The legacy of the dark blood

Chapter 17

The three stones

The night's chill became more intense as a thick white mist covered the area creating an unnaturally frightening atmosphere. Liz knew that the horrible creatures would have finished her off before it really was their intention; she was desperately looking for a way to get out of the terrible situation alive, but at that moment she could only hope that Chris and Bernard would locate her soon.

Slowly Liz reached a sort of wooden stage that brought to her mind those harrowing stories told of executions and tortures during the darkest times of the Middle Ages. The audience was not numerous, but there was no more than a group of individuals with tattered clothes, rotting skin and misshapen faces resembling wax figures melted by the heat. Besides that, there were also the brown monks waiting for her on the dais, staring at her with horrifying red eyes and their distinctive crimson skulls.

The place was entirely surrounded by people who gave her a look of hatred so difficult to describe that, in the darkness of the night, depicted a kind of disturbing surrealist painting. For Liz it was clear that any of them would have no scruples in finishing her off, so she turned her gaze towards the center of the stage where the man in gray was waiting for her, throwing her an eccentric smile full of evil, showing his yellowish teeth in a pitiful state that matched his long scruffy beard. Liz watched him trying to hold back all her emotions.

"Well," Liz decided to break the ice, "you already have me here, I think it's about time you explained to me what you want with me."

The girl uttered each of her words calmly, staring at the man, also intending to ignore both the horrible pawns that witnessed the scene and the hunters' and monks' skeletal faces. The man, however, widened his smile once more; suddenly, loud steel-booted footsteps echoed throughout the wooden surface, which revived one of his grimmest memories so far in his journey through Reich der Finsternis.

"Be patient girl, we are not all here yet, there is someone else who wants to see you, you already know him" The man replied; the intensity of the footsteps was increasing. In the midst of the little darkness that could be seen behind the torches that lighted the area around the perimeter, that enormous and robust silhouette appeared once, in the form of a black shadow, with a pale face under a black hat that she had already met in the village. It was Holzmann's executioner, who came closer, looking into the girl's soul with a notorious murderous gaze.

The cemetery workers rejoiced in a devilish manner and applauded the man. It was a spectacle that portrayed madness at its finest, which contrasted in turn with the supremely cold and merciless attitude of the executioner and his hunters.

Liz could not restrain herself from backing away after seeing the monstrous being approaching her. The executioner clenched his right fist so that the sound of his finger bones clenched and boomed with a shuddering echo.

"You can be calm, we come with the only intention of talking to you about a subject .... that worries us" mentioned the man in the gray robe after the executioner arrived to keep him company "I suppose you already know why you are here."

Liz denied having any exact knowledge of the situation that troubled the man who, without having introduced himself, acted as if he had knowledge of the operation she was working on together with the German police. Still lost in an anguish that held her in the depths of her being, Liz refused to answer, giving way to another uncomfortable silence that was abruptly interrupted by one of the hunters who hit her hard on the back with the butt of his rifle making her fall to the ground on her knees.

The young agent was recovering from the pain by resting her hands on the dusty wooden floor while she watched the shadow of the man getting closer to her to say a few words, to which she answered him by looking at him still on her knees. The man pretended to care for the girl by holding out his hand, although she showed her deep rejection for her captors, she stood up on her own while the man walked away with a faint evil smile.