The monster fell without a sound and began shriveling back to its once human form. The ring, I thought. Remove the rings and they die.
More machinegun fire thundered. Someone screamed.
Creatures continued fleeing the castle, most heading our way. The other knights were out of the car. Richard twirled Saighnean in tight, elaborate circles around himself, the blade accelerating to a metallic blur. Dennis stood behind him, his arm cocked and mace ready. Peter fired the last of his magazine at a charging beast and dropped his rifle. I didn't see Audrey at all.
"What's the order?" Peter asked, drawing Glisuan from his belt as he hurried toward us.
Dennis' response echoed my sentiments. "Kill the fuckin' bastards."
"Do it," I ordered.
Setting his jaw, Peter faced the oncoming hoard and swung the Norse axe as if throwing it. A brilliant purple-white lightning bolt shot from the head with a deafening crackle. It arced and jumped between two of the monsters. Electricity skittered between the fangs on their open mouths and danced across their bodies. Fire spewed from their blackening skin and exploded from their eyes. The monsters fell, smoldering.
More of them poured down the castle's walls and clambered up the low trench, separating it from the car park. A wave of snarling beasts charged toward us.
"Circle up!" I ordered.
Another brilliant stroke of lightning lanced up the castle, knocking one from the roof and setting it ablaze. The bolt's jagged image lingered in my vision even after I blinked. Dennis fired a luger in his off-hand, wounding two with silver slugs before the gun clicked empty. We formed a rough circle with Richard to my left, facing the oncoming hoard.
A closing beast leaped and came down at Richard, claws out. They met the whirring haze of his moving sword and were unmade as the blade shredded them. Blood and bits of fingers and bone sprayed everywhere — a truly spectacular sight had I not been in the red mist's range. The offending ring, destroyed or severed from the host, and the monster crumpled without a sound.
"Helen, I'm opposite you," Audrey's voice called from the shadows. "Don't fire."
Bypassing Richard's field of death, one of the monsters moved toward me. Gripping my rapier tight, I crouched, readying for the attack. The giant beast approached cautiously, black eyes locked on my blade. These things were tough. I needed to kill it or remove the ringed finger in one strike or else it would tear me apart. Moving the blade to the side, I began a feint when Audrey melted out from the space behind it, the shadows peeling from her like smoke.
She slashed Rowlind along the backs of its legs, hamstringing it. Bellowing, the maimed creature lurched backwards. It stepped to catch itself, but its injured leg folded beneath it.
Audrey had already melted back into the shadows before the beast hit the ground. She reappeared two yards away, crippling another as she ran.
I sprang at the fallen monster, and drove Feuertod up under its ribs. Pulling the sword to the side, it sliced a devastating wound.
Glisuan's lightning crackled again. The sharp stink of ozone tinged the smoky air.
Another beast stepped over its fallen brethren and lunged toward me. Stepping into the attack, I ducked the blurred arc of its claws and slashed my sword deep across its belly before moving to the side. Blood and entrails spilled from the wound but the creature refused to fall. Screaming, it took a lumbering step and raised its claw. I rammed Feuertod through its open mouth, sending six inches of steel out the back of its skull. The monster fell so suddenly that it almost wrenched the impaling sword from my grip.
A roar bellowed beside me as a creature fell to its knees, another victim of Audrey's blade. Dennis slammed his mace into its side, launching the corpse ten feet where it crashed into another.
The flames had spread through the castle and completely consumed the barrack house. Audrey's translucent form solidified as the welling orange light flickered across the lot.
A ring of mutilated and burning bodies surrounded us, most dead but a few still messily expiring. The near-forgotten Nazi was crawling to the edge of the car park, trailing blood. Peter launched another stroke of lightning, picking off one of the stragglers loping our direction.
The brief flash illuminated a half dozen more of the monsters racing away down the bare hill below the castle. Damn.
"They're going for the village!" I shouted. "Dennis, get in the sidecar. The rest of you finish these off." I stabbed my sword in the crawling man's direction. "And someone stop him!"
Hurrying between fallen corpses, I climbed onto the motorcycle.
Dennis awkwardly folded his enormous frame into the tiny cab.
"Hold on," I said and gunned the engine.
Tires squealed as we took off, the jolt knocking him the rest of the way into the seat. I steered the bike around and started down the walled road. Lightning flashed behind us. The slitted beam from the head lamp cut through the smoky haze. We rounded a turn, a maneuver made slow from the heavy sidecar, and we were now facing the sloping hill.
The great fires above lit the scene before us. Dark silhouettes moved in the distance on all fours headed toward the village. Light peeked through open windows as citizens watched the fortress burn.
We had to stop them. None of the villagers or approaching American army had any defense against the Nazis' abominations.
"There!" Dennis shouted, his words drowned under the engine's roar. Leaning into the mounted gun, he squeezed the trigger, unleashing a gout of stuttering fire. Tiny pink comets of tracer rounds, mixed with the silver ammunition, flew across the open spans. A second barrage peppered one of the beasts and it fell, tumbling down the slope.
The other monsters charged toward us, keeping low as more bullets sailed wildly above them.
A beast leaped as it reached the stone embankment, claws splayed as it flew toward us. Dennis swiveled the gun and unleashed a stream of fire, nearly sawing it in half. The corpse landed in the road just before us. I jerked the motorbike to the side, almost tipping it. The wheels struck the beasts leg, launching us momentarily airborne before the bike thudded down. Amazingly, we didn't crash. Aside from weapons, I must confess that Germans do make a fine vehicle.
We hit a straightaway and I gunned the engine. Wind whipped my face as we shot down the hill. Reaching the curve at the bottom, I slowed and turned, giving Dennis' gun full view of the hill.
The MG34 roared. Pink comets shot up the slope, their ricochets bouncing off rocks like errant fireworks. Two more of the creatures fell. Another stumbled as bullets struck its thick thigh, but the gun fell silent before finishing it off.
"Out!" Dennis shouted.
Dismounting the vehicle, we marched up the slope. I dispatched the final monster with a quick thrust of my sword.
I surveyed my surroundings but couldn't find any more of the creatures. A few silhouettes still watched us from the village's windows. Tomorrow they'd share stories about how the Nazis had burned the castle and in dawn's light see the executed prisoners that had tried to flee. I amputated the corpse's ringed finger and wrenched the silver band free. "Collect the rings. Then let's get back and see what our prisoner can tell us about where the weapons are."
2 May, 1945
"They're loading the boats," I said, peering through the field glasses. I lay in the hollow of a bomb crater, with a commanding view of the small encampment. SS soldiers, many of them so young I doubted they could even remember a time before Hitler's reign, patrolled the convoy of trucks parked alongside a lake. Pale moonlight reflected across the still, black waters.