Shadows Will Fall Read Free

main door to the dungeon area was slammed shut behind the last guard, and the loud steel clacking of the locks being set followed.
    No one spoke for a few minutes.
    Deitel heard rapid breathing from somewhere. He looked to his left, through the thick crisscross of bars, and saw Terah leaning against the far wall of her cell where it connected to the cell in which they’d thrown Rucker. He was about to ask if she was okay when he heard her whispering something as quietly as she could. He couldn’t see Rucker through the mesh of bars on the far side.
    Terah had wedged her hand through the bars to Rucker’s cell and was holding his hand. Rucker, it seemed, was trying to deal with the claustrophobia he’d been cursed with all his life.
    Deitel couldn’t say why, but he knew not to interrupt.
    After a minute or so, he could no longer hear Rucker’s rapid breathing.
    The silence, though, was oppressive. Locked in an old, underground dungeon beneath an SS encampment in the castle of the legendary vampire lord, Draculae.
    A day ago it would have sounded ludicrous.
    But now it was all too real.
    The light through the narrow windows waned. Defeat, like the growing darkness, enveloped Deitel.
    Exhaustion took the doctor. He fell asleep on the cold, dirty, cell floor.
    D eitel didn’t know how long he’d dozed—couldn’t have been more than a half hour. He’d been awakened by someone saying something loud—he was too disoriented to discern what, though.
    He sat upright but his head hung low. There was just enough moonlight now to see into the other cells. Terah and Filotoma were whispering.
    Then he remembered what was happening.
    It was all over.
    Darkness would fall on the world as surely as it had this dungeon.
    They had tried, but there was too much arrayed against them.
    The Nazis had the Spear of Destiny.
    The army of darkness was going to march across the world.
    They’d lost.
    He was so tired.
    Then Rucker’s voice cut through the dungeon.
    â€œAll right, people listen up—we’ve got work to do,” he said.
    Deitel looked upward and saw Rucker’s face. The moonlight flashed on his lopsided smile. Deitel’s eyes widened and Rucker held his finger to his lips. The last thing Rucker had whispered to him marching to the dungeon was that once they were inside, don’t talk, because their captors might be listening.
    â€œDon’t worry, Doc. While you were catching up on your zzz’s, we made sure the krau—they haven’t bugged us,” Rucker said. “Come on, there’s work to do.”
    â€œWork?” Amria hissed, disgusted. “We are in their jail. Surrounded by the Nazis. They have the spear. And it’s all your fault.”
    The mirth that had been missing from Rucker’s tone for a while was back now, to the point that he seemed almost giddily jovial. “What? Nazis on every side?”
    â€œYes,” Amria said angrily.
    â€œOutstanding. That simplifies things. That means they won’t get away from us,” he said. “All right, folks, inventory time—Terah? What you got for me?”
    â€œThree bobby pins,” she said, pulling them from her hair. She reached down to her safari boot and twisted the heel. Inside was a compartment with a small, folded penknife. The other heel revealed a coiled twenty-four inches of high-tensile wire. “And these.”
    She saw the surprise on the doctor’s face.
    â€œTools of the trade,” she said.
    Amria sat with her back to the other cells and her arms crossed. But Deitel could see the curious look peeking through her anger.
    Filotoma was pulling off his own belt. “A belt. Pretty long one. The boche did not find my flask—poor Nick’s ex-wives couldn’t either—so eight ounces of 180 proof,” he said. There was a gulp in the darkness. “I mean seven ounces.”
    â€œDeitel? Well?” Rucker said.
    â€œUm