Scott Mariani - Uprising

And then he came to the manhole cover. It was two feet above his head, a concreted circular hole with iron rungs for access in and out. He hesitated, then gripped the rusted handles of the lid, mustered his strength and scraped the cast-iron plate a few inches sideways. Powdery snow showered down onto his face. Very slowly, he eased the cover all the way aside and poked his head up through the hole.

He was inside the castle courtyard.

The snow had intensified while he’d been in the tunnel, covering up the cobblestones and drifting against the inner sides of the walls. Rapid flurries of snowflakes swirled and spun through the strong beams of the floodlights that illuminated the castle grounds. A layer of white had settled on the two battered four-wheel-drive vehicles parked up just inside the gates. Joel knew Gabriel Stone liked cars, but these didn’t seem quite the vampire’s style. They had to belong to the men he paid to guard and carry out tasks for him.

Joel squeezed up out of the manhole. Moving fast, he shrugged off the rucksack, took out the cross and shoved it diagonally into his belt. He dumped the empty rucksack back in the hole and then, as quietly as he could, grated the iron cover back into place.

A few yards off was a narrow archway, beyond it a passage with doorways either side. There wasn’t much he could do about his footprints in the snow as he sneaked away towards the passage. He had to hope they’d be covered over before anyone spotted them.

With one hand on the shaft of the cross, ready to draw it from his belt like a dagger, he moved furtively through the castle. From outside, the place had looked enormous and imposing; inside, it was like a fortified town, a maze of streets and winding lanes and squares. Many of its buildings still bore signs of their original purpose: an old smithy still had its forge and anvil, disused for centuries, and there were remnants of ancient straw on the cobbled floor of the stable block. Pitted stone staircases spiralled up to the sentry watchtowers along the battlements, and he passed a long barracks where two hundred or more troops might have been stationed. A thousand years ago, the self-contained castle community would have been a hive of bustle and industry.

Before the vampires had come to claim it.

Looking up, Joel could see the upper sections of the castle dominating the town.

Like the bridge of an old sailing ship where only the captain and senior officers were allowed to stand, he guessed the grand towers and lofty halls would have been the exclusive domain of the castle’s lords and masters. That was where he would find Gabriel Stone.

Joel heard voices and shrank back against a wall as a group of shadowy figures appeared under an archway, heading towards him. He ducked into a building and watched through a craggy porthole, straining to see the figures more clearly. They were thirty yards away; then twenty-five. As they came closer, Joel gripped the cross and tried to calculate how close Alex had been to it in Venice before she’d started showing signs of distress. But nothing happened. The cross remained cold and lifeless in his hand.

The figures passed through the light of one of the flood-lamps. They were wearing heavy greatcoats and fur hats, cradling rifles and talking to each other in a language that could have been Romanian, or some kind of dialect version of it. From their swarthy features Joel guessed they must be rustic locals, maybe gypsies. They were completely oblivious of the cross’s presence and that worried him as much as the rifles they were carrying. Against these guys, he was completely unarmed.

Joel watched the men walk by and wondered whether they had even an inkling of who their employer really was. Did they know they were protecting a vampire? Did Gabriel Stone pay such men in money, or did he have other ways of holding their allegiance?

He waited until the patrol had passed by, then stepped out of his hiding place and started to move tentatively away. Ducking through the arch the men had come through, he glanced back over his shoulder to check nobody had spotted him.

And froze to the sharp snick-snack of a rifle bolt.

Stone and his group led the Federation prisoners out into the night. The wind was howling and the snow lashed down as Alex, Harry Rumble and the remaining six Supremos were shoved down a flight of steps leading from the great hall and surrounding buildings to the upper courtyard that overlooked the castle grounds.

Through the curtain of swirling snowflakes, Alex could see the maze of lanes and streets down below, the tiny trucks parked up inside the gates in the distance.

At a gesture from Stone, the guards halted the prisoners. A few yards away, standing in the middle of the wide cobbled courtyard, was a tall oblong shape, some eight feet high, covered with a canvas sheet that crackled in the wind and was weighed down at the corners with bricks. Big Zachary stepped over, kicked away the bricks and pulled back the sheet to reveal the thing underneath.

It was a guillotine. Simple, but deadly — a rectangular vertical wooden frame with a heavy chopping blade suspended at the top by a crude pulley mechanism. Two steps led up to the horizontal platform on which the victim would be strapped to a plank and their neck secured between wooden stocks. A side lever released the blade, and a wicker basket was positioned underneath to catch the victim’s severed head as it fell.

‘Last used in the Place de la Revolution, Paris, 1793,’ Stone said proudly, running his hand down the side of the grim device. ‘I had to go to some trouble to obtain it after the mob had finished giving the chop to the French aristocracy. I always knew it would come in useful one day.’

Lillith pointed at Alex. ‘Let’s get this started. I want her to be first.’

Stone shook his head. ‘No, Lillith. This has to be done properly. The men first, in order of seniority.’ He scanned the five male Supremos. ‘You,’ he said, pointing at Hassan.

‘You animals,’ Olympia shouted. ‘You can’t do this!’

Stone arched an eyebrow. ‘Really? You would have preferred a Nosferol termination?’

The guards took Hassan’s arms and marched him to the guillotine. He was shaking badly and protesting as they tied his wrists behind his back and strapped his body tightly to the plank. Then it was slid into place and the wooden chocks positioned around his neck to stop his head thrashing about.

‘Something’s missing,’ Anastasia said. ‘We should have got a drummer.’

The blade was in position. Zachary pulled the retaining pin from the activation lever and looked to Stone.

Stone gave a nod.

And Zachary yanked the lever. The blade came whooshing down in the frame.

Its diagonal chopping edge impacted against Hassan’s neck with a sound like a knife hacking through a cabbage. His legs jerked against the restraining straps, then his body flopped and lay still as his head bounced into the wicker basket.

‘Quite clinical, isn’t it?’ Stone said. ‘Far quicker than, say, being left out to burn in the morning sunrise — which is what will happen to any of you who resist.’

Lillith gave a hoot of triumph, went striding over to the basket and snatched Hassan’s head up by a fistful of hair. His face was frozen into an expression of terror.

She spat in his sightless eye. ‘Here’s one Federation tyrant who won’t be bothering us any more.’

The guards busied themselves unstrapping the decapitated body and carrying it away to the side. Dark vampire blood was already soaking into the plank. Stone pointed at Goldmund, who began to bluster and panic.

‘Next.’

The fourth guard must have been lagging behind his companions to light the cigarette that was glowing red in the darkness. Joel had almost run right into him.