for Peter to do what he needed. He found the boot knife Newkirk had given him for Christmas last year, he had stolen it from a Gestapo who had visited the camp. It had seemed a little silly at the time, but the note under the knife came back to him.
"Not very practical I'm afraid guv. It's silver, too easy to nick up, but it would do in a pinch."
He pulled it from it sheaf, trying not to attract attention to himself. But it didn't matter, all eyes were on the woman and her captive. He wasn't a great knife thrower but he didn't need to worry about hitting a little target this time, just anything in the tangle of vampires that wasn't Newkirk.
He did it quickly, afraid to loose whatever steadiness remained or whatever nerve he had left. And it struck true, just a second before the woman tried to bury her fangs in the younger vampire's neck, hitting her in the back, the flesh hissed and smoldered.
She shrieked and pulled back, freeing Newkirk's arm and his weapon. He shoved it upwards, under her rib cage and into her heart. She opened her mouth in shock, trying to pull free of the arrow. She cried out, begging in a language Hogan had never heard before.
"Nici un copil! Te implor!"
Newkirk's response was one more hard shove on the arrow. The woman dissolved into ash, the arrow vanishing along with her.
Her brutes watched stunned. Tod gasped in amazment. "But her ring... It should have protected her."
Newkirk eased himself down to the floor. "You mean this ring mate?" He opened his left hand and in it was an ornate Sapphire ring. Hogan couldn't help but laugh.
Tod remained in place, still in shock but Henry moved to rush Peter. He was stopped by a jolly voice just behind him.
"I would do that if I were you." Schultz said, all good nature and smiles.
Henry sneered. "And why not?"
Schultz's smile grew. "Because it would be very stupid."
Henry took a step towards Newkirk, testing."And why is that?"
The smile fell from the German guards face. "Because if you so much as get close enough to breathe on him, I will kill you. I have watched over them a long time and they get into a lot of trouble. He is one of my boys, dear as one of my own sons. And you, unlike your mummy, are no match for me."
That startled Henry but he still bristled. "I am the first of The Countess's children! What can a mere werewolf do to me?"
Schultz laughed. "A wolf? Jolly joker. No I am not a wolf. I am a bear." He spoke as though educating a small child.
"What is the difference?" Henry relaxed, unsure how much he wanted to test this newcomer.
"A wolf is a divided creature, man vs beast, always fighting for control. To get anything important accomplished the two must first come to an agreement. A bear is just that, a bear. It doesn't matter what face he is wearing." Schultz's eyes turned rich Brown and he flowed into a monsterous bear over seven feet on it's hind legs. It was an effortless transformation and the raw power was clear even in his soft, fattened sides. He roared, deep and powerful, and then burped. The smell of half digested strudel and meat pie wafted over the vampire, who turned paler than pale.
Henry looked towards Newkirk, and then bowed at the waist. "You have right of conquest. What are your orders?"
The Englander pointed towards the gate. "Get out mate, and don't come back."
The vampires obeyed.
End of Part Four
Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.- Friedrich Nietzsche