by Nancy Morse
“Prudence?”
She lifted her head and stared at nothing.
He made himself stand up. He had dropped his terrible secret into her lap, expecting… what? That she would understand?
“I died that night,” he said suddenly. “I can’t explain it. I’m dead. And yet…I walk around, I talk, I feel. Do you hear me, Prudence, I feel. How can that be, you must be asking yourself.” He heaved a black sigh. “I don’t know. God help me, I just don’t know.” He began to speak faster, the words rushing from his mouth. “I’m not here and yet I am. I’m an aberration. Human and yet not human. I’ve done things. Things I’m not proud of, but only to survive. I’ve become the thing that made me, the hateful monster that drew the blood from my body, taking my life and all that I might have been.”
“Did you love her?”
Her voice, small and timid, spliced through the cacophony of his jumbled thoughts.
“What?”
“Did you love her? The girl from the village.”
He paused to consider the question, thinking it odd that after all she had just heard this was what she wanted to know. “Yes, I suppose I did. But I no longer know for sure. It’s been such a long time and I don’t remember the feeling. That, too, has been erased from my being. Love.” A bitter laugh split the tension in the room. “Who even knows what that is? Not me, I can assure you. Besides, what would be the point?”
He exhaled resolutely and went to the fire. Picking up the poker he stoked the fire, watching listlessly as the flames sputtered to life. The silence stretched so long that for a few moments he forgot that she was even in the room. When next he spoke, his voice hinged on anguish.
“He spared me the fate of my family, for what reason I don’t know. Instead, he dealt me a different kind of death, the kind that does not end with the passing of the body but condemns you to an eternal state from which there is no end.” Save a pointed stake to the heart, he thought miserably, or the manner in which my maker was destroyed.
He turned back toward her then. “I can see it in your eyes. You are questioning how a man can accomplish such a thing. Ah, but there, you see, is the answer. A man cannot. Only the undead can create the undead. The man that brought me to look at my grandfather’s rotting corpse on the stake was mortal, of that I am sure. But somewhere along the way he was transformed into the demon that slaughtered my family and made me what you see before you. Some years after the Easter massacre the Turks forced him to flee to the mountains of Transylvania. Perhaps it was there that it happened. The villagers tell of a prince who was bitten by a wolf and drained of blood, who became a predator so terrible that no one dared speak his name.” He shook his head and exclaimed with disgust, “They call him simply, “Draculea”. It means son of the Dragon.”
With slow, dawning awareness, she said, “Your name. What does it mean?”
“Ambrus?” He snorted derisively. “In my mother’s language it means immortal. Now, there’s irony for you. Do you think when my parents bestowed that name on me they knew they were condemning me to this fate? I prefer to be called Nicolae. I live in this wretched state. I need nothing further to remind me of it, least of all my name.”
“What happened to him?”
So, the questions begin, he thought wearily. And why not? After the chilling tale he just told, it was understandable.
“He was slain in battle against the Turks near the town of Bucharest the following month, surrounded by the bodies of his loyal Moldavian bodyguards. His body was decapitated by the Turks and his head sent to Constantinople where the sultan had it displayed on a stake as proof that the horrible Impaler was finally dead. Fitting, don’t you agree?”
“How can you kill someone who is already dead?” she questioned, doubt rifling her tone.
He answered matter-of-factly, “You cannot kill the undead, but you can destroy them. Decapitation will do the trick, as was the case for him. And, of course, there’s always the stake through the heart.”
“You have a heart?”
He looked at her, aghast, and replied angrily, “Of course I have a heart. And a mind, and feelings. The only thing I do not possess is a soul.”
Pru stifled a gasp and echoed in a shocked whisper, “No soul?”
“It’s one of the curses of the undead, my sweet. We get to wield all kinds of evil and never find redemption. How can you redeem that which you do not have?”
He slanted a look at her from the corners of his eyes to test her reaction and saw her body convulse with a shudder. For an awful moment he thought he’d gone too far, revealed too much.
She drew in a shaky breath “How can that be?”
Her questions were beginning to irk him, for they were questions he had asked himself a thousand times, never finding the answers. “How the hell should I know? Go ask a bloody alchemist. They’re into all that supernatural rubbish, aren’t they?”
Pru shuddered. Something about the way he had told his lurid tale, with fear in his voice and tears in his eyes, made a compelling argument for the truth. She bit her lip, hesitating. “What is life like for you?”
“Worse than you can imagine. At night I am obliged to rest upon a layer of hallowed ground from my homeland. Without my native soil I would not be able to travel more than a hundred kilometers from the place where I was born.”
“The trail of soil I saw on the floor in the garret room,” she said, half to herself.
“Although the sunlight will not destroy me, it hurts my eyes and burns my skin. That is why I have taken up residence in London. The fog shields me from it.”
“Yes,” she said, “I remember. That day on the street, when you pushed me out of the way of the speeding coach, the look on your face when the sun peeked through the fog and the haste with which you departed.”
“I am a creature of the night,” he said. “Lurking in shadows. Rising at dusk. Feeding in the dark.”
She nodded, as a gradual understanding took shape. “Music lessons in the evening. Resting this afternoon when I called. It all makes sense, and yet none of it makes sense. Maybe you’re just trying to frighten me, or trick me.”
“Or maybe you think it’s all the figment of a demented mind,” he said, sarcasm dripping from his tone. He came back to stand before her. She looked so lost and confused, and unbelieving. “You do believe everything I’ve told you, don’t you?”
“I…I…don’t know.” Her blue eyes were clouded with doubt, her face shadowed with suspicion and, for the first time, fear.
“I see my word is not enough for you. You require more proof of what I am? Very well. Come with me.” Without waiting for her to respond, he reached down and grasped her hand in his. Yanking her to her feet, he pulled her along, her shoes clicking against the wooden floor as he hustled her out of the parlor.
He brought her into the hallway and stopped before a tiny alcove beneath the staircase. Planting his hands on her shoulders, he turned her around to face a drawn curtain. With an angry gesture he shoved the heavy brocade fabric aside to reveal an intricately carved and scrolled mirror.
“What do you see?” he demanded.
She answered obviously, “Myself.”
He came to stand beside her. “Now what do you see?”
Pru blinked hard against the shifting light that flickered from a corner candle stand. The man standing beside her cast no reflection. The only face she saw in the glass was her own. She swallowed hard and tried to speak, but could not.
His voice was a soft hiss beside her. “Since vampires have lost their souls, they cast no reflection. Now do you believe me?”
Her legs went weak and threatened to crumble.
He let the curtain slip back over the mirror and placing an arm about her waist to steady her, led her back into the parlor.
“Sit down,” he said. “You look like you’re going to pass out.”
For a long time Pru remained silent, too afraid to speak and not knowing what she would say even if she could.
When she looked up, she saw the glass of sherry he was holding out to her. This time she took it and drank it down without ceremony. There was a pinched little look on her face, indicating that all doubt had been eradicated from her mind. The sherry warmed her blood and sent an immediate flush to her cheeks. After several minutes she regained her voice.
“It must be terrible for you.”
“At the beginning, it was. But think of all the things I have seen and been a part of. All the inventions and strides and achievements of mankind yet to come that I will see. Shall I tell you a secret? No, no,” he hastened to add in answer to the fresh wave of horror that blanched her face, “not terrible like the first. Actually, I am rather proud of this one.”
He sauntered to the decanter, poured himself a glass and drank it down. “In fifteen-oh-one I found myself in Florence, drawn there after the fall of Savonarola, the Dominican priest who ruled the republic with his narrow-minded hatred of all things artistic. I had not yet discovered my true calling, music, and as I fancied myself a rather good artist, I gained an apprenticeship with a young sculptor who was commissioned to complete a colossal statue portraying David as the symbol of Florentine freedom. I persuaded him to portray this David not as the victor standing over the slain Goliath, but rather in the moment immediately prior.”
The glass slowly lowered in Pru’s hand as she listened.
“It was I who suggested that in order to save both time and money he use a marble block from the quarries at Carrera that had been abandoned decades earlier by another sculptor. For weeks he searched for an appropriate model to portray the young shepherd, until he glimpsed me rising naked from the pool in the grotto behind his studio and entreated me to pose for the statue that was finished four years later and placed in the Piazza della Signoria.”
She stared at him, mouth agape. “You were the model for the statue of David?”
“The proportions are not quite true to form,” he admitted. “The head and hands are larger than normal. My hands, as you can see, are much more refined and elegant. Can you imagine playing the violoncello with hands such as those? The rest of the statue is, how shall I put it, quite true to form. If you’ve ever seen the statue of David, I’m sure you, of all people, can attest to that.”
Oh yes, she thought with a rush of embarrassment and excitement. She could very well confirm that he had been the model for Michelangelo’s statue. The image of the picture she’d seen in the book on Italian Renaissance art at Mrs. Draper’s came suddenly to mind. The muscled thighs. The taut abdomen. The power and tense energy. The vigorously fit specimen whose body echoed that of the man standing here now, two hundred and twenty-six years after its completion.
“There are other stories I could tell you,” he said, his voice winding its way through her thoughts. “Of places I have seen, experiences I have had. Perhaps some other time. For now, it is important to know that you believe me. That you understand what I am.”
In a distant part of her mind Pru knew she ought to be afraid for her safety, but she was not. “You must be very lonely.”
He sighed deeply. “At times the loneliness has been as heavy upon my shoulders as that block of Carrera marble. I am almost ashamed to admit that I have often taken comfort in the arms of whores.” He heard her gasp of disapproval, and said, “The pleasure I derived with them helped me forget, for the moment at least, the vague, worthless sadness of my life and the isolation it imposes on me. My immortality makes it difficult for me to form permanent attachments. Except for others of my kind.”
“There are others?” she exclaimed.
“Oh yes. More than you can know. But as I was saying, except for others of my kind, the mortals I have known have all grown old and died. It makes for a terrible loneliness. At times it has been so acute that I thought I would die, not literally, of course. But you learn to adjust. You have to. Eternity is such a very long time.”
Into Pru’s mind sprang the words the priest had spoken at her mother’s funeral and his description of eternity. “Imagine,” he’d said, “that a bird flies to a beach somewhere in the world and picks up a single grain of sand and flies off. One year later a bird takes another grain of sand, and it is repeated year after year until that beach is bare of sand. Then a bird flies to another beach somewhere else in the world, each year taking away a single grain of sand. And so it goes, again and again and again, until all the beaches and shores in the world are bare of sand. And that would be only one minute of eternity.”
“Immortality is not new to my kind,” he said. “Mankind built the ancient pyramids in an attempt to gain immortality. For me it comes naturally.”
“Nevertheless,” she said, “it must be a burden.”
“Aside from the obvious, the only thing I am burdened with is the ridiculous folklore that has come down through the ages. Contrary to the stories illiterate peasants tell their children, not all of us sleep in coffins or disintegrate into dust in the sunlight. And let’s not forget about garlic.”
She looked at him, puzzled. “What does garlic have to do with anything?”
“Nothing. That’s the point. All those fools get from wearing garlands of garlic around their necks is a nasty odor. About the only thing the folklore got right is the blood thing. Regrettably, we must feed on blood in order to survive.”
“You kill people?” Pru’s shock resonated in her voice.
“Never the innocent,” he said defensively. “Only the scum of the earth. And if there doesn’t happen to be any such filth available, rats will do. Don’t look so horrified. What you look upon as unthinkable becomes entirely possible when no other option for survival exists.”
She swallowed hard. “Do they all become like you?”
“My victims? No, they just die. Mort. Guasto. Muerto. Tot. Dood. In any language, dead. To make another I must not only drink from them but they must drink from me, and I’m quite selective about whom I share my own blood with.”
Pru twisted her fingers nervously in her lap. “Why have you chosen me to tell this to?”
He shrugged elegantly beneath his cambric shirt and gave her a silken smile. “Why did you choose me as the man to whom you would surrender your virtue?”
Her cheeks burned scarlet. “You tricked me into acting like a wanton. Now that I know what you are, I’m just beginning to realize the power you exerted over me.”
He reached down and ran a finger across her cheek. She flinched. Cold. So cold.
“You give me too much credit for your own carnal desires. Do you really think it is possible for me to trick you into fulfilling your true nature? Yes, I have the power to mesmerize, but not without the surrender of the victim’s will, such as you surrendered your will to me for the price of passion.”
She turned her cheek away. “You’re disgusting.”
He withdrew his hand and emitted a bored sigh. “Are we back to that again?” He sat down beside her. “Shall I tell you about my other powers?”
“I don’t want to hear.”
“I can take away a person’s voice, a man’s strength, a woman’s beauty. I have only to catch the gaze of my intended victims to control them. I hold sway over nocturnal creatures, the wolf, the bat, the rat. My powers of perception are higher than any mortals. I can transform into mist before your very eyes. And I’m fast, so fast, it’s almost like flying. But I believe you discovered that the day I prevented you from being flattened by a coach. I am a pagan creature, unmoved by the fear I see now in your eyes. Oh yes, you are disgusted, but you’re also intrigued by all you are hearing. And that, my dear Prudence, is why I chose you.”
In a quivering voice, she asked, “What is it you want from me?”
His own voice dropped to a caressing whisper. “Let me drink from your heart. There will be no pain, I promise.”
The blood left her face. “What! You would turn me into this…this…thing that you are?”
“Think of it Prudence,” he urged. “Th
e things we would see. The places we would go. To remain forever young. To ease this terrible, crushing loneliness of mine.”
Shock thundered through Pru’s brain and from the look on her face, it was as if his words were poison. “I could never love you.”
Her words were as sharp as a dagger, swift and deadly, the last one uttered with such contempt that it made his preternatural flesh crawl. Masking his wounded pride with a sneer of disdain, showing a glimpse of pointed teeth in the firelight, he laughed harshly. “Who said anything about love? I must say, my dear, your carnal talents are so delightful, love would only get in the way.”
He seized her face in one cruel hand. “Tell me you don’t want me, not in spite of what I am, but because of what I am.”
“No!” She struggled to be free.
His fingers moved to caress the silken hollow of her throat and downward to cup her breast beneath the fabric of her dress. He buried his free hand in her hair and drew her head back for a kiss.
She quickened like lightning at his touch. Her fingers trembled to touch the smooth skin beneath his linen shirt. His strong scent, flavored with lust and sherry, rose to meet her. A shudder of yearning and dread coursed through her.
“Nicolae.” Part cry, part moan.
She was in his arms, locked to him, feeling his heart beating savagely against her own, his stiffened member pressing against her, throbbing, pulsing with unchained desire.
“You are mine,” he breathed against her skin. His strong arms went under and around her, lifting her effortlessly and carrying her from the room and up the stairs.
He placed her on the soft down mattress. Overhead the billowy hangings of his bed rustled. He lifted her skirts and worked hastily to undo his buttons to free his aching member from the captivity of his trousers for the salvation that beckoned between her legs. He moved easily into her. She was wet and ready for him. With no need for preliminaries his slim hips thrust harder and faster, matching his movements to the sounds of her throaty moans. His lust exploded and his eye teeth lengthened. Just when the moment of savage release was upon him, he brought his mouth to her neck and pierced her tender skin with his sanguinary kiss. At the first taste of her hot, sweet blood upon his tongue indescribable pleasure flooded his being.
