Vampyre Labyrinth

by G. P. Taylor

  ‘The Oracle knows the future of the world and can answer any question. We need never fear an uncertain future again. Ozymandias has promised that now the Maleficarum has gone, we will be ruled in peace. The Oracle will tell us all we need to know.’

  ‘Don’t you need a diamond?’ Jago answered.

  ‘It has been here all along. Ezra Morgan brought it to this place just before the war. I was smuggled from England and have kept the diamond safe all this time.’

  ‘And my blood?’ he asked.

  ‘They will cut out your heart and squeeze the blood from it on to the diamond. Then the Oracle will come to life,’ Vibica answered.

  ‘And if I die before they can do that?’

  The voice of Ozymandias answered: ‘Then I will cut off the head of Biatra and Hugh Morgan and you will know that they are dead as well.’ He stepped from the shadows of the tunnel. ‘It is something I promise I will do, even though it goes against our code. If they die whilst entombed in Luna Negri they will never know any peace.’

  Jago turned. Ozymandias stood behind him flanked by two companions. Walpurgis was cuffed with a steel bracelet on each wrist. His face was bloodied and bruised with marks that matched the thick knuckle-guard on the hand of the man holding him.

  ‘Don’t believe him, Jago,’ Walpurgis slathered as his mouth filled with blood. ‘They could never break the code.’

  ‘That is a chance you may have to take, Jago. This is all about your willingness to give your life for someone else. It is what you were born to do. Like the master of Magdalene, you too are a saviour.’ Ozymandias laughed and then looked at Vibica. ‘Is everything ready?’

  ‘They are all here,’ she answered.

  ‘Have they been waiting for a long time?’

  ‘They have fasted for three days – just as is required. All the Cult of the Oracle are here.’ She stopped for a moment and looked at Walpurgis. ‘All except for Mina Karlstein and Medea.’

  ‘They will not be coming,’ Ozymandias said sharply. ‘There was an accident at the Convent. Medea is dead – isn’t she, Jago?’

  Jago nodded in agreement.

  ‘Did you kill them, Jago?’ Vibica asked as their eyes met.

  ‘It was Ozymandias – he killed them,’ Walpurgis shouted. The man holding his arm twisted him to the ground.

  Vibica looked at Ozymandias. He shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘Medea was already dead when we entered the Convent and Mina –’

  ‘She was poisoned – she drank poisoned wine,’ Jago answered before he could say another word.

  ‘On whose instructions?’ Vibica asked. Ozymandias tried to look away. ‘Was it you?’

  ‘They were loose ends. Both of them had tried to bargain for their lives. Mina sleeps and will do so for a year and a day. The boy is correct – Medea is dead.’

  Vibica de Zoete turned from them and stroked the forehead of Toran Blaine. She looked back just for the briefest moment to savour the glare on the face of Heston Walpurgis.

  ‘Then we should wait no longer,’ she said suddenly. ‘All is ready. Take Walpurgis to the chamber. The casket of Magdalene is already open. The Cult of the Oracle are awaiting.’ The taller of the guards grabbed Jago by the arm as if to drag him away. ‘Ozymandias – tell them to leave Jago. He has to be prepared.’

  ‘What if he tries to escape?’ the man asked.

  ‘I will stay with her,’ Jago said. ‘It is finished.’

  ‘Don’t be a fool, Harker. Fight them until you can fight no more,’ Walpurgis insisted.

  ‘They have won – can’t you see that?’ Jago shouted back. His words echoed in the dark cavern.

  ‘Jago … Please, Jago,’ Walpurgis begged.

  ‘When you become like us then you will see that Jago is right,’ Ozymandias answered. He turned to Jago. ‘I am so glad you do not want to make a fuss. What you are doing will be remembered for ever.’

  The man dragged Walpurgis from the cavern. Ozymandias and the other guard followed down a small passageway lit by red candles. Vibica waited until they were far away and their footsteps could be heard no more.

  ‘Do as I say and you will live.’

  ‘Why should you help me?’ he asked.

  ‘I remember that day at Hawks Moor. I couldn’t help but think how beautiful you were. I have not forgotten that thought all these years. If only things had been different,’ Vibica reached forward, cupped his face in her hands and kissed him on the lips. ‘I sense you are in love.’

  ‘I was in love – she is dead.’

  ‘Biatra? Medea?’ Vibica asked.

  ‘Lana Karlstein,’ he answered softly.

  It was some time later that Vibica de Zoete led Jago away from the chamber where Toran Blaine rested peacefully, along the passageway and into a vast darkness.

  Although the blackness went on and on, Jago knew that he was in the presence of many people. Vibica carried a dim candle that lit the ground about her feet. She stopped on a small stone step.

  ‘I bring you Jago Harker – Son of Strackan – True Blood of True Blood – begotten not made – of one with Magdalene,’ she shouted in the darkness.

  A flutter of applause danced about the cavern. Then, one by one, small lights appeared as more candles were lit. The darkness unfurled and faces came into sight, some nearby, others far away. Jago saw Walpurgis. He was tied to a wooden cross, his shirt torn from his bloodied body and leather straps bound around each wrist. Before him was a long open coffin that looked as if it was made of thick glass. Inside was the body of a woman wrapped in a shroud. As the candles banished the blackness, Jago could see more and more people. Standing a few feet away by a stone altar was Ezra Morgan.

  On a small, black satin pillow was a large cut diamond.

  Morgan reached out his arms and with outstretched hands begged for silence.

  ‘Five hundred faces and all so strange. I feel like a waif before the wind – tossed in an ocean of shock and change,’ Morgan sang with all his heart. ‘Those are my favourite words. Stolen from a school high on a hill – but quite fitting for this time,’ he said to Vibica. ‘Taken from the Temple of Constantine – hidden in the eaves of the Great Window – the Oracle diamond, the life of Magdalene,’ Morgan shouted as he held the diamond in his hand.

  ‘It is time – is all ready?’ Vibica asked him.

  ‘True blood for true blood,’ Ezra answered as he slipped back the hood of his robe.

  ‘And my husband?’ she said as she looked across the marble cavern to the cross.

  ‘He is willing,’ Ozymandias said from behind the mask of a goat.

  ‘Now is the time,’ Morgan declared as five hundred faces looked on.

  Vibica walked silently toward Walpurgis.

  ‘You don’t have to do this,’ he screamed. ‘Vibica – no!’

  Vibica ignored his words. She dropped the hood of the cowl and let the cloak slip to the floor. Grabbing his face with her long fingers, she held him fast. Then, pushing his head back against the cross, she exposed his neck. For a long, long moment, she looked at the vein that beat ever faster, dancing under his skin.

  ‘Just do it,’ Walpurgis muttered, knowing there would be no other end. ‘It is a stupid clemency that spares the conquered foe.’

  Vibica looked him in the eyes and smiled. ‘If only you would have done this all those years ago,’ she whispered.

  ‘Did I have a choice?’ he answered so only she could hear.

  Vibica leant forward. She kissed him on the neck and then bit as hard as she could. His skin trembled, cracked and punctured. Blood oozed down his neck and across his chest. Ozymandias shook excitedly.

  All those gathered began to scream and growl in delight. The cavern echoed with hundreds of voices as they shouted for the blood of Jago Harker.

  Vibica slumped to the ground. Her mouth drooled blood. Walpurgis shuddered as the venom burnt through him.

  ‘NO!’ he screamed as he fought against the poison that seared through his veins. The
n his head slumped and his body hung limply from the cross.

  ‘Now the boy, now the boy,’ Ozymandias insisted as he helped Vibica to her feet.

  ‘Stand where I told you,’ she said to Jago, and then to Ozymandias: ‘Give him the diamond in his right hand.’

  Morgan forced the diamond into his palm and pushed him towards the glass coffin. All those gathered began to shout and scream. The noise grew louder and louder. Jago did as she had said. He held the diamond in his hand and stood by the coffin.

  ‘The dagger, the true blood,’ Ezra Morgan intoned.

  Vibica slipped a long dagger from the folds of her dress.

  ‘He must do it to himself – we cannot take his blood,’ she said as she handed Jago the dagger. ‘The hand that holds the diamond must be the hand that gives the blood.’

  Jago took the dagger and, with a short stab, cut his wrist. The cavern was silenced as they waited for the blood to trickle from the skin. He looked at the hundreds of people staring at him through the shimmering candlelight. Long dark shadows danced across the roof of the cave as a shrill breeze whistled through the rocks.

  ‘Is this what you wanted?’ he shouted at them. ‘To see me die?’

  Ozymandias looked at him. ‘Again, again … more blood,’ he wheezed nervously, anxious that Jago should do as he said.

  ‘It is time,’ Ezra Morgan said to Jago.

  ‘Help me, father,’ Jago asked him.

  Ezra Morgan stepped forward and took hold of the hand that clasped the diamond.

  ‘I was there when you were born. I saw you when you were moments old. It was meant to be that I would be a shepherd of your life and of your death … Do this for me, Jago – do this for me …’

  Something about the look in the eye of Ezra Morgan made Jago stop for a moment. He seemed to be pleading to be set free, demanding with each glance.

  Jago took the long blade and slipped it into the pocket of his coat. Then his fingers searched for the small silver knife within.

  ‘What is it?’ Jago asked.

  ‘I am too old and have had enough of life,’ Morgan whispered as he pushed some crumpled papers into the pocket of Jago’s jacket.

  ‘Are you sure that Strackan is my father?’ Jago asked.

  ‘It is true,’ Morgan answered.

  ‘No!’ screamed Ozymandias as he saw the silver knife dart from the pocket and glance through the air. It stuck Morgan in the heart. Ezra gasped and then fell back.

  The crowd gasped as a single drop of blood fell from Jago’s wrist. It dropped into the glass coffin, landing on the parched skin of the woman.

  ‘Stop him!’

  Jago threw the other dagger to Vibica.

  Vibica took hold of Ozymandias and, with one blow, severed his head with the long knife in her hand.

  ‘Run, Jago! Do what I told you!’

  As Jago ran, the crowd of Vampyres fell upon Vibica like a pack of dogs. He could hear her scream as they tore at her flesh. Jago did not look back. As he ran back the way he had come, he counted his steps, just as Vibica had told him. Turning left and then right, he ran on in complete darkness. In his hand was the diamond. He clutched it within his fingers as if it were his life.

  ‘Take it to the Temple of Constantine and leave it in the wall beneath the Great East Window,’ Vibica had said. ‘If you do that – then they will never find it. Then hide, Jago – find a new life and forget this place.’

  Her words went over and over through his mind as he ran. Taking the next turn to the right, after one hundred paces, he opened his eyes.

  ‘Notarius, what are you doing?’ Jago asked, seeing the monk cowering over a pile of wooden boxes in the corner of the small room where he now stood.

  ‘You are a good man,’ the monk said with a sense of insight. ‘This will stop them following you. It was meant for the Gestapo if they ever came to the shrine. If I turn this handle every door and passageway will be blown, and this will become their tomb.’

  ‘But what of Biatra and Hugh?’

  ‘I have enough food for the year and I am used to my own company. When they wake from Luna Negri I will set them free. I know a way from this place. Go through the door and down the stairs and keep running, Jago Harker – run for your life …’

  As Jago ran from the monastery and along the forest track through the ancient avenue of yew trees, the ground beneath him shook. On the high scarp rocks trembled and slowly began to fall. One by one they rolled down the hill until the avalanche took hold.

  Fragments of stone blew out from the cliff face as the bomb exploded. A blanket of rock fell suddenly, covering the door to the monastery in a cloud of white dust and blocking every window from sight. Where once was the entrance to the Grotto of Magdalene was now a jagged pile of rubble and broken rock. A veil of dust shaded the monastery from sight. As he looked back Jago thought of Vibica and Heston Walpurgis, Biatra and Hugh.

  ‘Forgive me, forgive me,’ he shouted.

  ‘Who is there to forgive you?’

  The Cardinal stepped from the shade of a tall tree. ‘I take it you are Jago Harker?’

  ‘And you are the Cardinal?’ he asked the man.

  ‘Wherever you go is mayhem and strife. You leave Vampyres dead in your wake. You are a monster.’

  ‘Monster?’ Jago asked as his hand shook. ‘I was created for your purpose. The son of Strackan, and you call me a monster?’

  ‘I have waited two thousand years for this day and you have destroyed it. They called me Judas the Fool. Now they are all dead and I am still alive. I betrayed my closest friend so that I could live for ever.’

  Jago did not speak. Lunging at the Cardinal, he stabbed him in the heart and held him until he fell from the knife.

  ‘Don’t get in my way,’ Jago snarled as he kicked the corpse from the path and watched it roll down the slope into the darkness of the forest.

  [ 27 ]

  The Vampyre Quartet

  JAGO HARKER stood on the corner of Ludgate Hill as the rain beat down around him. Water spouted from the overflowing gutters of the Banco Perazzi and washed against the taut skin of the bat-wing umbrella he gripped in his hand. For a moment he hesitated, hardly daring to knock on the door.

  Without warning, the viewing slat opened suddenly and two piercing eyes stared out into the half-light of the early morning.

  ‘It is true, you really are alive,’ Fredrico Lucca said in surprise. ‘I had heard rumours that Ozymandias was dead and that you had murdered Ezra Morgan, but Vampyres gossip worse than women. Then last week I had all the proof I needed.’

  ‘I am alive,’ Jago said, ‘and there is business that I have to attend to.’

  Reluctantly, Lucca opened the door to the bank. Jago stepped inside and shook the water from the umbrella.

  ‘I never thought I would see you again. The Maleficarum has gone and there is no one to tell me what to do. I took it upon myself to try and make things as they were. When I heard the rumours that you had survived I decided to …’ Lucca stopped talking and looked at Jago. He studied him intently.

  ‘Who told you that I lived?’ Jago asked as he leant against the counter.

  ‘The Sinan – the Vampyre compass was returned to the bank. The note was anonymous and asked that it be placed in your deposit box. I had to be sure that you were alive and sure enough, it pointed to the east and your name was still on the scroll.’

  ‘And Lana Karlstein?’ he asked.

  ‘I never looked that far. All I could see was that three hundred and fifty Vampyres were missing from the scroll. Their names were smudged black as if they had never lived.’ Lucca sighed, knowing he had lost many friends. ‘It is easier to ask who is still alive. I will let you see for yourself.’

  ‘Ezra Morgan gave me this – he asked me to kill him.’

  ‘Asked you?’ Lucca said as he took the parchment letters from Jago and examined them closely. He read what was written carefully, muttering the words as his eyes scanned the pages. ‘Goodness – goodness
indeed. It was all planned for some time. Everything is given to you and Hugh Morgan, and there is even enough for the girl.’

  Lucca then began to read from the parchment. ‘I Ezra Morgan being of sound mind can no longer bear the life that I have been cursed to live. It is now time for me to move on to a world where I can make right all that I have done. I go there with an open heart …’

  As Lucca read on tears trickled slowly down his cheeks. ‘He found all that he had been looking for in a dark cave on a French mountain. Ezra Morgan wanted to die and he knew that you would help him.’

  ‘I saw the look in his face, his eyes pleaded with me – there was nothing else that I could do.’

  ‘And Ozymandias?’ Lucca asked.

  ‘Vibica de Zoete killed him,’ Jago said coldly. ‘Cut off his head.’

  ‘Interesting,’ he answered. ‘There was one new name on the Sinan – that of Heston Walpurgis.’

  ‘He is still alive?’ Jago asked in disbelief.

  ‘See for yourself,’ Lucca rasped as he lifted an old box from beneath the counter and opened it in front of Jago. ‘I have kept this with me all the time. I cannot believe what it says,’ he said as he opened the box and brought out the Sinan. ‘Vibica is dead, but Walpurgis a Vampyre – how?’

  Jago told him all that had gone on. Lucca listened intently with eyes that wished they could have seen the occasion for themselves.

  ‘Then they fell on Vibica and killed her. I could hear her screams,’ Jago concluded.

  ‘They all died just as the prophecy said they would. You bring trouble to our world, Jago, and it is still not over,’ Lucca answered.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Jago replied.

  ‘A quartet of death. That is what it said. The flood – the fire – the earth …’

  ‘That is just three,’ Jago said.

  ‘And the whirlwind,’ Lucca whispered, as if his words could conjure such a thing. ‘The final death of us all and possibly the world. The flood was the great wave at the labyrinth. The fire was the explosion at the house of Ozymandias. And the earth was what has just happened.’

  ‘Then what is to come?’ Jago asked.