Page:Weird Tales volume 33 number 04.djvu/82

 headlong rush of Ethan's forces carried them crashing through the streets, toward themountainous bulk of the great fortress. But as they entered the plaza in front of the giant structure, Luunian warriors were swarming toward them from every part of the city, by thousands.

Over their heads, the gigantic fortress frowned like a thundercloud as they forced their way toward the doors. Ethan glimpsed Masters running wildly in through the entrances.

"Into the fortress—quick!" he yelled to Hank and Lopez, spurring fiercely ahead.

"Hell's name, what a fight!" gasped the Spaniard, his face wet with blood and sweat, his eyes wild.

Ethan and his two comrades, and a score of mingled Mongols and Sioux, won to the entrance of the huge building.

They rode right inside, their horses slipping and plunging, into great, shadowy stone chambers.

Here scores of the red Masters scuttled before them in terror. A few Luunians opposed them. Men died to the music of clashing steel and clattering hooves in those great shadowy chambers, as Ethan's band forced onward.

They burst on their steeds into a huge circular chamber. At its center rose a big, round stone table, with a ring of many cushioned seats around it.

Upon the high stone table, fastened down by metal fetters, lay a half-hundred men and girls. Into an incision in the arm of each of them had been inserted a thin metal tube, which led down from each to one of the cushioned seats.

"Dios, what ghastly thing has been going on here?" Lopez gasped.

"This is the Feast of Life of those fiends the Masters!" Edian cried. "A drinking of the blood of helpless victims! God, if Chiri is dead"

Chill horror was freezing his spine as he leaped from his horse and ran to the high table of victims. For he knew now the full hideous nature of those red Masters who had come to Earth ages before from another world.

The Masters were vampires, taking their food, not naturally, but through the blood of others. He guessed that it was a custom that they had brought from their own native planet, and that they had kept it up as a ceremonial rite through their generations on Earth.

"Chiri!" he yelled frantically.

"Ethan, I am here!" cried a weak voice.

He leaped up onto the stone table, over the supine bodies of helpless victims, and found her.

Chiri was living, but was pale as death itself. And her great dark eyes had shuddering terror in them as Ethan severed her fetters with a sword-stroke.

"Ethan!" she sobbed as he helped her up. "The Masters—they had begun to drink our life-blood, when the alarm of attack halted the dreadful Feast."

"Loose my bonds, that I may wreak God's vengeance on those unholy children of Satan!" boomed a great, wrathful voice.

"It's John Crewe!" shouted Hank Martin, his taut face lighting.

The big Puritan lay fettered among the other victims. As Lopez shattered his metal bonds, Crewe rose, his massive face flaming red, eyes flashing fanatically.

"Retribution!" he shouted, snatching a sword from the floor. "We shall leave not one of those red demons to defile God's green Earth."