“Kate,” Will prompted.
“She’s concentrating. Give her a chance. These things can’t be rushed.”
Blocking out all noises, the constant lap of the water against the dock, disembodied voices, she saw—not Juliette but the man, Wade Russell. But he wasn’t a man. He was a monster, cloaked in darkness, clothed from head to toe in black. His white teeth glistened in a mouth twisted into a satisfied snarl. He was here, but on which boat? She made out the name, The Marika, and the horizontal tricolored red, white, and blue flag with the Croatian coat of arms in the center. She felt Juliette’s presence, but her mother was asleep, thankfully passed out in oblivion.
“The Marika,” Kate mouthed, her throat parched, her head pounding.
Jack looked up at the captain. “Could that be the name of a ship?”
The captain consulted his computer. “Not registered in Bermuda. There is a ship called The Marika registered in Croatia. That’s a popular place to charter yachts, especially for owners who live in landlocked countries like Hungary.”
“Let’s go.” Will was out the door.
“You don’t have any jurisdiction here,” the captain said. “You have no authority to carry a gun. Without a weapon, what can you do?”
“I have my bare hands,” Will answered. “And I’m going to rip this murderer apart.”
Will raced up and down the dock until he spotted a sleek black yacht called The Marika. Jack and the captain followed.
The yacht was about to pull out of its slip.
“Hold on,” Will shouted to the man unmooring the boat. “We’re with the police, and we need to ask you some questions.”
A man clad in black sat next to the captain’s chair, and when he saw Will and the others approaching, he fled down the steps, calling out, “Set sail, immediately.”
The captain, garbed in white, approached the group.
“What’s this about? We need to get under way.”
“What’s the hurry?” The police captain stepped in front of Will. “How many passengers do you have on board?”
“In addition to the crew, two. The owner and a female passenger.”
“Where is she?” Will demanded.
“Below deck. She’s not feeling well. Haven’t seen much of her since she boarded.”
“It’s her. It’s got to be her,” Will pressed. “How did she look when she arrived?”
“They carried her in because she was on medication.”
“He’s drugged her, the bastard. I’m going after him.”
“She wasn’t drugged,” the captain of the vessel insisted. “She’s seasick. She’s staying below, confined to her cabin.”
“I’ve been with this woman on a cruise for almost a week, and she showed no signs of seasickness. Something fishy is going on.”
Three large black crows landed on the yacht’s railing and started squawking.
Will pointed to the birds. “They’re Juliette’s crows. They’re trying to warn us.”
The yacht’s captain scratched his head. “That’s strange. You don’t usually see crows out here, and never at night.”
“It’s a sign,” said Will. “Where is this woman you’re talking about? Show us her room.”
“The count is down there with her now. He asked that they not be disturbed.”
The vein on Will’s neck began to pulse.
“The records say this ship is registered to a Mr. Nagy Gedeon?” asked the police captain.
The captain of The Marika nodded in confirmation. “Yes, that’s right. Count Nagy.”
“We’re going to need to interview the count and see his passenger.”
“I have my instructions,” the captain insisted.
Captain Smith was equally forceful. “I will impound this boat if you don’t cooperate. Permission to board.”
The ship’s captain threw up his hands and ordered one of his crew to re-secure the boat to the dock.
Will was first to jump aboard, followed by Jack and then Captain Smith. They took the wooden steps that wound down into the bowels of the boat at a furious pace.
“Ilona. We have to go.”
Juliette stirred, her mind in a fog. The man was shaking her awake, slapping her. He carried a package and was untying her from the bed.
“Where are you taking me?”
“Don’t ask any questions.” He grabbed her hands and tried to pull her to her feet, but she stumbled, too weak to keep her balance.
He lifted her up, trying to balance the package at the same time. He ran up the stairs and plowed into Will, who almost knocked the breath out of him. Thrusting Juliette into Will’s arms, he clutched the package and ran by the police captain and right into Jack.
Jack grabbed his hands and wrested the package out of them.
“My paintings,” cried the man.
Jack tossed the package to Kate.
“Those are private property.” The man scowled.
“Somebody’s private property, but not yours,” Kate accused. Will ran up the stairs.
“How’s Juliette?” Jack asked.
“She’s foggy and shaky and dehydrated. The ropes left some bruises. She’s resting comfortably in the cabin. She’ll need a doctor.” Will walked over to the fugitive in Jack’s iron grip.
“Is this the man?”
Jack nodded and asked Captain Smith to call for an ambulance.
Will drew out his handcuffs, grabbed the man’s hands, and cuffed him to the yacht’s steering wheel. At the touch of the cuffs, the man’s wrists began to sizzle, and Will’s captive screamed in agony.
“Take off the handcuffs! The silver is burning my hands!”
“What are you talking about?”
Juliette climbed up the stairs. “Will, he’s a vampire. Silver burns him.”
“You don’t actually believe that, do you?”
“I don’t know what to believe.”
“I thought vampires were afraid of the sun.”
“And silver.”
Kate ran over to Juliette and wrapped her in an embrace. “Juliette—Mom, are you all right?”
“A little hungry and thirsty and sore. This man kidnapped me and drugged me and threatened me and starved me.”
“Let’s see if vampires can bleed.”
Will pulled back his fist and punched the man squarely in the nose. Bone crunched and blood flowed out of his nose.
“I know you’re a beast, but I don’t believe you’re a vampire. Either way, I’d love to put a wooden stake through your dark heart.”
The man wouldn’t stop screaming, and the crows were making a riotous noise in concert. They flew over to Juliette and landed, one on each hand and one on her shoulder.
Juliette soothed them, and when they were quiet they flew off.
Will hugged Juliette. “I thought I’d lost you.”
“I’m okay now that you’re here.” Will kissed her tenderly and led her over to the captain’s chair. “Rest here until the ambulance comes.”
Kate brought the brown paper package over to Jack. “These are the paintings we’ve been looking for. This artwork is priceless. The Monets are gone, but they’re hanging in the yellow house in Tucker’s Town. I think we have our proof. ”
Jack turned to the handcuffed man. “We have some questions to ask you.”
“Take these handcuffs off, and I’ll answer you.”
Will stayed Jack’s hand. “The cuffs stay. In fact, I’m going to keep you cuffed until sunrise, and we’ll put you to the ultimate test. If you disintegrate, then we’ll know you really were a vampire.”
The man howled. “You can’t do that.”
“I can and I will, and I’ll enjoy watching you burn, Gideon.”
“Gedeon.”
“Whatever.”
“Did you kill the gallery auctioneer on the cruise ship?” Jack asked.
“I won’t tell you anything until you remove these handcuffs.”
“The cuffs stay on.” Will was adamant.
“I paid him to take the paintings aboard ship. I had pre-sold two in Bermuda and was planning to sell the rest in the States, until he came around asking for more money to keep quiet. He went back on our agreement, so, yes, I killed him, and I was going to throw his body overboard until these women came sniffing around the gallery.”
“Where did you get these paintings?”
“I own them. They’ve been in my castle in Hungary for decades. They’re family heirlooms.”
“These paintings were stolen by the Nazis from museums all over Europe,” Kate interrupted. “They’ve been missing since the war.”
“The Nazis stored them in our castle when they occupied our town. When they fled, they left the paintings behind. They became my property.”
“They belong to the world,” Kate disagreed.
“Whenever I needed money, I sold them off, one by one. The private buyers didn’t hesitate to pay our price, nor did they return them to the museums they were stolen from.”
Will was curious. “You lived in a castle?”
Juliette answered. “Yes, he claims to have lived in a castle in Hungary near the Transylvania border. My mother and I lived right outside the castle gates. The last time I saw my mother, she was walking toward the castle and she told me to leave. She said the man who lived there—the count—wanted me. I know now she was sacrificing herself to save me.”
“Is that true?” Jack demanded.
The man looked at his blistering wrists.
“If you’ll remove the handcuffs—”
“Don’t remove them, Will,” Juliette warned. “Vampires are very crafty. His wrists will heal as soon as you remove the cuffs.”
“Juliette, he’s got you fooled,” Will said. “He’s only a man. An evil man. But he’s not a vampire.”
Juliette faced the vampire. “Where is my mother? You promised you’d tell me what happened to her.”
“Answer the lady, or the cuffs stay on.” Will wrinkled his nose at the smell of burning flesh. “You can rot in hell, for all I care. Hell is where you belong.”
Gedeon laughed. “Your mother was a most beautiful woman, like yourself. I desired her, even loved her, but your mother refused my affections. I offered to marry her. But she refused me. So I locked her in the dungeon until she was ready to give herself to me. Marika was a stubborn woman. I starved her, beat her, tortured her, but still she refused. She’s still there, standing in chains, or rather her bones are still there.”
Juliette whimpered, and tears streamed down her cheeks. She covered her face. “And were you planning to do the same to me?”
“I knew you would learn to love me.”
Juliette spat. “I could never love you.”
Kate went to Juliette and held up a painting of a beautiful woman, a gypsy, dressed in red, dancing around a campfire, with a young girl looking on.
“Is that you?”
Juliette touched the painting. “That’s my mother, your grandmother, and the little girl in the picture is me. He must have had her portrait painted. He thought I was Marika. He kept calling me by her name.”
“That painting hung in the castle all these years. I stared at it for hours on end. I loved her. I regretted what happened to your mother.”
Juliette’s eyes flashed. “It didn’t just happen. You made it happen.”
Will stared at the painting. “She was a beautiful woman,” said Will. “Just like you.”
“Jack, is there any way you can check his story? I always wondered whether my mother was still alive and, if she was, why she never tried to find me.”
“Now that we have a record of him, we will find your mother and, if his story is true, give her a proper burial. Gedeon will be locked up for a long time, for murder, art theft, and kidnapping. He won’t ever hurt you again.”
“Bars won’t hold me.” Gedeon laughed. “You think I’m afraid of your prisons?”
The ambulance pulled up to the dock.
Jack touched Kate’s arm. “Go with your mother to the hospital and get her checked out. Will and I will babysit this bastard until the sun comes out, and then we’ll truly see if he’s a vampire. I don’t believe it for a minute. I’m sure the records will show that this man is a relative, perhaps the grandson, of the man who owned the castle during the war.” He turned back to Gedeon.
“One more question,” Jack asked. “Was there really a threat to the European Union banking conference? Did you have anything to do with that?”
“That was just to throw you off so you’d be focused on protecting the conferees and I’d be free to conduct my business,” Gedeon admitted.
“I’m going to tell the captain. They’re delaying the ship. We can tell him it’s okay to go on to their destination. We have our culprit. After we get Juliette checked out, we can fly back to Atlanta and you can drive back to Graysville.”
“I’m not leaving without my Juliette.” Will took Juliette’s hand and raised it to her lips. “I plan to make our marriage official as soon as we get back home, if she’ll have me.”
Juliette rushed into Will’s arms.
“That looks like a yes to me,” Kate said, brushing off Juliette’s assurances that she was okay and didn’t need to go to a hospital.
“Juliette, if not for you, do it for me,” Will said. Juliette finally acquiesced, and Will helped her into the ambulance. Jack asked Captain Smith to go with them to take Juliette’s statement, while he waited with Will.
“I need to bring the suspect into the station,” the captain objected. He had dispatched another police unit, which had just arrived on the scene.
“Give us until morning, and then he’s all yours,” Jack said.
“My man will wait here on the boat with you, then.”
“That’s fine,” Jack agreed.
Jack started making calls to Interpol and the Hungarian police.
Hours passed. The “vampire” had fainted. He couldn’t stand the pain.
Jack’s cell phone rang. Jack, yawning and rubbing his eyes, answered it.
“I see. Yes, I understand.” He spoke with the party on the other end for about fifteen minutes. Will looked up, his head bobbing from lack of sleep.
The sun was about to rise over the ocean. The rosy pinks and blue hues of the dawn were magnificent, but the men didn’t pay much attention.
Jack said to Will, “I just got off the phone with the Hungarian police. They did find the body of a woman, about the age Juliette’s mother was when Juliette says she left Hungary. She was hanging, or what’s left of her was hanging, in chains in a dungeon below the castle. They will do DNA testing to identify the body, or rather, the bones. Then, if it is truly Juliette’s mother, we can have her sent to Atlanta for burial. Even more bizarre, she was dressed in a wedding gown. It was tattered, moth-eaten, practically in shreds. As decayed as the woman wearing it. And the bastard just left her there to rot. There were records, a diary,” Jack added. “He’s sending it to me in Atlanta, but there were frequent mentions of a woman named Marika. She had a daughter, Ilona. Ilona must be Juliette.”
Will nodded. “She did mention that name to me on the ship.”
“But something else that was strange. The name of the castle’s owner was Gedeon, but according to the diary he was also the owner during World War II and the first World War and even back in earlier centuries. There was never a record of a son, no heirs, no mention of any family, or anyone but Gedeon. He seems to be a shadowy figure, and I don’t believe in vampires, but this man is apparently the same man that’s lived there in that castle for many centuries.”
“Well the sun is about to rise. I guess we’ll find out.”
Will picked up a bucket of water and threw it in splashes onto Gedeon until he regained consciousness. He looked up fearfully at the sun beginning to peek through the clouds.
“Release me. I answered your questions. If you don’t let me go, I’ll burn to death.”
Will looked at Jack, and they both looked at G
edeon, still lashed to the steering wheel by Will’s silver handcuffs.
The sun beat down on the yacht, and Gedeon’s skin began to crackle and smoke.
Jack’s eyes widened. “Do you believe what we’re seeing? We can’t just let him burn to death.”
Gedeon held their gaze and fixed them with a murderous look. He began a relentless chant in an unfamiliar language, pleading and calling on someone above.
Suddenly the sky directly above the vessel was ablaze with a column of heavenly light, not sunlight but brighter, more ethereal.
Jack was stunned, locked in a trance. Will was knocked back on his feet.
When they came to, the only thing left of Gedeon were the silver cuffs, still attached to the steering wheel.
“I think I was struck by lightning,” Jack said, rubbing his jaw. “I couldn’t move. Must have been some kind of freak sunstorm.”
“Whatever it was, it flattened me, too,” Will said. “I didn’t see what happened. Where did he go?”
They tried to question the police officer, who had collapsed on the deck, but though he was still breathing, he was incoherent.
Jack shrugged. “He just disappeared. I don’t know whether that flash was godly or ungodly, whether he was a fallen angel or a devil or whether he was truly a vampire.”
Will couldn’t shed any light on the subject. “Juliette says he was delusional, that he thought she was Marika, her mother. She wasn’t convinced he was a real vampire, but Gedeon was convinced of it, she’s sure. What will we tell Juliette and Kate?”
“That it’s over, that we’re finally going home.”
“But is it, Jack? Is he really gone? Will he come back for Juliette, or take revenge on us?”
“We’ve recovered the stolen paintings, and we know where the two in Bermuda are. The police have taken over the castle in Hungary, and the place is a crime scene, so even if he is still alive or undead or whatever it is that vampires are, he can’t go back there. They’ll have a warrant out for his arrest. They found more than one body in that dungeon. Apparently Gedeon or whoever he is has been plaguing that town since the seventeenth century. He was a major landowner. I can’t wait to get my hands on a copy of that diary. I imagine it will make fascinating reading. The police are going to fax over some of the more relevant pages. The diaries start in 1625, and he’ll fax me some of the early entries as well as those during the World War II period, to help us settle our art theft case.
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