by Ben Tripp
She was drifting imperceptibly closer, passing over Gander’s prostrate body like a mist. But she was real enough—she’d smashed Gander’s face, and she cast a long, black shadow.
Sax cringed. He dared a glance away from the woman, following her outstretched finger, and saw there was something on the altar behind him. A coffin. The box was carved of some blasted, ancient wood, bound in intricate bronze turned green with age. It had been wrapped in animal skin of some kind, of which only gray tatters now remained.
Sax was startled to see that in the brief moments he’d looked back at the coffin, the woman had narrowed the gap between them by half.
“You write him letters,” he said, conversationally. He took a few steps along the floor, in any direction but toward Madame Magnat-l’Étrange. The motion brought him closer to the coffin.
“He will require to know what has transpired while he sleeps,” she said. “He sleeps . . . he sleeps.”
“Rather deeply I should say,” Sax remarked, and then regretted it. No time for flippancy. Not a cocktail party. Death in the face and so forth. Keep her engaged. Find a weapon or something. He’d long before lost the kitchen knife. Senseless in any case. He couldn’t use a weapon—he’d never struck anyone, except as a boy when it was a matter of flailing fists to keep the bullies from bashing out all his teeth.
He watched her face. She was looming closer, slow as sunset, inexorable. Sax had his back against the altar now. He could smell the stale wood of the coffin.
“You told no one of your journey here,” she said. It was a declaration, but Sax thought she was asking a question.
“Lots of people,” he said. “My assistants and Jean-Marc’s people, he has lots of people, very alert, I—we—were told this property was vacant and the contents, you understand, and well—I mean we came right to the front door, and nobody told me there would be this unfortunate mix-up, ah, of course the police and so forth, the, er, ah, accident, the accident upstairs with that sort of flytrap device, I mean there will be inquiries—”
“No one knows,” she said in a dreamy voice, as if Sax had confirmed her thoughts with a simple affirmative.
“Lots of people,” Sax said again. “Everybody knows. People could be arriving, you know. This minute.”
His fingers found the deeply carved paneling of the altar and crawled lizardlike along it. There were heavy silver candlesticks on either side of the coffin. Sax might be able to defend himself with one of those, or at least beat his own brains out before Madame reached him. He was so very tired, so very afraid.
She had now crossed two-thirds of the chapel without appearing to move at all.
The coffin rested on a corroded altar cloth of linen worked with gold thread; the linen was so ancient it hung in filaments, like the webs of weary spiders. It was fear alone that made Sax wind his fingers into the brittle fabric. He had no plan, no results from the good old calculating engine in his mind. He was just a trembling animal before the wolf. Even now he wasn’t sure why the woman frightened him so. It was something that flowed from her, like cold air. He only knew he was afraid almost beyond endurance, and for the first time in his life, he could imagine death as an alternative to living anymore. He wanted this to end without pain, without horror. It didn’t seem to be shaping up that way.
And then she was before him, close enough to take his hand, if she wished. He didn’t see her move. She was simply there.
He could see her perfectly now, her translucent skin stealing what little color it had from the glow of the stained-glass windows. There were no tiny veins in the whites of her eyes, no dabs of red at their corners. She was pale as the meat of a fish, without pores or the fine vellus hair that softens human skin.
Sax’s mouth went dry. His ears roared with undifferentiated noise, his limbs light and hollow.
“I have had visitors before,” she said. “None have come so far as you. These are new times. I shall have to . . . adapt.”
“I think we can be reasonable,” Sax squeaked. “I’ll turn myself in, if that helps.” He knotted his fingers in the altar cloth, clinging to it. Without it, he might fall.
The coffin shifted its weight. Hope flashed in Sax’s mind like a new coin catching the sun. Behind Madame Magnat-l’Étrange, Gander had rolled facedown, shaking his thick neck, trying to clear his head. He was regaining consciousness, dragging his heavy limbs under himself.
The coffin shifted another tiny amount.
“There are enough of you for my Alastor. I shall bathe him. We shall bathe together in your blood. Your filthy blood, that tastes of ashes and fat. It nourishes but does not refresh.”
“Come again?” Sax said, his voice tremolo. At that moment, he realized two things.
First, she was not speaking to him, not really; he would be dead soon, but it was likely her habit to say aloud what was in her mind. Her thoughts had been, for ages, the only voice she heard.
The second realization was this: She’s a vampire.
“Ego sum lamia, cruoris et letum comedo,” she whispered. Latin. Sax knew that much. Her hand rose again, describing a serpent’s path through the air toward him. Sax was panting with fright. He felt as if he was shrinking.
“Hominum tepidus refrigero,” she breathed, as if in a dream. She spoke with a lilting accent like Italian, and the fraction of Sax’s mind that was still working wondered if he was hearing Latin as it was pronounced two thousand years before. He would remember her words for the rest of his life, all thirty seconds of it.
Her breath fell upon his face, cold as dew, scented with the crypt. A string of saliva spilled from her mouth and hung from her chin. Her lips parted. Thick webs of mucus stretched between them. Her dark tongue stirred between fine, chisel-thin teeth—not fangs, but razors. A gout of clear fluid poured out of her mouth and spattered the floor between them, and now Sax could see the veins and tendons in her throat rising up, bundles of cords squirming beneath the skin. The black of her eyes contracted until the white showed all around them.
Sax understood that he was not looking at a human being, not even a thing that had once been human. This was a beast clothed in human features, and he was nothing more than prey.
Her fingers stole across his face, and now the brilliant light that swarmed through the church windows was turning gold. Sax could hear bells, or laughter. The white face before him seemed golden, illuminated from within. There was joy in it, joy for him, and for herself, those seething wet jaws stretching not only to drink but to share delight. Sax felt a hysterical bubble of laughter within himself. He was grinning, he knew. He could feel it, and his heart was as light as a feather. The world was a glittering golden fountain and they were the source of all the light that shone. This was the woman of dreams, the lover of all lovers, bright as fire, fresh as sunlight. She was desire incarnate, Helen of Troy.
All his fear was gone, and before him there was this glorious beautiful color, behind which moved the woman. All the woman mankind had ever sought.
But Sax—Sax liked men.
He yanked on the altar cloth with all his strength, and it was enough. The cold, black eyes flicked up and the world of gold vanished in an instant, the bells were silent, and now in the gray stone room there was a harsh, grating noise and the coffin, dragged along on the disintegrating cloth by Sax’s straining arms, teetered on the edge of the altar, then fell. It lurched down into the open arms of Madame Magnat-l’Étrange and drove her to the floor.
She screamed. Sax’s ears nearly burst with the piercing sound, then the coffin struck the floor and cracked and vomited out a geyser of stinking, sapropelic filth. The lid to the box, unsecured, clapped loudly on the stones. From within the coffin slid a thing so unspeakable that Sax’s brain could not give name to it.
It was a shriveled effigy of bone and flesh, the colors of butchery, hairy with pale filaments that branched and branched again, seeming to ro
ot in the reeking liquid, to draw substance from it in silvery, translucent sheets that coalesced into an obscene caricature of a man. It could not be alive, and yet, as it sprawled across the struggling Madame Magnat-l’Étrange, its limbs contracted, its spine writhing with something like will.
The woman spat and hissed. There was a silvery object jammed between the raw thing’s ribs, bright and heavy. Madame clawed herself free of the monstrosity, her whiteness smeared with dark slime. The hideous remains flexed once more, then lay still while the blood-dark sewage pooled outward around it.
The horror of what he’d seen propelled Sax backward. He thumped against the altar and slid down it until he was sitting on the floor with his knees up in front of him, his hands flat on the stone beneath him.
Madame Magnat-l’Étrange followed his progress with her white-rimmed eyes, lips drawn back from her teeth to such an extent that the glistening, violet gums were exposed to the root of her cheeks, her mouth now yawning wide as a python’s.
There was nothing human there at all.
From her throat came a bronchial hiss, a reptile sound. The corpse-thing lay on its side, the front of its skull turned toward Sax. There were gelatinous tumors in its eye sockets. Its facial features were indistinct, built up from scraps of tissue. The homunculus did not look decayed; it looked unfinished. Sax saw that the silver instrument that had plugged the hole in its chest had slipped partway out, the blunt end now resting on the stone. It was a tapering, star-shaped maul of some kind, razor-edged and cruel, streaming with glutinous tissue from within the chest of the cadaver. A dim notion made it through the shock that had descended to muffle Sax’s mind.
He shifted his weight and the woman rose to her feet, seeming to gain in height until she towered in the lofty chapel. To Sax, the box was of no more consequence than the cask of spoiled wine he’d thrown at the top of the kitchen steps, a vessel with something unwholesome inside. To her, it was a holy relic. He would pay for this desecration.
“Alastor,” she spoke. Her voice came from somewhere sulfurous and ice-bound. Then her head turned toward Sax, eyes blazing cold like the moon.
Sax lunged forward, straight at the unfinished corpse on the floor, his belly skidding in the putrid flesh-liquor. His fingers found the silvery weapon tangled in the bowels of the monster, and he gripped it with both hands and twisted himself around.
The creature that he knew as Madame Magnat-l’Étrange, but which must have had some more ancient, evil name, was suspended in the air above him, or so it seemed, hanging there, eyes fixed upon him. But time caught itself up again and she was hurtling down toward him with her jaws screaming wide, her fingers bent into meat hooks, the dark dress billowing up around her, a thundercloud from which was descending the angel of death. She struck Sax, crushing him to the floor, her teeth jammed deep into the flesh of his neck—and she did not move again.
Sax lay there, senseless, and only dimly understood that Gander had returned. Gander with a mustache of blood that curled up past his ears and a swollen purple nose like a clown’s. Gander lifted the heavy corpse away from Sax. Her head dangled on its pale neck, white hair streaked with blood and filth, and the half-lidded, blank eyes seemed even in death to see him for what he was, and disapprove. Gander made a noise of disgust and dumped Madame Magnat-l’Étrange beside her cadaverous mate.
There was a star-shaped puncture in her exposed bosom. Sax had killed her with the strange weapon. Or rather, she had killed herself by Sax’s hand, her own momentum driving the silver lance into her heart.
Gander dragged Sax outside into the air, and Sax looked upon a fleecy sky and green leaves. He smelled fresh grass and the scent of damp soil—clean, honest dirt. Gander looked down at him, his bloody face bent with concern. Gander was feeling his pockets now, looking for something. He produced the little box of matches from his waistcoat.
“Half a moment, sir,” he said, and returned to the chapel and set it on fire.
Present Day
4
* * *
New York
“I am a monster, feasting on blood and annihilation. Warm man, I make cold. Those were the words she spoke in Latin. I looked it up.”
Emily sat beside Sax in the twilight on her dowdy old sofa. He held a cold cup of tea perched on a mismatched saucer, which he didn’t recall picking up.
There was a buzz on the door intercom and Sax startled, sloshing tea into the saucer. Emily sprang to her feet and smiled at him.
“Thai delivery,” she said, and went to answer the door. Sax was so immersed in the past, he hadn’t even realized she’d ordered it. He put the cup aside on a little Moroccan inlaid table next to the sofa. Or rather, he put the cup on top of the books on the table. Books covered most surfaces in Emily’s life.
Sax took a few deep breaths and his fingers sought his sagging, wattled neck. He felt the soft skin there, and remembered the terrible wounds that had taken so long to heal. That was when he’d added ascots and kerchiefs knotted at the throat to his look, which became, it flattered him to recall, something of a fashion craze amongst the Beautiful People. Even with the few lovers he took in those days, he kept something on his neck. They thought it was a kink.
He showed no one except trusted medical specialists the purple weeping scars that wouldn’t knit. He lacked vigor by then; his youthful energy was gone, driven out by not only the injuries but the horror of what he’d seen.
It was exactly one thousand days after the ghastly adventure at the château, at a time when he was on holiday in a modest villa in Umbria, when he awoke in the morning and found he was ravenously hungry and had an erection like a salumi Calabrese. He sprang from bed and examined himself in the bathroom mirror. His throat bore only some raw, pink patches, shiny and smooth—it had healed overnight. These marks faded over the course of the next few months and eventually could not be seen at all, unless he failed to shave. The beard never grew back in those places.
The tale, as Sax had told it to Emily, had been much briefer than these memories that flooded back upon him. For her, he made it as simple as he could, leaving out details of scene and conversation. The thing he most scrupulously omitted was his own abject cowardice. He could scarcely confess to Emily what a quivering, helpless infant he was that day. Even so, the sun had been high when he arrived, and now there was only a faint stain of light in the sky, with the windows of Greenwich Village lit up below it. The ceiling lights came on and Emily bustled back in with a fragrant paper sack. She extracted white cartons from it and the air was tropical with the smell of lime and chilies, coconut and shrimp. Sax realized he was still holding his throat where the vampire’s teeth had torn into him.
“What happened then?” Emily said, eating the pluralistically included fortune cookie first, as was her custom. “ ‘Soon life will become more interesting,’ ” she read on the slip of paper inside it.
“I think you’ve got mine by mistake,” Sax muttered. Now that he had described the events of that long-ago day in France, he found he had no desire to pursue the mysterious woman who had bid against him for the beastly ormolu clock. If his theory was correct, he was setting himself up for an equally dreadful calamity, only this time he was old, feeble, and much wiser.
Then he remembered poor Alberto, his dead night watchman. Sax hadn’t started it this time. It was self-defense. And retribution. He’d see this thing through, neck or nothing. A reason to die, at least, besides sheer decrepitude.
“The rest is anticlimax, I’m afraid. We found Jean-Marc out in the driveway, frightened out of his wits. And when I say ‘we,’ I mean Gander, you understand. I was quietly bleeding to death on the lawn. When the police did finally show up as a result of the chapel fire, there was a search party organized. Two of the workmen were still alive, hiding in upstairs rooms. The rest . . .” Sax tossed his fingers and shrugged. “There were all sorts of traps in that place. A policeman lost his foot befo
re the end of the afternoon.”
“Terrible,” Emily said. Sax couldn’t tell if she was criticizing his tale or lamenting the loss of life and foot.
“In the end,” he continued, “it was all perfectly legal. Jean-Marc’s documentation turned out to be accurate in content, if not in fact: the place was not legally owned by anyone, including, by a loophole in the laws at that time, the state. As Jean-Marc asserted possession, the whole mess went to him. Once the death-traps had all been cleared out, I had the contents of the place removed, donated half of it to the Musée du Louvre, and sold the rest at a cataclysmic profit.”
“Did you ever give Jean-Marc his twenty percent?” Emily asked, looking sidelong at Sax. She was spooning the steaming food onto plates.
“Oh, nearly,” Sax said airily. “The point isn’t your uncle’s cunning. The point is that it’s a true story, every bit of it. If you don’t believe me I’ll grow out my beard and you can see the bald patch. It looks just like a shark bite.”
“I believe you,” Emily said, without conviction. She licked her fingers thoughtfully. “Is that the same vampire hammer—” she ventured, pointing an elbow at the gift box.
“No, it isn’t,” Sax said. He poked at his plate of food as if searching for a cufflink. “You know, I still had the thing in my hands when the ambulance came? They couldn’t get it out of my fingers. It was the one called Thaddeus, and those bastards at the Vatican came along and took it according to some law or other they’d had on the books since before the bloody papal schism of 1378. I got this one here, yours now, quite by chance when a museum of arms and armor in Connecticut went out of business, back when Carter was president. Paid thirty dollars for it. Mine has been a mad life, even without the vampires. They’re real. You have been warned. Heed me, my girl.”
