Vampyre Labyrinth

by G. P. Taylor

  ‘You are here because it was no longer safe for you to be in Scotland with Hugh Morgan. He is now out of harm’s way and cannot be found by anyone.’

  ‘So we will be imprisoned here until you tell us that we can go?’ Jago asked, not wanting to look at her.

  ‘I am here to look after you. You have had a guardian before. Most of your life was lived that way,’ she answered. ‘I am sure you will get used to it.’

  ‘It’ll be fine, Jago. She doesn’t look that bad,’ Biatra added. She smiled at Mina. ‘We’re just getting used to all this.’

  ‘The matter will be resolved soon. There are those from the Maleficarum who are trying to make sure that Hugh is always safe. Henson will be here with you and I have arranged for a delivery.’

  ‘Cow’s blood?’ Jago taunted.

  ‘As a matter of fact, no,’ she answered smugly. ‘It will be here in the morning. Can’t have old Henson thinking we would be stalking him in the middle of the night, can we?’

  ‘Henson can look after himself,’ Biatra answered. ‘If you see his room, he sleeps beneath a bow of holly and keeps a silver knife under his pillow.’

  Mina Karlstein didn’t think it was funny. She looked at Henson and tried to smile. Jago could see her eye Henson very warily.

  ‘Force of habit, I’m afraid,’ he said apologetically. ‘My family were taken by a Vampyre a long time ago and things like that are hard to forget.’

  ‘The Maleficarum hopes to be at peace with you, Henson. Don’t forget you are being well paid for all you do for us,’ she answered primly, her voice strained. Mina looked about her and nodded at each of them. ‘It has been a long journey. I presume I have a room?’

  ‘On the first floor, overlooking the bay,’ Henson said as he gestured for her to follow. ‘It is next to mine. You will be quite safe.’

  Mina Karlstein shuddered as she turned to leave the room. The steel tips of her boots clicked on the stone floor.

  ‘It would be good if we could talk in the morning – perhaps I could explain the rules,’ she said as she followed Henson from the room.

  ‘Rules?’ Jago asked when he heard the door to her room close. ‘Rules to keep us locked in this house and away from Hugh.’

  ‘Let’s see what she is like. She didn’t look that bad to me,’ Biatra answered honestly.

  ‘I don’t intend to stay longer than I have to,’ he whispered, knowing that Mina would be trying to listen. ‘We have to find Hugh and stop Walpurgis.’

  ‘But how?’ Biatra asked.

  ‘He is human and can be stopped. We can hunt him down.’

  ‘Is that your answer for everything?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s what needs to be done.’ Jago stacked more logs on the fire, then slouched back into the leather armchair. ‘I will find a way.’

  Jago didn’t move from the chair. He still had the key to Toran Blaine’s motorbike but was reluctant to leave without Biatra coming with him. As hour faded into hour he stared at the flames and embers until the night gave way. When dawn broke the sky had cleared. The house was still. Walking silently, the Sinan in his pocket, he went to the library. He checked the doorway of Mina’s room but could hear nothing. The distant, faint sound of Biatra singing in her room trailed down the stairway.

  Inside the library, Jago locked the door behind him and slipped the key into his pocket. He began to search the shelves for anything out of place. All the books looked the same, leather-bound with gold writing etched into their spines. There was no clue as to where he should be looking. All Jago knew was that somewhere Henson had hidden a box of papers. Jago hoped that within he would find the answers to his questions.

  As he reached the end of the first aisle, Jago stopped. By the desk that faced the window was a small brass frog. It sat life-like on the polished wooden floor and stared at him through one bulbous metal eye. In all his time at the house, he had never seen the object before. Jago lifted it from the boards and saw that it covered a tiny hole, the size of his smallest fingertip. Without thinking, he placed the frog on the desk and then slipped his finger into the hole. The floorboard moved slightly as he flicked a catch behind. Suddenly the wood tilted as a slot in the floor opened.

  Jago reached within, his hand fumbling in the darkness, and grasped a bundle of papers tied with a ribbon. He pulled them from the darkness, looked at them quickly and then hid them in his coat. Within a minute all was as it had been. Jago reached for the key in his pocket and turned to leave.

  ‘I always worry about people who do things behind locked doors,’ Mina Karlstein said as she stepped in from the balcony that overlooked the bay. ‘It makes me think they have something to hide.’

  ‘How –?’ Jago asked, wondering how the woman had got to the balcony.

  ‘I heard you, so I thought I would come and see what you were searching for. Is it something that you always do? Is it because you are a boy?’ she asked intrusively.

  ‘Do I have to tell you everything? Can I not have secrets?’ he asked. ‘Even Mrs McClure gave us freedom.’

  ‘She told me that you were thoughtful and irksome and spent most of your time talking to the girl and thinking,’ Karlstein answered as she closed the doors to the balcony behind her and looked around the library. ‘Do you think I want to be here?’

  ‘I care not,’ Jago replied as he took the large key from his pocket and slid it into the lock. ‘I will do what you ask and nothing more.’

  In an instant the woman was at his side, her hand on the key.

  ‘I don’t want you to go, not yet. I feel that we have started badly,’ she said as she touched his hand.

  ‘It’s breakfast, I still try to eat. It makes me feel –’

  ‘Human?’ she asked.

  ‘Happy,’ he answered.

  ‘Perhaps the two are really one,’ she replied as she moved away from the door and sat on the desk, flicking the switch of the reading light on and off.

  ‘The bulb will explode,’ Jago said as he turned the lock, ‘and you could be electrocuted.’

  ‘Would that be an end to your problems?’ Karlstein asked. She picked a stiletto paper knife from the Toby jug by the lamp.

  ‘It would be the start of yours,’ he answered glibly as he turned the handle, trying to hide the bundle of papers stuffed into his jacket.

  ‘They said that you would be like this,’ Karlstein answered as she rolled the sleeve of her black jacket and pulled the cuff of her neat white shirt. ‘What can I do to prove to you that I am on your side, Jago?’

  ‘You could tell me the truth. I don’t believe that we are here for protection. Hugh Morgan may be fooled by that, but I find it hard –’

  His words were cut short by her abrupt reply.

  ‘And if I told you the truth, what then?’ she asked. ‘Do you think you would be able to understand what it would mean for you?’

  ‘I have now realised that Vampyres find the truth a hard thing to understand,’ he said as he closed the door and looked at her.

  Mina Karlstein was outlined in the light from the tall window at the far end of the room. It etched her in a murky shadow. She stood by the writing desk in her dark suit and looked as if she were a tall, slender man. Her hair was cropped short at the sides and cut high around the ears. It was piled on her head in a mound of thick black ringlets. She tapped the desk with her painted fingers as she smiled at him.

  Jago saw her face change as she slipped her hand into the pocket of her jacket and pulled out a silver pyx.

  ‘This is the blood of the plague doctor who saved my life. One day I was hoping to take it and change back to being human. I have carried it with me since the day he saved me,’ Karlstein said as she held the pyx before him like a gift. ‘I remember him well. He came to my house when my mother and sister were sick. He looked like a gigantic bird in his long black coat. As he climbed the stairs to my mother’s room, at first I thought he was a monster. He looked at her and told me she would be dead within the hour. Then he told me of a
way I could escape her fate.’

  Karlstein slipped the vial of blood back in her pocket. ‘He pushed me against the wall and bit my neck. It was on 15 August 1723.’

  ‘And you would go back to being human?’ Jago asked.

  ‘I have considered it often,’ she answered.

  ‘Some of us do not have that chance,’ Jago replied,‘because the woman who took my blood is dead.’

  ‘What makes you think that?’ Karlstein asked as if she knew more than she would ever say.

  ‘The explosion at the house of Ozymandias … So many Vampyres died. Ezra Morgan, Toran Blaine, Vibica De Zoete, Noel Kinross – all dead.’ Jago concentrated his mind on the sight of the burning steam engine so she could not see his true thoughts.

  ‘There are only five hundred of us left throughout the entire world, Jago. This war has cost so many lives. Throughout the centuries our kind have survived pestilence and hardship. We have prospered where others have failed. But in five years of human warfare many of my friends are dead.’

  ‘Didn’t Kinross want to kill as many Vampyres as he could – isn’t that why he planted the bomb?’ Jago asked.

  ‘He was deluded,’ Karlstein said as she walked to the window and looked out across the remains of the labyrinth, tracing the outline of the passageways with her finger on the windowpane. ‘The signs were there for many years. He had become obsessed with power and his own glory. Some say that he wanted war.’

  ‘And now you keep me captive for even longer and you taunt me with stories of wanting to become human again.’

  ‘The woman who took your blood was Medea – and she survives. She is as well as I am. She is in the same place as Hugh Morgan. She is also there for her own good. If you ever wanted to return to humanity it could be arranged,’ Karlstein answered as if she would broker a deal.

  ‘What would make you offer that to me?’ Jago asked.

  ‘You are very different from every other Vampyre that has lived – except for one …’

  ‘Strackan?’ Jago asked.

  ‘Do you know who you really are?’ Karlstein asked. She looked at him with piercing silver eyes that flickered red as she spoke.

  ‘I am the son of Strackan,’ Jago answered. A sudden breeze stirred the dust from the bindings of the books around him as if the mention of that name brought them to life.

  ‘Your true father,’ she answered.

  ‘So it is about me – all of this?’

  ‘It is about you and what you are. The Maleficarum do not know what to do with you,’ she said.

  ‘Have they thought of killing me?’ he asked.

  ‘They are bound by a law that is as old as time. Murdering you could never be sanctioned and even if it was possible the Maleficarum would never allow such a thing.’

  ‘So what is to be done with me?’ he asked, sensing she was not telling him the truth.

  ‘You are to be taken to a place far away from here. You will be kept there until they can decide your fate. You will never see Biatra again,’ she said coldly.

  ‘And if I don’t go?’ he replied.

  ‘We will kill Henson and the girl. They are all that you have and we know you would never let that happen.’

  [ 6 ]

  Luna Negri

  THE SMELL OF BREAKFAST filled Hawks Moor and lingered in the kitchen. Jago stood by the gurgling stove, clasping a cup of steaming coffee in his hands like a prayer. Henson was still in his room. Jago had wanted to wake him and tell him all that Karlstein had said but had decided to wait until they were all together. The last thing the guardian had said as he left the library was that she would tell Henson and Biatra at breakfast that Jago was leaving that morning. She had given no other details and Jago could tell from her pinched red lips that the woman would carry out her murderous threat if he refused.

  He had not seen Mina Karlstein since he had left the library. It was still early and he could hear her walking the upstairs corridor as if she owned the house. He knew she was searching his room, hoping to find what he had taken from the library, and he laughed to himself. The papers he had discovered were still stuffed down the front of his jacket. When he was alone he would read them; he knew they must have some importance if they had been so well hidden.

  It was not long before Jack Henson appeared at the kitchen door.

  ‘Coffee, Jago?’ he asked with a yawn. He looked about the room with eyes that asked where the new guardian was hiding.

  ‘She is in my room and yes, there is coffee,’ he answered. He put down his cup and took the pot from the stove.

  ‘I had a strange dream. It was so bad that I got up and put another sprig of holly above my bed,’ Henson said.

  ‘We won’t eat you.’ Jago laughed as he handed Henson the cup of steaming black liquid. ‘Biatra thought about it once but didn’t like to take any of your blood as she thought you were so old you would need every drop.’

  ‘Not you I was worried about,’ he whispered in reply as he blew on the liquid to cool it down. ‘I was on a train. It had stopped in a tunnel – there was a feeling of evil that was everywhere.’

  ‘Too much cheese,’ Jago answered. ‘I have taken dreams too seriously.’

  ‘Mina Karlstein was on the train; there was no one else but her and me. She was hunting me down through the corridors and passageways, her eyes streaming with blood.’ Henson looked back and forth as if he re-lived the nightmare. ‘It means something, Jago, I am sure of it.’

  Jago looked beyond him to where the woman stood in the hallway, leaning against the frame of the drawing-room door.

  ‘It means you are an old man,’ Karlstein said as she straightened the lapels of her jacket. ‘As a Vampyre I myself never dream. Sleep is just a closing of the eyes. Perhaps I have no need to work out my guilt through the phantasms of the mind.’

  ‘Do you drink coffee?’ Jago asked as he held out the pot.

  ‘Only that which I have prepared myself,’ she answered coldly. ‘I think it would be a good time to explain what is going to happen and why we are really here.’

  The woman looked at Jago. In turn, he smiled at Henson and raised an eyebrow.

  ‘What do you want?’ Henson asked her. ‘Something’s not right – I can feel it.’

  ‘What is not right is that a man has got involved in our world,’ Karlstein answered as Biatra turned the landing of the staircase and looked over the handrail.

  She could feel the strained atmosphere. Her mind darted as she sought an explanation. ‘What is it, Jago?’ she asked, sensing his fear.

  ‘I am going away,’ he answered as he swallowed a lump in his throat. ‘It’s for the best. Mina told me early this morning when I couldn’t sleep.’

  ‘Then we will come with you,’ she answered.

  ‘He will go alone,’ Karlstein said, annoyed by the interruption. ‘It is all arranged. You and Henson will stay here. That is what must happen.’

  ‘You can’t stop us,’ Biatra replied as she stepped towards the woman.

  ‘Tell her, Jago.’ Karlstein commanded. ‘Tell your friend what will happen to her.’

  ‘If I do not do what they say, Karlstein will have you both killed. I am to go away while the Maleficarum consider what will be done with me,’ Jago answered.

  He put the coffee pot back on the stove and slumped in a kitchen chair, folding his arms begrudgingly.

  ‘Why do you need Jago?’ Henson asked, stepping towards Karlstein.

  ‘Shall I tell him, Jago?’ she asked.

  ‘They know who my father is,’ he answered.

  ‘It doesn’t take a fool to know it is Ezra Morgan,’ Henson said.

  ‘If that were the case then Jago would not be such a threat to our kind,’ Karlstein answered.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Henson asked.

  ‘She knows my father is Strackan,’ Jago said calmly. ‘They found out when Medea took my blood. Then Ezra Morgan told Kinross. That is why I could not be killed.’

  ‘Why can’t he stay he
re? He will do you no harm,’ Henson pleaded.

  ‘There is a place for such as him where no one can free him,’ Karlstein answered. ‘He will come with us this morning and you will stay at Hawks Moor.’

  ‘You promised not to harm them,’ Jago insisted earnestly.

  ‘I will keep my promise. The girl will forget you in time and the man will die of old age long before you are ever set free,’ she said with a smirk, twisting a curl with her fingertip.

  ‘How long will we be kept here as prisoners?’ Henson asked her.

  ‘As long as it takes you to die,’ she answered coldly. ‘By looking at you, that should be fifteen years at the most.’

  ‘And what of Biatra – what will become of her?’ asked Henson. He looked at Jago, who sat on the kitchen chair with his face buried in his hands.

  ‘When this crisis has passed and you are dead she will be put in the care of another guardian far, far away from here. She will be given a new name and a new life. Hopefully she will forget all about you,’ Karlstein quipped arrogantly. ‘It is quite tragic that you all got involved in this.’

  ‘I had no choice,’ Jago shouted. ‘I was sired by a monster for his own good. He fooled my mother into thinking he was someone else, someone she loved. That is why I am here.’

  ‘Save it, Jago. You will have your chance to speak before the Maleficarum,’ she snarled.

  ‘Where are you taking him?’ Henson insisted as he gripped her by the wrist.

  ‘Let go of me!’ Karlstein shouted.

  ‘Where are you taking him?’ Henson repeated.

  Karlstein twisted her wrist and threw Henson across the hallway towards the fireplace. He slid across the stone floor like a rag doll.

  She screamed in anger. ‘Don’t ever touch me again or I will kill you!’

  As Biatra thought for a moment and made ready to strike Karlstein turned to her. ‘Don’t think of it. I wouldn’t hesitate to rip out your throat.’

  ‘Just tell us where he is going,’ Biatra said.

  ‘Luna Negri – a place you will never know,’ she answered.

  ‘The prison of Luna Negri – the cave of the Black Moon?’ Henson asked.