The leader of the group turned his head slightly to look towards the sound of her voice, as did several other men around the table. Bronson stared in that direction as well, trying to build up a picture of the layout of the room, so that when he moved, he wouldn’t slam into a wall or trip over anything. As far as he could tell, in the fitful illumination provided by the candles, it had a low ceiling and no doors apart from the one leading to the spiral staircase. Along one side of the room were short dividing walls which formed small, door-less, internal rooms. Possibly they’d once been storerooms but now, even in poor candlelight, he could see that they were being used as cells.
He could just about see Angela, who was still shouting her defiance at the men. Bronson tensed, ready for action. And then he heard a sudden sharp crack and a brief flare of light from the darkness, and she fell silent. He didn’t know for sure, but it looked as if one of the men had used a taser on her. He would pay for that, Bronson vowed, his hands clenched, blood pounding in his temples.
The leader of the group held up his hand, and immediately the attention of all the men around the table snapped back to him. He whispered something to the man on his right, who’d been acting as his assistant during the first part of the ceremony. This man nodded and then he, too, lifted his hand.
‘Our master has made a decision,’ the man said, his Italian smooth and educated. ‘We have two subjects available to us tonight. As you know, one of these shares the holy bloodline of Nicodema Diluca, and she will enjoy the rapture of giving her lifeblood freely while two or three of our number offer their unworthy seed to her sacred womb.’
For a moment, Bronson didn’t understand what the man meant. Then it dawned on him: despite the almost literary expression he had used, what he was actually talking about was multiple rape. Bronson felt his whole body tense with loathing and disgust.
‘Our second subject,’ he continued, ‘has no direct connection with us, but has accidentally proved to be of enormous value to our quest. She was responsible for removing the diary of Carmelita Paganini from its resting place in her tomb. She has provided a translation of a part of that book, and this information in turn led us to the island of Poveglia, where we recovered the Source Document, the “Noble Vampyr” treatise written by our ancient and revered master, Amadeus. This holy text has confirmed the validity of our quest and the accuracy of our rituals, except in one important respect.’
There was a sudden silence in the chamber, and Bronson could tell that every man there was totally attentive, waiting for the explanation.
‘What we did not know until now was that, for the ritual to be successful, we needed to combine the blood of the descendant of Nicodema Diluca with that of a woman without connection to any of the sacred families. Our leader has decided that this Englishwoman, whose usefulness to us is now at an end and whose spirit must be released to the void for our own security, will fill that role. So this evening we will celebrate the passing of both spirits.’
The chill Bronson felt as he heard those words and understood what the man meant had nothing to do with the cool and clammy air of the cellar. Angela, it was clear, was also destined for multiple rape, and was then to be murdered. As if that wasn’t horrific enough, the man’s next statement showed the hideous depths of the cult’s brutality.
‘Afterwards, in accordance with the tenets of our quest and our sacred knowledge, we will then enjoy her directly, consuming her blood and her still-warm and ripe flesh in the manner prescribed by our sacred guide and master in spirit, the venerable and inspiring Amadeus.’
Several of the men appeared to nod, though the voluminous hoods that covered their heads and faces largely concealed any movement, and Bronson heard a faint murmur of approval.
‘Now let us begin. Bring forward the first subject.’
There was a howl of outrage and anguish, and then the two men walked back towards the circle and the stone altar, each gripping the arm of a dark-haired girl in her early twenties who was struggling violently, trying desperately to get away. They stopped a short distance away from the stone table and held her as still as possible.
Two other men then left their places in the circle and stepped over to her, one in front and the other behind her.
His features invisible beneath the hood covering his head, Bronson glanced towards the girl, stark terror written all over her face, and then at the silent figures of the men surrounding the stone table. He knew he would have to make his move soon – he would not permit the men around him to do harm to this girl or to Angela. Or he would die trying.
73
But right then wasn’t the correct moment. When the bullets started flying, Bronson wanted the innocent parties – the girl standing a dozen feet from him and awaiting her fate and, of course, Angela – to be as far away from the firing line as possible. It looked to him as if the ceremony would require the girl to be tied down on the table, and that would probably be as safe a place as anywhere in the cellar. So his best option was to wait until she was immobilized, because then she wouldn’t panic and run into a stray bullet. And she would also be the focus of everybody in the room. That might give him time to step back to a suitable vantage point and cover the dozen men with his pistol. Quite how the scenario would pan out after that, Bronson didn’t know. He would just have to think on his feet, and play the cards he’d been dealt.
He switched his attention to the four men who now surrounded the dark-haired girl. The two who had dragged her from the cell by the wall were still holding her bare upper arms, keeping her in position. Bronson couldn’t see what the other two men were supposed to be doing. Then he found out.
Simultaneously, they both reached out, seized the material of her white robe and pulled violently on it. The Velcro seams ripped apart, the robe separating into two halves, front and back, which the men casually tossed aside before stepping backwards a couple of paces.
The girl emitted an even louder squeal of terror as her nakedness was revealed to all, and redoubled her struggles to get free. But it was an unequal contest, and the two men had no difficulty in keeping her still. They looked towards the leader of the group, and when he beckoned them, they strode forward, forcing the naked girl towards the end of the table almost directly in front of Bronson.
They turned her round so that her buttocks were resting against the old stone, then simply pushed her off her feet. The two men who’d removed her robe stepped forward and seized her legs, lifting her up and placing her writhing body flat on the table. In moments, the men had buckled the leather straps around her wrists and ankles, while another man tied a strap around her head as well.
He knew that it was time to stop this, before anything else could happen to the girl.
The men who’d been lashing the girl’s body to the table stepped back and resumed their places in the circle, and waited expectantly. Bronson knew without a shadow of doubt what the next act in these bizarrely mediaeval and simply monstrous proceedings was going to be. Somebody, one of the men around the table, was going to climb up on to the table, force himself on to the girl’s body and rape her. And he knew absolutely that he wasn’t going to stand by and let that happen.
Surreptitiously, he took a couple of steps backwards, moving slightly out of the circle, and took a firm hold of the Velcro seam of his robe, preparing to act.
Then the leader of the group spoke again to his assistant, and Bronson caught the faint sound of his voice, though not the words he spoke. The voice was weak and rasping, as if he hadn’t used it for a long time or was simply unused to talking. The assistant nodded, then looked up and extended his hand, pointing directly at Bronson. And suddenly, every man in the room was looking at him.
As he stared across the table at the figures opposite, Bronson could just make out the glint of the leader’s eyes under the hood, and below that the shine of his teeth, a faint horizontal bar of white in the gloom. But there was something else, something that sent a chill through Bronson’s soul and literally raised the hairs on the back of his neck. It looked as if the canine teeth in the man’s upper jaw were at least twice as long as they should have been, the ends sharply pointed.
But before he could react to the sight, the leader’s assistant spoke directly to him.
