Drawing on old knowledge that these European vampires would never have bothered to acquire themselves, I set myself in a crouching stance behind the pillar, right foot forward, still sheltered from sniper fire. And then I began a series of forms with Fragarach that I had learned in China; when combined at speed, they formed a whirling defensive guard about my head and torso. I didn’t know from which direction the attack would come, so I had to give myself some chance of slowing them down, since they would be coming with a significant speed advantage.
The first one came from behind the pillar on my right and led with his face, fangs bared. He expected to find a stationary target, not a steel blade whipping through the air that he wasn’t breathing. Fragarach sliced through his head from top to bottom in front of his ears. His body’s momentum carried into me and knocked me a bit to the left, and I was already thrusting in that direction, expecting another vampire to appear from there, the old one-two. And, sure enough, one did. He ran right onto Fragarach’s point, which missed his heart and punctured the lung he didn’t need. Still, it hurt, and he stopped, though he hissed and hit me with his dead-body breath. Feeling exposed, I twisted the blade and darted back behind the pillar, yanking Fragarach and the vampire with me. It was therefore his head instead of mine that got exploded by sniper fire from Marko.
I re-centered myself between the bodies and resumed my defensive forms. Neither vampire was completely toast, but they were down for now, until they could be unbound. In the meantime, I needed to be ready for the second wave. It would be any second now—I was sure I’d feel the impact before I saw anything coming.
But no more undead minions materialized. I just got a good workout when I was already exhausted and in pain. Maybe that was the plan: Wait until I couldn’t maintain my defenses and then swoop in. As soon as I considered it, though, I realized Theophilus didn’t really have that luxury; when and if Owen dispatched the vampires that currently occupied him, he’d be able to unbind any that were left, provided he could talk. I was starting to think that perhaps he had shape-shifted because of a similar injury to mine. If his jaw had also been broken—a tactical move on the vampires’ part—then bulking up as a bear and fighting it out would make sense for him.
Maybe we had truly fought through most of the vampires. Or maybe there was some other skullduggery going on—time being taken to reevaluate strategy, given that I had demonstrated you can take out a vampire with a sword, albeit not permanently.
A blur zipped past me to the left up the central flight of the steps and then stilled well out of reach of my sword. It was Theophilus, face crispy and wizened and bereft of the smug confidence he’d displayed earlier. I kept my eye on him but didn’t stop moving Fragarach through my defensive forms; his appearance was most likely intended as a distraction and I’d be hit from the sides or even up top—
Flicking my eyes upward, I saw a dark shape descending from over the top of the pillar, and I pivoted to my right and hacked through it, splitting the body in two. But the gambit served its purpose. During that crucial second or so, Theophilus moved with blinding speed and bowled me over, tackling me to the cobbled plaza stones and trapping my sword arm against my body. As soon as we hit the ground on my left side, he reared back, grabbed Fragarach by the blade, and ripped it out of my hand, uncaring about the deep cuts he received as a result. He tossed it away onto the steps of the Keats-Shelley House. I was unarmed, drained of energy, and unable to speak—he had me and he knew it. He grinned, feeling confident again, and held me down with a grip stronger than any iron bands I’ve seen.
Just to make that smile disappear again, I wanted to tell him Werner Drasche was dead, but I couldn’t.
“Well done, sir, well done,” he cooed at me. “Not good enough, but definitely a fine challenge. A worthy opponent. When the world’s nests hear that you killed so many but failed to kill me—even with the sun!—that will only add to my prestige. You’ve done me a favor in a way. But that doesn’t mean I won’t ram my fist through your skull right now.”