The Deliverance Engine: The Sword of Saint Georgas Book 7

By Robert Davis

It’s a race against time for vampire-hunter, Anders Draculescu, when his apprentice falls victim to a necromancer’s curse.

With the young man’s life hanging in the balance, Draculescu has only a matter of days in which to slay the necromancer and lift his curse, but as the hunt unfolds, Draculescu soon learns that there is much more at stake.

The necromancer seeks an ancient artefact that has the power to control vampires, and he is not the only one seeking it. Enemies, both living and undead, want the artefact for their own ends, and will stop at nothing to possess it.

From the subterranean torture chambers of an insane priest to a ruinous castle clinging precariously to an unstable cliff face, Draculescu must follow the clues and uncover the truth in what might be his most dangerous adventure yet.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert Davis
• Release date: Oct 16, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005470906

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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The Deliverance Engine

The Sword of St Georgas: Book 7

by Robert Davis

This Smashwords edition: Copyright © Robert Davis 2022.

All rights reserved.

Originally published in Vampires of Carpathia by Swordworks. Copyright © Robert Davis 2012.

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 Necromancer’s Curse

Anders Draculescu had been a vampire-hunter for over ten years, but he had never faced an adversary as repulsive as he faced now. It was a stigoii: a vampire that had been unable to halt the spread of decay through its body and, though it had unmistakably been human in some distant past, centuries of corruption had all but liquefied the flesh that clung to its yellowed bones, giving it the appearance of a waxwork model that had melted under a strong flame. The splits and fissures that yawned into its putrescent core swarmed with loathsome colonies of knotted worms and maggots that squirmed and coiled disgustingly.

It stank of filth and decay, but for all of its rotten, festering appearance it moved with the speed and agility of an athlete and possessed as much strength as a whole team of oxen.

‘Stab it!’ Draculescu shouted.

His apprentice, Stefan, was a young man, barely out of his teens. He was handsome with a rounded, muscular physique and bright, intelligent eyes that were currently fixed in a look of intense concentration as he backed their adversary into a corner of the room.

Stefan brandished a vampire-hunter’s spear; the first weapon that all vampire-hunters learned to wield. It was nearly two meters long and had a thirty-centimeter-long spike at its tip. Experience had taught that it was always safest to engage a vampire from a distance, where its naturally superior strength and speed could be nullified. The more well-known stake through the heart was better reserved for a sleeping foe that was incapable of defending itself.

Eager to obey his mentor’s command, Stefan thrust the spear at the rotting vampire’s heart, keeping it threatened while Draculescu took aim with a crossbow.

Draculescu was an enormous man: tall and built like a bear. His head was shaven and he bore the image of the cruciform Sword of Saint Georgas tattooed upon the brow of his weathered and leathery face. The crossbow that he held was custom-made and fitted with two sets of prods, one above the other, that could be fired independently or both at the same time by means of a dual-stage trigger.

He lined up his target and gently squeezed the trigger to its first setting, launching a bolt from the top prods. The stigoii weaved out of its way and his shot missed. Cursing to himself, Draculescu fired the second shot, but this one missed as well.

He and Stefan had been tracking the stigoii for weeks. They had first heard of it when it had attacked a monastery at Mamuresh, where it had tortured the monks and then murdered them so that no one would know what questions it had asked. Since then, it had struck twice more at Argesti and Bostani, successfully eluding them on both occasions, until they had at last caught up with it, here in the gallery of a manor house in Sihagapia.

Vowing that he would not let it escape them this time, Draculescu drew back the strings of his crossbow so that he could reload it for another shot.

Meanwhile, Stefan kept it trapped in the corner of the room, threatening it with the point of his spear. He misjudged his distance, however, and accidentally got too close. The stigoii immediately capitalized on his mistake and struck the spear tip aside with the flat of its hand. It grabbed Stefan by the throat before he could react and pinned him up against the wall, where it began to choke the life out of him.

Seeing that his apprentice was in danger, Draculescu abandoned his attempts to reload his crossbow and ran over to help. As he drew closer, the stigoii made a loud retching noise and its body convulsed violently. A stream of worms erupted from its mouth onto Stefan’s face, causing the young man to cry out in horror and disgust.

The stigoii released him and turned to face Draculescu, who swiftly drew a wooden stake from a pair of bandoleers across his chest. As an experienced hunter, Draculescu was one of the few men alive who dared tackle a vampire close-up. He ducked as it lashed out at him with bony talons and was just about to launch a counterstrike when he was distracted by an agonized scream from Stefan.

The young man lay writhing on the floor, clutching at his face.