Shadows' Brood: The Sword of Saint Georgas Book 2

By Robert Davis

At a mountain pass, high upon the Carpathian Alps, something is waylaying carriages that try to cross at sunset. Vampire-hunter, Anders Draculescu, and his young apprentice, Stefan, are called to investigate.

What they find, nesting in the woods, is quick to bear a grudge, and after the vampire-hunters’ disturb the contents of their larder, they soon find themselves faced not with a single enemy – but a whole swarm.

Forced to take shelter in a fortified inn, the vampire-hunters must weather the siege until daybreak. But it is not long before they realize they have enemies within, as well as outside...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert Davis
• Release date: Oct 16, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005217266

Robert Davis

Robert lives in Hermiston Oregon with his wife and two dogs. While driving truck for a local farming company many thoughts would stream through his mind until he decided to write them down. Using his cell phone he texted hundreds of poems with sunrise and local scenery pictures to his wife and friends. The practice continued until it was suggested he put them into a book. The cell phone camera proved unreliable to reproduction but the poems became a lifeline to many as he was impressed to write the simply events of daily living in a small farming community.

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Shadows’ Brood

The Sword of St Georgas: Book 2

by Robert Davis

This Smashwords edition: Copyright © Robert Davis 2022.

All rights reserved.

Originally published by Swordworks as The Vermin from the Black Abyss. Copyright © Robert Davis 2011.

The right of Robert Davis to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, countries, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual entities, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Chapter 1 – The Road To Hell

‘I don’t think I can take much more of this.’

The young man slouched, his face contorted in a grimace of intolerable pain. ‘Please,’ he begged. ‘Tell me that we’re almost there.’

His companion smiled tightly. ‘Hah! Paris made you soft. We haven’t been riding long.’

‘Long enough that I can’t feel my arse. There’s just a solid knot of pain where my body ends and my legs begin. And what do you mean, Paris made me soft? I fought in a duel I’ll have you know.’

‘Yes, you’ve told me,’ Anders Draculescu replied derisively. ‘You fought each other with sticks, as I recall.’

‘A duel a la canne happens to be very dangerous,’ the young man retorted.

‘Yes, I imagine you probably suffered some very nasty bruises.’ Draculescu said with a grin.

He enjoyed needling his apprentice. Stefan Balaneanu was a boyar’s son, handsome and cocky, with a youthful passion for wine, women and gambling. Up until a few months ago, he had been a student at the Sorbonne in Paris, but rather than attend his classes, he had preferred to squander his allowance in the brothels, theatres and gambling dens of the Quartier Pigalle. His father had summoned him back home when he had found out and had enrolled him as a vampire-hunter in the hope that it might teach him some responsibility.

Anders Draculescu had been a vampire-hunter for ten years. He was a massive figure, standing almost six feet tall and possessing shoulders as wide as those of an ox. His head was shaven and he had a cruciform Georgas Sword tattooed across his brow that gave him a savage and warlike countenance.

‘It is my belief,’ Stefan began. ‘That a benevolent God would have made this country flat if he truly loved its people, so that they would not have to be constantly riding up and down.’

‘A benevolent God made this country with hills and crags,’ Draculescu argued. ‘So that a soft-skinned daisy like you could harden and become a man.’

Stefan sneered. ‘I became a man when I was fourteen, thank you very much, courtesy of a very saucy young thing called Ana,’ he countered. ‘I don’t see why I should have to have my bones jarred out of my body just so that I can further lay claim to what is already a biologically-proven fact.’

They had been riding since dawn and the day, promising from the outset, had turned out warm and sunny. The road climbed through the hills of northern Carpathia, near to the Ardealan border, and the land was vibrant with color, the air scented with the rich smell of clover. Ahead of them, the staggering pillar-like mountains of the Ceahluacu Massif reared majestically against the skyline, bare rocks shaded dark-blue and grey and capped by wispy streaks of cloud.

Their destination was the village of Droesti Targa. Yesterday, whilst riding through the lowlands further east, they had encountered a travelling merchant who had told them stories of a mountain pass beyond the village, lately cursed by evil. Travelers who journeyed that way too close to nightfall were never seen again. Their coaches were found the following day, overturned by the side of the road, stripped of passengers and horses, without even a splash of blood to tell of their fate.

Vampires, the merchant had concluded, or worse.

The village lay in a natural saddle between two mountains, surrounded by a rich forest of silver fir, beech and juniper. It depended greatly on the pass for its livelihood and Draculescu saw on his arrival that it had begun to suffer for the recent loss of trade. The people had a hungered look, and the houses were in need of simple repairs that might normally have been carried out, but which were now too frivolous to justify the expenditure.

The arrival of two vampire-hunters could not be overlooked and the villagers came out to greet them and offer gifts of garlic, poultry and beer. According to ancient tradition, a vampire-hunter