He caught a cab to the Bucuresti Nord train station. The next train to Piatra Neamt didn’t leave till morning. Tomas found a suitable bench in a dark corner and fell asleep surprisingly easily.
Morning sunlight was like a dagger to the scientist’s eyes. He felt weak and wretched as the sun pinned him to the bench he had slept on. Glad to see his provincial train roll in, Tomas practically crawled into the rearmost carriage and huddled in a shadowy corner.
The old train didn’t leave immediately, but within the hour it was clattering alongside verdant fields of corn and sunflower. Ominous clouds built over the course of the day, allowing Tomas to peek outside without being assaulted by the light.
The slow, steady train took an interminably long time to cross the southern plain. It was late afternoon when the terrain changed, the flat farmlands replaced by rugged foothills. Tomas was relieved to find that civilization was sparse here.
Along with the gathering darkness, he felt a lot safer. Well enough to sit up and smooth his hair back at any rate. He knew he looked unruly but it couldn’t be helped. If all went to plan he’d soon have a sanctuary where he could be left alone.
After a short stop at Onesti, the train climbed the Tatras Range through the night. The train’s central heating failed and a menacing chill hung in the carriage. Tomas realized he was the only person in his car, wondering if he’d scared anyone away. He couldn’t imagine how - all he was doing was minding his own business.
The night seemed to confer energy and vitality upon Tomas’s tired body and mind. He was able to think clearly and with deep insight. The view outside was pitch black to any normal human, but Tomas could see incredible detail. Tall pine forest bordered the track on both sides. If they avoided snowdrifts, he calculated their destination was only hours away.
Sitting bolt upright and making notes on a crumpled sheet of paper, Tomas made a checklist of things he would need if the property he purchased was ‘less than habitable’.
Dawn saw the train sigh into the terminus at Piatra Neamt - the end of the line. Tomas climbed down the ladder, his breath visible in the frigid mountain air. Rustic locals unloaded their baggage from the other carriages. Tomas smiled. These people were mostly Maramurians - mountain people who had stoutly defended their land for centuries. They dressed in tough leather dyed with vibrant traditional colors.
Tomas knew they were a hardy bunch, wary of outsiders. He also sensed they were fiercely loyal to people like him. He didn’t know how he was sure of that. Usually he required some kind of evidence, but his instinct told him he would find allies here.
Even better, the cloud cover was so oppressive at this high altitude that one might be forgiven for thinking the sun was dying a slow death. Just the way Tomas liked it. He marveled at his sudden aversion to UV light. A part of him wished he still had access to his lab in the Ukraine. He could think of hundreds of tests to conduct on himself.
Barely feeling the cold, Tomas trudged down the platform and up a steep, muddy hill into the town proper.
Piatra Neamt was a typical town in rural Romania. Some faded and peeling high rise apartments and that was about it. Tomas inquired after a property agent at a general store and was directed to a rude office on the east periphery. The grubby man who answered his knock called himself Nico and proudly proclaimed representation of most property owners in the district.
“I need somewhere private,” said Tomas. “I don’t mind having to renovate.”
Nico nodded understandingly, pulling a sheath of dirty folders down from an over-stocked shelf.
“Let’s see,” the Romanian said in broken English. “I have a hunter’s cabin on the Malorva property. Cheap. No people, just the wind. Perfect for you.”
Tomas looked at the man. “A rental?”
Nico looked sheepish all of a sudden. “Mr. Tomas, you must understand, we have no properties for sale.”
Some vague instinct told Tomas to persist. “None at all?”
The rotund Romanian chewed his lip for a moment before dragging down a second folder. He produced the deed for a run-down, ramshackle property high up in the mountains.
A series of monochrome photographs illustrated the scene. The structure had been a castle once, owned by an obscure Prussian general. It had fallen into disrepair over the last two centuries, and was now overrun with weeds and wild goats. The more Tomas considered this ominous, windswept tract of land, the stronger his resolve grew.
“Name your price,” he said firmly.
“Mr. Tomas,” stammered Nico. “Only a goat herder could want this. Not even the hall is left standing.”
It was true. There wasn’t a single room Tomas could shelter in.
“So I’ll buy a tent,” Tomas countered, his mind made up. “Show me where to sign.”
Nico looked at Tomas shrewdly, sensing a trap. Seeing none, he smiled broadly and grasped the scientist’s hand.
“Finally, we have a lord once more,” he gushed.
Tomas wasn’t sure what he meant, but was glad to have somewhere to go. There was much work to do.
The general store provided a rucksack, a tent and enough supplies to last three weeks. Tomas engaged one of the local farm hands to guide him to the shoulder of Mount Brasev.
Actual ownership of the property wouldn’t be finalized for two weeks, but Nico hadn’t objected to Tomas’s immediate residency. After all, the scientist had paid overs for what was basically a ruin. Tomas didn’t mind at all - the purchase had barely raised a ripple in his bank account.
The trip up the mountain took several hours. Gustavo, a rangy boy all of fourteen years old, guided Tomas through a steep pass choked with gorse and briar rose. It snowed briefly as they crossed a high plateau sprinkled with imperious pine and elm. Tomas didn’t mind a bit - the harder it was to reach his new palace, the better.
It was early afternoon by the time they reached a flat stretch of stony ground beyond which stood the ruin Tomas had just purchased blind.
Gustavo grunted his goodbyes before heading straight back down the mountain.
Tomas lay his rucksack down and took a moment to drink in the view. Low, scudding cloud had for the moment trailed into the south east, leaving a clear view over the Tatras range to the west.
Distant pillars of sunlight broke through the veil of cloud to kiss the peaks of smaller mountains. This was amazing country, rugged and inhospitable.
This was wild and woolly Europe, the dark heart of a continent. The best part was the lack of civilization. There was not a human soul to be seen for miles. Occasionally a wolf let loose a blood-curdling howl. This was the place. This was always the place. He didn’t know how, but his spirit beast had instinctively guided him here. Where a great story, long forgotten, could begin again.
With a grin he realized what his role in all this would be. Everything had recently been taken away from him, and he still needed to grieve. He hadn’t completely lost his humanity.
But what he had now was a grand purpose. He looked up at the ruin. Like the penny-pinching Romanian property agent had said, it was a decrepit place. There wasn’t much evidence of its former glory.
Luckily, many of the original stones were strewn across the weed-infested ground. His guide Gustavo had told him that locals avoided this place out of respect for the former owners. Tomas grinned again. Was it respect … or fear? He couldn’t wait to begin learning again. In a way it was like going back to school.
Tomas’s first task was the re-construction of the main hall. He produced some rudimentary mortar with a bag of cement, a little dirt and plenty of fresh water from a brook that ran the eastern boundary of the property. Under the weak, unholy sun of the Tatras mountains, Tomas began to build a wall, brick by brick, stone by stone.
He gathered momentum as the day died early at four in the afternoon. One of the many benefits of these mountains were six hour days. Tomas worked with unbelievable strength and stamina through the night. As he discovered on the train from Bucharest, his
night vision was now superb.
As the black sky became infected with pink the next morning, Tomas felt himself weaken. Shivering from the extreme cold all of a sudden, he dug a shallow hole behind one of the broken walls and lay in it wretchedly. In his day fever he imagined he heard several men chanting in a foul language strangely familiar to him.
After a shallow, dream-filled sleep he woke to blessed darkness and peered over his protective wall. To his amazement a score of local men, Maramurians in traditional leather, were trudging down the slope after a hard day’s work. On a superficial level they were unknown to Tomas, but he felt a curious affinity with them nonetheless.
It seemed news traveled fast round these parts. A tall stranger had purchased the ancient ruin on the top of Mount Brasev. The locals obviously saw this development as a positive thing. A lord coming back to his people? Tomas laughed at the ludicrous notion - he wasn’t who they were waiting for. Perhaps they sensed … her. Anything was possible in this new Flux Age.
In any case, most of the hall’s western wall was now complete. Those Maramurians had worked hard and long. Tomas liked the idea of progress even when he was sleeping. Perhaps the hall would be complete by the new moon after all?
Tomas and his band of Maramurians worked feverishly for the next seven days and nights. Tomas barely said a word to them - they regarded him with sober respect and knew what they had to do. Tomas grew in strength and mental fortitude, thinking often about his lost family but diverted by the intensely physical work.
By the seventh night the hall’s four walls were almost complete. The Maramurians had started bringing long ladders with which they could begin setting cross beams for the roof. Many of them were lumberjacks and had access to the hard, straight timber of the lower forests. Though they were dirt poor, they found ways to drag the wood up the mountain on sheets of tarpaulin. Their devotion to the task was ferocious.
With the construction well in hand, Tomas turned his mind to learning. There was still so much to know. He didn’t know where to begin.
One thing he’d learned was to rely on instinct. As a scientist it went against his nature to do so, but his gut feeling had not let him down so far. And so it was instinct that drew him back down the mountain and through several valleys like dark pits. He traveled by night, huddling in shallow gullies by day.
Eventually he came to Bicaz, a small mountain village even more rustic than Piatra Neamt. The largest building was a ramshackle drinking house for all the local peasants. Tomas drifted in as night fell, finding a dark corner in which to sip locally brewed beer.
He watched the locals drink, sing, yell and brawl for several hours. These were similar to the men who helped him by day. Many of them spent time behind a cloth partition, returning with lazy grins. Tomas guessed what was on offer in those back rooms, and sensed his answer lay there in the murk.
He made his way down a dark corridor and was accosted by an old, hideously ugly woman. Her first reaction when she saw his face was to shrink back. In a vague attempt at Romanian, Tomas asked the matron whether anything unusual had happened lately. It was the only line of enquiry he could think of.
Frightened of Tomas, the woman unleashed a string of words in a local dialect, holding up three of her fingers to enforce the point. Tomas looked at her blankly, unable to piece her story together. A burly Maramurian sauntered from one of the side rooms, zipping his pants.
“She’s telling you the story of the possessed whores,” he said in passable English. “Three of her best women went feral, started scaring the men. Olna here banished them from these rooms two nights ago.”
Tomas’ heart quickened - this was the lead he’d been searching for. “Where can I find them?” he asked urgently.
“Edge of town,” came the half-drunk reply. “If you’re unlucky.”
With a sordid laugh the man wandered off. Tomas backtracked through the seedy building and out into the windswept night. He gathered his thin cloak around him as he headed south through the village. The only sound was the howl of the wind in between the low buildings. Tomas spotted a hut perched on the edge of a bluff at the southern edge of the village. That was it.
Approaching the door with caution, he rapped on it twice. At first there was no answer, but a light, musical laugh told him all he needed to know. He kicked the door open with a heavy boot. One mocking laugh became three in unison.
Three barely-dressed, startlingly attractive young women lay entangled on a low cot. As far as Tomas could tell they weren’t engaged in anything sexual - they seemed to be huddled together out of habit more than anything else.
The peculiar thing about these women was the shimmering halo that surrounded their sumptuous bodies. They had an other-worldly presence that might have seemed threatening to anyone other than Tomas, who found them both beautiful and charming.
He considered them for a moment while they laughed at him with beguiling eyes. Two had jet black hair whilst the third was a striking blond.
Tomas felt a yearning in the pit of his stomach, but knew better than to succumb to these alluring women. They needed to be shown who was boss. Their identity revealed itself to Tomas - they were succubi, an ancient race of spirit beasts from the previous Flux Age.
Tomas had only read a little on these creatures, but he knew they traditionally served vampyra and made excellent servants. Like sirens, they tempted the weak-minded into their lairs and lulled their victims into the sleep of a thousand years while feasting on blood.
Like the vampyra, they were night creatures, only even more so. During daylight hours they lost their powers and practically ceased to exist. For this reason they were really only effective within their home ranges. In old times vampyra often used succubi as sentries to watch over their castles while they were away.
Tomas smiled internally, glad to have made his identification. The succubi looked at him expectantly, recognizing his latent power. Who had divined these women? Was there a diviner in this village? He resolved to ask the succubi, but not before he had them securely settled in his hall. Grinning, he lay down with them, making it clear they were not to touch him.
Work continued on the ruin. The Maramurian builders worked tirelessly by day while Tomas slumbered in his shallow, coffin-like depression. The three succubi were permitted to roam at night, three ghostly figures wandering the ruins. By day they sheltered with Tomas.
If the sun shone they were reduced to nothing more than specks of pale light. They didn’t have much to say to Tomas, but their new roles were clearly understood. The natural order of the Flux was an instinctive, inevitable wave. The women understood the ruin was to be their new home, and that Tomas would soon be welcoming someone even more powerful than he.
Weeks of hard labor saw the completion of the great hall. Tomas’s heart swelled with pride as he took a long moment to savor his new home. Not wanting to disappoint their new lord, the Maramurians had done an extremely solid job. Tomas thanked them by ordering crates of food and drink from Bicaz.
The Maramurians wanted to stay, saying their job was not finished. Tomas nodded, pointing to the silvery moon rising above the hall’s silhouette. A belfry tower used to sit just there. The Maramurians began work on the tower the very next morning. There was no shortage of stone, and the peasants’ knowledge of carpentry and masonry was second to none.
The succubi seemed to grow excited as the tower neared completion, making all kinds of suggestive comments to Tomas in a foul tongue he didn’t quite understand.
As the winter deepened, and snow flurries visited the mountain semi-permanently, Tomas wondered as to the tower’s original use. The answer felt close at hand but tantalizingly out of reach. One cold, miserable morning, as he stood watching the Maramurians slide home the last roof tile on the imposing tower, he realized the structure wasn’t designed for the views, but to be viewed.
It was a signal tower.
With a rush of adrenalin he remembered reading about the call of the vampyra - of lon
ely beacons in the night, drawing blood to blood. Flushed with elation, he immediately dispatched one of the departing Maramurians to source a supply of long-burning phosphorus. It was time.
Eyes aflame with devotion, Tomas set his special phosphorus brazier alight. Positioned on a wooden platform at the apex of the tower, it would be seen for miles around. Better still, it would be felt. The Maramurians had left the top level of the tower clear. Only the stone corners supported the sloping, tiled roof.
Tomas was crouched low on the platform, hunting knife in his right hand. The phosphorus erupted in pink flame, high and strong. Exposure might have flayed the skin of a normal human, but Tomas held himself over the flames as if born from them. He ran the knife across both wrists, watching his thick blood pour into the flames. The color changed from vivid pink to burgundy wine. Tomas basked in the glow of his unholy flame for several minutes before climbing down the outside of the tower. He found he could slither up and down walls like a lizard.
He joined his chittering succubi on the ground. All looked up at their crackling beacon with an almost holy reverence. Tomas didn’t think he’d ever felt such intense pride.
On the second night of undying fire she came.
At first Tomas heard the tinkle of a bell. Then, through the heavy snowdrift, a team of huskies appeared. They were pulling a simple wooden sled. Gustavo had followed his instructions to the letter.
Tomas’s heart skipped a beat when he saw her sitting upright on the back of the sled. He could barely breathe as it slowed to a halt. Even the succubi hung back at a respectful distance.
The female figure stepped delicately off the sled and threw her velvet hood back. Tomas’s eyes widened. The girl’s beauty had deepened and matured. There was definition and grace in those petite features.
The Lycan Society (The Flux Age Book 1) Page 15
