ten-pins.
Into the searing heat and light.
BOOM!!!
**
The explosion blasts Vesuvio to his knees. It's raining grappa-laced flames. Puppet boys, transformed into living torches, dash wildly in all directions.
Alphonse runs to the Wolf Girl, ripping his sword free. Those iron chains -- the Toledo steel cuts them like tent ropes. Snap, snap, snap.
And Lucia, growling and bristling and wild, is free.
**
Whirling on Alphonse, the White Wolf bares her drooling fangs even as Vesuvio -- nimbly, for a fat man -- leaps from the shadows, swinging his hatchet like a lunatic chicken farmer.
Alphonse, dodging, parries with his blade and with a clang the hatchet spins off into the darkness.
He is bracing himself to run the astonished Gypsy sorcerer through the heart with his whip-thin length of steel even as Lord and Lady Blackgore float into the glare like monster bats.
Lucia lets out an electrifying growl. Alphonse, taking this as an invitation, leaps onto the Wolf's back, and they're off like a shooting star. Running for their lives.
The Sewers of Paris
Alphonse does not stop to reflect that this White Wolf is four and a half times the size of the little golden-haired Lucia di Fermonti -- or that she has slavering fangs and bristling fur.
No. He leaps onto the Wolf, seizing her scruff in both puppet fists, the rapier gripped between his dentures, and they tear off like ball- lightning, the Wolf dodging tree trunks that appear to Alphonse only as dark, whizzing blurs to either side.
As they break into open space -- the grass whipping Alphonse's gangly wooden legs -- Alphonse sees it: the vast, silent MOONRISE.
So that's what the silly ghouls were waiting for. Some kind of moonlit occult ceremony, thereby to transfer the Wolf's power to the Vampyres . But no time for thought.
The Wolf is dashing through fields at breakneck speed, and Alphonse thinks with a rush of pleasure that even the Vampyre's frothing demonic black horses won't be able to keep this insane pace.
When he glances back, he can't see the bonfire -- it's not even a spark.
Then he glimpses, not far ahead, a moonlight shimmering curve of the Seine -- and a wooden bridge spanning the fast current.
A decrepit road sign reads PARIS, 2 km.
He pulls hard on the Wolf's bristling neck and points.
The White Wolf snarls and plunges left, downhill and through a flowering cherry orchard --ah, it must smell divine -- and then they are crashing across the planks.
But now Alphonse's pine-wood body turns to cold iron. The White Wolf lurches to a snarling stop.
For a black shape has settled down from the sky, congealed almost, to block their escape onto the far riverbank.
It wears a cape and a tricorner hat and its ghoulishly pale visage -- chalk green in the moonlight -- is pulled in a lopsided, toothy, vampyric leer.
It's Lord Edward Blackgore , brandishing what can only be a naked sword.
Alphonse glances fearfully over his shoulder just in time to see the other inky shape soaring down at them bat-like -- it's Lady Edwarda , screeching, a saber in her hand -- and without a thought or a feeling he draws the pistols from his waistband and fires one pistol, BANG, dead center at the chalk-faced harridan.
The report is so deafening that it drowns out the White Wolf's frenzied howl. The pistol ball strikes Lady Edwarda in the ample chest, spinning her like a top -- and as the Wolf springs at Lord Blackgore , Alphonse discharges the other pistol, point blank, into his vampyric grin.
Alphonse sees the face explode into a mess of blood and teeth and other stuff but, almost at the same instant, weirdly and magically recompose, grin intact, as the spent pistol ball drops to the planks.
It's a sight that might have been enough to kill the little boy Alphonse with fear -- but a puppet, luckily, has no heart for fear to stop.
Black powder smoke envelops
Into the searing heat and light.
BOOM!!!
**
The explosion blasts Vesuvio to his knees. It's raining grappa-laced flames. Puppet boys, transformed into living torches, dash wildly in all directions.
Alphonse runs to the Wolf Girl, ripping his sword free. Those iron chains -- the Toledo steel cuts them like tent ropes. Snap, snap, snap.
And Lucia, growling and bristling and wild, is free.
**
Whirling on Alphonse, the White Wolf bares her drooling fangs even as Vesuvio -- nimbly, for a fat man -- leaps from the shadows, swinging his hatchet like a lunatic chicken farmer.
Alphonse, dodging, parries with his blade and with a clang the hatchet spins off into the darkness.
He is bracing himself to run the astonished Gypsy sorcerer through the heart with his whip-thin length of steel even as Lord and Lady Blackgore float into the glare like monster bats.
Lucia lets out an electrifying growl. Alphonse, taking this as an invitation, leaps onto the Wolf's back, and they're off like a shooting star. Running for their lives.
The Sewers of Paris
Alphonse does not stop to reflect that this White Wolf is four and a half times the size of the little golden-haired Lucia di Fermonti -- or that she has slavering fangs and bristling fur.
No. He leaps onto the Wolf, seizing her scruff in both puppet fists, the rapier gripped between his dentures, and they tear off like ball- lightning, the Wolf dodging tree trunks that appear to Alphonse only as dark, whizzing blurs to either side.
As they break into open space -- the grass whipping Alphonse's gangly wooden legs -- Alphonse sees it: the vast, silent MOONRISE.
So that's what the silly ghouls were waiting for. Some kind of moonlit occult ceremony, thereby to transfer the Wolf's power to the Vampyres . But no time for thought.
The Wolf is dashing through fields at breakneck speed, and Alphonse thinks with a rush of pleasure that even the Vampyre's frothing demonic black horses won't be able to keep this insane pace.
When he glances back, he can't see the bonfire -- it's not even a spark.
Then he glimpses, not far ahead, a moonlight shimmering curve of the Seine -- and a wooden bridge spanning the fast current.
A decrepit road sign reads PARIS, 2 km.
He pulls hard on the Wolf's bristling neck and points.
The White Wolf snarls and plunges left, downhill and through a flowering cherry orchard --ah, it must smell divine -- and then they are crashing across the planks.
But now Alphonse's pine-wood body turns to cold iron. The White Wolf lurches to a snarling stop.
For a black shape has settled down from the sky, congealed almost, to block their escape onto the far riverbank.
It wears a cape and a tricorner hat and its ghoulishly pale visage -- chalk green in the moonlight -- is pulled in a lopsided, toothy, vampyric leer.
It's Lord Edward Blackgore , brandishing what can only be a naked sword.
Alphonse glances fearfully over his shoulder just in time to see the other inky shape soaring down at them bat-like -- it's Lady Edwarda , screeching, a saber in her hand -- and without a thought or a feeling he draws the pistols from his waistband and fires one pistol, BANG, dead center at the chalk-faced harridan.
The report is so deafening that it drowns out the White Wolf's frenzied howl. The pistol ball strikes Lady Edwarda in the ample chest, spinning her like a top -- and as the Wolf springs at Lord Blackgore , Alphonse discharges the other pistol, point blank, into his vampyric grin.
Alphonse sees the face explode into a mess of blood and teeth and other stuff but, almost at the same instant, weirdly and magically recompose, grin intact, as the spent pistol ball drops to the planks.
It's a sight that might have been enough to kill the little boy Alphonse with fear -- but a puppet, luckily, has no heart for fear to stop.
Black powder smoke envelops
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