Werewolf Moon Ch. 03

Giselle turned, wild-eyed, her face covered with blood. She yanked the blonde's gutted corpse from the ropes that held her ankles, and tossed her body to the crowd of lycanthropes as well. Her carcass met a similar fate.

Stronger now, Giselle turned to Deidra. She picked up the cloaked woman by her throat.

"Now -- you will explain to me why I was awakened!"

The red-robed giant lumbered forward to come to Deidra's aid. Without sparing him a glance, the vampire lashed out with her free arm and decapitated him. His head bounced off the platform, and was immediately fought over by three werewolves. His body sank to its knees, blood spurting from the thick stump of its neck, and then collapsed on the floor of the stage.

Shaggy, thickly-muscled arms dragged it off the platform and down to the ground.

"A-all will be e-explained in time, my M-mistress," Deidra wheezed in terror, her eyes bulging. "Those who c-command me won't arrive until after sunset this coming night. They have an offer for you. For now, won't you t-take command of your army?'

"My 'army?'" Giselle released Deidra, who shakily stood massaging her throat. "Hah! This motley collection of mangy, flea-bitten curs? I have commanded legions of thousands of the undead!"

Van Helsing's earpiece crackled.

"Gabe, it's Vic. We're in position -- a mouse couldn't get out of there now."

"What the hell took so long?" Van Helsing hissed. "And where's Taggart? Two innocent girls were murdered while we were waiting for you!"

"I'm sorry -- couldn't be helped. Long story. We ran into some....resistance. I'll tell you later."

"How bad?"

"Four dead -- including Taggart."

Van Helsing closed his eyes. Then he loaded the stake into his crossbow. He turned to Tessa.

"Be careful!"

She smiled and fingered the 14-K cross charm she wore on a fine gold chain around her neck. "Don't worry - I will. This is my good luck charm; you gave it to me."

Van Helsing nodded. Then he clicked his helmet's comm link. "Let's hit it!" he snapped. He sighted the crosshairs of his bow's scope on Giselle's chest, just to the left of center. He fired, and the stake shot away toward its target with a high-pitched "twang."

Giselle du Meliere saw it coming. She grabbed Deidra by the shoulders and planted the cloaked woman in front of her, using her as a shield. Van Helsing's missile pierced Deidra's back with a hollow 'thud' and protruded out between her breasts. Streams of crimson gushed from the wound and poured from her mouth.

"M-mis..t...tress?" she burbled, choking on her own blood.

And then all hell broke loose. Submachine guns opened fire, spewing silver bullets as Van Helsing's troops poured out of the woods. Grenades arced into the crowd of werewolves and exploded violently, flinging dozens of the beasts high into the air. Silver shrapnel flew everywhere. The mangled corpses that hit the ground were human.

Giant bat-like wings sprouted from Giselle's back, and she flung Deidra aside as she launched herself into the air. She landed feet first on Van Helsing and slammed him against the thick bole of a tree before he could aim his bow again. He cried out in pain and went down, his helmet tumbling off down the hillside. He was sitting slumped against the tree, helpless. Panic gripped him when he realized his arms and legs were useless; he had no feeling from the neck down. Giselle knelt in front of him and repeatedly smashed a fist into his face, driving his head back, slamming it against the tree trunk until he was teetering on the edge of unconsciousness.

"YOU!" she snarled. "How can you possibly still be alive in this time?"

"I...have connections," Van Helsing gasped as his blood ran in his eyes.

"You think you are amusing? I do not find you so."

The vampire backhanded him again and again, and his head snapped from side to side with the force of the teeth-rattling blows as his blood sprayed around the clearing. Tessa charged forward to help him, a sharpened stake in her hands. Just as she was about to plunge it into Giselle, the vampire slammed a locked arm palm-first into Tessa's face. The young woman was propelled violently backward and rolled down the hill, losing her helmet as well. She was abruptly stopped by a large gray boulder, and lay stunned, moaning in pain. Blood streamed from her broken nose and smashed mouth.

Giselle listened to the sound of machine gun fire and the howls of dying werewolves. She snarled. "Let's even the odds, shall we?" she said. She raised her hand over her head

Tendrils of blood-red mist began to creep along the ground. Within moments, the woods were filled with the billowing scarlet fog. A half conscious Van Helsing could see little of the area beyond where the stunned Tessa lay just a few yards away. The chattering of the guns ceased, to be replaced by the confused voices of Van Helsing's troops.

Then suddenly, a fearsome roaring shattered the sudden calm, and the agonized screams of dying men and women joined the din. The werewolves were on the attack now; they could see in the fog, and the tide had turned. The humans were functionally blind. They were easy prey for the savage beasts.

Tessa stirred. She lurched drunkenly to her feet and shook her head. Giselle's smile was savage as she raised her right hand over her head like a claw, her eyes blazing like twin ruby lasers. "Come to me, little one," she crooned.

Tessa jerked upright, as if she was a marionette on strings. She stared fixedly ahead with a sleepwalker's stare.

"You are indeed beautiful, my little one," the vampire whispered. "Take off your clothes so that I may admire all of your beauty."

"Tessa -- don't!" Van Helsing cried. "Fight it!"

But Tessa was deeply in thrall to Giselle du Meliere. She peeled off her camouflage jumpsuit and wriggled out of her panties, then slipped off her bra. She even kicked off her shoes, but she didn't take off her socks. She had the body of an athlete. She was small breasted, lean and supple, like a runner. Her nipples were hard in the chill night air. She shivered, her lower lip quivering. Her smooth skin puckered into goosflesh.

Something gleamed on Tessa's neck. The cross charm.

Giselle hissed and whirled away from the young woman, throwing an arm in front of her eyes. "That charm!" the vampire snarled. "Remove it now and throw it away!"

Tessa obediently unclasped the necklace and tossed it aside, and then she willingly walked into Giselle's deadly embrace. Their naked bodies came together. Tessa gasped and moaned. "Y...you're so cold," she quavered.

"As you will soon be as well, little one," Giselle murmured. Woman and vampire kissed, and Tessa gagged. Giselle forced herself on her prey, and before too long Tessa began to respond, moaning and thrusting her hips in arousal. Giselle probed Tessa's sex, spreading open her lips with two fingers, and a stream of her juices spattered on the ground.

Suddenly, Giselle pulled away and sank her fangs into Tessa's tender throat. She sucked voraciously.

"Noooooo!" Van Helsing screamed, but there was nothing he could do.

With a prodigious effort, Giselle finally yanked herself away from the young woman's torn throat, gasping, her face smeared with blood. Tessa was turning blue; she was dying. The vampire took a sharp thumbnail and sliced a deep cut in her left breast, just above her nipple, so that blood flowed. She shoved Tessa's head down, and the woman feebly sucked like a baby nursing at her mother's teats. Giselle's blood streamed from the wound into Tessa's mouth as Van Helsing shrieked in impotent rage. Once Tessa had ingested Giselle's blood, she, too, would be doomed to forever walk the night as one of the undead. The vampire arched her back in an orgasm, and ran her tongue across her upper lip. Her own icewater juices ran down the insides of her legs.

"Yesssssss," she hissed. "Now you are.....hhhhhhhhhhh......m ine, little one."

Tessa sagged forward like a rag doll into Giselle's arms. The vampire's fangs slashed again, and she finished draining her prey. She let Tessa's limp corpse slump to the ground; then she pushed the body with her foot so it tumbled down the slope. The vampire queen smiled triumphantly and returned her attention to the sobbing Van Helsing.

"She was your cunt, no, mon cherie?" she taunted. "Your lover? Now that she has been turned, you will have to share her with me. But we can have the ménage a trois, no?"

Van Helsing's tears mixed with the blood on his cheeks in a watery pink cascade. He spat in her face. "Go to hell, bitch!" he howled.

Giselle merely smiled. "I've already been there, mon cherie," she said, wiping the gobbet of his saliva off her cheek. "Such delicious irony, no? The great Gabriel Van Helsing, vaunted vampire slayer and inestimable monster hunter, turned into a vampire by little Giselle du Meliere. You will die tonight, along with your troops, but this coming night you will rise again to be with me as my consort. Your troops, alas, will be reduced to werewolf dung."

Van Helsing could hear the screams of his soldiers growing less frequent now, as the triumphant howling of werewolves echoed through the trees. If he could kill her, the fog would lift. But how....

Giselle tore open his shirt front. "I promise you, mon cherie, that your death will be exquisite, pleasurable."

She kissed him, and Van Helsing nearly threw up from the taste of hundreds of years of death and corruption. She licked the blood off his face; her icy breasts pressed against his skin. Her body was as cold as the deepest winter day in January, and Van Helsing shuddered. Her tongue traced its way down his body, lapping off his blood. He could feel her clawlike fingernails tearing bloody grooves in his chest. He started.

He could feel her fingernails!

Van Helsing realized that sensation was returning to his legs, and that his arms now felt normal, although he was still numb from the waist down.

Suddenly, a werewolf roared in triumph nearby, and a woman screamed in consummate agony. There was a good deal of frenzied thrashing in the brush; then the distinct sound of chewing and crunching could be heard, and the woman's shrieks doubled in intensity.

She was being eaten alive!

The screaming abruptly stopped. The naked torso of a woman, its head and arms torn off, sailed into the mist-shrouded clearing. A lycanthrope dashed through the fog and grabbed the mangled prize in his jaws and fled with it, trailing intestines behind, while another werewolf ran alongside in hot pursuit, ripping a breast from the bloody remains and swallowing it whole as he ran. Then he managed to sink his fangs into the belly, and a vicious, snarling tug of war began over the carcass.

Van Helsing desperately glanced over the ground, looking for a weapon. He had to find some way to defeat Giselle to save the remnants of his troops. He saw what he needed lying on the ground near his right hand - the stake that had dropped from his crossbow when Giselle had slammed into him. Could he get to it? He stretched out his hand; his fingers brushed against its roughened wood surface. If he could only get a grip on it......

The vampire squatted in front of him. Her smile grew bestial as she bared her fangs, and her eyes shimmered into pools of blood. "You will enjoy this, mon cherie. I will make you come!"

She attacked, burying her fangs in his jugular, and began to suck. Van Helsing moaned, but it was a throaty moan of sheer pleasure. The sensation of her fangs in his neck, his blood gushing down her throat as she sucked, was the most intense source of pleasure he had ever known. It would be so easy just to give in.....

And then, before she even realized what was happening, Van Helsing finally grabbed the sharpened stake and savagely drove it to the hilt into her chest in an explosion of blood. Giselle shrieked and convulsed; her wings receded, and he pressed his advantage, falling on top of her and driving the wood deeper into her. Then he grabbed a rock and hammered the stake in all the way.

Then Giselle du Meliere, the vampire, reverted back into Giselle du Meliere, the innocent young girl.

Her beautiful face was wreathed in a radiant smile as blood trickled from the corners of her mouth. "M-Mama...I have b-been released......" she gurgled. She turned to Van Helsing. "Th...thank y-you..."

Her head lolled to one side and she died.

Again.

The fog lifted almost immediately. The stuttering of machine guns began anew, and the tide shifted back in favor of Van Helsing's soldiers. The death cries of werewolves rang out through the trees.

Suddenly the forest lit up as bright as day as spotlights flooded the area. Two helicopter gunships, RAH-66 Comanches on stealth approach, opened fire with 20 mm cannons and specially-designed Hellfire missiles and assorted rockets. The choppers had been called in as reinforcements when the red mist had filled the forest. The werewolves were mowed down like tenpins now; the ground troops cheered and pressed their own attack with renewed vigor. The lycans were bracketed from above and below.

It was over within moments. The last werewolf lay kicking on the ground, quickly reverting to her human form as she died.

Van Helsing sat wearily against the tree as his troops mopped up. Vic Childress trudged slowly up the hillside.

"All the bodies need to be cremated," Van Helsing said without looking up. "The werewolves, our troops, all of them. You need to cut off the vampire bitch's head and fill her mouth with garlic, and burn it away from her body. We need to do the same...with Tessa. Use thermipalm to cremate them; that's hot enough that there should be nothing identifiable left behind from any of the bodies. I want a gunship to hover and scatter the ashes when the fire's out."

Childress nodded. As he turned to leave, Van Helsing added, "And I need a torch from the bonfire."

A young soldier ran and brought one back, and before their horrified eyes, Gabriel Van Helsing pressed the flaming brand against his wounded neck, screaming as the gagging stench of charred flesh wafted through the air. He nearly passed out; then as smoke curled up from the horrible, blackened burn, his trembling fingers grabbed a bottle of holy water from a pouch on his utility belt, and he liberally splashed the liquid on the wound.

Within moments, the flesh had totally healed. Not even Giselle's fang marks remained.

Van Helsing was to his feet by Childress and the soldier who had brought the torch. They half-dragged and half-carried him over to the clearing where Tessa's naked body lay, pale as snow now. He sagged to his knees and sat on his heels next to her, and his shoulders shook with silent sobs. He slowly raised his head.

"Get me a stake and a hammer," he ordered.

"Gabe," Childress began softly, "I can do this...."

"Just get me the fucking hammer!" Van Helsing cried, distraught.

Vic Childress nodded. He walked off, and returned moments later with the implements Van Helsing needed. The vampire slayer's lips moved in silent prayer. Then he rammed the stake to the hilt into Tessa's chest with one mighty blow, just to the left of center, as blood arced into the air.

The "dead" woman sat up, screaming, clutching at Van Helsing's arm. She stared at him in horrified disbelief, as if she had just awakened from a nightmare.

"G....Gabe? What.....happened... ."

Then she slumped back on the ground, fangs gleaming in her open mouth.

Tears streaming down his face, Van Helsing slid a long bayonet from its sheath and decapitated Tessa. He drew on thick gloves and stuffed her mouth full of garlic from a pouch on his weapons belt. Vic Childress took the severed, dripping head from Van Helsing, while two of his men picked up Tessa's headless corpse and lugged it away.

Something glinted in the midst of the gore where Van Helsing had beheaded her. He bent down, heedless of the blood. His fingers closed over a charm. Tessa's body had rolled atop the 14-K cross charm she wore on a fine gold chain around her neck.

Her good luck charm.

Van Helsing threw back his head and loosed a scream of raw anguish.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO...... ............. ."

Gabriel Van Helsing awoke with a gasp. He had fallen asleep at the computer terminal again. He rubbed his eyes.

They had gone into the compound in Kentucky with 257 troops and had come out with 84. It had been a bloodbath. He had lost many friends, and.....Tessa. They never had discovered who was behind the unholy convocation of werewolves and vampires, although he had heard rumors that the CEO of a mining company who was an aficionado of the occult had wanted to terrorize the residents of counties bordering the National Forest and drive them away from their property. The residential areas sat on some rich coal veins. His company could buy the property for a song and strip mine it once it was abandoned. There wasn't much incentive to stay when werewolves were running amok in your neighborhood, killing and eating people.

He shook his head. Such an elaborate scheme, just to satisfy simple greed. Satan could take many forms.....

It was only later that he learned Giselle du Meliere's coffin had been spirited away in the melee before the funeral pyre was lit. If there was any of Giselle's essence remaining in the casket - and he'd be willing to bet there was - she could be resurrected yet again with another sacrifice of virgin's blood.

He feared they hadn't heard the last of Giselle du Meliere.

Van Helsing gazed moodily out the window at the shimmering late August heat of the Kansas plains. He had been assigned to this satrap of Eglon Special Forces for rest and rehabilitation. Eglon was a quasi-military clandestine ops organization that specialized in.....unusual cases. Very few people, even inside the organization, knew that the real power behind Eglon was a secret society called the Knights of the Holy Order, who had been fighting the forces of supernatural evil for centuries. Van Helsing answered to no one at Eglon. As the Chief of Operations, he got his orders directly from the Vatican.

A light flashed on his monitor screen, and a beep sounded, informing him that Eglon's computer network had picked up an alert. Van Helsing sat forward, suddenly wide awake.

"Something come in?"

He craned his neck as Miranda Tyler, his new assistant, walked into his quarters. She was girl-next-door pretty, a slender brunette with brown eyes and a nice smile. He nodded.

"I haven't opened it yet," he said. "It's on F.I. Network, a forensic net. Coming in from a place called Winslow Junction, Washington."

He clicked on it and opened the file. Miranda gasped in horror when the image of the Winslow Junction werewolf came up on the screen. Van Helsing swallowed hard. "My........God! What a nasty-looking bugger! He's maximally transmogrified." He scrolled down the screen. "The video is from a dash cam unit on a Park Ranger's cruiser. She was a young woman; the werewolf violated and slaughtered her. The video shows it....all."

Miranda stiffened.

"You don't have to watch," he said softly.

"Yes, I do," she said. "Don't forget, I was in Kentucky, too. I saw the carnage first hand, and I'm still with Eglon. If I'm going to be your assistant, I'm to be spared nothing."

He nodded and pushed 'play' with his mouse.

When it was over, Miranda was numb with horror. Van Helsing was as pale as she had ever seen him. There was an almost imperceptible tremor in his hand.

"You were worried about me," she said softly. "Are you okay?"

He closed his eyes and exhaled slowly. "It brings back memories -- all of them bad," he said. "I keep going back over it all in my mind, asking myself if I could have done anything differently, and I keep telling myself 'no.' That mist Giselle generated -- only a vampire as powerful as Dracula himself could have done that. We weren't expecting that. I should have been prepared. All those people died. Tessa......."