Vampyre Labyrinth

by G. P. Taylor

  [ 3 ]

  45 Dean Street

  A BATTERED BLACK CAB pulled up outside the door of the small hotel and bar. Pulling a leather strap, the driver let the solitary passenger onto the pavement. The man handed him a crumpled one-pound note and didn’t wait for the change. The driver doffed his cap and held the note to the light before he swiftly slipped it into the pocket of his torn shirt. Without even looking back, the passenger crossed the litter-strewn sidewalk of the busy street and pulled on the long brass handle of the door. As it opened a flake of old paint fell to the tiled floor. He looked at it for a moment, reached down and carefully picked it up and put it in his pocket.

  Stepping inside, he smiled at the redhead behind the counter. She nodded, looked down and then rustled like a hen in her tight-fitting black suit.

  ‘It’s been such a long time,’ she said as she pushed down the fabric of her skirt and tried to smile.

  The man raised an eyebrow suspiciously and looked around him.

  ‘Did everything arrive for me?’ he asked in harsh, deep voice.

  ‘Everything, Mr Walpurgis. Everything, just as you asked.’ She reached into a box and pulled out a thick stuffed envelope the size of a small painting. ‘The man said there would be another delivery tomorrow.’

  He grunted in appreciation. He took the package, broke the seal with his finger and peered inside.

  ‘I need a barber and my tailor, Mayer and Mortimer, Sackville Street, if you could ring them for me?’ Walpurgis wasn’t asking. He brushed the flecks of lint from the ragged sleeve of his shabby overcoat as if to show her what he needed. The woman looked at the back of her notepad and reached for the Bakelite black telephone.

  ‘It’s your usual room, overlooking the street, just as you asked,’ she said before she made the call.

  ‘Did you get the flowers?’ he asked as he picked up the keys already labelled with his name from the counter.

  ‘Holly and yew branches with white roses?’ her words ended with a question.

  ‘And some scissors and candles?’

  ‘Just as ordered, they are all in your room.’ The woman smiled and dialled the operator as Walpurgis opened the door to the staircase and then stopped.

  ‘And I am not here if anyone asks,’ he said as he looked back.

  ‘You don’t exist,’ she answered lightly. ‘Many of our guests like not to be noticed.’

  Walpurgis climbed the narrow staircase and turned right, taking the long landing at the front of the hotel. He counted the steps and checked each door he passed. Taking the key, he turned the lock and looked back down the corridor. He stood and listened, as if concerned with what could not be seen and only perceived through a sixth sense. When Walpurgis was satisfied that he was alone he pushed on the door.

  The room was just as he remembered. A large double bed was pushed against one wall; a desk was by the window and a wireless gramophone to one side. The only thing that had changed since his last stay was the picture on the wall above the bed. He had been sure that it had been a scene of the Thames. Now it was just a swathe of colours with a human eye staring from the centre of a vivid rainbow.

  Walpurgis crossed the room and pulled the bed from the wall. He traced the line of the floorboards with his fingers until a short plank gave way. Lifting it from the floor, he reached inside and pulled out a bundle of cloth. Slowly he unwrapped the parcel. Inside was a pistol. He took hold of the cork grip and pulled back the hammer.

  ‘Nice to see you,’ he whispered, as if welcoming an old friend. He lay the gun on the bed and got to his feet.

  Walpurgis stopped suddenly. He was held fast by his reflection in the long mirror by the door. It was the first time he had seen himself for seven years. He stared closely at his equine face, the thin lines around his eyes and the sallow cheeks. He rubbed the short growth of beard on his chin and tried to smoothe the thatch of hair that hung down in long blond ringlets. Everything about him had changed. He was thinner, his shirt baggy around the neck. The collar was black with the dirt of several trains and three nights waiting for a boat at Calais. Walpurgis laughed at his reflection, a shrill and harsh sound.

  He had not seen himself since the day he had been captured by the Gestapo and driven through the forest in the Kubbelwagen. Walpurgis had stared at his reflection in the rear-view mirror and wondered if he would ever escape.

  Now, in the corner of the room the telephone rang. He waited for a moment, hoping it would stop.

  ‘203,’ he said slowly as the first drops of rain beat against the glass. ‘Yes … in the hour … that will be fine … a little thinner …’

  Later, as darkness fell, Walpurgis stepped from the hotel and walked through the busy Soho streets. He admired the creases of his new suit and looked at himself in the reflection of every shop window. His long blond hair was now cut short at the sides and a dark trilby was slanted on his head. On every corner he stopped and looked back through the crowds of people. It was something he always did, a habit from before the war, and part of his craft.

  Walpurgis emerged from the dark, fog-filled streets into a small park, where under a string of coloured lanterns was a café. A white canvas awning covered a cart selling what they said was coffee. Walpurgis thought it smelt of straw. At one of the tables sat an old man in round spectacles; at the next table a woman scribbled notes and turned the pages of a tattered notepad.

  ‘I thought you would never come,’ the old man said as he sat with him.

  ‘I am only seven years late,’ Walpurgis answered. ‘You have lived long enough for that not to matter.’

  ‘Even so, Heston, I would have hoped we could have resolved this matter sooner. The Oracle diamond is not a crystal ball owned by a fairground gypsy.’ The old man tapped the table and rattled the cup that sat on an oversized saucer. Walpurgis saw that the man’s hand was covered by a burn scar.

  ‘My dear Ozymandias, it will be yours as soon as I have it back from Ezra Morgan,’ he answered as he drank from the old man’s cup.

  ‘Morgan is dead and so are many of my kind.’

  ‘That is old news and why I seek the diamond from his son.’

  ‘The assassination killed more than Ezra Morgan, Noel Kinross saw to that. I myself just survived. The explosion has taken most of my sight.’

  ‘Is that why you have a companion?’ Walpurgis asked as he looked at the young woman on the next table.

  ‘If it was not for her I would never have escaped. When Kinross kindly blew up my country house and most of my friends, she saved my life. For that I will always be grateful.’

  ‘But she is human,’ Walpurgis said, ‘and you are an old Vampyre.’

  ‘Have you never been tempted to join us?’ Ozymandias asked. ‘How old are you now – thirty, forty?’

  ‘I am old enough to know that I could never live your life and would never want to,’ he answered.

  ‘That’s right,’ Ozymandias said mockingly. ‘You are an archaeologist, a finder of relics and a man who sells them to the highest bidder. Didn’t you work for the Gestapo?’

  ‘They were searching for things that interested me. When I was no longer of use they locked me away in a wooden hut in the middle of a forest. Carpathia is not a place to be alone.’ Walpurgis slurped the last of the coffee and smiled at the woman. She ignored him and kept on writing.

  ‘Perhaps that is why the authorities want to speak to you.’ Ozymandias spoke eagerly, as if he could help. ‘We are not without influence. The few of my kind that survived still hold sway in the world of men.’

  ‘And what do you want of me?’ he asked.

  ‘The diamond, of course. For which you would be well paid … And a promise that you will kill Hugh Morgan and all his family.’

  ‘All his family? I planned to kill only Hugh Morgan,’ Walpurgis answered.

  ‘There are two others, a boy and a girl. It would be good if they could meet a similar fate to Hugh Morgan.’ Ozymandias scratched the mottled scar on his hand, then pushed an
envelope across the table. ‘Everything you need to know is within. Madame Arantez has seen to that.’

  The woman at the other table stopped writing and looked up and smiled.

  ‘So why did Kinross want to kill you?’ Walpurgis asked.

  ‘I forget you have been away for so long. Carpathia must be a quiet place.’

  ‘Ezra Morgan told the Gestapo where I was hiding. I wasn’t hard to find.’ Walpurgis laughed. ‘I had found the Spear of Longinus and the price they wanted to pay wasn’t enough. In the end, they just took it from me.’

  ‘In a way we have all been cheated. Kinross tried to kill all of us who stood against the Lodge Maleficarum,’ Ozymandias said. ‘He even managed to coerce me into inviting all my friends to a Vampyre Ball. Without my knowing he had planted a bomb under the house, and at midnight the bomb exploded.’

  ‘Didn’t he die in a train crash that night?’ Walpurgis asked.

  ‘Many died … many old friends and a few enemies,’ he answered as he remembered the faces consumed by the fireball. ‘Now that Ezra is dead, it is the end of the Vampyre Quartet and no one will know where the Oracle diamond is hidden.’

  ‘I am an archaeologist and can find that which is lost.’ Walpurgis rubbed the smooth skin on his face and pushed back the brim of his hat. ‘I am a detective of time.’

  ‘I heard that you were a cold-blooded killer who hated Vampyres,’ Ozymandias answered as he looked at him suspiciously. ‘Tell me, Heston. Why is it you want to kill so many of us?’

  Walpurgis looked at the waiter behind the counter and pointed at the cup. The man nodded, poured two cups of coffee and brought them over. Walpurgis slowly stirred the cup and looked at Ozymandias.

  ‘You are an aberration and should not be allowed to live. It is as simple as that,’ he said.

  ‘So it is not that a Vampyre killed your little sister?’ Ozymandias asked.

  ‘I suppose that could be taken into consideration,’ he answered coldly. ‘That, and the fact that I find you all so easy to kill.’

  Ozymandias shivered as he sipped the coffee from his cup and watched the shadows under the trees of the park.

  ‘I am surprised that no one has come to kill you,’ he rasped angrily. ‘It is quite a threat to feel there is someone so hateful in the world.’

  ‘Isn’t that why you want me to do the job?’ he asked.

  ‘You have your uses,’ Ozymandias answered.

  ‘Make sure you kill the boy,’ Madame Arantez muttered from her seat next to him.

  ‘She has a vested interest. It was Jago Harker who took away her humanity,’ Ozymandias said. ‘She is now as much a night-creature as I am.’

  ‘She still looks human,’ Walpurgis said.

  ‘She tries very hard. Madame Arantez writes books for children. It passes the time for her,’ he said, and he reached across the table and stroked her hand as if she was an ailing cat.

  ‘I could always put her out of her misery,’ Walpurgis said.

  ‘It is a shame that I know that isn’t meant to be a joke,’ Ozymandias answered. ‘You do realise that you are quite mad – even in human terms you are deranged. I should know – for many years I worked as a doctor in Leipzig.’

  ‘I would prefer my madness to yours.’ Walpurgis held the gun in his pocket, smoothing his fingers over the cold metal. ‘I find the voices in my head amusing.’

  Walpurgis drank the last of his coffee and sat back in the chair. He looked at Arantez and smiled at her. She looked human; her blond hair was neat and pulled back from her face. The lights from the coffee stall glinted on her red lipstick.

  ‘One thing intrigues me. Why did you turn against the Lodge Maleficarum?’ he asked.

  ‘It is quite simple. For many years we had been under their control. They told us how to live our lives, what to say, what to eat. They even advocated that we only drank that which had been freely given by companions or bought from unscrupulous blood-dealers,’ Ozymandias laughed. ‘Some of us wanted more than this. There was no thrill in the pursuit, no chase. We wanted to be more natural.’

  ‘A return to the old ways?’ he asked. ‘Hunting for your blood?’

  ‘They argued that it would attract too much attention.’

  ‘So he had you culled?’ Walpurgis asked.

  ‘It was quite fitting that his train exploded. He was escaping from the bomb when a car crashed into the steam engine. There were only two survivors. Jago Harker and a girl named Biatra.’

  ‘Are you sure that Ezra Morgan was killed?’

  ‘Completely. The bodies were taken from the train and buried. Ezra Morgan was amongst the dead,’ Ozymandias replied as he rubbed the back of his hand.

  ‘And Strackan? Is he alive?’ Walpurgis asked, keeping a close eye on Madame Arantez, who by now had given up writing in her notebook and was staring at him warily.

  ‘Not even I know where he is. There has been no sign of him since that time. Vampyres are now a scattered and fearful people. The war has cost us greatly. I hear that the Gestapo did much evil towards us.’

  ‘They took your kind to Murano. General Missendorf was most intrigued by them. I thought I could have been of use – but sadly they didn’t need my advice.’

  ‘And now there are only five hundred Vampyres left in the whole world,’ Ozymandias said sadly as the night edged in and wisps of fog swirled around them.

  Walpurgis smiled, knowing that Ozymandias would know his thoughts instantly.

  ‘A deal is a deal, Walpurgis. I will pay you well for the Oracle diamond.’

  ‘Then there will be only four hundred and ninety seven of you left.’ Walpurgis laughed as he got to his feet. ‘Tell your friends to get the authorities off my back. I don’t want to be answering questions about what I did in the war. They can also get me my job back at Cambridge.’

  ‘Would that be all?’ Ozymandias asked sarcastically.

  ‘For the time being,’ Walpurgis answered as he began to walk away, leaving the envelope on the table.

  Ozymandias watched him disappear into the thickening fog.

  ‘He has not taken the envelope,’ Madame Arantez said.

  Ozymandias got to his feet, clutching the envelope.

  ‘Go after him, he is at Hotel Julius. Make sure he reads every word. This cannot go wrong. I will see you at Curzon Street.’ Ozymandias barked the orders as he tapped the table with his fist.

  Arantez vanished into the mist. As she ran along Dean Street she kept to the gutter, staying off the crowded pavement. The lights of the shops flickered in the thickening fog. Suddenly a taxicab lurched towards her and she stepped onto the pavement, pushed close to the wall by the mass of people walking back and forth. Arantez looked up, trying to see the sign for the hotel.

  A hand grabbed her from the blackness of an alleyway. She was pulled back, vanishing from the street without being seen.

  ‘I don’t like to be followed,’ Walpurgis said as he covered her mouth so she could not scream.

  ‘I wouldn’t,’ she answered, twisting her fingers in the lapel of his coat.

  ‘When did you become a Vampyre?’ he asked, pressing his face closer to her.

  ‘It was Jago Harker. Ozzy had asked me to search for the boy. I crashed the truck and Harker took my blood.’

  ‘Then that gives me a better excuse to kill him,’ he answered.

  ‘I didn’t think you would ever come back,’ she said as she brushed his face with her hand.

  ‘It was hard not to think of you. I had to guard my thoughts so he wouldn’t see that we knew each other,’ Walpurgis answered.

  ‘I told him everything. That is why he sent for you. I have nothing to hide.’

  ‘That I loved you?’ he asked.

  ‘Even that.’

  ‘I left the envelope hoping you would follow,’ he replied as he held her close, the fur of her coat pressed against him.

  ‘Is that all you wanted?’ she asked.

  [ 4 ]

  Hegira

  THE
WIND RUSHED IN from the cold North Sea and battered the windows of the turret room. The small glass panes were held in place with strips of lead that shuddered as the gale beat against them. Jago tried to look out into the darkness, but all he could see were the faint lights of two ships sailing south through the heavy sea. They crossed the bay slowly as the waves pushed them back. He shuddered, the thought of the water swirling around him making him feel quite sick.

  ‘We can’t just wait here,’ Biatra said as she walked into the room. ‘I just can’t stop thinking about Hugh. He’s hiding somewhere from a man we don’t even know. We have to help him.’

  ‘Where would we start?’ Jago asked as he tried to count the fresh raindrops that ran down the glass. ‘Does Henson know?’

  ‘If he does, he won’t tell us. Do you think he has changed?’ she asked bitterly.

  ‘We have all changed, Biatra,’ Jago answered. ‘We have been hidden away for too long. We don’t know the real world any longer.’

  ‘I asked him if he’d made any arrangements for us. He said that we would be getting a visit from a butcher in Dewsbury and that is all he could get. I would prefer …’

  ‘Once a moon. That is all we have to have. It is no hardship,’ Jago answered quickly, not wanting to speak of blood.

  ‘At least in Scotland we had the real thing. In Scotland.’

  ‘In Scotland we kept ourselves hidden away and pretended we were dying of tuberculosis. I hated it, hated every minute. It was Hugh who wanted to hide, Hugh who wouldn’t fight. He came to an arrangement with the remnant of the Lodge Maleficarum. If we went away and lived in exile then they would leave us be.’

  ‘We were together,’ she argued as several doors slammed in the house.

  ‘Spied on by Mrs McClure – she was there to make sure Hugh did as he was told. I heard her on the phone to someone from London. She was our guardian,’ Jago answered.

  ‘But you never said,’ Biatra shouted. ‘Why didn’t I know?’