Diaries of the Family Dracul - The Covenant with the Vampire Part 21

he whispered. "What sort of monster... ?" He pointed over at the unveiled theatre of death.

"And that is no doubt where-"

He broke off, unable to continue. I put my hand upon his shoulder, understanding too well his sense of horror and loss.

After a moment of silence I said, "Come."

I led him into the inner sanctum where the coffins stood, their lids still opened to reveal the imprints of bodies upon crimson silk. Beside them on the floor lay the stake, mallet, and knife which I had dropped. Kohl looked on the scene and the black altar with an expression of horrified wonder but did not speak.

"He sleeps in the day, just as legend says," I told him. "Normally here, but he has hidden himself-somewhere on the castle grounds, I am sure.

"I intend to destroy him. Your call interrupted my search. Will you help?"

Kohl's gaze, of uncommon intensity, met mine at once. "Yes." I gave a joyless smile. "It matters not to my pride whether you believe that my great-uncle is a vampire, or an entirely human monster; but I must insist for your own safety that you take this and wear it. Your gun will provide you no protection in this house."

I handed him Ion's crucifix, which he hung round his neck without hesitation. "And you?" he asked.

"I am currency to him," I said. "He will not harm me."

Kohl looked askance at this, but I did not explain. We equipped ourselves with the stake, mallet, knife, and a lamp, and began the hunt.

For the next few hours, we went through the forty or fifty rooms-painstakingly, slowly, looking beneath beds, in cupboards, pantries, closets, stables, wine cellar, everywhere that might afford V. and Zsuzsa a resting-place.

Outside, the clouds blackened and thundered; at last the storm arrived, with a gusting wind that pelted water furiously against the windows, a fitting backdrop to our hunt. After a thorough search of the upper levels, we made our way down to the cellar and discovered, beneath a layer of dust so thick we almost failed to find it, a door which led to a staircase.

These stairs in turn led to an entire series of subterranean catacombs, dug out of damp earth and layered with cobwebs. I half-expected to find the bones of martyred Christians, but the first few chambers were empty, save for the rats that scurried at our approach, and a thriving beetle population: the edges of the beam cast by my lamp seemed alive with small, dark crawling creatures.

But I sensed we neared the objects of our search; and so, I think, did Kohl, for his expression grew ever more taut. Keeping the lamp lifted high, I strode with him through chamber after chamber. The ground sloped slightly downward, and I had the sense of going deeper and deeper into the earth, the air growing danker with every step.

Then we entered a long, narrow corridor that stretched into endless darkness. Suddenly, Kohl touched my shoulder and said, "Look!"

I followed the direction of his gaze, and saw, to my left at the edge of the lamp's wavering light, cubicles each the size of a large closet, carved from the earth. Within were rotting wool blankets, tin cups, bowls, chains, an occasional wooden stool...

And each was sealed with iron bars and rusting padlocks.

Cubicle after cubicle, a dozen, perhaps, in all. A prison.

"Gott im Himmel," Kohl whispered.

"Of course," I murmured. "When the snows close the Borgo Pa.s.s, no more visitors can come; but he still must feed..."

Was this, too, to have been my task-to fill his prison in autumn, that he might sup at leisure over the winter?

We turned our faces from the horror and somehow managed to keep moving. The cells at last ended, and the tunnel itself terminated in an abrupt earthen wall laced with the dying roots of trees and nests of small animals. At the foot of that wall was a large trap door of wood bound with thick bands of rusted metal and studded with iron spikes.

I ran to it, set the lamp on the ground, and took hold of the large metal handle with both hands. Kohl dropped our weapons and joined me, and together we pulled.But the door was bolted fast from the inside, and the outside bound shut with a thick chain attached to a long spike driven into the hard ground; no creature could pa.s.s through that portal by any means less than supernatural.

I took the mallet and pounded the wood, but it was petrified, like pounding rock. I could not so much as leave a dent. I tried smas.h.i.+ng the chain, with equal success, and then tried driving the stake between earth and wood as a lever; this too failed. When I was spent, Kohl did his best to smash and then pry the door open, but after a frustrating half hour, we surrendered and returned the long, winding way we had come.

"He will rise at sunset," I told my companion. "You must leave well before then, or your life is forfeit."

"You and your family must accompany me, then," Kohl insisted. "It is dangerous for your wife to travel, but it seems a far greater danger to leave her here."

I agreed-simply to avoid argument, though I intended to stay and delay V. from following for as long as possible. It was already late afternoon; I explained that V. would rise at sunset, so that we would only be able to get a couple hours' head start. Swiftness was imperative.

"Then there is the matter of the chambermaid, Dunya," I said. "Vlad knows all that she knows; and if she is awake and unrestrained when we depart, he will know through her when and in which direction we left. If there is some way to render her unable to do so-"

"Leave it to me," Kohl responded firmly.

We returned to my wife's prison to find the baby still nestled in her arm, and papers in her lap; Dunya sat attendance at bedside. My wife looked up, and our gazes locked; I saw that she held back tears. As I neared, and stood at her bedside opposite Dunya, I saw that the papers were covered with my handwriting-Mary had read my diary entry about Zsuzsa's revelations.

I lowered my eyes from that stricken, knowing gaze, heartbroken to think I had again caused my wife such misery. Neither of us said a word because of Dunya; we did not have to. The tale was told by Mary's loving, horrified eyes.

Kohl stepped beside me and said cheerfully to Dunya, "Young miss, you seem very tired and pale yourself. Go and sleep. I can watch your mistress."

She lowered her eyes shyly, embarra.s.sed at having been noticed, but her voice was resolute as she answered, "No, sir. You are a guest of this house. It is my duty to stay awake and help my mistress and the baby."

Kohl considered this, then nodded indulgently. "Well, then, let me give you a tonic to make you strong."

For a moment she brightened, and seemed on the verge of glad acceptance; and then her eyes dulled in the same horrid manner they had when she had seen V., and her expression s.h.i.+fted to one of suspicion. "Thank you, sir, but I am strong enough."

He shrugged and said good-naturedly, "As you wish. But I shall prepare a tonic for your mistress," and set his bag upon the credenza at the wall nearest the foot of the bed. His back was to us, and neither I nor the others could see what he was doing; and then he turned towards us, smiling, and walked swiftly up to the side of the bed where Dunya sat.

She suspected nothing, but was studying with concern and puzzlement her tearful mistress. Kohl leaned over the bed as if to administer some drug to Mary, but at the last instant turned and clapped a handkerchief over Dunya's nose and mouth.

She rose at once to her feet, and released a m.u.f.fled cry; above the handkerchief, her eyes were wide with indignant surprise. But within seconds, they closed, and she sagged, unconscious, in Kohl's strong, solid arms.

"Do not hurt her!" Mary cried. "She cannot help what has happened." In her distress, she clutched my hand, and at last allowed the tears to flow; I cried, too, and we wept for a time while Kohl softly set the sleeping girl upon the floor.

He returned swiftly to Mary's side, and soothed, "She is unharmed; she will merely sleep for some hours."

"Mary," I said, "you and the baby must go at once with the doctor. It's the only hope I have of keeping you safe."

"You cannot stay!" Aghast, she struggled to sit; the sleeping infant in her arm stirred. Kohl gently but firmly guided her back against the pillows.

"If you read that"-I nodded at the papers piled in her lap-"you know that he will do nothing to harm me. I can distract him until you are safe. When the time is right, I will join you."

Despite her weakness, she spoke fiercely. "Knowing your life is no longer in danger is little comfort; he will stop at nothing to corrupt you, and more than your life will be lost."

I ran a hand over her hot forehead and smoothed back her damp hair. "Mary... you are no longer safe with me."

"Perhaps not," she said. "Perhaps he will kill me. I no longer care what becomes of me, so long as I am with you. But I won't lose both my husband and son.

"Vlad knows that he has no power over you save through me and the baby. You won't be able to hold him here; he will go after us at once-for only so long as we are alive and in his reach can he blackmail you.

"I cannot let him destroy you because of us. You must accept this; you must be brave. You are my husband and I will not abandon you. I will remain with you until you are free of the curse."

I turned my face away from her, unwilling to let her see the grief there, for I knew what she said was true. If I sent her and the child away together, V. would follow- with, I feared, terrible consequences. It mattered not whether I accompanied them.

But the same horrors would befall them if they remained.

There seemed no solution to our little family's plight. Even so, at that moment, revelation descended: I saw with magical clarity what had to be done, though I could not bring myself to give it voice, knowing the unspeakable pain it would inflict on the one nearest my heart.

Yet she was strong; I turned back towards her as she said with bitterly poignant sweetness: "But we both want our son to be free. I believe G.o.d sent this man to deliver our son from evil. I trust him." She nodded at the stranger is she spoke, her pale face radiating such serenity and grace that he was clearly moved, for he knelt at her side and gazed on her with unmasked admiration.

"Madam," he said, and laid his great broad hand upon the small frail one she used to hold the child. "May I prove worthy of that trust. Your courage is remarkable; only name what you require, and it shall be yours."

"Will you help us?" she asked, echoing the question I had asked him in the strigoi's inner sanctum.

And again Kohl promptly replied, in his unwavering ba.s.s voice, "Yes."

Thus were our fates decided. I could do nothing but kiss the palm of my wife's hand, and grip it tightly as we made the plans that broke our hearts.

Within the hour we had abandoned the castle, taking with us only the most basic necessities in the event we survived. I directed the stranger to the north, while we took the more obvious escape route to the southwest, towards Bistritz. By then it was late afternoon; the rain had ceased, but the air was damp and cool. Dark clouds still filled the sky, transforming day into the gloom of premature twilight. The tall trees were hung with raindrops, recalling another time, another Stefan. I had dreamt of my brother on my re-entry into this dark forest; I thought of him now as we fled. And of Shepherd, whom we had trusted, but who proved to have the heart of a wolf.

I drove the caleche, Father's Colt tucked beneath my waistband as protection against wolves. Mary lay behind me in the pa.s.senger's seat, reclining on pillows and covered by wool blankets, with a small swaddling bundle held tenderly at her breast.

We had but an hour before sunset. By then the stranger would cross running water, which Mary told me rendered the vampire unable to follow, save in his coffin or at the slack of the tide.

But because of our chosen route, my wife and I would not reach the nearest stream for some two hours. It was a danger we willingly accepted, so that the other carriage might be safe.

Still, I was seized by the same panic I had felt twenty years before, as a five-year-old running through the rain-drenched forest in search of my brother. I calmed myself by calling out to Mary. I feared she might begin to haemorrhage-a possibility the stranger had warned of, but for which he had also provided instruction.

She answered weakly, but with encouragement that all was well. And so I drove, forcing the horses as hard as they could go, grimacing at each b.u.mp in the uneven roadway and glancing over my shoulder at Mary, who bore it all in silence, but was pale and tight-lipped with pain as she clutched the bundle more tightly to her bosom.

After a time, the forest gave way to village-where I gave one final glance at Masika Ivanovna's little house and the church graveyard-and then to forest again as we headed towards the Borgo Pa.s.s. Soon the sun set, and the winding sand road narrowed until we were closed in by darkness and the black shapes of trees and distant mountains. The moon rose, limning the rain-kissed branches with silvery light.

The night brought with it more fear; I sank into the same suffocating panic I had experienced when trapped blindly with the horses and snapping wolves in the midnight forest.

Silence. All silence, save for the laboured breathing of the horses and the rumble of the earth beneath the wheels. We rode thus for the s.p.a.ce of an hour, until I dared hope we might make good our escape.And then: a howl. Distant at first, then closer, and joined by another. And another. And another.

I snapped the reins and cried out to the frightened horses to go faster, faster, knowing that it was all for naught: the salvation-giving stream lay another half hour to our west.

Still I drove, praying that the other carriage had already found deliverance by water, praying that our sacrifice should not be in vain.

The howls neared. I drew Father's revolver. As if evoked by that very action, the wolves emerged from the darkness in all directions. A pack of six rushed the caleche, attacking the screaming horses with an urgent ferocity that made Mary and I cry out as one.

At the same time, I felt pity for them, knowing that they were but V."s p.a.w.ns, as I had been-but pity could not supplant the instinct for survival. I fired, forcing my hand not to tremble, for there would be more wolves than I had bullets. Indeed, I killed one cleanly, as it caught hold of a shrieking horse's leg, only to watch two more snarling creatures spring from the darkness to take their fallen comrade's place.

And then the focus of the wolves' attack s.h.i.+fted from the quivering horses to us. As my bullet struck a yelping second, yet another emerged from the darkness and leapt up into the pa.s.senger's seat where my wife lay.

Fear and instinct rendered me mindless. I turned with preternatural swiftness and pulled the trigger in the split second before the animal sank its teeth into Mary's neck. It died with a rattling sigh, its slavering jaws open wide for the kill, and fell to her feet as she rose speechless with shock, the bundle pressed tightly to her. With revulsion, we pushed the dead creature from the carriage.

Of a sudden the wolves ceased their attack. For a few moments they paced, whining softly, then crouched in the moonlight like silent grey sphinxes encircling us, their ears p.r.i.c.ked with an odd, restless expectancy. The horses-trembling and bloodied, but neither seriously harmed-stamped and neighed fretfully. I set the gun down upon the driver's seat beside me, knowing the remaining bullet in the chamber would prove useless against the evil to come.

From out of the brooding darkness, a thin column of mist sailed out of the eastern sky, crossing over our heads and settling in front of the caleche, just within the circle of wolves.

As we watched, the mist, asparkle with glints of unearthly blue and rose light, began slowly to solidify and take on the form of a man, until at last V. himself stood before us.

He was young, raven-haired, possessed of the same dazzling, leonine beauty I had witnessed in the Impaler when my father had led me to his throne, and in those piercing evergreen eyes shone mocking contempt. At the sight of their master, the animals whimpered, and lowered their chins between their paws in unhappy obeisance.

"Arkady," he said-softly, but his voice filled the entire forest. "I had not taken you for such a fool. Did you really believe you could escape me?"

He moved towards the carriage-not by walking, but by simply looming larger in my field of vision-and stretched out his hand towards Mary, who sat, pressing the white woolen bundle to her heart. "Give him to me. Quickly! My patience was long ago spent."

My eyes at once sought Mary's, and we gazed at each other with secret triumph in the midst of our fear. She stood, and with an expression of such intense loathing as I had never before seen, hurled the bundle from the carriage at the wolves, shouting: "You will never have my child, monster! Never!" V. let go a gasp. Before he could come to himself, the nearest wolf, startled and yielding to instinct, had sunk its jaws into the soft child's blanket and shook it as though wringing a rabbit's neck. The act revealed the blanket to be empty of content, and the creature, after sniffing it with puzzlement, sat on its haunches with the blanket between its front paws.

V. turned back to stare at us, his face gleaming in the moonlight like white-hot ash, his eyes blazing with a fury that could never be a.s.suaged. "Harlot! Deceiver!" he screamed, his lips twisting to reveal sharp teeth. "Do you think you are indispensable? If not your child, then that of another woman"s-by your husband!"

And then his rage went cold, and a cruel, sensual smile played upon his red lips. "Mary, pretty Mary," he crooned, as though reciting a child's rhyme, and suddenly he stood upon the pa.s.senger's step. "Hair of gold, eyes of sapphire. You think you can deceive me, hide your baby from me; but the truth is carried on your blood. I have only to taste it..."

And he reached a finger towards her, as if to caress the skin beneath her chin. She recoiled, falling back against the seat.

"No!" I begged. "I will do anything-anything you ask. I will go to Bistritz at once, bring you a victim, help you dispose of him, have other children by other women -whatever you require. Only let her live!" I uttered those words with complete sincerity, for I no longer cared what became of my eternal soul, so long as my child and wife were safe. Now that I knew little Stefan's escape was achieved, I was willing to do whatever V. bid to save Mary's life. This I had been prepared for from the moment we fled the castle-but I could not confide it to Mary, for she would never have accepted it.

V. drew back and smiled with pleasure at this; but Mary's mouth fell open, and she cried, "Arkady, you mustn't your soul will be lost, and it will never end! He will hunt Stefan down!"

And with swift, sudden sureness, she reached forward and took my father's gun.

V. threw back his head and laughed with arrogant delight as he spread his arms, offering himself as a target. "Go ahead, my dear: Fire! Fire! And see what good it will do."

And my brave wife fired. Mary, my soul, my saviour, my beloved murderer.

Less than a second pa.s.sed before the remaining bullet struck my chest, but in that fleeting instant of time I saw my wife take aim, and looked up into her eyes. Those eyes held such love that the evil surrounding us seemed to fade into unimportance; and I smiled at her with adoration and utter joy, for I knew my life had not been cursed but blessed, blessed to have loved one who would stain her own soul to save mine.

I had not been able to speak to her of ending the covenant by taking my life, for to have done so would have amounted to suicide, and victory for the strigoi. I could do no more than leave the journal entry where she might find it, and read it; and then pray she would have the strength to do what was necessary.

She did not disappoint me.

The impact hurled me backwards from the carriage, against the horses, down amongst the wolves. The pain grew, consuming my heart, my lungs like a raging fire, but it mattered not, for my bliss, my triumph, were greater. I stared up at the black velvet sky and saw that the stars had disappeared... and knew this was not night, but the sweet darkness of approaching death.

Silence enveloped me. The world receded as, grateful, drowsy, I sank further into bliss. An eternity-or perhaps only an instant-pa.s.sed. The pleasurable stillness was rent by the screams of horses, the thunder of hoofbeats, the rumble of wheels.

And in the midst of these, a horrified cry-muted, seemingly distant, yet when I opened my eyes, I beheld V. kneeling over me, wailing in terror.

He bent low to embrace me, gathered me into his arms-and pressed his lips to my neck, softly, tenderly, as a lover might.

I groaned, tried to struggle, but my mortal wound rendered me unable to so much as avert my head. I prayed (not with words, for I was too weak to pet.i.tion with aught but my heart) that death would take me first, for even as he lingered over my neck, vision failed, and all became consuming blackness. I felt joy, victory in death, for I knew the horses had bolted, taking Mary with them. G.o.d had heard my pet.i.tion: my son and wife were safe.

Yet in the midst of the blackness came a small p.r.i.c.king pain, less intense than the fire that filled my torso, but bright and sharp and silvery, like moonlight upon water. I felt a surge of anguish-yet that wave of emotion, ere it pa.s.sed, turned sweetly sensual. My moan of dismay became one of pleasure; the agony in my chest faded, forgotten, and I yielded to the intoxicating sensation of my life blood flowing out to meet his.

I felt his deep gratification; and I felt my own thoughts sailing towards him on that crimson flow: The memory of Kohl; each detail of his broad florid face, his rounded nose, the spa.r.s.eness of his pale golden hair, the gleam of pale blue eyes beneath his spectacles.

Mary's tears, and mine, as Kohl solemnly swore to us that he would raise our child as his own, should we not survive.

These memories faded, and I knew nothing but my own pleasure. With a final burst of strength, I raised my arm and clutched the back of V."s head, pressing him deeper into my flesh.