Kobra, startled, looked back at her.
And Palatazin plunged the jagged end of that table leg toward his heart.
The point struck, but, deflected by the Mauser in its jacket holster, only staggered Kobra. At once Kobra gripped the makeshift stake and wrenched it from Palatazin’s grip, flinging it aside. “Not that way, Van Helsing,” Kobra sneered. “Can’t finish off old Kobra that way!” His hands struck, lightning fast, pushing back Palatazin’s chin and exposing the scarred throat. Kobra bore him down to the floor. Tommy grabbed Kobra’s hair and tried to gouge out his eyes, but Kobra struck him a backhanded blow across the cheek, as if he were swatting at a fly. Tommy fell, dazed.
Kobra’s mouth opened. Palatazin struggled, knowing that now he was only an instant away from joining the ranks of the Undead. Kobra’s head lowered, the fangs sliding out and ready.
And suddenly Solange’s fingernails were digging into the flesh above his gaunt cheekbones. They sank deep, ripping away hunks of meat that did not bleed. Kobra’s face contorted; he shrieked and threw himself backward from Palatazin, trying to crush the female vampire who clung to his back. They rolled on the floor, hissing and shrieking. Palatazin staggered to his feet and saw Solange plunge her fingers into Kobra’s eye sockets. The eyeballs burst, leaking great spurts of black fluid. Kobra howled in agony, twisted around, and got his hands on Solange’s throat. They rolled through Wes’s blood and across the floor, into the maw of the raging fireplace.
NINETEEN
“Look over, priest,” Prince Vulkan commanded. He grasped Silvera’s collar and thrust him against the balcony’s parapet. Silvera could hear the growl of engines in the holes of the storm’s fading scream. A yellow bulldozer was pushing mounds of sand to each side as it moved away down the mountain, followed by three orange U-Haul trucks.
“They’re taking my lieutenants down to the battle,” Vulkan said. “They’ll be returning with food—humans to feed the king’s court. We’ll have a good celebration. Now look out there.” He pointed into the far darkness, and Silvera’s heavy-lidded gaze followed. “That’s where your city lies, from horizon to horizon. Do you see any lights? Any cars? Any blinking neon signs that shout the names of your idols on billboards and marquees? No. My army marches the streets and boulevards, and your kind hides in holes. I’ve already won. The world has begun to bow to me, starting right here. Did you really think you could destroy the King of the Vampires?”
Silvera didn’t answer. He was so terribly tired, so beaten. His head pounded, and he had no feeling in his arms or in that injured leg. It was all over now; a better man, a better servant of God, would have to carry on the fight. He looked down and saw his own body in his mind, spinning down after he’d jumped. Because that was the only escape now.
The storm was winding down. The wind had stilled to a soft moan, and the sand had stopped blowing. Prince Vulkan looked uneasily at the sky. He felt alone. The Headmaster’s protection was gone, the final gift lying broken on the council chamber’s floor. He felt vulnerable now, a soldier without armor. But no! He’d learned all the lessons, he’d sat too long at the Headmaster’s knee. It was time to put his mark upon the world, and the Headmaster be damned! “I am Prince Conrad Vulkan, King of the Vampires!” he shouted into the darkness, his eyes blazing. The wind whispered around him in an empty reply.
And then the wind died.
Silvera peered out over the city. The storm had stopped. Now from the darkness he seemed to hear the screaming and shrieking of vast multitudes of the Undead down in the city that had once been known as Los Angeles, as they danced and celebrated to the strains of a Luciferian symphony heard only by vampiric ears. The shrieking went on and on, hideous and obscene, echoing through the hills like mad laughter. Silvera put his hands to his ears. “Listen to them sing!” Prince Vulkan shouted. “They sing for me!”
In the distance, over the ocean, lightning streaked through the night.
Silvera grasped the edge of the parapet. He couldn’t even feel the cold stone. When the next flash of lightning came, much closer, he could see the streets and buildings of the metropolis below him illuminated for a split second, like rows of stones in a graveyard. There was a faint rumble of thunder from the west. Now, he told himself. Go now! He tensed to leap.
And suddenly the castle shook beneath his feet.
Thunder rumbled. In its wake there was no sound but the fading echoes of the vampires’ shouting. Then total, utter silence. The world stood motionless.
And then again, the rasping of stones rubbing together as the castle trembled. Silvera could feel the vibrations rippling up his uninjured leg, hammering into his body.
Prince Vulkan gripped the edge. “No!” he hissed. His eyes were wild, the pupils narrowed into slits.
Silence. Lightning flashing in the distance, its flare illuminating the naked fear etched across the king vampire’s face. He was watching the ebony sky, his head cocked to one side as if he had heard a terrifying, long-dreaded voice. Thunder welled, rolling through the hills, and when the castle trembled again, a great black slab of stone broke away from an upper parapet and pitched downward, crashing into the balcony just behind Father Silvera. The balcony shuddered, cracks zigzagging in all directions.
Silvera could see earth and boulders sliding off the edge of the cliff just underneath the castle. Part of the wall sagged and disappeared in a tumble of stones. From somewhere there was a terrible splitting sound, a rending of the earth that seemed to Silvera like the noise of a thick telephone book being torn by muscular hands. He clung to the parapet as the balcony began to heave and buck beneath him. Mounds of earth pitched off the cliff, rolling down in an avalanche toward Hollywood. More of the wall vanished, and now the courtyard itself was beginning to slide away. The castle started leaning toward the precipice, ancient stones groaning in agony.
Earth cracked, opening huge fissures that snaked beneath the castle. In the next bright gleam of lightning, seemingly directly overhead, Silvera saw a stunning and terrible sight. The entire basin of Hollywood and L.A. was pitching, heaving like a Doomsday bellows. He saw buildings sagging, splitting apart, and falling one after the other, at first silently, but then the roar of destruction swept up into the hills like the shouting of an advancing army. A fissure had begun to run the length of Sunset Boulevard, and in the intermittent flashes of lightning Silvera saw its advance, swift and relentless, sucking down entire blocks in its wake. He could hear screaming now, coming from the guts of the castle. When he looked down, he saw several vampires trying to run across the courtyard to the main gate vanish into a fissure than ran along at their feet just before overtaking them.
“Noooo!” Prince Vulkan wailed, his voice drowning out the next drum roll of thunder. His fingers dug into the parapet, his eyes glowing with green fire. His mouth worked with silent rage. From above came a loud grinding noise, and when he looked up, he saw a dunce-capped tower fall like a head being lopped off. The stones and slate struck the parapet, knocking great chunks out of it. Father Silvera threw himself back as a stone struck the parapet just in front of him, collapsing it. Prince Vulkan stood in a rain of slate, the pieces striking his back and shoulders. Silvera pressed himself against the wall for safety.
“NO!” Vulkan shouted into the night. “I WONT…I WONT LET IT HAPPEN…!” A chunk of masonry struck him between the shoulder blades, driving him to his knees.
The tremors went on for another moment, then stopped abruptly. The castle seemed to be balanced at an angle, and blocks of stone kept falling from above, crashing down into the courtyard or off the mountain’s side. Between the peals of thunder Silvera heard the high shrieking of the vampire hordes down in the city, except now that shrieking was pained and terrified, lost and confused. And then another sound, one that came to him only faintly but with an impact that wrenched at him.
The sound of bells.
Church bells. Ringing in Beverly Hills, in Hollywood, in Los Angeles and East L.A., in Santa Monica and Culver
City and Inglewood. Stirred by the tremor, they were singing to Father Silvera, and their song sounded like victory. He knew that Mary’s Voice was singing loudest of all, and tears suddenly filled his eyes.
“You’ve lost!” he shouted to Prince Vulkan. “It’s the earthquake! The Big One that’s going to sink this city beneath the sea! You’ve lost it all!”
Vulkan whirled, his face mad with rage. “LIAR!” he shrieked. “Nothing can…nothing can stop…nothing can…”
And the earth reared up, a chain of mountains rising abruptly across lower Hollywood, black peaks pushing up through avenues and boulevards three hundred feet high, then dropping again into gaping holes that sucked the city down like a whirlpools of brick and concrete. Buildings tumbled like huge chessmen across a shattering board. The castle pitched and shivered and started to fall to pieces. Vulkan, his eyes wide circles of terror, screamed in a boy’s cracking voice, “Headmaster, help meeeeee! Help meeeeeee…!” His cry was lost in the din of thunder and falling stone.
Silvera fell to his knees on the sagging balcony. Between the thunder and the bells, he could hear the voice of God, and he understood the message. Whatever power that had protected these vampires was gone; the pendulum of power had swung back now, and it was time for the evil to die. The city was going to fall, yes, but it would fall by the will of God and for His purposes. Not for the vampires but upon them, a vampiric Sodom and Gomorrah.
Vulkan stood at the shattered edge of the balcony, wailing in a language that Silvera couldn’t understand. He lifted his hands in supplication and was struck down again by a chunk of stone. The L.A. basin dipped and heaved. Mountains split the earth, rising to tremendous heights—their crumbling sides stubbled with palm trees, broken sections of freeways, houses and buildings—and. then sank rapidly down below sea level. Hideous screams, like those of the tormented in Dante’s Inferno, echoed through the shifting hills, a hundred thousand screams rippling, mingling, intertwining. And above them the great clamor of the thunder and the bells.
The vampire king whirled to face Father Silvera, his face contorted with hatred. “I haven’t lost!” he shrieked. “Not yet! I can still win!” The balcony pitched beneath his feet, and he struggled for balance. And suddenly he began to change, his body lengthening and darkening like a shadow. His face became vulpine, the fangs jutting from a mouth that was a blood-red slash in a dark, green-eyed horror. He lifted his arms to the sky, and Father Silvera saw them split the sleeves of his velvet coat. They became black, leathery wings that flailed at the air, reaching for height. The thing hissed at Silvera in triumph, turned, and threw itself from the balcony. Its wings moved powerfully, muscles rippling along the shoulders, and hovered for an instant in mid-air. Then with a last defiant glance backward, Prince Vulkan began to move away from the crumbling castle, the wings beating a hard, steady rhythm.
And Silvera knew what must be done. The only choice, and what God had put him in this position to do.
He leaped across the balcony and threw himself into space, his hands grasping for Prince Vulkan’s ankles. Behind him, the balcony gave and dropped away. He got hold of Vulkan’s right leg just below the knee, but his hands had no strength, and instantly he started to slip. Vulkan shrieked, more an animal’s cry than anything else, and tried to kick the priest loose, but Silvera threw his arms around the ankle and held on with his last reserves of strength. A black-clawed hand raked across his skull once, then again, but now they were falling together in a slow spiral, and Vulkan stopped his attack to concentrate on gaining altitude.
For a moment they swept across the tops of dead pines, then Silvera was aware of cold air on his face, and they were climbing over the shattered city. Streets and buildings were being swallowed by the earth less than a hundred feet below them. Vulkan started to turn north. Silvera gritted his teeth and reached up, grasping the thing’s waist. He fought to crawl up over the king vampire’s body, straining to reach and pin down those powerful wings. A claw flashed out, taking away most of Silvera’s cheek to the bone. He screamed in agony, but now he had both arms around Vulkan’s waist, and he was trying to force his numbed hands up onto the shoulders. Vulkan twisted around to fight, almost flinging the priest off, and they plummeted more than forty feet before the wings started beating again.
Silvera was aware of a loud roaring below them now. When he looked to the west, he could see a two-hundred-foot wall of Pacific Ocean, white foam churning atop a gleaming black and green sea that looked as solid as fine Venetian marble, a monstrous tidal wave sweeping across the city, carrying with it yachts, cars, billboards, theater marquees, chunks of boardwalk, roofs, coffins, shattered sections of freeway, airplanes, palm trees, and entire buildings that reared up from the depths like the prows of gigantic, sinking ships. And now Father Silvera remembered what his mentor Father Raphael had told him about the holy water in Puerto Grande, where fresh well water had been as precious as life itself. “Use water from the cradle of life, Ramon, The salt heals and cleanses…”
Below him Los Angeles was being flooded. It was a cauldron of holy water blessed by God Himself, and tonight all the evil would be cleansed, every bit of it.
Silvera blinked the blood out of his eyes and hauled himself upward, grasping for the king vampire’s wings. He caught and trapped one shoulder, throwing his other arm around Vulcan’s neck.
They fell, spiraling in a long arc over West L.A. Prince Vulkan fought wildly, getting one winged arm free and struggling for altitude. Silvera hung onto his neck, wrenching downward to throw Vulkan out of control. But now they were rising again, very rapidly.
And then something huge loomed into their path—a wall of glass and steel that seemed to fill up the horizon. It was an office building, now starting to tremble and pitch forward as the tidal wave swept it from its foundations. Vulkan threw himself to the left, trying to veer over and away. Silvera saw that they were barely going to skim the roof as the building crashed down before them. Clasping his legs around the thing’s waist, he let go of Vulkan’s neck and grasped for his shoulders, pinning the leathery wings back in an effort that almost ripped his own arms from their sockets. He felt electric with power, filled with renewed strength. They tumbled forward, caught in a whirlwind, and Silvera shouted in Prince Vulkan’s batlike ear, “You’ve lost, you’ve lost, you’ve…!”
They crashed through a plate-glass window. The building fell upon them like a massive tombstone, shattering as the sea roared up into it and through its hundred cubicles. The pieces were swept under, boiled to the surface, swept under and over again, and finally vanished beneath the littered foam.
TWENTY
The council chamber pitched at an angle, paintings falling from the walls to the floor, stones grinding and loosening, rafters crashing around Palatazin and Tommy. A great jagged crack split the floor and started to widen between them and the bolted door.
From the massive fireplace one of the scorched, burning figures slowly rose from the other and, roaring with hatred and bloodlust, came shambling across the room with its hands outthrust. Tommy could see the black eye sockets in Kobra’s face, the flesh dangling from yellow bone, the lips and cheeks burned away to expose those hideous, snapping fangs. From the smoking rags of his jacket, he wrenched the scorched Mauser and screamed “WHERE ARE YOU!” The barrel swung toward Palatazin; Kobra’s finger twitched on the trigger.
And in the next instant the antique weapon, its magazine heated to an explosive level, blew up in Kobra’s face, red-hot bullets glowing like tracers. Kobra’s headless body was flung backward to the floor where it lay writhing, the stub of a hand still gripping the mangled lump of iron.
Palatazin gripped Tommy’s arm and threw him across the widening chasm in the floor. Then he jumped, scrambling for a grip on the other side as the entire room heaved, great chunks of stone cracking loose from the walls and rolling like deadly pinwheels. The door was jammed shut, and Palatazin had to throw his shoulder against it to break it open. The corridor was filled wit
h screams, falling rafters, and dust. Vampires came out of the darkness, bumping into Palatazin and Tommy, then racing away in a panicked frenzy. The corridor bucked, rippling beneath their feet. “This way!” Tommy shouted to him. They ran toward the corridor’s far end where a pack of vampires fought to get down the stairway. Behind them the floor split and collapsed, sending a half-dozen of the Undead plunging through. Palatazin almost tripped over the female vampire in black who now crawled on the stairs, screaming “Master! Master help me!” A cloud of dust came welling up the stairway, almost blinding him. Vampires were fighting all around him in their frenzy to get out of the castle, some stumbling and falling over the struggling, gnashing bodies of others. Palatazin reached back and grasped Tommy’s arm, and together they fought their way through. In the lower corridor vampires ran back and forth, calling for their Master and wailing for help. Stones and rafters fell from above, crashing to the floor and often crushing one or more vampires underneath. The corridor was filled with dust, struggling shapes, screams, and moans. Three huge blocks fell with a tangle of rafters, blocking the corridor ahead of Palatazin and Tommy. They found the door leading downward, stepped through it, and bolted it. And now they knew they had to hurry because the castle was pitching and swaying above them, sending chunks of stone hurtling into the basements. They passed through the rooms where coffins lay with their beds of dirt and descended the stone stairs in almost total darkness, into the lower basement where the dogs bayed and fought to escape, running back and forth like the vampires above, lost without a guiding hand.