Flynn extracted himself and rolled backwards, coming up and drawing the Glock in one smooth move. He knew it wouldn’t stop the laughing, blood-smeared monstrosity, but at least it might slow the fucker down a bit again.
The archaeologist had gone foetal, curled up on the floor, whimpering like a baby with bellyache.
‘Fuck him. Focus on the target.’ Flynn’s eyes narrowed and he squeezed the trigger. Two shots rang out and the monster twitched briefly. Then on the third squeeze the Glock, normally a stalwart of reliability, did nothing other than issue a mocking ‘click’. “Shit!” Memory gave him a hard slap in the face. He’d emptied most of the clip into the bastard back in the corridor earlier. Damn, damn, damn!
Most people would have railed against fact that the clip was empty and pulled the trigger again and again, as if the action would magic some spare ordnance from out of the sky and into the weapon. Flynn had spent six years in Special Forces. He’d spent more time behind enemy lines than the enemy had. So he knew better. The clip was empty; don’t fuck about trying to deny the bloody obvious, just reload, prime and fire. Flynn jettisoned the empty clip and fumbled in his vest pocket for a new one, ignoring the old magazine as it clattered against the stones. Normally, he’d be able to reload, prime and start shooting again in a split second. Put him up against a bunch of howling Afghans armed with AKs, bad personal hygiene and angry intent and it would have been a walk in the park. But this? This guffawing, cackling monstrosity? It had him rattled.
So he did the unthinkable.
He dropped the damn clip.
Time demonstrated that whole ‘fluidity’ concept in glorious technicolour, and decelerated to a crawl. Man and monster watched the clip fall in slow motion, fleeting, flashing glimpses of the jacketed hollow-point bullets emphasised by the matt black of the clip. It hit the ground end on, bounced and spun through three-sixty in mid-air, spewing one bullet off at a right-angle. The clip and stray bullet clattered back down, shuddered and finally came to rest. The errant JHP rolled away into the darkness, lost in the shadows.
Flynn tore his gaze away from the clip and refocused on the grinning face of the monster. He knew, didn’t he? The smarmy, grinning motherfucker! He just damn well knew that was Flynn’s last spare clip. He fucking knew.
Flynn was determined to go down fighting. He stuffed the Glock17 back in his belt and pulled out his trusty Blackhawk blade from the drop-down leg holster it liked to call home. No self-respecting SF squaddie would be caught dead without one of these black beauties. The six-inch symmetrical blade was precision ground D-2 steel. It would cut through skin, bone, and flesh, and didn’t differentiate between the dead or the undead. Flipping it around so the blade w edge-on against the inside of his forearm and hidden from the monster’s line of sight, he smiled back at the monster like a man with nothing left to lose but his life. “Wanna dance, fuck nuts? Huh?” He beckoned with his outstretched left hand. “C’mon, you ugly fuck! Let’s do it, let’s fucking dance! C’mon!”
He knew it was hopeless.
He knew he was going to lose. And that losing meant dying. Badly.
He knew that as soon as that cackling, guffawing bipolar son-of-a-bitch flip-flopped back into black fury and bloodthirsty rage, he’d be facing an enemy whose savagery was beyond all comprehension. Savagery of that level made an opponent practically invincible. He’d seen how fast the thing was when it launched itself out of the cell. Nothing Flynn had ever encountered moved that quickly. His only consolation was that while mister bitey here was getting busy with him, it would give the archaeologist a chance to get out of danger, at least for a few moments. But it might just be enough.
Flynn may have appeared to have scant regard for his charge, but he was a good man. And good men care about those who can’t fight for themselves…
The monster stopped its insane cackling. The hunger was burning in it once more. And this time it lusted after the blood of a warrior, not that of a screaming, pissing boy. It wanted blood filled with passion and fire. Blood that had been spilled on the battlefield. Blood that sang out to him like a war trumpet. The blood of a soldier.
It could sense the man’s heart beating, a slow, steady rhythm, not the usual frantic pounding that its victims normally demonstrated. Ah, delightful! A true, battle-hardened warrior. They were always the most satisfying, especially at the very end when they knew they had lost their final conflict.
It would also give the Black Prince an insight into modern combat tactics. It knew it was capable of tearing the soldier to pieces as easily as it had devoured the screeching boy earlier. But it wanted to ‘dance’, as the mocking soldier said. It wanted to see just what kind of a ‘dance’ these modern warriors engaged in, and how things had changed in the five hundred years it had been locked away in that stinking cell.
But the hunger was also strong. It filled the creature. It consumed every fibre of its being.
Time to feed…
The Black Prince coiled, ready to spring. The soldier was certain to land a few blows before he succumbed, but the brief glimpses of fleeting pain would remind the Black Prince that it was alive. Free. And would be feared once again! The beast flexed its taloned fingers. Long, yellowed nails tapered into savage points. The knuckles were pronounced and gnarled, like the knots in a tree trunk. Sinews like cords snaked across the back of its hands and up his arms. It spread its arms, threw back its head and roared – a scream of defiance at those who would incarcerate and starve it for all these years. They were gone. Mere dust and ashes. Corpses for the worms. But Vlad? Ah, Vlad. He was here. He had survived! And now he could feed once more on the blood of a soldier. He lumbered towards his opponent, a low snarl grumbling in the back of his throat cut short when another sound intruded – a soft mewing. The creature stopped in its tracks. Its bloodshot eyes widened in horror and it screeched – a sound so piercing it made his human opponent recoil and cover his ears. The screech went on and on, reverberating around the corridors and echoing through the citadel, folding and doubling back on itself.
A small, calico cat sat serenely in the middle of the corridor, casually studying him. The skinny creature was one of the hundreds of feral cats that inhabited the citadel. For as long as the stone walls had stood, the cats had been there. They served a practical purpose in that they kept rats and mice under control. But the villagers seemed to have a special reverence for the mangy creatures, leaving out food and milk for them and chastising anyone who might feel the temptation to kick one of the creatures in passing. Cats, in this part of Turkey, were almost sacred.
Vlad hated them. They represented its madness, its incarceration, its humiliation. Every time it had fed on one of the screeching beasts, the creature’s insides felt as if it had swallowed acid. For days afterwards Vlad would writhe and scream in agony as the cat’s blood burned through its body. For Vlad, this tiny, mewing calico cat represented all the torment, the agony and the rage that had turned a man into a monster. What once had been a brilliant young mind had degenerated into that which terrifies mankind the most – a physical manifestation of the darkest evil that we are all capable of becoming…