Then he turned to the mother and her child, a boy of perhaps four. “And these two—” He moved in closer, squatting beside them. The woman shifted her position, shielding the loose-limbed figure from the glare of Wolff’s flashlight, but not before he had glimpsed the boy’s eyes—alive but blank and unfocused.
Without warning, the child began shaking uncontrollably, his small body stiffening in his mother’s arms. At the sound of a wet cough, Wolff took a reflexive step backward just as the boy vomited a mouthful of blood across his mother’s back and onto the floor. Another low moan escaped from the woman as the child completed its transformation into a bloody rag doll in her arms.
The colonel was fascinated. This is exactly how my men died.
“Don’t disturb these specimens,” he said, never taking his eyes off the dying child. “Corporal Kessler, bring some body bags from the lab. I want this boy bagged and on Dr. Kimura’s examination table in fifteen minutes.”
Corporal Kessler gave Wolff a puzzled look, “Sir, but he’s still—”
“Now, Corporal!” the colonel shouted. It was the first time any of them had heard Wolff raise his voice.
Kessler bolted from the hut, careful to avoid tripping over the cans that lay scattered in the blood.
From their perch on the hillside, the twins tracked the chaotic comings and goings of the bipeds. Four of them were now half-stumbling down the steep incline, burdened by their weapons and by the weight of a prize the bats had earned.
FOOD, the female signaled with the ultrasonic equivalent of a human sigh. She could still taste it, though most of the liquid was currently soaking into the ground. And if they waited much longer—
The four bipeds struggled past the trees where the twins hung in silence. The siblings could smell it—even through the thick material that covered their prey. The smallest meal was still alive, and they could feel the lingering liquid heat and the turbulence as the food drained out of him and sloshed inside the membrane in which the intruders had wrapped him.
The female sensed a vibration that ran through her brother’s body into the tree trunk from which they hung. She could feel his claws tearing deeply into the bark.
The male roared in ultrasonic silence.
MacCready awoke from a dream about cool mountain streams to the sound of the outer door being opened. He was expecting to see Wolff or the SS giant, back to finish what they’d started. But instead, he watched a pair of German soldiers carrying a hysterical and blood-covered woman toward one of the cells. Scott’s old cell, he thought, suddenly remembering the lieutenant’s mad song.
MacCready sat up. “She win a date with Sergeant Frankenstein?”
Both of the uniformed men seemed startled by the sound of another voice.
Relieved to see that it was only a prisoner, one of the soldiers shot his companion a puzzled expression. “Was sagte er?”
“Er scherzt darüber,” the other replied.
Although MacCready’s ear for German speech had grown a little rusty in recent years, he did notice that, unlike his earlier handlers, one of these guys was actually being quite gentle as he ushered the woman into a cell. He also noticed that the blood staining the woman’s clothes was apparently not her own. Still, she slumped to the floor even before the soldier backed out of the tiny cell.
The man secured the cage door and turned wearily toward MacCready. “You think this is a joke?” he inquired, in heavily accented but very serviceable English.
MacCready said nothing, noting that the man’s eyes were set deeply within dark circles. Though only in his twenties, his features seemed stretched tightly over the bones of his skull, giving him a haunted appearance.
The soldier gestured toward the woman. “Her family was killed by the . . .” He struggled in vain to find the right word. “Blut kinder.”
MacCready sat up straighter. Blut kinder? Blood children.
The man’s partner looked on, his puzzlement turning to annoyance. “Kessler, warum sprechen sie mit einem Gefangenen?”
The corporal ignored him. “The blut kinder came down from the trees. They killed her mother und her son. Drained them . . . like pigs.”
MacCready’s body responded to a sudden release of adrenaline. His mind responded, too, becoming clear and instantly relieved to be focusing on something else besides horrible news, aches, pains, and his impending death. Thankfully, they had untied him.
The draculae. He’s talking about the draculae!
The considerable portion of MacCready’s brain that dedicated itself to self-preservation saw an opening—a tiny crevice of light—and he headed straight for it. “Blood children—now there’s a load of native bullshit,” MacCready said, finishing up with a dismissive wave.
One of the men turned to leave, but the haunted-looking man rushed to the bars, his eyes wide. “I saw them! Es geschah an diesem Morgen!” he cried. “They were like deformed . . . children. Crouching. Scrabbling.”
“And her family was bled to death?”