Vampyre Labyrinth

by G. P. Taylor

  ‘The priest who brought us here yesterday is a traitor. There is a gathering of Vampyres who want you dead. They say that your birth was predicted and that the Lyrid of Saturn was a sign that you will be the destruction of our race. The priest is their spy.’

  ‘How did you know?’ he asked.

  ‘He was planning to meet a woman by the Seine and tell her all that he knew. I managed to meet her before him and left a sign that would implicate him,’ Lana answered with a slight laugh.

  ‘You killed her,’ Jago replied. He glimpsed her thoughts as if he had been allowed to see into her mind.

  ‘Of course – she was working for the enemy. Your life would have been in danger.’

  ‘And the priest?’

  ‘I had asked for his rosary. I told him that I would like to follow the Cult of the Oracle. He kindly obliged. I noticed that it was engraved with his name. I left it in her hands. The police will think he is the murderer.’ Lana crossed her legs and looked at her reflection in the toes of her polished boots.

  ‘Why didn’t you just kill him?’ he asked.

  ‘It had to appear that we do not know what he had planned. The priest will be arrested and taken away. We can then continue our journey,’ she said complacently. She reached into the bag that hung from her shoulder and picked an almond-shaped mint imperial and ate it quickly. ‘For some reason, the Cult of the Oracle want you dead. Since the Lyrid of Saturn, the only thing that Vampyres want to talk about is Jago Harker.’

  ‘I wish all this had never started,’ he answered as he got up from the couch and walked to the window. Lana followed, staying close as a shadow.

  ‘There are things in life that are meant to be,’ she said before she turned him towards her. ‘How old are you in earth years?’

  ‘I will be twenty-one,’ he replied realising for the first time that putting a number to his age did not make sense. Jago felt just as he had done all those years before. His appearance had changed so little that he had forgotten that he should look much older.

  ‘That doesn’t make it so bad,’ she said in reply, knowing she could say no more. ‘I will get Clover to take away the breakfast,’ she added as she stepped away from him.

  ‘Clover?’ he asked.

  ‘The companion – his name is Clover. He was once an actor. Clover has been with me for ten years. I could not be without him,’ she said, as if he were a pet dog.

  ‘Strange name for a man. He is so tatty. I noticed his clothes are threadbare,’ Jago said. He heard a busker stop playing outside the window.

  ‘That is only how he dresses when we are away from London. He is very elegant. I should know, I pay his bills. That is the benefit of being a companion.’ Lana edged closer to Jago and brushed the dust from the shoulder of his leather coat. ‘And if any one is tatty then it is you – have you seen …’

  He did not have time to answer. There was a sudden thud and the double doors to the room swung open. Clover hung from the door, pinned by his hands, crucified with two long-bladed knives. He screamed in agony as four dark figures walked slowly towards Lana and Jago. Each was masked. They wore black gloves and long coats. The tallest wore a black shirt with a red necktie.

  ‘Jago Harker? We have come to take you back to where you really belong,’ he said as he pushed Lana out of the way with a sudden blow.

  ‘Leave him,’ Lana shouted as she got to her feet.

  ‘You have done enough damage, Lana Karlstein. Stay out of this,’ the man shouted as he grabbed hold of Jago by the wrist and pulled him towards him.

  ‘Who are you?’ Lana asked as she lurched forward and tried to grab the mask from the man.

  As she struck out, the man pushed her away. ‘Don’t hurt her,’ he said to the man behind him.

  The other man stepped forward quickly and just as Lana went to strike him with her fist, he grabbed her by the hands. With one fluid movement he twisted her round, and before she could fight back another man close behind struck her across the head. Lana Karlstein fell to the ground.

  ‘She won’t bother us now,’ the man said as he took hold of Jago by his other arm and with his companion walked him from the room.

  ‘Good,’ the other replied as he put a hand across Jago’s mouth. ‘Let’s get him to the car.’

  Lana could hear every word as they dragged Jago from the room. Her companion screamed as the knife cut through the skin of his hands, the weight of his body pulling him to the ground. She tried to get to her feet but the blow to her head held her to the floor. Fighting against herself, she struggled to the sofa and got to her knees. Lana looked about the room. In her befuddled mind she tried to work out which way they would have gone.

  As the spinning in her mind calmed to a faint dizziness, she got to her feet and made her way across the room.

  ‘I have to stop them, Clover. I will be back for you,’ she said as she stood by the open window and looked down to the square below.

  A car was waiting on the cobbles under the canopy of the hotel. Four men walked towards it. There was Jago. Instinctively he turned and looked up, and she saw his face.

  ‘In the car,’ one of the men shouted. ‘Police – get out of the way!’

  The crowd stood back as Jago was bundled into the car. No one in the street seemed to care. He looked as if he were just someone else being arrested. It had become a common sight. The last man looked back to the hotel and then got into the car and slammed the door.

  It sped across the square towards the river. Lana jumped from the window and slid across the canopy. She landed on the ground as if she were a large black cat. Then, without taking a breath, she began to run through the crowd of people.

  The car was always ahead of her. It followed the roadway around the Place de la Concorde and headed towards the Avenue des Champs Elysées. Jago looked back from the rear seat of the car. Two guards, their masks still in place, pressed him in. Silent and sweaty, they smelt like over-worked horses. He was sure that he saw Lana running through the crowds, but then she was gone.

  ‘Turn around,’ one of them commanded as he pushed Jago in the ribs with a sharp fist. ‘Keep your face down in the car. Don’t want you to be seen.’

  The car turned away from the river and was soon in the narrow streets around Saint Lazare. It crawled through the traffic, the horn sounding at the small motorcycles that cut in from all sides.

  ‘Get them out of the way,’ the man in the front seat shouted. ‘Knock them down if you have to.’

  Jago could hear desperation in his voice.

  ‘Who are you? Where are you taking me?’ he shouted at the man.

  ‘Keep quiet, you fool,’ the man next to him shouted as the car swerved, knocking an old man on a bicycle to the ground.

  Jago looked for the moment, and without warning he reached out to the door handle at the far side of the car.

  ‘What do you think you are doing?’ the man said, twisting his wrist as the car drove off leaving the old man in the road.

  ‘Let me go!’ Jago shouted, hoping someone outside the car in the crowded street would hear him.

  ‘Stay where you are and shut up,’ the man on the front seat commanded.

  The car screeched around the corner of Rue Moncey, narrowly missing the street-front coffee shop with old men playing cards at small tables. Jago looked out of the back window. He knew that Lana would never find him. The car drove quickly down the road and then stopped in traffic.

  ‘It will be like this all the way to Montmagny,’ the driver said as he turned the wheel of the car, slipped the gearshift and accelerated away across the pavement, scattering the pedestrians. ‘If I can just get out of this street …’

  There was a sudden shadow as a body landed and thudded on the windshield. The car skidded and crashed into the wall of the Bank Montmartre, smashing stones from the doorway. Steam billowed from the engine and the body of a woman was slumped on the bonnet.

  ‘Look, you fool!’ the man in the front seat shouted at the driver.
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  The woman outside got to her feet. Jago saw her face. ‘Lana Karlstein,’ he whispered.

  In one movement she smashed her fist through the glass and grabbed the passenger. She pulled him through the broken windshield and onto the bonnet.

  The guard in the back tried to get from the car, but his door was jammed against the wall of the bank. Jago lashed out at the man next to him and then grabbed the door handle. A fist came through the glass and punched the man in the face. He slumped back, his nose broken.

  ‘Jago, watch out!’ Lana shouted as the other man grabbed him by the throat.

  ‘Stay where you are!’ the man shouted as he tried to strangle him.

  Footsteps crashed over the roof of the car. The door was pulled open. The man was dragged from the leather seat. He hung in the air, his feet off the ground. Jago could hear him gasping for breath, and then his body fell to the ground as if dumped from the gallows.

  ‘Quickly, Jago,’ Lana shouted. ‘We have to get away.’

  A screaming crowd gathered around the car. In the steam and smoke that poured from the engine, they all stared at the tall blond woman with her hands covered in blood.

  ‘Get her,’ a man shouted.

  ‘They are Gestapo, they have been hiding in the city,’ Lana said as the mob came close. ‘They were kidnapping him.’

  ‘Gestapo?’ he answered, his face turning red with anger as he saw that the men were masked and a Luger pistol lay on the floor. ‘Gestapo?’

  The man pulled on the door and dragged the unconscious guard from the car. Jago slid free as Lana jumped from the roof and took him by the hand.

  No one saw them escape through the howling mob that descended on the black sedan like a swarm of ants. As they slipped away, Jago could hear smashing glass and faint screams echoing through the narrow streets as the car was pulled to pieces. The crowd roared as an old blacksmith in a leather apron smashed the petrol tank. They stepped back as the first flames took hold and the car began to burn. Thick acrid smoke plumed into the air and wafted between the tall buildings.

  ‘Don’t look back, Jago. You don’t want to ever see what they are doing,’ Lana said as they turned from the road with the old buildings and onto a wide tree-lined boulevard that led back to the river. ‘We will get a taxi and leave the city. They know where we are.’

  ‘What about Clover?’ Jago asked. He could see from the grimace on her face that he should ask no more.

  ‘I think we will be going alone,’ she answered as she took a handkerchief from the coat of her pocket and tried to wipe the blood from her hands. She waved the bloodied handkerchief at the stream of cars that crowded the boulevard. ‘We are not safe. We have to go now,’ Lana said as a taxi pulled over and the door opened.

  ‘Who were they?’ he asked.

  ‘The Cult of the Oracle. They were going to sacrifice you,’ she said casually as she pushed him into the back of the taxi and pulled the door behind them. ‘It is the prophecy.’

  [ 15 ]

  Mina … Mina … Mina …

  THE MORNING WAS grey and cloudy with little chance of the sun ever breaking through the clouds. The gloom stretched over Whitby like a funeral pall, mixed with the smoke from a thousand chimney pots on the old cottages beneath the Abbey. As Walpurgis walked down the five steps from the shabby railway station he looked across the river to the far side. The banks of the cliff were lined with old houses painted in bright colours like nothing he had ever seen. High above was the old church and the ruins of the Abbey that stood next to a vast house made of dulled sandstone and covered in coal grime.

  He walked across the street to the tobacconist’s, where three taxi cabs stood in a row waiting for passengers.

  ‘Hawks Moor?’ he asked. Each driver politely refused and then drove away.

  ‘Won’t take you there,’ a woman said, listening from a doorway of a disused shop. ‘Not since all that has been happening. People around here are quite suspicious.’ The woman sucked on an old pipe and blew white smoke into the morning air.

  ‘What would put people off going to Hawks Moor?’ he asked as if he didn’t care, so she wouldn’t be put off her answer. ‘It is a fine house.’

  ‘Police inspector was killed during the war. There were rumours of things happening in the old maze they had there. Trouble with …’ The woman paused and looked around to see if anyone else was listening. ‘Vampyres.’

  ‘So how will I get there if no one will take me?’ Walpurgis asked as he hitched up the leather bag on his shoulder.

  ‘Walk,’ she answered, pointing to the pathway that led up to the church and beyond. ‘That will take you all the way to Hawks Moor. Not many miles, just keep the sea to the port side of you and it’ll be fine.’ The woman waved her left hand as if to show him which way to go.

  ‘You could always come with me – keep me company,’ Walpurgis joked as he raised his eyebrows in surprise.

  The woman didn’t laugh. She tapped the cup of the pipe against the wall and knocked out all the burning ash before she spoke.

  ‘Would rather dine in hell than take my chances outside the town. I have lived here for fifty-five years and never set foot outside of the place,’ she said smugly, as if this self-imposed incarceration was something of which she was exceedingly proud.

  Walpurgis touched the brim of his fedora and walked on. Every now and then he stopped and took the small green bottle from his pocket and sipped the linctus. It took away the pain and numbed the wound to his leg. Ozymandias was right when he had said it was an elixir to die for. He could feel nothing – no pain, no sensation, no life.

  Soon he was across the bridge and through the narrow streets crowded with fishermen and groups of soldiers emptying sandbags on the beach. Within an hour, Walpurgis could see the tall chimneys of Hawks Moor in the distance. Heather and bracken gave way to small fields of rough grass. Covens of tattered sheep stared suspiciously at him as he walked by. The sky was still laden with cloud that blocked out the horizon, though every now and then it broke into open blue. There was not a hint of breeze. The world stood still, as if it were dying and unable to draw breath.

  By the time he had crossed the moor and stood on the high bank looking down on the house, the fog had thickened. It moved slowly, like fumbling party balloons or swirling candyfloss. The house vanished under a blanket of mist only to reappear suddenly as if the ground had swallowed up the clouds. A fire burnt in the house and a spiral of smoke welled up from one of the chimneys. Walpurgis reached into his shoulder bag and took out a pair of brass binoculars.

  A car rattled down the lane behind him. Walpurgis hid in the long wet grass and waited until it had gone. It chugged on, clunking through the potholes, and within minutes it was outside the house. Through his binoculars Walpurgis saw the driver get out, leaving a passenger reading a newspaper in the front seat. He could not see the face, but by the fingers that clutched the newspapers Walpurgis knew this was a man.

  A group of people walked to the car. An older man with grey hair and a straggly beard held the arm of a younger girl with red hair and a frightened look on her face. Walpurgis could see they were manacled together. He could hear the man protest as he was pushed towards the car. A tall woman in a rugged black suit followed them. Her black curled hair was piled on her head and shaved at the sides. Walpurgis focused the binoculars on her face. She was giving out orders and, not content with shouting, pointed her long fingers at the older man with the beard.

  Walpurgis tried to read her red lips. They moved quickly, slipping from English to German and then to French. He could make out the occasional word. Most were spoken harshly in her staccato voice.

  ‘Mina Karlstein, you never change,’ he whispered under his breath.

  Before she slammed the car door, Walpurgis had taken the path down the bank side to the back of the house.

  Mina Karlstein waited as the car turned on the gravel and drove back towards the gate. Biatra looked out of the side window as she was driven away, w
ondering why Mina had broken her promise. The woman smiled at her as if she was saying goodbye to an old friend. The smile cracked the face powder that was daubed thickly on her cheeks. She stopped for a moment, sniffing the air like a dog taking in the scent. She looked up to the hill as if she could sense something was there that she couldn’t see.

  Closing the door to Hawks Moor behind her, Mina crossed the hallway. The painting of Ezra Morgan stared down at her. His face frowned in discontent as if he knew what filled her thoughts.

  Then she stopped suddenly. On the floor, outlined in the dust, was a large footprint. From the drawing room came the sound of the fire being griddled with the iron rod. The coals scraped against the firedogs as the embers crackled. Mina listened, and as the poker was dropped on the stone fireplace she walked slowly to the door. Taking the handle she pushed gently, listening to every sound as she did so.

  ‘I am quite comfortable, if you want to come in, Mina,’ Walpurgis said as he settled back in the armchair by the window with his leather bag on his lap.

  Mina Karlstein looked around the door. A flop of curls fell across her face. She wiped them back quickly as she stepped into the room and held the door.

  ‘Heston Walpurgis. Have you taken up burglary as a pastime?’ she asked sarcastically.

  ‘Your name came up in conversation so I thought I would come and see you,’ he answered. ‘It is a long time since that afternoon in Cambridge. If my memory serves me well it was enjoyable for us both.’

  ‘My tastes have changed since then, Walpurgis. In fact it was meeting you that set my mind once and for all.’ Mina eyed him warily, wondering why he was there.

  ‘I am so glad I was of service. Perhaps you will be able to help me?’ Walpurgis asked as he reached into the bag and concealed his hand within.

  ‘How did you know I was here? It was a secret,’ she answered.

  ‘That is the world of the Vampyres. No one can keep anything to themselves. I think that your venom addles the mind and you all chirp gibberish and we mortals are led to believe it is supernatural truth.’ Walpurgis crossed his dirty brown boots and relaxed back into the chair and yawned.