Dracula Sequence - Thorn Part 10

Gently I eased free my deadening arm, drew open the bed curtains, and looked around the room. Someone had been in while we slept-bedroom privacy was not valued then as much as now, and anyway the curtained bed provided it. Fresh clothing of fine cloth and the latest cut had been laid out for us both, upon a pair of great wooden chests that served both to decorate the room and provide storage.

Atop a third such chest leaned paneled Magdalen, her back propped against the wall. I considered her presence, and understood from it that all my few possessions must already have been brought here from the Medici house in town. From this in turn I understood that my wife and I would be expected to avoid the city, at least while the affair at the Boccalini house was still fresh. Which seemed to make obvious sense.

Shortly after being dislodged from my shoulder, Helen had moved voluntarily in her sleep, turning on her back and pulling the cover up close under her chin. She lay with pretty pink lips parted to reveal surprisingly good teeth. Reclining with my head propped up on one hand, I studied her. I found myself turning my gaze from her flesh to the Magdalen's freshly painted face, and back again. As I have mentioned, the painting was still unfinished, but the work remaining to be done consisted of details of the woman's dress and of the background. As far as I could see, the modeled face was nothing short of absolute perfection. It was Helen, and yet was not-it seemed rather that the living face beside me had somehow failed to reach its own ideal.

That I, Vlad Drakulya, now had possession of both breathing flesh and painted image, was a fact; and the more I considered this fact the more momentous it grew, the more pregnant with a significance whose nature I could not grasp at once. Like other men of the fifteenth century, I was usually more than half ready to see omens, hidden meanings, wonders spiritual and supernatural. Even in the warm sunlight of midday.

Helen, this girl of hardly more than half my size or age, stirred in her sleep beside me. Then she turned on her side away from me, and a moment later snuggled backward till her soft flank touched me under the light cover. I forgot the painting, and moved to accomplish the one thing still necessary to seal our marriage completely in the eyes of G.o.d and man. Helen, only half awake at first, resisted me mechanically-but then, as she awoke fully, she relaxed, and even gave some evidence of enjoyment.

As soon as the first dance was over, I pulled some pillows into better position for both of us, and we lay there side by side, regarding each other and the world from a nest of greater physical comfort than either of us had lately been accustomed to.

"My bride," I meditated aloud. There was a grave expression in those dark young eyes now fixed on mine, and I was trying to fathom what might be going on behind them.

"Yes." The one-word answer somehow conveyed, I thought, her willingness to accept brides.h.i.+p as a starting point and to see where it might lead. And I was cheered by the fact that she did not seem to be a heavy talker. Reticence by day and a lack of snoring by night would count for much.

A light warm breeze was stirring the fine gauze curtains at our open window. I could hear gardeners at work not far outside. They were digging, snipping branches, sc.r.a.ping at the earth. A good male voice rose lightly in Italian song. We were a floor above ground level, secure against casual observation from outside, but from where we lay much greenery was visible. The grounds at Careggi were quite as impressive as the house. When I sat up fully in our bed and pulled its curtains farther open I could glimpse graveled walks, distant lawns being smoothed by grazing sheep, and beds of ma.s.sed flowers. There was a fountain, studded with statuary and rimmed by concentric rings of masterly stonework. All s.h.i.+mmered in late summer's warmth.

"Ah," said Helen, in a new tone. I looked and saw that she had just discovered the painting. Next moment, without pretense of modesty, she had slipped out of bed and gone to inspect it at close range.

"I wish my face was truly so," she said at last.

"But I think the artist has accurately caught your beauty." I was an experienced husband, you will recall.

"But no, this is really a marvel. I never had the chance to take such a good look at it before-I was always on the other side of it, you know, when I was posing."

"I agree, a marvel. Too bad it is unfinished."

Without turning, Helen gently waved one hand in my direction, dismissing that objection; and, certainly, the painting was essentially complete. "I think," she said in Italian, "that boy has been touched by the good G.o.d."

But my mind was turning elsewhere. The two of us had important matters to talk about, and I judged the time had come. "Helen."

A hand on one bare hip like Donatello's David, she turned her head at the new sound in my voice, and probed me with her eyes. Then slowly she returned to stand beside our bed. She took the hand that I extended to her, then paused, fingering its ring. The circlet was then still fat with gold. Helen looked at it, and at the untanned groove worn by it into my finger underneath. "You have been married before, my lord," she said.

"It will please me for my wife to call me Vlad. Particularly on such private occasions as this. Yes, I have been married. My first wife is now two years dead."

"I will pray for her soul."

"Thank you." Sooner or later, I supposed, I would be called on by Helen for some explanation of her predecessor's leap from the parapet; she would learn something of that tragedy from others even if I never brought it up. But right now I was not going to mention it.

"And you have children?"

"They are staying with relatives at present." I sighed; another subject that could wait. But Helen's question had brought back to me my grief for the son I had loved most. He was a love-child indeed, born to a favorite concubine. He had been riding with me, before my saddle, when I began that last ill-fated retreat from the Turks, the withdrawal that had degenerated into a desperate flight, and had ended for me only with my personal surrender to Matthias. During that fiasco my son had been lost, and when I spoke to Helen on that morning at Careggi, I thought him dead.

"Helen. There is a matter between us that I wish to dispose of now. I intend to speak of it this once, and then never again. Nay, let me put it this way-in future I will not even have this subject mentioned in my presence."

Of course she knew what I was bringing up; she must have known that it was coming sooner or later. Her eyes were withdrawing from me as I spoke, though they still looked in my direction. Her royal chin was lifting.

I went on in a businesslike tone: "I mean of course these shameful escapades of yours during the past few years, since you broke off your betrothal to the Sforza. The whoring and debauchery."

"You say whoring?" Some sparks flared up; she pulled her hand free with a jerk.I let her break my grip. "If 'whoring' is the wrong word," I answered coldly, "then pray instruct me, what should the right one be?"

With that I expected for a moment that she might try to strike me. But then her body sagged in weariness, and she sat down on the edge of the bed, not touching me.

Curls of dark hair hid her face.

Finally she spoke. "Men, as you know, have taken me by force. And, yes, at times I have sold myself, for food, for survival. And yes, I have known l.u.s.t for men." Helen paused, still looking away from me. "That is all I care to say."

"It is enough. More than enough, indeed. Understand that I demand no apologies, confessions, explanations, for anything that you have done up to now. All that is over, finished, wiped away completely, and I shall never reproach you with it."

I drew breath. "What I do demand concerns your conduct from this moment forward. It must be that of a model wife of exalted birth: virtuous, modest, obedient.

In every detail beyond reproach."

Helen had lifted her face enough for me to see her eyes under the dark hair; but I could not read them. She gave me an inspection that went on for what seemed a long time, and still I could not guess what she was thinking. When she spoke it was only to ask a question that seemed to me insultingly irrelevant. "How long do you mean for us to stay here, in this house?"

My hand seized her wrist; if she had not been Matthias's sister, it would have taken her by the throat. "Have you been listening to me, woman? I want to know that what I say is understood." My voice was still not loud; I have never been one for shouting much.

Helen gasped and leaned forward, easing the pressure on her forearm. "Yes, my lord Vlad-I have heard and will obey. I meant my wedding vows-every bit as seriously as you meant yours." When I released her arm she sighed, and closed her eyes, and rubbed it gently.

"Then I will gladly proceed to answer your question. I believe our hosts will be happy to entertain us here for a day or two. Meanwhile some other arrangements will doubtless be made. It will be suggested that we might like to travel, leaving the region of Florence, at least for a time, lest our presence here become known and be an embarra.s.sment. The news of our wedding is doubtless already on its way to your royal brother-our royal brother, now. Perhaps we will go to Pisa, or Genoa, and wait there for a while to know his pleasure."

"But I thought . . . you mean it is possible that we will not soon go back to Hungary?"

"It would please you to remain in Italy?"

She hesitated. "Yes. Yes, it would."

"I would say that it is more than possible." And Helen appeared relieved to hear this news.

As I had predicted, the two of us spent the remainder of that day and all the next as honored guests at the Medici villa. We rested, and did what newlyweds in all times and places are supposed to do. Our hosts called upon me to demonstrate some tricks of fencing, for which they offered appreciative applause. We joined them in conversation, the skill of which I believe I first began to appreciate when in that household; and in games, and music, and in listening to the poetry of Lorenzo and others. On our first evening at Careggi I had the pleasure of meeting the beautiful Lucrezia, Piero's devoted and intelligent wife, who looked much too young to be the mother of grim-faced, beard-stubbled Lorenzo. You can see her beauty still, in the face of Ghirlandajo's St. Elizabeth.

I remember Lucrezia talking alone with Helen, at great length, while I was telling Lorenzo as much as I could about King Matthias's artistic patronage. In particular Lorenzo wanted to hear more of the royal book collection. Later that night I could see that Helen had been weeping; but I chose not to question her about it. Experienced husband or not, perhaps I made a great mistake.

On the morning of our third day at Careggi, as I had more or less expected, my bride and I were cordially invited by our hosts to visit a house they owned in Pisa.

Pisa was a small city at no very great distance from Florence, and at the time under Florentine-and therefore Medici-political domination. We were loaded with more presents, and furnished with an escort for the journey.

The house, when we reached it, proved to be no more than a comfortable cottage; no doubt it looked smaller than it was because we came to it from the opulence of a palace. Yet I was content with its modest comforts, considering it only a way station on the road to power and glory; and it seemed to me that Helen was content also.

She had recovered from whatever had made her weep, and was playing the role of devoted wife to my fullest satisfaction.

A few weeks later, when autumn was well under way-it was an extremely lovely autumn in Italy, as I recall-a message at last reached me from King Matthias. The royal blessing was p.r.o.nounced upon our union-rather perfunctorily, I thought, at no great length and with no special warmth. Then to business. I was to join the king and his army in Bosnia as soon as I could possibly do so, and that was that. Reading between the lines of this missive, I felt sure that the campaign was not going as well as had been hoped. In fact it seemed likely to me that a military disaster of some magnitude might have been in the making when the king wrote; fine considerations of peace and harmony in the officer corps no longer prevented his using another good field commander.

Well, I was ready. A honeymoon idyll in flowered idleness now and again was enjoyable, but I was basically a soldier. I made immediate plans for my departure for the distant front on the morning after the letter arrived; and, following a terse hint in the king's message, for Helen's departure from Pisa on the same day as mine. She would go back to Florence, where she would remain under Medici care. Eventually she would be sent under escort with some traders to Buda, there to remain till I should be free to join her.On what was to have been the morning when this planned temporary separation began, I was awakened by a servant crying that something was amiss. Helen was already gone, though not with any Medici escort. On the pillow beside mine, my own bare dagger had been laid, its point aimed at my head.

Chapter Thirteen.

Thorn in his timeless mode of horror had no choice but to watch the centimeter- by-centimeter progress of the wavefront of the blast as it rose toward him along the steering column. The shockwave of it was so intense that it distorted vision like thick gla.s.s. He could watch it coming, but he could not get away in time; not even he could move that fast. Nor were his extranormal powers able to dissolve his solid flesh to mist quickly enough to allow him to avoid the onrus.h.i.+ng pain and shock. He could think, and, thinking, doubted that the blast was going to end his life; it was too artificial a thing to be able to do that. He would survive, though with what injuries he did not know. Yes, he would survive.

As for Mary . . . if he could not save himself, it was even more hopeless that in these first microseconds of the expanding bomb blast he should be able to do anything for her. He had not even time to move his eyes for a last look at her, much less reach out an arm in even the feeblest gesture of protection.

The only thing that he could do, he did: willed himself to change into a form intangible. He did this with all possible speed, yet the change did not even begin until his feet and the lower portions of his legs had already been engulfed by the blast-wave. A fraction of a microsecond after his eyes reported the immersion of his feet, his vampire's nerves already had brought the pain of the fire and force enveloping them to eat at his brain like acid.

The dissolution of his solid shape began to ease the pain, though not before it had risen as far as his lower torso. Something hard and mechanical, yes, the steering column itself, came spearing, raping its way right through his melting abdomen, reaching for his fading spine. His last clear sight of the blast through solid human eyes showed him the walnut-grained instrument panel exploding with an awful velocity toward his face. It is not real wood, he had the time to think. It cannot kill me even if I am not fast enough to get away. But he was gone before the panel struck.

Ten yards outside the vehicle, the blast-wave already past, and the first surge of secondary flame beginning, Thorn gathered his mist-shape back into that of man. He reformed his body as quickly as he could, despite the renewed pain brought by the re-created nerves, and the consciousness of real injury done to his feet and legs. In solid shape he could see more clearly, and act with greater force.

When his vision cleared, the roof of the Blazer was completely gone, as was the hood, with new fire blooming where they had been. Some portion of the explosion directed downward had lifted the front of the heavy vehicle clear of the ground, and it was now in the process of falling back. Debris still sang like shrapnel through the air around Thorn's ears.Before the blasted wreck had fallen back again on its four burning tires, Thorn leaped toward it. His motion began on two feet and ended on four, beside the wreck; instantly a second bound on wolf-fast legs bore him, armoured in thick fur, straight through the flames where doors and windows had once been.

Mary was no longer there. Her mortal form, or what was left of it, had been blown clear of the vehicle on its far side.

A wolf's teeth closed on her hair, and on what was left of the collar of her s.h.i.+rt.

She was dragged away from the fire, to a distance where its flames were no longer hot enough to burn.

One of Mary's arms was gone, off at the shoulder. Both of her legs were twisted, lying at wrong angles like those of some great discarded doll. Still her eyes were open, and alive. They were blankly blue, familiar eyes in a blasted face from which most of the lower jaw had been ripped away. In man-form again now, Thorn crouched over her. He must have looked half-dead himself, with his clothing blown to rags and his skin covered with the black residue of the explosion. But though his nervous system still rang with pain he could tell now that his own injuries were minor, a result of organic matter in his own clothing impacting his body under the force of the blast: the leather in his shoes, the cotton in some of his clothing. His wounds would quickly heal.

But Mary.

It was obvious from the first look at her that she was not going to survive.

Unless . . . there was one desperate chance to take.

Thorn closed his eyes, and willed the double fang-growth in his own upper jaw.

Then he crouched lower over the girl, bending till his lips touched her charred flesh.

In a moment he had tasted of her living blood. Then, kneeling erect again, he ripped open the burnt remnants of his own garments at the chest, and with one taloned fingernail nicked his own blackened skin. Then he lifted the girl like a nursling babe toward his wound.

He tried, tried desperately, to give Mary his own vampire's blood to drink. With her jaw gone, her own blood drowning her, it was impossible.

She never drank the blood that might have given her a chance for a transformed life. Yet still it took long minutes for her death to be complete.

"Who's it from, Bill?" Judy Southerland followed the back of Bill Bird's blue s.h.i.+rt through the sunlight of highland New Mexico, along the pine-needle path that led from her cabin, past the schoolroom-studio where Bill taught and worked at sculpture, to the lodge that housed the school director's office.

Bill turned his head back briefly. He wasn't handsome, not by Judy's standards anyway, but very nice. "He said he was your brother-in-law. But then he said to be sure not to scare you, that the family's all okay."

"I see. Thanks." But Judy was sure she would have felt it had there been something serious wrong with Mom or Dad or Kate or Johnny; she felt things like that, even at a distance, and always had. There had been a bad dream last night, she suddenly remembered. She frowned, but the content of the dream escaped her now.

Brown-haired, st.u.r.dy, never in her young life a runaway, she walked wearing jeans and plaid s.h.i.+rt into the director's office. The outer room was otherwise unoccupied at the moment, maybe so she could take what sounded like an important call in privacy. The walls here, as in most of the other camp buildings, were of thick logs, the interior surfaces cut flat, heavily and neatly c.h.i.n.ked. After that the walls had been sealed with a glossy finish through which the wood shone yellow. With walls like these it was possible for life indoors to be as civilized, as cultured, as anyone might wish, even amid mountains verging on wilderness. The fanciest interior furnis.h.i.+ngs did not look out of place. Fritz Scholder prints hung here in the office, along with the obligatory Navajo rugs.

Judy picked up the phone, meanwhile smiling rea.s.suringly at Bill, who had remained hovering just in the doorway. "h.e.l.lo," she said. Outside the screened window, open on this warm late spring afternoon, tall pines waved in a breeze.

"Judy? This is Joe. Kate and everybody here are all okay, it's nothing like that."

"So Bill said."

"But there's something I still thought I ought to talk to you about."

Judy glanced at her watch. Mid-afternoon in Chicago, one time zone away. Joe must be calling during his duty hours at the station; for him to do that, it must be something important indeed. She knew now who it was about; the feeling, though not the manifest content, of last night's nightmare came back in full force. She felt no surprise; as if, on some interior level, she had already known. "I didn't think it was the family, Joe."

"You see," said Joe's voice through the long-distance buzz, "I got a call just a little while ago from the Phoenix police. A vehicle was blown up with a bomb out there in the desert last night, and at least one person killed."

He can't be dead, I would have known at once if he were dead. "I follow you."

"They were trying to trace the man who had rented this vehicle. He had also occupied a certain hotel room out there, from which room a long-distance call was made to me here in Chicago. Judy, I think you know which man I'm talking about."

"Suppose I do." Bill was still hanging in the doorway; no doubt courtesy was urging him to leave, but something he saw in Judy's face was evidently compelling him to hang around. As soon as the call was over he would offer to try to be of help.

"Don't be defensive, Judy, I'm trying to help.""I know you are, Joe."

"Have you seen him, since you've been out there? Have you heard anything from him? It could be very important."

It certainly could, to me. "Why? Are the Phoenix police after him?"

"Not in that sense. At least I don't know that they are. They're naturally trying to find out where he is, after his car blew up, and a young woman who must have been sitting in it was killed. There could be some possible connection with that Seabright murder and kidnapping case out there a few months ago. You've heard of that."

"I've heard of that. And about What's-his-name Seabright's missing painting just the other day. They haven't found the aircraft yet. But I haven't heard from the man you're talking about."

"Good. I didn't have any reason to think you might have, just a hunch. For your sake, Judy, I just don't want you to get involved in any way."

"I see." Why was she so angry? Joe meant well.

"Now if he does contact you, for any reason, will you please for G.o.d's sake just give me a call?"

"I suppose I could do that." She could hear her own voice still chilly and upset.

She was really angry with herself, Judy supposed, because she had almost missed completely being aware of how much trouble he was in. Might he be badly hurt? She couldn't tell. Once before when he was hurt, to the point of death, she had been able to help. Now . . . the contact between them had evidently faded, without her being aware of it.

Phoenix. But at the moment she had no feeling for where he was.

Bill still fidgeted in the doorway, watching her. Good. Maybe she would need some help from someone. She smiled at him.

Joe's voice said: "I didn't tell Kate I was going to call you on this. And of course I didn't tell your folks."

"Of course." Judy's parents and brother had no idea of the truth shared by Joe and Kate-that vampires existed, and that Judy had had one as a lover.

"I just thought it was my duty to make sure that you don't get involved in this.

You being out there in the same part of the country and all."