steadied himself and took another step towards them.
They were backing away towards the tall round turret, and he had them cornered.
‘You’re finished, Stone!’ he shouted through the roar of the wind, blinking the driving snowflakes out of his eyes. ‘It’s over!’
He took two more steps forward and heard the leather-clad woman vampire let out another tortured wail as she pressed herself desperately against the far wall of the turret.
Gabriel Stone seemed to have shrivelled with terror. He shoved his servant roughly onto the battlement.
‘Kill him! Shoot him! Don’t just stand there, Lonsdale!’
Lonsdale moved cautiously along the wall. Raised the pistol and took an unsteady aim at Joel.
‘Kill him!’ Stone roared.
Alex had lost all sense of where she was when she suddenly smelled the night air. She ran out of the winding passage to find herself standing on the high outer castle wall. The howling gale ripped at her hair.
Fifty yards away through the blizzard she could see Gabriel Stone and Lillith.
They were cowering, cringing in terror and fury at the top of a tower at the very far corner of the opposite battlement wall. Running her eye along, she spotted Joel’s ragged, bloody figure, dragging himself along the walkway with the cross in his fist. She was out of its range, but Stone and Lillith were dangerously close to it and had nowhere left to run. A few more steps, and it was over for them.
Standing halfway between Joel and the two vampires was Stone’s ghoul, Lonsdale. In his hand was a big revolver. Alex watched helplessly as Lonsdale aimed it at Joel. Stone’s screaming commands to shoot were being snatched away by the wind.
Joel must have seen the gun, but he was behaving as if he no longer cared. He took another limping step and raised the cross higher.
There was nothing Alex could do to stop what was about to happen.
Lonsdale seemed to hesitate, then, half-turning his face away, he squeezed the trigger. The revolver recoiled up in his hand, a halo of white flame bursting from its muzzle.
Joel kept coming. Lonsdale fired again, and this time his bullet found its mark.
Blood spattered on the snowy battlements. Joel flailed with his arms and went down on his back, still clutching the cross.
‘Joel!’ Alex screamed. But she was powerless to do anything — as long as he held the cross she couldn’t go near him. His body lay slumped on the battlement. Snowflakes were settling rapidly over him, turning red as they melted in his blood. He wasn’t moving.
Chapter Eighty-Six
Jeremy Lonsdale lowered the heavy pistol. He stared at the fallen man he’d just shot. Turned to look at Gabriel Stone in the tower behind him. The vampire was gesticulating wildly at him through the blizzard.
‘Pick up the cross, you cretin. Get it away from us! Throw it over the cliff!’
Stone’s voice was cracked with pain. Lillith was on her hands and knees beside him in the tower, her black hair plastered over her face as she clutched her head and her body shook violently.
Lonsdale nodded. He understood what he had to do. Still holding the gun, he walked slowly over to the body in the snow and bent down to pick up the cross from the limp fingers of his victim. Blood was seeping across the battlement, dripping down the wall; red on white under the black sky.
Lonsdale turned away, the cross still in his grasp. It seemed to thrum in his hand, and was warm to the touch. He looked out over the craggy castle wall, at the swirling snow and the distant mountains. The wind whipped at his clothes. He raised his arm to hurl it far over the battlement, where it would go spinning and tumbling a thousand feet before it smashed into a million pieces against the rocks below. His master would be saved. The war would be won — thanks to him, Jeremy Lonsdale. The power was his.
He grunted with effort as he hurled the heavy object in his fist. It sailed high up in an arc over the battlements and then dropped away into the night. Then, slowly, he turned to face Gabriel Stone.
Still holding the cross. It was the big revolver that he’d thrown away. He had no further need for it. But the cross…
He looked down at it. Its thrumming warmth spread up his arm.
‘No,’ he said softly. And took a step towards the two vampires.
‘Throw it, ghoul!’ Stone’s scream of desperation cut through the howling wind.
‘No,’ Lonsdale repeated, loudly this time, and took another step. ‘You’ve come into my life and poisoned everything. You’ve taken everything from me, taken away the one person I loved. Look at what I’ve become. And now you’ve made me a murderer for you.’
‘Jeremy, stay away from us. I’m commanding you—’
‘I’ve taken enough of your orders, vampire.’ Lonsdale stood straighten There was a glow in his eyes and his face was contorted as he slowly approached the turret. His knuckles were white on the shaft of the cross. ‘I don’t give a damn what happens to me any more,’ he shouted. ‘But by God I’m going to destroy you!’
Stone was frantically trying to shield Lillith with his body, absorbing the energy blast in a bid to save her. But the power of the cross, now just a few yards away, was too much for him. As Lonsdale came closer, Stone collapsed inside the turret beside Lillith. He cried out. Smoking blisters burst out across his skin. Lillith was writhing and shrieking. In one last desperate surge of energy she raised herself to her knees, drew out her sabre and hurled it with all the strength she had left.
The blade whirled hissing through the blizzard. Lonsdale flinched as he saw it flying towards him, but too late. Its point drove hard into his chest and went right through him, piercing his heart and sticking out of his back. He staggered, gasping, blood sputtering from his lips, and for a moment he seemed about to go tumbling down over the battlement, taking the cross with him.
But still he kept on coming, coughing blood, staggering towards them in a jerky dying gait, the hilt of the sabre protruding grotesquely from his chest. His bloody lips were spread into a lunatic grin.
The vampires screamed their fury. There was nowhere to run.
Unless…
Lillith grasped her brother’s arm. They looked at one another, and understanding flashed between them. Staggering to their feet in the last instant before the cross destroyed them utterly and forever, they linked hands and threw themselves off the turret.
Alex watched from a distance as their bodies went spinning down. After the first hundred feet their linked hands broke apart and they fell separately, turning over and over like tiny dolls. Then the shadows engulfed them and they vanished into the deep, dark valley.
Lonsdale had made it to the turret. Moving like a zombie now as he virtually died on his feet, he clambered up its steps and lurched to the spot where Stone and Lillith had jumped. With his dying breath, he threw the cross over the turret wall and it went tumbling down after them. Then he slumped face down. The weight of his body pushed the sabre through his chest up to the hilt so that the blade stuck up out of his back like a bloody flagpole. He didn’t move again.
Joel hadn’t moved either.
Chapter Eighty-Seven
With a cry of despair, Alex leapt down from the opposite battlement and sprinted across the snowy courtyard to scramble up the wall and get to Joel. She shouted his name over and over as he lay there immobile. The snow
