by Hall, Ian
To my chagrin, despite my errant attack, Ivan placed me behind him as if to defend me. I opened my lips in defiance but he quietly shushed me. “I will distract him,” he hissed quietly, “follow quickly on my heels, Valérie Lidowitz.”
Then he turned and launched himself at Tomas.
It seemed to be all or nothing. Gripping my knives tightly, I sprung after him. “You die tonight!” I cried through gritted teeth.
I hardly registered Ivan’s demise, I felt so caught up in my own charge. My last step was on Ivan’s back as I neared the bald Cossack.
I hit Tomas full on, two knives against two curving Cossack swords. I didn’t even get close, he swatted away my first attacks, then for an unknown reason whirled round, leaving his exposed back to my attack.
“The bitch bites my arse!” he roared swinging at Finch, now visible to his front.
I raised my arms to strike. Three ribs down.
“Three!” I cried.
And as I began the downward plunge towards the third rib, the world around me exploded.
Blasts from both sides, from below the floor, and from above the collapsing ceiling threw sharp wooden shards and burning oil everywhere.
Staggering from the detonations, my body reeled from many pains, almost falling. Smoke billowed, I couldn’t see my own hands, never mind attack anyone.
I pulled four of the sharpened sticks from my body, my hands feeling the exposed ends.
Smoke and flame filled the room, and I fell to the ground.
Aftermath
Theresa Scholes, March 1959, Tomas’s House
I awoke to firemen lifting me. The building had somehow caught fire and blazed harshly in the dark night. Two heavily gloved hands under my arms, two on my ankles. They passed so close to the heat from the building, it almost scorched my skin.
“Thanks,” I mumbled, but then became a little nervous when initially they carried me nearer the conflagration behind the main door. I mean, they couldn’t intend to throw my into the fire, could they?
Holy mother of God!
As they swung me to give my body the momentum to be cast inside, I twisted out of their grip, then shimmered invisible. With an incredulous look behind me, I limped away. Whoever was in charge wanted no witnesses.
I wondered who’d made it out, but walking round the building I gave no thought of going in to see. I smelled kerosene in the breeze, and immediately knew the source of the high temperature burning.
Three fire trucks stood outside the house, yet none had their red lights on, and none had deployed any means of extinguishing the blaze. I shouted Valérie’s name as I rounded the building, then came across a group of survivors huddling behind a shed, away from the flames. Here at least they seemed to take care of survivors, as at least six ambulance personnel attended the wounded. As I neared, I shimmered visible again, recognizing the Helsing from beside me in the room.
Well, when I say recognize, it was a loose term. His arm and shoulder, and part of his face had been burnt, and two guys with red crosses on their arms were spraying a white cream on his injuries. I nodded to him. “Are these the only ones that got out?” I asked.
The man nodded. “Napalm,” he croaked. “They hit us with napalm. It must have been rigged from inside, you know, rigged to explode.”
It all suddenly made sense. Georgie had men in the construction team; they could have rigged the charges. And napalm was the worst thing in a closed space; a sticky-glue bomb, guaranteed to cling to even vampires.
And the people in charge had detonated the charges at the very moment when they thought those inside were failing at our job; just as Tomas proved unbeatable.
“I got Amos!” the man croaked.
For some reason I grinned. “Yes you did. I can vouch for that; two shots in his side.”
“See, she seen it.” He twisted despite the ambulance guys protestations, and held out his good hand. “What’s your name, as a witness?”
“Theresa Scholes,” I shook his hand carefully. I smelled vinegar all around him.
“Marvin Knight,” he said, looking at me carefully after my introduction. “Vampire hunter, from Unicorps.”
I remembered the sign back in the foyer in Gregor, seemingly so long distant, but actually less than 24 hours ago.
“Hi Marvin,” the grin slid from my face. “Theresa Scholes, Căluşari vampire, and proud.”
His face went horribly serious for a moment. “You attacked Tomas on your own. You got two of those knives into his back.” He swallowed, even though it pained him. “I’m pleased to meet you.”
I walked away, conscious that the conversation had died behind me, all eyes on my retreating form.
Valérie Lidowitz, March 1959, Tomas’s House
The initial blasts tumbled me into a wall, my body peppered with wooden shards. As I pulled them from my body, I saw regularity in the shards. As my senses reeled I recognized them for what they were: vampire shrapnel. For some reason, no-one was meant to survive, human or not.
I tried to crawl, but my legs proved useless. Then I smelled kerosene.
“Don’t worry,” a voice soothed me, and strong hands slipped under my armpits. Then the flames above me both intensified and went fuzzy, unfocused. My unseen hero dragged me out into the night, where canisters of chemicals waited, pumping thick liquid into the fireball.
“I’ve got to get mother,” I struggled against his grip, but he didn’t stop until he’d pulled me a hundred yards from the flames.
“I’ll go back inside,” he said. “You’re in no condition to move.” His tone was so matter-of-fact. Then he’d gone, and the world came back into focus, the reflections of the fire in the tree above me. I raised my body onto my elbows and looked back at Tomas’s house.
Then, moments later, I heard the noise of someone approaching, a labored breathing, a dragging noise along the grass.
“Here she is,” the man said, and mother became visible, her body burned in places, her face frozen in a howl of pain. “She’ll be fine in the morning.”
I turned my head to express my gratitude, but was caught by the stare of his eyes, reflected by the fire: dancing yellow orbs that somehow fascinated me.
And of course, like every other time he’d popped into my life, he vanished on me.
“No!” I wailed into the darkness. “NO!”
“Valérie?”
Theresa’s voice, and quite close too. I looked around. “Finch?”
She crouched, and hugged me as best as she could.
“We need to get out of here,” Finch said, disentangling her arms. “The firemen are throwing bodies back into the napalm fire.”
“Napalm?”
She nodded. “That’s what one of the Helsing’s called it.”
“I saw containers of kerosene, and that’s not all, but yes, let’s get out of here.”
Then I heard my rescuer’s whisper in my ear. “Introduce me to your friend.”
I turned, but he was nowhere to be seen. I almost cried out in joy. “Why?” Finch made to talk, but I held my hand up, halting her.
“Because I’m on your side,” his lips were so close to my ear, they tickled.
“Finch?”
“Yes?”
“I have to introduce a friend to you, he’s going to appear, so don’t kill him.”
“Okay,” she said slowly.
The man who drowned me appeared beside us, but didn’t linger for pleasantries. He looked at Finch. “I’ll carry Valérie, you take her mother.”
“Okay,” even in the dim light, I could see suspicion on her face.
So between us, we headed northwards, away from the smoke. To my surprise, we soon ended up on the outskirts of the Country Club, its two storey clubhouse illuminated by tall yellow lamps.
“Fancy a bath?” I asked as we looked across the golf green to the large building.
Pure opulence lit up the nightscape. High white pillars belied delights inside.
Finch grinned. �
��Oh I’m quite certain that resourceful vampires could find somewhere to lay our heads and get some recuperation time.”
“This is where I leave,” my man said, laying me on the grass. “You can manage from here?”
I didn’t even have the time to call after him.
“Bugger,” I said into the darkness.
Ten minutes later, we lay on a large yellow covered bed, Theresa panting with the effort of getting us both up the stairs and past the staff on duty.
I tucked towels over all the mirrors, I mean, I knew that I’d recover in a day or so, but not even I wanted to see my burnt and scarred skin.
Finch went on the prowl for something to drink, and returned a few minutes later with three cold bottles of champagne. I know that drank most of one, if not more, and eventually fell asleep on top of the coverlet. When I woke, at some point in the night, the room was only illuminated by a sliver of light from the attached bathroom. Mother still lay on the bed opposite, and Finch lay snoring gently at my side, her arm around me.
The next thing I knew, morning had arrived bright and yellow.
I rose from the bed to hear the shower running, and Finch, probably under it.
I crossed to mother, and found her resting gently, rather than drugged, with her eyes open. Some of the burnt parts of her face had already shed its charbroiled flakes, and although the skin underneath looked red and puffy, she definitely looked on the mend.
Around eleven that morning, Mother came to with a loud groan, arcing her body from the bed, her legs stiff and stretching. I put my hand quickly over her mouth, smothering her cries. I mean, we’d gotten into the Country Club by stealth, and we were still doing a fair bit of shedding.
“Valérie!” Her eyes met mine, and she began to tear up. “We made it.”
“Yes, Mother, we made it.” I said. I saw Finch at the bathroom door, looking at us all teary too.
“Tomas?” mother asked.
“I have no idea, but Finch saw Amos get hit, and the Helsings are claiming he’s dead.”
“Ivan?” I knew the way she said his name that she didn’t expect good news.
“He took a charge at Tomas that allowed Finch to stick him.”
“Wow,” she said, the word strange on her lips.
Tears began to drop down her cheeks, and I couldn’t help joining in. “I thought you said that vampires don’t cry?” I asked, smiling through my blubbering.
Mother gave me a wry grin. “This one does.” She said, and for a fleeting moment, we almost became human again.
The Rise and Fall of Tomas Lucescu
The Lucescu Keep, near Moshny, Ukraine, 1699
At eighteen years of age, I became the last of my family line.
My parents and brothers all succumbed to the blood sickness before me. Though frail to the eye, it seemed I possessed a far stronger spirit, and it sustained my life that much longer. Even still, the cold touch of death’s hand reached ever closer. Were it not for Ivan’s intercession, I would have breathed my last that very night.
Though it pains me to say so, Ivan both saved the family line, and ended it.
He waited in the shadows of my bedchamber as I struggled through the first clutches of my changing. Every corpuscle in my body screamed and my head raged. When Ivan pressed the goblet to my lips and I tasted the warm, thick liquid for the first time, the pain relented. I looked at my reflection in the deep, red liquid in the pewter vessel.
Thicker than red wine.
Later, he knelt by my bed. “Forgive me, Tomas; I have never officiated a turning. I’m afraid I proved very clumsy.”
“What have you done?” I hissed, clutching the cup to my throat.
With a single swig I drained the remainder and, after months of atrophying in my bed, felt strength returning to my extremities – not a calm revival, but a surging of energy. My body shuddered as a hundredfold the vitality I had known before the sickness rippled through me. Lifting and swinging my legs over the edge, I found my beloved hound, Prince, limp at my feet. A pool of blood formed a halo around his head. The smell of it left little doubt as to the source of Ivan’s potent elixir.
Some animalistic need railed within and I dropped to his wilted form, biting instinctively at his dripping arteries, draining whatever remained. I swallowed greedily, mercilessly, until the dim light left to his eyes extinguished entirely. Licking my lips and tracking my finger through the red puddle, I looked to Ivan and his grave expression.
“What have you done to me?” I demanded.
He supplicated himself to me, falling on bended knee. “I could not bear to see the last of your noble family taken in our country’s time of unrest. Our people need a leader, Tomas, you were the last Lucescu…the last son.”
“You fool!” I thrust my rebuke at him. “I am the third son, born to academics and scholarship. What do I know of leadership? Of war? You should have saved Dmytro; schooled in those disciplines from the first day of life.”
Ivan’s bent posture straightened; his false show of deference fell away like a cloak. Instantly, he became a man of authority, of decision.
“Dmytro was as much a barbarian as your father; their ways brought the Zaporozhian Cossacks into decades of despair.”
“Our great-grandfather sacked Constantinople!” I roared at the top of my voice.
Ivan just stared calmly through my rage. “And what did he bring back for the Zaporozhian people? Some golden goblets and a hundred empty saddles. Even now the Russian court finds new ways to schism the Cossacks. We need a new type of leader, not one who just thinks with his blade.”
I looked at the man who had been my father’s trusted advisor, the same who had just disgraced my family honor. For three decades, Ivan Vyhovsky stood at Apostol Lucescu’s side, whispering tactics and schemes into my father’s ear as our own people turned against us. And now he had the gall to disparage the great man in his death.
“Barbarians, were they? What, then, are you?” I showed him my bloodstained sleeve. “What have you made of me?”
Ivan looked unsympathetic. “You will learn to tame your cravings; I will teach you.”
It took all my resolve not to crush his throat. “What gives you the right to do this evil deed? I would have preferred death to becoming a monster!”
“Precisely, Tomas,” Ivan said levelly. “It is for that reason, I chose you to save.”
The blame lay plainly at the feet of Yakiv Ostranin, not so many years ago. If we Romanians had not ridden to the aid of the Polish Cossacks, we would never have been defeated and banished to Russia. If we had remained nomads, and never settled, the blood plague would never have struck.
But we settled here, in Moshny, trading our tents for stone.
Then the plague hit, and it struck harshly; in some places taking nine men in ten.
I looked at the pale bald head of the young man, barely eighteen years old. A Cossack from a long line, he held the purest heritage. Yet he held the pen with more surety than the sword. I stood in the castle, the interloper, the agent of the Elders for thirty years. I had listened to three decades of Hetman politics, and in the end, I had to act on my own volition.
The choice for Lucescu leadership thrust into my hands.
I am quite certain that if there had been time to talk, the Elders would have decreed that we could not let the Zaporozhian Cossacks perish. They would, of course, debate my choice for decades.
Thirty years ago I was sent here, to Moshny, to the ancient house of Lucescu, to spy on the greatest Romanian Cossack; Apostol Lucescu of Zaporozhia. My mission tonight lay simpler; to save his dynasty.
As I watched Tomas suck on the hound, I wondered if I’d done the right thing; chosen correctly, alone in the selection, no guidance, no officiating body to pull any political strings.
If my will was questioned later, I can say with some conviction that I did not regret my action; I was in no doubt that someone had to take command.
But I considered the consequences of my c
hoice of survivor.
Dmytro had been a warrior prince; a noble of Zaporozhia, destined to rule in his father’s place. He proved himself a strong-willed and fierce Cossack, but I watched him die, the power to save him, unused. As he croaked his last breath, I knew that I’d made the correct decision. Dmytro would have been too powerful with the gift of the turning. The Order could do without factions that would undoubtedly have followed.
Vasili died next, and I had no compunction watching him take his beloved cross to his grave. I could not have endured the philosophical revolt as he came to terms with his newest gift. His precious God watched from the heavens as he choked on his own vomit.
So I’d chosen Tomas, the third brother; the man of books, of learning.
I imagined the Elders’ questions; having to justify my decision to them.
My argument would be simple; the Hetmanate had to survive the plague. The Order had groomed most of the Hetman families for generations; it was no time to throw away a good plan.
One of our disciples would rise to Hetman one day, the ruler of all the Zaporozhian Cossacks. That day would herald the zenith of the Order.
Tomas ranted at me, questioned my loyalty, and threw insults at my race. One thing did not pass his lips; appreciation for saving his life.
I walked forward and gripped him by the face, squeezing his jaw with such force, he railed in pain. “Listen to me, you little whelp. You had better learn gratitude pretty damn quick. Let this realization dawn; if I can save you, I can crush you, too!”
Ivan spoke of gratitude. Should I have kissed his robes and sang hymns to his glory for turning me into such an abomination? Gratitude? I had only detestation – both for Ivan and for myself.
On the third night since my changing, he arrived at my chamber as the previous two. A silver tray, laden with hunks of raw game meat. Fresh blood seeping from the tissues stymied my resolve, whetted my craving. As each night passed, it became more difficult to ignore my desire to feed. Ivan set the tray on the table beside his last two offerings; flies had begun to swarm the rotting meat and, no doubt, maggots were gorging within.
