Ch.71

A castle is not merely a collection of stones stacked prettily and grandly. Piled stones alone do not convey feelings of protection, safety, and steadfastness.

Faith. Trust. Hope. Stronghold.

When coupled with the myth that the castle has never once fallen, it becomes something more than just a heap of stones.

The lives of those who have somewhere to flee in the worst of times are inevitably different from those who don’t. It was thanks to the castle that the people of the Count’s domain could live courageously, thinking, “At least we won’t die.”

Because the Count and the castle were watching over them.

But now that faith was broken. The castle gates were destroyed. The castle that had protected the people had become something to be crushed underfoot.

The guards gritted their teeth and endured, but they knew from the start it was a battle they couldn’t win.

They were friends and family to those now destroying the castle with pitchforks, giant scythes, hunting rifles, torches, and barrels of oil.

But in the eyes of the crowd, anyone wearing the Count’s armor was a demon.

The white rose painted in the center of the black shield, once the pride of the Count and his people, was now—

“Tear it! Burn it!”

—soaked in blood and trampled under boots. When the guards could no longer bear it and began firing spears and arrows—

BOOM!

They were suppressed by van Helsing and his group’s firepower. Dynamite. Repeating crossbows. Even musket rifles that took time to load but possessed tremendous destructive power.

Van Helsing had come fully prepared.

“Kill them all! Don’t spare a single one! Show no mercy to demons!”

The guards abandoned the first floor. Instead, they concentrated their forces on the staircase. They needed to buy time, waiting for the Count, who had disappeared somewhere, to return and sweep away those rogues.

* * * * *

The Count opened his eyes. His body was in shambles. Despite throwing himself to wrap around the explosives, they had still shattered the castle gate. If he had allowed them to exert their full power, the castle itself would not have remained intact.

“No.”

But there was no time to worry about such things. The gate had already been breached.

“No, no, no!”

The Count ran along the wall. Flames rose from the tower at the highest level. The room where his office was located. Where the secret passage was. Where his wise wife would have fled with the children.

Through the window gaps, he could hear the laughter of the looters and the screams of the guards. There was briefly the sound of weapons clashing, then loud gunshots, followed by silence.

His legs were wet, slowing his pace. Blood flowed from wounds not yet healed. Too weak to climb up the wall, the Count entered through the nearest window.

Two floors below the top level, it was a room used as a storage area. He flung open the door leading to the corridor. Familiar faces appeared. His people.

“It’s the Count! Kill him! Kill him!”

The Count passed like a ghost through the people trying to kill him. Each time he used magic, blood gushed from his wounds, but this was no time to fight.

Family. His family was up there.

“Guhk, cough!”

The Count finally coughed up a blood clot the size of a fist. Behind him, the people followed up the stairs. The Count blasted away the stair steps with his finger.

With a boom, half the staircase collapsed. The panicked people fled.

Though his legs were giving out, the Count somehow managed to grasp the handrail and painfully drag his body forward.

Top floor. He was greeted by his guards. The elite chosen few, the pride of the Count’s domain.

They were all dead.

Now they lay dead in the corridor. The Count remembered each of their names. From the middle of the corridor, near the entrance to his office, smoke continuously poured out. The flames were low but still fierce.

Thwack!

And in the corridor, he saw van Helsing’s subordinates with bowed heads, and van Helsing himself madly stomping on Jonathan Rider.

“Stand up straight!”

Jonathan Rider, kicked in the abdomen, stood up.

“What are you going to do? What are you going to do now! Everything’s ruined. Everything!”

Though the flames, smoke, and ash made it difficult for the Count even to breathe, he pressed himself against the side of the corridor, praying for his ancestors’ protection. The smoke that tormented him now served to conceal him.

“I told you to use less explosives! Everything’s gone to hell! You idiot, you sodomite, why did you crawl up here instead of just screwing your whore of a wife! What are we going to do now? How many times, how many times did I tell you we should sell the Count’s children as breeding stock!”

Helsing’s fist repeatedly pounded Jonathan’s solar plexus. Jonathan vomited violently. Even so, he struggled to stand upright.

“You imbecile! I told you to at least capture the Count! We need to take his children hostage to sell to Lenin! Was it so hard to understand that we should make the Count a blood vessel for the people!”

Thwack!

“Oh.”

Van Helsing stepped back in surprise. A sword had pierced Jonathan’s head. It was a sword that had been considered merely a corridor decoration. Looking in the direction from which the sword had flown, Helsing saw the Count standing there, catching his breath.

“Oh. So the master of the house was there. I knocked quite loudly but got no answer, so I thought you were out. Yes. Which woman’s breasts were you fondling today, you philandering Count?”

Helsing’s subordinates surrounded their leader.

Instead of answering, the Count swung his finger.

Thwack!

A sword from the corridor grazed Helsing’s cheek and pierced the heart of a subordinate standing beside him.

“Rise and meet the enemy!”

The Count shouted.

Crunch! Creak!

The fallen guards in the corridor rose one by one. With pierced stomachs. With burst heads. With broken arms and legs.

“Arm yourselves!”

Like most castles, the Count’s corridor had decorative swords and shields. The difference from other castles was that these had actually been used as weapons and were regularly maintained.

As soon as the Count’s order fell, the guards picked up weapons from the walls and floor. An army of the dead formed ranks to protect the Count.

“Oh my. How frightening.”

Helsing showed no fear at all.

“What will you do, Count? I know all your methods. The power of the Blood Lord. Ha! Ha! Is that how you repelled the Mongols too? Ha! Ha! Hee hee hee! But it won’t be so easy this time.”

Helsing reached into his coat and pulled out a small box. It was too small to be called a weapon or explosives—just a tiny, small box. Perhaps large enough to hold a wedding ring.

“Attack!”

“Grrrrrr!”

The Count and his men charged down the corridor in unison. That thing was dangerous. His still-living instinct told him so. The ancestors sleeping in his blood sent warnings. That thing is dangerous! But it was too late. Helsing flung the box open.

♬♪♩ – ♬

It was a music box. A small wooden carved girl danced.

“Aaaah, aaaaaaah!”

Helsing’s subordinates all clutched their heads at once.

♬♪♩♪ – ♪♪♪♬

“Captain! Please, anything but this, anything but this!”

“I’ll do anything, Captain! Captain! Captain Helsing!”

♩

Thud. Helsing’s subordinates broke their own necks with their hands. Tick. Tick. Tick. The sound of winding clockwork rang out simultaneously.

“Activate.”

Like expressionless wooden dolls, the subordinates’ heads turned forward again. The sound of creaking gears and axles turning could be heard. One of the Count’s soldiers struck down one of Helsing’s subordinates.

Clang!

It wasn’t a sound that could come from a human body. The blade, stopped by the shoulder blade, bounced back up.

“Welcome to the world of modern scientific civilization, vampire. This is the latest fashion technology from England. Converting people into clockwork dolls. What makes it far superior to your blood magic is—”

Screeeeeech!

Helsing’s subordinates leaped up like grasshoppers. Each time they took a step, there was a clank, clank sound.

The guards, having discarded their swords, struck the subordinates with hammers and shields. But they only dented, never stopping their advance.

“Machines don’t betray you.”

The Count drew his sword and charged. Using a soldier’s back as a springboard, he leaped into the air and drove his sword into the crown of a clockwork human’s head.

With a clang, the blade broke. The clockwork human with the sword embedded in it shook its head frantically from side to side. It seemed the balancing mechanism had malfunctioned.

Parts that had formed flesh spattered across the corridor, unable to withstand the violent vibration.

Then a skull appeared, festooned with gears, bearings, and clockwork springs. The still-scarlet brain seemed to be functioning, writhing.

“Strike the heads!”

The dead soldiers faithfully followed the Count’s orders. But it was futile. The bodies of the dead soldiers were too slow compared to the machines.

Soldiers whose bodies were shattered could not rise again, but the machines fought on as long as they had power. Even severed finger joints would burrow into the ankle of whoever was closest.

Tick, tick, tick! Severed machine parts gouged, cut, and ground into the bodies of the dead soldiers.

The Count somehow managed to slash, crush, and leap over them. When mechanical devices rushed at him, he turned to mist to shake them off. Even as their bodies were being torn apart, the dead guards clustered together to protect the Count’s sides and front.

It was like a ship of dead bodies breaking through a wave of mechanical humans.

The Count managed to walk forward one step at a time. Fortunately, the clockwork humans’ power was also waning.

They would need to be rewound to recharge, but the machines’ bodies were not in good condition either. The cunning van Helsing had turned and fled.

“My wife. The children… please…”

The Count dragged his feet into the burning office. His worst fears were confirmed.

He fell to his knees before the bodies of his family. His wife’s armor was crushed and her sword broken. Countless enemy corpses lay fallen around her.

The bookcase concealing the secret passage lay formlessly on the floor, and the passage itself was destroyed. Even the secret passage. Even the place he had trusted had been exposed.

The Count now understood everything. While Helsing drew attention at the castle wall entrance, his subordinates had come up through the secret passage and detonated explosives.

Perhaps his wife. His wife had fought so admirably. That there had been no answer.

The Count’s body collapsed. He was utterly exhausted. Though he had lived a tenacious life, now he wanted to throw it all away.

The sounds of fighting had subsided. No more clockwork sounds. No more sounds of moving dead flesh.

Nothing left to protect. Nothing left at all. All he held in his hands was pain.

The only sounds in his ears were the lazy crackling of fire consuming the corridor and… footsteps.

Muffled footsteps. They matched the rhythm the Count had heard from within his wife’s womb.

“Papa.”

It was Avashina. The Count forced himself to rise. The young child tried desperately to help her father up. With great effort, the Count turned his body to lie comfortably.

“Daughter.”

The Count raised his hand to wipe away his daughter’s tears.

“Papa, Papa.”

“You’re alive. You’re alive. Where were you?”

Avashina pointed with trembling hands to a corner of the wall. A small gap. A space just big enough for a small child to hide in. A space only a sensitive and delicate child could find.

What this small child must have witnessed—the Count’s heart broke.

“Avashina. Listen to me. Listen carefully. Hide yourself. You can do it. Hide, and somehow survive. Go to a big city. Forget everything that happened here.”

“No, no!”

“You must…”

The Count’s eyes widened. Van Helsing was charging toward them with a large spear.

“Die, demon!”

“No.”

The Count’s body turned to mist. The mist shot upward and deflected the spear.

“Argh!”

Unable to control his own strength, Helsing clutched his wrist and tumbled to the side.

The mist reformed into the Count’s shape. There was a large hole in his stomach. Kneeling, the Count reached out his hand to the trembling Avashina’s forehead.

“Ancestors. Moon. Remember this child. She is your child.”

The Count muttered incomprehensible words rapidly. The blood flowing from his body stopped. Surging like a snake raising its head, the blood gathered at the Count’s hand, the hand touching Avashina’s forehead.

It was warm. Like sunlight waking one from a pleasant late sleep.

“Avashina.”

The Count smiled.

“Be happy.”

The Count’s hand split apart.

Avashina flailed her arms trying to hold onto the Count, but his body was already crumbling, breaking, collapsing.

The Count’s body, reduced to a handful of dust, quickly disappeared like morning dew evaporating in the sunlight.