"Run!" he cried, putting every ounce of strength he possessed into the scream. For one long second, she seemed to acknowledge him, to hear. She turned slightly, letting her gaze return to his eyes, and in that moment he knew fear. It was not the exhilarating fear of battle, or the fear that riding a horse through the woods at full gallop might bring. Those fears he knew and reveled in -- this was unclean. It was a fear so deeply rooted, so all-encompassing, that he had to force himself to continue to breathe. The weight of it pushed down upon his breast, punishing, grinding into his soul.
The creature paid him no attention, and Myrna's gaze returned almost immediately to her attacker. Miraculously, she managed to rise to her knees as it approached, then to stagger to her feet as it reached out with clawed, shriveled hands to take hers in its grasp.
Vlad wanted to scream again, to scream a negation, either of the scene before him, or of the knowledge he would now take to his grave, the fear that had been thrust upon him. He knew this creature, though until that moment he'd thought it legend alone. He knew the vrykolakes, the vampyr. He knew, and wished to the depths of his soul that he did not.
The thing was drawing Myrna closer, bringing her against itself in a parody of an embrace, or some demented dance. Myrna did not resist. If anything, she seemed drawn to it, entranced. She moved as a lover, now, not a victim, and the fear had melted from her features, leaving them slack and lethargic, though her eyes were as wide as ever.
His heart cried out to her, to what she had been. He was helpless in his cell, would probably be so in the courtyard, and she was beyond his words. It was like watching the bizarre courtship ritual of some gigantic insect, one that fed, like the spider, on its mate.
He saw the thing dip its head in a lightning strike, saw Myrna's head yanked roughly back by the hair and heard her tiny cry. It had her by the throat, fangs ripping through soft flesh, both arms holding her in a tight embrace as she squirmed weakly. The thing drank her down in moments, great heaving, gulping draughts of her, pumping her dry with the enormous strength of its arms.
Vlad retched violently, falling to his knees, then clawed his way back up the wall, tearing skin from his fingers and breaking nails with the effort. He rose without bothering to wipe the bile from his face or clothes, forced himself to watch. He was beyond fear now, beyond anger, even. He was recording each moment, each emotion, for revenge. He was etching the scene into the fabric of his psyche. He was setting the course of his destiny.
The thing had stopped its convulsive feeding. It still held Myrna's cold form close to it, but almost tenderly. Slowly, she was lowered to the ground, and it turned again, facing the window, seeking Vlad's gaze.
Again, his heart skipped a beat. It was no hideous ghoul he faced -- nor was it quite human. The thing still wore its tattered clothing, draped over thin shoulders like the wrappings of a scarecrow, and yet there was no comparison. Where the hair had been patchy white shocks, barely clutching the sides of a ruined skull, blond hair had sprouted, long and lush. Where yellowed, glowing eyes had stared out moments before, deep grey orbs, flecked with ice, called out to him.
The mincing, dancing steps had become even and sure, and the thing was advancing on the window again, reaching out a long, slender arm, gesturing for Vlad to come near. He took a half step forward, nearly reaching for the bars again, nearly reaching through them, then stopped. Sweat ran from him in small rivers, coating his skin, soaking his clothing, but he did not move closer. He fought.
Beyond the thing, a broken lily against the dark, shadowed ground, he could see Myrna's prone form. She did not move, and her skin, if anything was paler than the white, filmy gown that she wore. He latched onto the sight of her, the memory of the way she'd been the last time they'd been together, and he lurched away from the window.
You will come to me, Vlad Dracula, the voice trailed after him, soft, sibilant, provocative. In some time, in some way, we will be bound, you and I. By the blood.
Then there was silence. Nothing. He did not feel the chilling dread that had accompanied the thing, nor had it made any discernible sound in leaving. He remained where he was, leaning heavily against the wall beside the window, heaving in immense lungfuls of air and expelling them as quickly as he could, trying to wash the taint of the thing's touch, the memory of its eyes, from his soul.
A long time later, he managed to turn his face toward the window again. Myrna was gone. There was no trace in the court of her body, or of her assailant. Nothing. It was as empty as the shadows that filled it were black.
Vlad laid back on the rough, wooden cot and placed his arm across his eyes. A weariness was creeping over him that overcame even the discomfort of the cell, the chill of the air and the weight of memory on his heart. Closing his eyes, he passed from consciousness, falling into a nightmare world of claws and yellowed skin, fangs and crumpled flowers that became women, then blossomed and flew into the night on wings of wicked laughter.
When he'd awakened, he found the sultan there, watching him from the other side of the room and waiting. He sat upright in a swift motion, rising to his feet and coming within a foot of the older man before he stopped. He knew the ice of anger was in his eyes, that his own death might be imminent; it didn't matter. He was through with this game, this horror.
"Now you have seen," the sultan said simply. "They are here, Vlad, many of them, and they feed in the night, despite what we might wish. With some we have a pact -- we don't hunt them, they don't hunt us. We provide sustenance when it is scarce, or when we have a suitable sacrifice."
"The girl had done nothing," Vlad grated. "You should have shooed your dog of a prince out there -- at least he earned the fate."
The sultan's eyes went hard for just an instant, but his control was phenomenal. "I am not here to banter back and forth with you, young Vlad. I need you as the leader of your people, and I need your support -- and theirs -- to continue my own rule. What I have done is simply to ensure that this is possible.
"There are those among us who would do away with the vrykolakes, given their way. Your church would certainly do so, but it is not so simple. Some among them have done me great service, service that has gone beyond the confines of death itself. A man such as yourself can see the beauty of such service . . . the honor of it.
"These would come for you, if I bid it, young Vlad. This is my lesson to you. Remember this night, remember the eyes that held you and the beauty of the death dance. They will come for you if you fail me. You will be one of them, not dead, not alive, no salvation for your soul possible. You will do as I bid, or you will never die . . . that is a promise to chill even your hot, Wallachian heart."
A breath passed in which, if the sultan had uttered another sound, consequences be damned, he would have died. Vlad knew the message was clear in his eyes, and he saw the momentary quiver in his captor's smile. Very slight, very quick, but no less real for all that.
"I will do as you say, sire," he answered calmly, "because I believe it best for my people. I will live as my father lives, doing as you bid, as long as what you bid serves the common good. You have spoken of honor -- it is obviously not a concept you cherish, or you would know that, horrible as your threats have been, dizzying as the reality of these creatures is to my heart and mind, I will not be your slave. Do not think to make of me your dog, sultan."
"I would never consider such a thing," the sultan smiled. "Go to your quarters, Prince Vlad. Clean yourself and get some wine. Find another girl. Just see that you do not forget . . . wherever you go they can find you. There is no escape."
Vlad knew that there was no way that he could share this experience with anyone. He could tell his brother, little Radu, but Radu was weak. He had always been the weak one, and if he believed the tale at all, it would only add to that weakness. He might tell his father, were they to meet again in this life, but to what purpose?
So he had an enemy. A new, very powerful enemy. An enemy that dropped from the shadows and drank the very life from y
our blood. An enemy that he did not know. Of these facts, only the last was intolerable. Only the last could he do anything about.
Without a word, he slipped past the sultan and out of the cell, being careful not to go near any portal or window that looked as if it might skirt the border of that courtyard. It was daylight outside, and yet he did not feel as though he could face those bent and twisted trees. Nor did he feel the urge to approach the spot where Myrna had lain, or to search for her remains. What he wanted he could not have -- freedom from the memory of what had happened in the night. Freedom from those eyes, those dripping fangs and that hypnotic voice.
* * *
One of the corpses slid further down its stake with a sickening lurch, the sound bringing him back to the present. The horror of the memory lingered -- transcended coherent thought. He knew the Vyrkolakes now, knew them as no man living could know them, as no man living should know them. He felt their pain, knew where and when they would strike before they knew themselves. He had lived and breathed their lore, and he knew the ways of their deaths.
He had not kept his word to the sultan, as he'd known, in the end, he could not. He'd learned more of the church and its God as he matured, learned more of love, war, and hate than he'd believed possible. He'd learned death best of all.
Turks. Any of them could be the one, any of them could be the demon set to stalk him, to drag him into the realms of nightmare and blood. Any of them. He had no idea how many he'd killed, how many of his own people, seen through fevered eyes in moments of rage, that he'd added to that total. The stake was the only sure way, the only absolute in any of it. He could take no chances, could afford no weakness. If he were caught alone, or unaware, he would be theirs, and evil as he himself had become in their eyes, his people and those of the church needed him . . . his strength, his wisdom in battle -- his ruthlessness.
He heard a creak, felt droplets of blood dripping down his neck toward his collar, and he turned. It was the woman. She refused to die -- refused to meet her maker. As he watched, his eyes widened and his heart tripped like the drums at a festival, faster and faster, running out to become a trembling in his arms and fingers.
The woman was not sliding down the stake with the force of gravity. She was not sliding anywhere. She was reaching out, one hand after the other, and she was dragging herself down the pole. He watched in dark fascination as she struggled, heard the sickening wrench of the stake as she forced herself downward, clawing ever nearer, the madness in her eyes turning to a glow of purest hatred, and something -- something deeper and older, more chilling.
"Do you . . . not know me, Vlad Dracula?" she hissed through blackened, twisted lips. Her words slid like sand over yellowed teeth -- elongated teeth. Her hands became claws and her progress more pronounced, until at last her feet came to rest on the ground before him. Placing them firmly, she gave a great wrench, and the stake came free. Almost contemptuously, she dragged it the final two feet through her torso and at last tossed it aside.
"No," he said softly. "No. The stake should end your life -- your death-life."
"It would be so," she hissed, taking a step nearer, "were I only what you believe me to be, Vlad Tepes, son of the Dragon. You truly do not recognize me, do you?"
His head was shaking back and forth, perhaps in answer, perhaps in negation only. His own hands were white with tension as they pressed into the arms of his chair -- his crude wooden throne -- readying his body to leap free, to run like the wind.
With a cackle void of mirth, the woman snatched at one of the bodies that hung near where she stood, ripping it downward. As the blood burst free of the corpse in her hands, she gulped it down greedily, huge, heaving swallows that inhaled more than was possible, more than he could believe. And she changed.
At first it was subtle, the lessening of the twist in her back, the glossy, gossamer soft hair sprouting -- materializing? -- where only grey patches had clung, a firming of the muscles. Vlad tried to send the message to his limbs that would carry him away, tried to galvanize his frame, to move as he had moved so many times, to fight yet again.
She turned. It was her. No mistaking it. Age and years had spun their web over the features of young Prince Vlad, but Myrna was ageless, beautiful. What had been bright and fresh, naive and endearing, was now tragically beautiful. A woman's eyes -- or a demon's -- stared from beneath arched brows. Her lips twisted in a smile so powerful, so erotic and enticing, that he felt himself growing hard, even as his blood ran to ice.
"Oh," she sighed, almost coquettishly, "you remember me now?"
He felt himself falling backward again, into time, into memories that battered at his sanity. He did not run. There was no power left to his limbs, no will to resist pounding through his veins. He stood, and he waited. That much dignity he maintained, though the urge to fling himself forward into her arms was ripping at his control.
"You?" He'd meant it as a statement, meant to fill his words with hatred, with bile. They came out soft, gentle, familiar as an old nightmare. It seemed so right, somehow, after years of fear, with lost lives and broken dreams scattered behind him like the dead shells on an endless beach. She had wanted only him. She had chosen him, over Ahmed, over life.
"There was nothing I could do," he said finally. "I was prisoner, held against my will. I could not come to you, and you would not listen when I called to you."
"Oh, but I heard you," she laughed darkly. "I heard you, heard your terror, even through my own. Would you have truly come to me, Vlad? Would you have forsaken the light and life for me? I think not, but I'd like to dream it so."
As she spoke, she moved closer. He trembled, but he did not turn away, nor did he approach her. She was lovelier than he remembered. Her figure was the same, and yet somehow the curves had sharpened, become more voluptuous in their very angularity. Her skin, always fair, was pale like the moonlight.
He remembered his last image of her, a crumpled flower, wilted and torn. Torn for his benefit, to teach him a lesson, only, not for anything she herself had done. As her breath wafted over him, drowning him in the scent of death and decay, he imagined that he smelled the aroma of lilies -- decadent, damp and rotten, lilies long on the grave, and yet sweet.
As she took him into her embrace, drawing him close and piercing him, even then, he pulled back -- but not far. "How?" he asked. "The stake, it should have killed you . . . it should have brought you peace. How?"
"It is not the stake, Vlad," she whispered, letting her fangs brush once more against the skin of his throat, "it is the sunlight. You staked me, but at sunset -- when my powers wax strong. You have killed many, but few Vyrkolakes...very few, and all by daylight. You didn't even know them when they passed."
"Besides," she continued, running long, slender fingers through his hair, "I could never have left without you. From the moment I heard the sultan's promise, I knew it would be my charge to come to you, to bring you home. You have been mine all along, Vlad Dracula, mine and the night's."
He closed his eyes then as she grew silent and moved back to his throat, holding him with tenderness and strength beyond his wildest imaginings. He felt himself flowing out and through her, felt his senses dying and awakening at once . . . felt at last the chill, final touch of death -- and beyond.
As the moon rose to her throne, the blood of Vlad the Impaler joined that of his final victims, soaking into the earth and disappearing. A lone figure walked away over the nearby hills. She was slight, slender and willowy, and her hair blew about her like the petals of a dark, blossoming flower. In her arms, like a child, she cradled a still form, carrying it away into legend.
Against His Bitter Judgment
The old church was run down, so decrepit that the bricks had begun to crumble about its base and the mold to grow like dirty green veins among the rocks. I felt a certain affinity to the decay, to the rot. It was a fitting place for my worship, and for that of those few misguided souls who wandered within its confines, seeking my guidance and my help
— God help them, seeking absolution for sins that pale to flickering candle-flames before the blazing evil of my own.
My vow is older than my sin. I serve God, in whatever manner I may, though my very existence stretches more closely now to Cain, son of Adam, and the demoness Lilith than to any spawn of Eden. I serve the Catholic church because, though warped and corroded from within, it is still closest that remains to the world I left behind, to that from which I was born — born for the second time.
It was not the first time I’d tried to spread His message, not the first time I’d found the faith around me lacking, the power of my own soul laughable. Visions of Masada slipped in and out through my brain, always, visions of misguided faith — of a community, and a brother, now gone to dust — now weighing upon my soul. Still I believed, and I waited. Still I preached his gospel from lips accused of betrayal. Still I waited.
Seldom has my reading of the mass reached more than half a dozen ears on any given day — almost never have I seen the same face twice. Even given this, I know I have reached a few. It is a gift, honed by centuries of practice. It is all that is left to me. When I speak of the love of God, of sacrifice and sin, I know of what I speak.
That day I spoke of resurrection. This I know, too, more thoroughly than most. I was speaking of the return of the son of Man to the heavens, of his promise to return, bearing the gift of eternal life. It is an old story, an old promise, I await it’s arrival with every ounce of the soul I still hope to lay claim to in the end. I spoke of resurrection, and one listened.
He was thin — bringing forth memories, visions of Lazarus, staggering from his grave, the hunger of demons in his eyes and his flesh crawling with worms from his days in the arms of death. He watched me as I moved about the altar, watched with an intensity that burned through my shoulder blades and sizzled along my flesh. I ignored him, reciting the mass in its original Latin, delivering the message that is the focus of my existence. He died, he rose, he shall come again.
A Taste of Blood and Roses Page 12
