The Fifth House of the Heart

by Ben Tripp

  “What if she doesn’t make the speech?” Rock whispered.

  Sax considered it. “Then shoot me first, will you?”

  “I surely will. You got me into this,” Rock said. He might have been reconsidering his role in the mission, but it was too late to turn back. They advanced around the laboratory, keeping beneath the ring of walkways on the wall above, their backs to the translucent material that covered the stone walls. There could be no attack from behind that, at least, because there was nothing behind these walls except a thousand-foot drop.

  The visibility within the laboratory was poor. It was all in glimpses, seen through Expressionist juxtapositions of technology from the age of steam to the present day. Ahead of them, a spiral staircase in perforated iron rose up to the catwalk. Sax and Rock, moving slowly sideways as if traversing a ledge, reached the stair without incident, and then it was time to make a decision. If they went up, they were entering the trap of all traps. If they did not, they were in a waiting game with a creature that had nothing but time.

  “You stay here,” Sax whispered. Or rather, his voice was so faint it sounded as if he was whispering. In fact he couldn’t have spoken any louder if he’d tried. The fear inside him had adhered to itself and accumulated into an icy ball. He felt as if he were physically filled with snow. He was trembling, his system most of the way to shutting down. It was only will that kept him breathing and moving.

  Rock was circling away now, eyes on the upper reaches of the chamber, and in a few moments, he was lost to Sax’s sight amongst the machines. Sax turned his own eyes upward and ascended the iron stairs, one halting step at a time. It was an exhausting journey. He would have had difficulty with the climb even without the burden of dread he was hauling up with him; the open lattice of the iron stairs promoted vertigo, and the entire construction shook slightly with every step, swaying.

  Now he could see the tops of the infernal machines arrayed on the lower level, marvels of technology laden incongruously with mountains of guano, corroded where the polyuric bats in the rafters had voided down for many decades upon them. Now he could see into the aluminum races that bore the thick bundles of modern data and power cables. He began to grasp something of the plan of the space, how the passages between the machines all converged upon a central mass, like the densest part of a city skyline, clustered with strange engines and ducts and pipes that rose up to meet the suspended island above.

  Then his eyes were level with the floor of the upper platform. He saw the three-inch thickness of the boards, the ebonized beams as big around as the belly of an ox, freighted with bat shit like a fall of heavy stinking snow. The pipes and cables and tubes rose through the floor to meet in a strange tower in the center of the platform.

  Sax’s legs were trembling with the effort of climbing the stairs. He resisted the urge to look down. In his coat pocket he had the only weapon he’d been able to convince himself to bring, the ampoule of silver sulfide suspended in acid that he’d liberated from amongst Abingdon’s effects. He was of two minds how he would use it: he could, of course, dash the stuff in the vampire’s face. That seemed a very poor plan as it would likely infuriate the creature rather than kill it, thus hastening Sax’s own demise. His only other idea was to swallow the stuff and hope it killed him before the vampire did. He was beginning to wish he’d brought a firearm, a stick with a point on the end, or even a hat pin. Anything weaponlike, rather than this little bit of glass with a stopper in it, no larger than a roll of quarters.

  Sax placed his foot on the catwalk. It made a soft but unmistakable clang, and he closed his eyes in repentance and put his weight on the fragile bridge across the open air to the heart of the laboratory.

  She was there.

  He saw her now that she moved, in the middle of the web of technology she’d woven for herself. She was looking at him.

  The creature was just the same, her platinum hair piled high, her figure as long and thin as a fashion illustration, and somehow as unlikely in proportion: her legs seemed never to end, her head was suspended atop a neck so long it appeared too frail to support it. She was wearing a white laboratory coat; on her it was elegant. She stared, and that joyless smile was on her lips.

  Sax could see there were several monitor screens behind her, one of which was divided into eight sections, each showing a different black-and-white image from around the castle. Min was clearly visible in one of the octants, moving carefully up a wooden stair that would once have been the only way up into the attic from the great hall. She was favoring her injuries. The vampire had been following their progress, as Sax knew she would.

  There was a tank behind the monster, a great long thing of murky glass bound with bronze hoops. Inside the tank was what appeared to be blood, dark and ropy with strands of coagulation. Something humanoid floated inside it. The tank was mounted on chains. Sax saw that the chains rose up to a system of pulleys under the roof. There was a panel there mounted on rails, probably to open the roof to the night sky. That must have been the source of the mysterious light they’d seen.

  Sax felt himself falling, although he wasn’t, and the sensation was so vivid that he reached out and took hold of the thin iron railing along the catwalk. He was experiencing a particularly pure form of panic that left the nervous system in a continuous state of anticipating death, of which falling is the most oft-experienced.

  Sax wondered what he should do. Had he come here of his free will, or was this all the outcome of some subtle chemistry of mind control, at which vampires so excelled? Could the seeds of this moment have been planted in his mind by the monster half a century before? He felt he should say something.

  “I’ve come about the ormolu clock,” he said, because it was true.

  “You have grown old, I see,” the vampire replied.

  Her accent was Germanic but there were other things beneath it. Over the centuries she had spoken many tongues, adopting and discarding them as a mortal would fashions in clothing. Sax had, he suddenly realized, walked halfway across the catwalk. She was already exerting her influence. He was no longer in proper control of his perception of time. He would have to be very careful if he wanted to live long enough for Rock or Min to get a shot at her. And he didn’t want to get so close that he became a human shield—not so much because it would force his companions to hold their fire, but because it probably wouldn’t. His mouth was so dry his tongue felt like a flap of suede. Seconds were passing.

  “You know we’re here to stop you,” he said. It was a ridiculous thing to say.

  “You’re here because I need fresh blood for my work,” the vampire said. “You’re all B-positive, which is what I require.”

  “We have the same blood type? How can you know that?” Sax was bewildered. What work was she talking about? “I don’t even know my blood type.”

  “I have access to information, Mr. Saxon-Tang. Unlike you, I have moved with the times. Amongst my people, it is a fatal mistake to dwell in the past. Our great flaw. That is why you were able to destroy my sister.”

  “Who?” Sax heard a rushing in his ears, and his skin felt terribly hot, although inside himself he was freezing. He clutched the railing with both hands, and found even then he was creeping closer and closer to the vampire.

  “Corfax. You killed her the same week we met. That is when I decided you were not a suitable business partner.”

  “Business partner,” Sax repeated. “Yes, I thought as much. But I didn’t know vampires had sisters.” A drop of sweat fell from his nose and he saw it sparkle away past the catwalk, through the reeking air, and into a heap of bat excrement far below. Golden light flickered at the margins of his sight. He heard a tinkling of bells or silver coins in an endless cascade.

  “Sisters or brothers, it can change,” the vampire said. “But blood.”

  “What’s your name?” Sax asked. “Your real name.”

  This quest
ion surprised her, broke her concentration. He felt an easing of the relentless, gravitational pull that had been drawing him toward her. The bells and warm golden light faded from the world.

  “No one ever asks this thing.” The vampire considered it. “Innin En-Men-Lu-Ana-Ni,” she said, the syllables loose and wet as stones in a river. “Sumerian, because you are interested in the past. My husband ruled for millennia.”

  All around him was bathed in molten, gentle gold. Sax’s ears rang with the pleasure of tuneless music like the laughter of bright waters.

  “Rubbish,” Sax said.

  Again he felt the pull of the vampire slacken. She was, it seemed, susceptible to surprises. She must have thought humans so predictable after thousands of years. His last defense, then, was to be unpredictable.

  “You dare much,” the vampire said.

  “I dare ask,” Sax said, feeling almost amused by his own performance, “what’s in the tank thing there behind you? It must be frightfully important. All these pipes and tubes and so forth—everything in this whole laboratory seems to converge on it.”

  The vampire looked away from Sax, turning her eyes to the tank. When she broke eye contact, Sax almost fell down, the relief was so great. She had been sucking his mind dry, somehow. Sax had an unpleasant feeling he already knew what the oblong vessel was. He’d seen something like it before.

  The box was the length of a man, and there was something inside its red, slimy depths that threw the dim outlines of a humanoid form against its thick glass flanks. Under different circumstances one might mistake it for a strangely constructed coffin.

  “En-Men-Lu-Ana, my husband,” the vampire said. “His time has come again.”

  “But that looks more like that Russian bloke with no face,” Sax observed. He knew he recognized the shape inside the glass coffin.

  The vampire turned back upon Sax and immediately he felt the weight again, despite the pleasure of his senses bathed in beautiful light and sound, his nerves splashing in the warm pool of delight—there was a weary price for the sensuality of it, as if his pockets were filled with wet sand, pulling him down. And not just down, but forward. His shoes were at the edge of the catwalk, he discovered. He would step onto the platform next, and into her arms after that.

  “You must have wondered why I required the ormolu clock,” she said.

  “Not really,” Sax said, because the opposite was true. Her attention flickered again. He clutched at the instant of relief.

  “During the war—”

  “Yes yes yes yes,” Sax said, suddenly impatient. His head was throbbing. Vampire or not, he was tired of this interview. Another power trip, like all such petty displays he’d endured over the years. She was just a bloodthirsty version of old Pillsbury, the apostolic protonotary diocesan priest back in New York. For all her murderous power, just another puffed-up Napoléon. He wished Rock would fire his little popgun or Min would attack her with the hammer. Anything to take the pressure off his mind.

  His fear was now veined with irritation. That was good. It took the edge off. He found he was not advancing anymore. He remained where he was on the catwalk, albeit hanging on to the railing with both hands. Before she could speak again, Sax took up the narrative.

  “I know all about the clock. Did my research. This castle fell to the Allies in 1947. You’d run off somewhere because that’s what vampires do, bloody cowards. They packed up all your bits and bobs and took them away by locomotive. But they didn’t put all your things on the one train. So you went and took everything back except for one boxcar that got away. And in that car was the bric-a-brac you’ve been buying back or stealing all this time. Including that wretched old clock.”

  He found he was able to move his feet. He shuffled them backward, away from the vampire. Sweat poured down his spine. The monster stared at him, her eyes drawing him toward her once more, and Sax thought he was resisting, but he was not.

  He was suddenly standing on the edge of the vampire’s platform again, his feet on the bat-beshitten boards. The Turing engine in his brain had an idea it wanted to share with him. A good idea that might buy him some time, or even tip the balance of power. Unfortunately the idea involved his standing right where the vampire was. He thrust his hands in his pockets.

  “That tells you nothing,” the vampire said, her voice thick with menace.

  “You mean in terms of your motives?” Sax said, his voice unnaturally light and cheerful. He felt like the lead actor in the final performance of a long-running play, trying to keep his mind at once on what he was doing in the present and at the same time experiencing the end of an era represented by all that had gone before. The character he’d played for so long, this Asmodeus Saxon-Tang, was about to cease to be: He was about to leave the role. Time to go off-script again.

  “I don’t care what your motive is,” he continued. “Vampires don’t interest me that much, to be perfectly honest. I only like your taste in furniture.”

  She hissed at him, and her slender throat swelled with veins that writhed across each other beneath the skin. Sax might have overplayed his hand. He didn’t think he could get to the coffin before she got to him, if it came to that. He shuffled another step forward, as if compelled, although he no longer felt the hypnotic pressure to advance.

  “There’s no need to get upset,” Sax said. Noël Coward could not hope for a more deadpan delivery, he thought. He might even die with a modicum of style, at this rate. He’d die alone, anyway; his companions had apparently taken the opportunity to quit the premises. They should already have attacked. “Suppose you tell me,” he continued, “why on earth you should be so interested in that silly little clock.”

  The vampire seemed pacified by this. Her throat lost some of its bulging anatomical detail. She began to pace, not in steps that were obvious to the eye, but drifting from side to side. As she did so, she drew nearer Sax. There were several routes besides the direct one to get to the glass coffin. They were longer. But if bloody Rock would oblige him by condescending to fire a few rounds at the creature, Sax thought, he might just possibly have a chance of getting at it. He promised himself: if there was a gunshot, he would run like the wind for the coffin, not just stand in place and hoot like a forlorn owl.

  His fingers were clenched around the ampoule in his pocket, so tightly he was afraid it would shatter. But he could not let go.

  “When En-Men-Lu-Ana died, I took his heart,” she said. “With its Herzblutkammer.”

  “Your sister had her own lover in a box like that one,” Sax said. “You probably killed your boyfriends around the same time, am I right? And you regretted it. So you decided to reanimate old Be-Bop-A-Lula there in Yeretyik’s body, poorly as it is. That’s why you saved him.”

  The creature was growing distant, reaching into the past, which was just as Sax hoped she would do. Vampires were only vulnerable when they waxed nostalgic. He suspected the inevitable monologue was coming. He prayed it was.

  “En-Men-Lu-Ana’s heart was like a seed, dry and still, waiting to be planted in soil of flesh. To bloom. I was away when the soldiers came,” she said, not to Sax but to infinity. “One of my familiars hid the precious heart. The familiar died defending my treasures and had no chance to tell me where the heart was hidden. When it was not discovered, I knew it must be amongst the things stolen from me by the so-called Allies. Your people,” she added, as if, when she killed Sax, it would be in response to the indignities of the postwar period in Germany. “I was sure he had hidden it within one of the candelabra,” she continued, “those ridiculous things with the sea god on them. But I was mistaken. The clock. It was in the clock.”

  “Another five hundred dollars and I would have dropped out of the auction, you know,” Sax said.

  “The girl is sorry she did not outbid you,” the vampire said, and the smile came back, revealing those perfectly even teeth. Vampires didn’t have elong
ated canine teeth, as Sax well knew; if anything, the canines appeared short. Their teeth were used to cut, not to stab; they met against each other like the blades of surgical scissors. He could almost feel the thin white edges slashing through his old flesh. It was coming, and he had made no progress toward his goal. He shuffled another couple of steps toward the vampire—toward the coffin.

  “So you plucked out old Yeretyik’s heart and stuck your boyfriend’s in the body?” he asked, knowing damn well that’s what she had done. He only wanted to keep her talking.

  “And then I ate Yeretyik’s heart,” she said. The dreamy look had gone from her eyes. She was back in the present.

  He had a strong feeling the vampire was almost finished with its speech-making. Sax supposed it was some kind of desire to connect with any other living thing that made them want to talk to their prey. Or it might just have been part of the hypnosis. They expended no effort they could avoid, did vampires. Lazy creatures. In fifty thousand years, mankind had risen from a hairless ape with a good throwing arm to master of the entire planet. What had vampires done? Fought amongst themselves and killed people. They didn’t even have their own art. They took everything from humanity, except humanity itself.

  Sax was ten steps from the glass coffin now, and five steps from the vampire. She had stopped her drifting. Her throat pulsed and swelled. She was controlling her appetite, but not for long.

  Sax thought he could hear a clock ticking away his last seconds. No, that was his heart, battering the inside of his ribs, looking for a way out. He wondered if he could manage a feat of unexpected athletic prowess but didn’t expect so. He didn’t think he’d accomplished anything so far, except he was arm’s reach away from a slavering monster with the face of a goddess, the strength of a lion, and the compassion of a bone saw.

  The vampire was about to attack.

  Rock shouted, “Get down!” and for lack of a better idea, Sax did.

  The gunshot was a hot wind that scorched past. Sax saw white particles of flame struck from the handrail of the platform as he dropped, and beyond in the same instant there was a great crashing of glass and metal and sparks poured down from inside the cathedral of fierce machinery that rose up around the glass coffin. The vampire was instantly in motion, seeming almost to vanish as she leapt from the platform toward Rock, who was positioned behind one of the metal boxes full of electronics down below.