by James, Aiden
“What is that smell?” asked Amy, wiping at her nose as we moved to the row of barracks. Alistair’s response was similar.
“It’s the lingering residue from burnt hair and flesh,” offered Cedric, solemnly. “It was stronger the last time I was here, in 1996. It seems to get weaker over time, but sure as shit it’s still there, man. It’ll mess with your mind as you explore the grounds, realizing Nazi cruelty still lingers in the air seventy years after the war ended.”
Beatrice squeezed my hand, as if to remind me to stay close. I wrapped my arm around her shoulder to pull her against me, and I caught her grateful smile as she glanced up at my face. Alistair pulled Amy close, and we followed Cedric who picked up his pace to catch up with Roderick.
It wasn’t until we began moving through the third barrack that I noticed Roderick was silently crying. All of us were overwhelmed by sadness, but the initial tears at Stutthof softened the worse emotional blows from this place that saw more than a million victims lose their lives.
“Are you getting anything?” I asked him, gently.
He shook his head, and at first couldn’t respond verbally.
“How about you?” he whispered, once able.
“Nothing,” I said, pursing my lips in frustration. I had seen a slight blue glow in the second barracks, but that was it.
“They weren’t here long enough,” said Roderick, dabbing at his eyes with a handkerchief. “I had the impression of surprise, and I think it might be from Simon Lieberman. I sense he was alone from the start, and his parents were taken immediately to the gas chambers…. He didn’t know what to do, and held on to the coin in fear of someone trying to take it from him—like the girl back in Stutthof.”
Roderick sniffed and swiftly moved to the barrack’s exit.
“What, are we leaving?” Alistair asked him, his tone surprisingly compassionate. “We haven’t seen one fourth of this place yet. Pops… well, are you going to stop him or not?”
“I’ll be right back,” I said, immediately pursuing Roderick.
I feared he might’ve run to where our rental was parked. But he hadn’t exited the camp yet.
“Do you wish to tell me what’s going on?”
“I can’t do this,” he said, softly. “I knew I should never come here again. I had no idea what could happen if I came here focused on one individual….”
“Simon Lieberman?” I carefully prodded, when he refused to go on, shaking his head defiantly as he gritted his teeth.
“I’m so sorry, Judas,” he said, motioning behind me. Everyone else was on the way to meet us. “I will tell you this quickly, and then I want to forget about this place and what happened here. Okay?”
“All right.”
I glanced over my shoulder. He had about thirty seconds… maybe a minute. Alistair was dragging behind the group, and like dominos, Amy, Beatrice, and Cedric stopped to wait for him.
“Simon was lost, so heartbroken from the loss of his parents,” said Roderick. “Keep in mind he thought he had lost his sister at Stutthof. He became desperate to get out, though there was no way he could leave. That’s the impression I’m getting…. The boy foolishly tried to bribe a guard who had befriended him—likely in hope of eventual sexual favors. But seeing the silver shekel and its strange glow, though faint, was how it left Simon Lieberman’s possession. Once the kid and his family’s coin were brought to Richard Baer, the commandant confiscated the coin and forced the guard to put a bullet in Simon’s head.”
It took me nearly half an hour to console Roderick. Not since the loss of his wife and child nearly eighteen hundred years ago had I seen him this grief stricken. That’s all I needed to effectively keep my son and anyone else from badgering him with questions as we took our journey one step further than originally anticipated.
“What in the hell is in Budapest?” asked Cedric, as we headed to Slovakia, with our destiny one country further south in Hungary. We would reach our destination by nightfall, provided the weather didn’t worsen.
“You mean, who in the hell is in Budapest,” I corrected him, playfully. Well, playfully as the overall somber mood in the minivan could tolerate. “We’re going to visit Krontos.”
“Huh?! Pops have you lost your frigging mind?!”
Alistair’s scorn was understandable, and everyone but Roderick had similar reactions. Alistair and Amy shared the back seat once more, and I rejoined Beatrice in the middle, where she suddenly clamped her hands around my left forearm as if hanging on for dear life. Her eyes were filled with fear, and for a moment I wondered if somewhere deep inside her psyche the terrible experience she had endured at Dracul’s castle lingered, like a distant memory from a past life. Only in this case, it was her current life until Krontos changed the script.
Her terror notwithstanding, we had no choice.
“We must go to Hungary and end this tyranny,” said Roderick, his voice echoing around us, but subdued. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was afflicted with some sort of sickness, which is damned near impossible for an immortal that has lived beyond several hundred years. “He is there. The impression is coming to me in the same manner I’ve received every other image and insight the past two days.”
“So, Krontos is in Budapest, Hungary, and we are on our way to casually drop in, huh?” Amy sounded like Alistair, and it was difficult to not picture them as a GQ pair of Hummels. Or, if I were a fairy tale wicked witch, Hansel and Gretel. “What happens if he’s just a tad irritated that we are here and not waiting for him in Sedona, as instructed?”
Good point, and something I had seriously considered. But after so many years of avoiding this little old man with the Napoleonic complex, it was time to settle things once and for all. To ‘end the tyranny’, as Roderick aptly stated.
“Krontos likely suffers from the same malady of being stuck in or near his castle, as Dracul was,” I said. “If it’s the same one we last strolled by in… what was the year, Rod?”
“1796, when I came to see you in England, and we traveled to Turkey to visit the St. Germain brothers.”
“Ah, yes, that was it,” I said. “But that particular castle was in the Mátra Mountains, about ninety-seven kilometers from Budapest.”
Cedric eyed me suspiciously in the rearview mirror, until Roderick assured him that we wouldn’t travel to the castle before morning.
“I knew when we visited Stutthof yesterday that we would be going to Hungary in search of Krontos,” Roderick confessed. “The sensation in my ‘heart of hearts’ told me then what was confirmed at Auschwitz today. Krontos has been operating all this time from the castle. That is why he has procured the local mafia, to be his arms and legs, and depending on the circumstances, his voice. They do his bidding, and as William and I experienced in Budva, Krontos can possess unwitting human subjects to give a message.”
The response from our companions was predictably guarded. Cedric was absent, and the others had their memories wiped clean by Krontos changing the sequence of events when they came to look for Roderick and me. It’s too much to explain here, if anyone missed hearing about it. But I detailed it fairly thoroughly in The Dragon Coin.
“But, you said Krontos is not a vampire,” said Amy, distrust in her tone. “Why would he be stuck? From what you and Roderick have repeatedly stated, Krontos is a master at controlling time and space.”
“No, he can’t control space,” Roderick corrected her. “Just time and dimensions, since space indicates untamed chaos beyond our solar system. Do you follow me?” He waited for her response, a slight nod. “Krontos may possess genius the world has not seen before, but he still follows scientific principles, or laws. And, he is not an anarchist. Even when we were acquaintances on peaceful terms, when he posed as a French aristocrat before the revolution, he never wanted to watch the world burn. Rather, he has always desired to control it, and ultimately conform it to his vision.”
Whether or not he made the point he sought with her remained to be seen. She cuddl
ed with Alistair, and they both kept a watchful eye on him, until he grew uncomfortable and returned his view to the flurried road ahead of us. The storm seemed to have the same destination we did.
“William, what do you think of this compromise,” said Roderick, keeping his focus on the road while Cedric deftly navigated through treacherous ice patches. “If by tomorrow morning, Beatrice, Amy, or Alistair come up with a reason strong enough to override yours and my conviction to press on to the Mátra Mountains, we will immediately head back to Berlin and fly home Monday afternoon. Otherwise, we stay the course until it is no longer prudent to hunt Krontos. Agreed?”
The last part sounded like Cedric’s words from the other night. Meanwhile, I couldn’t think of a reason strong enough to call off this potentially foolhardy trip and head back to Germany. Nothing that could override Roderick’s conviction. But the bigger question was the same one we started with two nights ago. How would we, or could we, ever know if we were being manipulated by Krontos to come to Hungary… or not?
Impossible to answer, and at least for me, the question promised another restless night.
Chapter Eleven
“What about our flight home from Berlin?” worried Beatrice, shortly after we settled in our room at the Hotel Victoria in Budapest. “Tomorrow is Halloween, which leaves us only two more days to make it back in time for our flight. What if something goes wrong and we are delayed, or worse?”
“If there is a delay, I’ll take care of it,” I told her, pausing to give her a reassuring hug and kiss. “The important thing is to take every precaution as we travel into the mountains.”
“He knows we’re coming, doesn’t he?”
Her eyes glistened as the depth of her worry surfaced.
“Yes… I believe he does.”
What else could I say? Krontos had known our every move for at least the past five months, and more likely, since our return from Bolivia last November. Stating the truth, as I’ve understood it, has always been the best way to go. I smiled, hoping to reassure her while I reflected on this lesson—one that my beloved wife had a hand in teaching me.
“Are we walking into a trap?”
“You mean driving into a trap.”
“William!” she scolded. “You know what I meant!”
“I think ‘trap’ is a strong word to use at this point,” I said, mustering every ounce of positive energy within me to keep my smile and countenance radiant. “We need answers only Krontos can provide. I think it’s the same thing Roderick believes. Despite your misgivings, you can’t tell me part of you doesn’t feel inexplicably drawn to a meeting on his turf. Despite the danger we all fear, each of us is being pulled to Krontos like moths to a flame.”
“I think we’re all nervous,” she said. “ I feel something… but calling it attraction to an evil man who is just as apt to kill us as give answers seems a bit stretched, don’t you think?”
Count on my better half to cut through the bullshit and get to the heart of the matter. Despite the pull to Hungary and Roderick’s and my anticipated first face-to-face encounter with Krontos in nearly two hundred and twenty years, something about this situation felt wrong. Hell, it felt absurd, and if I knew of a place where we could all safely hide indefinitely, we’d be on the way there now.
What if Krontos wasn’t there when we found his ancient castle? What if he had sold the place or moved on, letting it fall into ruin—with no sign of him anywhere? We couldn’t find anything like it when we tried to drill down into Google maps from Roderick’s computer earlier that afternoon. So, anything was possible.
I suddenly worried about Krontos not being in Hungary, perhaps seeking to uncover the hiding place for my coins in Sedona. All but one lay buried there. The Dragon Coin was the only coin making the trip with us, securely wrapped and placed inside my wallet.
A knock on the door interrupted our discussion.
“Pops? Mother? …Cedric and Roderick are down in the lobby, waiting on us to go to dinner,” Alistair advised, from outside our door.
“We’re coming, Ali. Just give us a moment,” I called to him.
“Promise me you won’t do anything foolish, due to your hatred of this fiend Krontos,” urged Beatrice. “Don’t put you or any of us in harm’s way.”
“I don’t hate him—”
“Pops—we haven’t got all night!”
We would have to continue this discussion later. I grabbed our coats and gently nudged her toward the door. Alistair and Amy seemed pleased to see us, and more refreshed after parting company less than thirty minutes earlier.
“It sounds like we might finally have a good time on this trip,” said Alistair, as we walked to the nearest elevator. “Roderick has booked our dinner reservations at the oldest inn in town, the Százéves Étterem. He said he came here shortly after World War II, right before Stalin completed his Iron Curtain.”
“There will be live music, too!” Amy enthused.
I hoped their merrier moods proved to be a lasting thing, even if only through tonight.
Roderick and Cedric were waiting downstairs, and seemed refreshed. I had worried Cedric might need an early start to a good night’s rest when we arrived at the hotel, due to the rigors of driving all day. But the opulent appointments and flirtatious desk clerk who checked us in seemed to revive his spirits. As for Roderick, I think he was relieved to not need as much primping to get his slightly bronzed look back. Despite the anguish he endured at Auschwitz, the previous afternoon’s excursion to Stutthof had taken a greater physical toll, and left his pallid complexion fully exposed when we arrived in Krakow. Not so tonight.
“So, you decided on a visit to Százéves Étterem after all,” I teased Roderick. “And here I thought you might want to try someplace new.”
He chuckled and led the way out of the hotel. A frigid gust greeted us as we headed for our rental.
“It seemed like the best choice,” he said, while all of us jogged to the minivan. “Something with a little local flavor, history, and the best Gypsy music in town.”
Sounded like fun. Especially seeing my wife’s countenance light up. Beatrice needed this as much as anyone else. The restaurant was packed, and yet the revelry with strangers was refreshing for me. I, too, was able to forget the sorrow and sense of loss that had followed us from the concentration camp museum-memorials we visited. Finally able to push Krontos and his wicked schemes from my immediate awareness, I began to relax.
We stayed at the restaurant until ten o’clock, after all of us had enjoyed nearly three hours of great food, drink, and uproarious fun. I offered to join Roderick in retrieving our ride, since Cedric was seriously inebriated. The feeling of merriment followed us past the portico. But like the arctic breezes that had assaulted us throughout the day, an ominous sensation overwhelmed my senses. Then the source feeding my sudden trepidation appeared before us, stepping into the glow from the nightspot’s neon sign, near where our vehicle waited.
“Ah, we meet again, Judas and Roderick!” announced the familiar blonde, blue-eyed man dressed in a dark trench coat. Arso Dmitar, whom we last encountered as one of Vlad Tepes’ henchmen, approached us, flicking a glowing cigarette butt into a small snowdrift beneath a nearby juniper bush. Flanked by two other men we recognized, Jevrem and Gajo, it was obvious this wasn’t a benign social call. “We’ve been expecting you.”
Hard to say why we said nothing, choosing to retreat to where the others stood, just outside the entrance. After all, we had bested this trio of Dracul’s thugs in Budva, sending them scurrying away. Of course, that was before they reappeared as helpful guides to Alistair, Amy, and Beatrice when the reality shift occurred as Roderick and I stepped out of the Adriatic Sea. Obviously, they worked for a new employer now, and likely the same one back then: Krontos Lazarevic.
Alistair and Amy waved to the three men stealthily approaching the crowded entrance to Százéves Étterem, as if they were long lost friends. Gajo raised his chin in a subtle greeting, his dark ey
es and slicked-back black hair glistening in the soft neon glow. Jevrem’s dark, loosened locks were as preened as Arso’s. The trio looked like a heavy metal act carrying musical instruments beneath their coats, though a surer bet was automatic weapons lay hidden instead—either small rifles or pistols. Were they sent by Krontos to cut us down?
“Quick! Get back inside!”
“Huh?! Pops, what in the hell—”
“Just do as I say, son—you, too, Amy!”
I shoved them toward the door, along with a gentler push to Beatrice, shaking my head when she sought an explanation. Meanwhile, Roderick grabbed Cedric and coerced him inside the restaurant.
I prayed we weren’t endangering innocent patrons, and I banked on the fact these guys likely bore familiarity, and could easily be identified—regardless of the immortal menace supporting them.
“It’s useless to run, Judas!” Arso called after us. I believe he said something after that, but whatever additional warning he uttered was absorbed by the din of music and noisy patrons singing and dancing inside.
I hoped to go deeper into the restaurant, toward an exit I noticed earlier, not far from our table. But I ran into Roderick. He had stopped, and once I saw what he was looking at, I stopped, too. Stopped, while wearing a stunned expression.
“What the hell?” said Cedric, slurring his words, as he pointed to a small bar, and a much smaller room than we had reveled in just minutes ago. “Where did everybody go?”
“Are we in the right area? Maybe we came in a side entrance and this is another side of the restaurant,” said Amy, her calm tone belied by her nonplussed look.
“Damn it!” hissed Roderick. “He’s already changed everything! There’s nowhere to go!”
Nowhere, but back from whence we just came.
Beatrice clung tightly to me as I turned toward the entrance we had stepped through, less than thirty feet away. I expected to see the three Budva hoodlums waiting smugly inside the doorway. Maybe even with their weapons drawn, held above their heads and pointed to the ceiling like famed miscreants Pancho Villa or John Dillinger. But the threesome was absent, apparently waiting outside.
