But the focus of our attention was drawn to Lucy, standing in the midst of the taxi lane, aiming at a grey German staff car racing toward her and Renfield, who stood at her side gawking at the conflagration he had created. Four arms protruded from the open windows of the car and four pistols were firing at Lucy like a scene from some Yank gangster movie.
But she stood her ground, the bright fire from the burning airfield bathing her in a yellow, flickering illumination. She did not flinch as a fusillade of bullets struck the mud and punctured the air around her. Calmly she aimed and fired as if the bullets buzzing about were mere raindrops.
She shot and the staff car windscreen shattered. The driver was obviously hit as the car swerved, canting into a sideways skid, speeding directly at Lucy. She never faltered, rather used the opportunity to shoot the two passengers on that side. The vehicle slid to a stop. Then with supreme self-composure she reloaded a fresh magazine, walked around the car, and shot through the rear window, killing the remaining Nazis.
This extraordinary event was followed by a massive blast, behind the aircraft and fuel bunkers. Tracers arced into the air, and there was a popping of small-arms ammunition and larger eruptions as bombs cooked off.
Dracula and I ran across the field to join Lucy and Renfield. Over the thunder of ammo explosions and the remaining aircraft and fuel salvos she shouted into Renfield’s ear. He responded by tossing a charge under the staff car. As we walked away the auto blew up behind us. We were so inured to the ongoing cataclysm that we did not even glance back. Well, except for Renfield, who always dawdles to watch the fiery results of his craftsmanship.
At our hearse, Lucy was greeted by her three comrades as the returning hero she was, indeed. Her face was blackened with smears of gunpowder and soot, her hair a wild tangle, wet and glistening, giving her the appearance of a ferocious Amazon. I was never more enamored of this magnificent woman, excuse me, as I said before—WOMAN.
Renfield climbed into the rear deck of the hearse with some reluctance. “Ach, cannae we dally a bit and watch the show?” he asked.
“Sorry,” Lucy told him. “Time to go before the local militia take notice and arrive to spoil our little excursion.”
Lucy took the driver’s seat, I the passenger side, with Dracula between us. She drove away with the remains of the airfield ablaze behind us. I could not help but look back to the merry mess we had created, and with some satisfaction. Imagine, our little party destroying an entire airfield. A small one, but still. The boys back in London were certainly going to have to give me proper respect after this exploit.
Dracula was examining Lucy as if she were some rare botanical specimen he had just discovered—which was not far from the truth.
“Are all modern females similar to you?” he asked her. “Or are you an exemplary exception, like Catherine the Great?”
“You’ve read about her?” Lucy asked.
“She and I were . . .” Dracula paused. “We shared a convivial relationship. She was a redoubtable woman, in all manners and ways. As you evidently are.”
Lucy could not contain her delight at his approval, and I could not hold back the jealousy I felt at that moment. We did not return to the garage but travelled through the night, much to my regret, as I was looking forward to examining the motorcycles in the showroom. I have a particular fancy for that type of transportation. But we needed to put as much distance as possible between us and our raid.
Dracula rode in silence, reading a book. His vision must have been phenomenal, as the dash light hardly gave any illumination, at least for reading. I kept to my own thoughts, renewing my decision to find a way to sway Lucy to my affections, and her attentions to me.
We are the perfect match.
EXCERPTED FROM THE UNPUBLISHED NOVEL THE DRAGON PRINCE AND I
by Lenore Van Muller
As tired as they might have been, the residual thrill of escaping death made the morning after each and every attack a period of insomnia, since the saboteurs were too full of residual energy to sleep.
As for Lucille and Harker, if they had not found rapprochement they at least had reached an emotional stasis. His longings were kept at bay, and she made her own compassionate concessions, treating him with a brotherly affinity. At least that was what she thought up to this point. But, no, the English boy was thick as a brick.
On the drive to their next refuge, Harker found a moment when they were refueling to take her aside. He was in a fervour and told her that he found Lucille never more beautiful than when, her hair in a mad tangle, her face smudged with a dusting of cordite, her eyes burning with a fierce anger, she showered the enemy with bullets from her long-barrelled Luger. She could only answer with a sigh and he did not speak for the rest of the trip.
The next night as he scribbled away in that damned diary with those hen scratchings he called shorthand, Lucille heard him say the words out loud as he was wont to do when making entries, “She is a true girl and improves under strain that would kill a weaker nature.”
Still Lucille’s boundaries of no physical contact were maintained. When they had arrived at this new next hideout Harker attempted to congratulate her success at the airfield with a quick embrace. “Well done! Oh, I say that was splendid,” he declared.
Lucille immediately pulled away and there was an uncomfortable look from the Englishman, his hurt-puppy gaze making Lucille feel guilty. And angry, at herself more than at Harker.
She had thought that they had finally found a working relationship that was satisfactory for both, devoid of any emotional bother. They were two adults and were supposed to act as such. She had thought the matter had been settled once and for all. But the Englishman was an obtuse pup.
All in all, the six of them had created a redoubtable team and were causing much hardship against their enemy, a source of happiness for all. The only shadow over their work was the messages for Harker attached to the drops. The English officer had a mate on the other end who would leave notes (in code, of course). Messages from home, much of it concerning the German bombing of his native land and sometimes naming mutual acquaintances who had died in “the blitz” or “the good fight.”
Despite their mutual peace accord, Harker still found new ways to irritate her. The lectures on warfare she finally terminated by one day asking him how many men he had personally killed, face-to-face. His answer was grim silence.
The latest irritants were his constant inquiries about her father. One question after another concerning “the Professor,” and it was evident that the Englishman’s focus was on the days recounted in that damned novel.
His curiosity mirrored her own, but she gave him scant information and rebuffed most of his queries. Even though she had hectored her father for years on the same subject, she was reluctant to give away what she knew. She felt obliged to guard her father’s privacy as diligently as did the old man. Anything she would have told Harker would seem some sort of betrayal.
The first night after the airfield attack, his badgering became too much and she fled to the roof of their current hideout. They were ensconced in a top-floor apartment of an office building in the centre of town. It was the former residence and headquarters of the Walnut King of Rumania, a Hungarian named Ferenc Dezso Blasko. His was the second highest structure in town, six precise inches lower than the spire of the Catholic church two blocks away. An architectural concession negotiated with the local diocese.
Below the apartment were six floors of walnut industry offices. Blasko, a vocal anti-Fascist, had seen the coming cataclysm and sold everything, fleeing to Grand Rapids, Michigan, of all places.
Local partisans had offered the old apartment as a temporary refuge. It was beautifully appointed in all walnut parquet floors, floor-to-ceiling walnut paneling, ornate walnut ceilings, and, yes, every stick of furniture was hand-carved wood—walnut.
In comparison to their other safe havens it was quite plush, better than many of their previous residences.
Luci
lle had confronted Harker, telling him to go to her father for answers and to leave her alone, for God’s sake. He retreated to transmit his nightly radio posting. Every night he submitted reports to his SOE handlers: local war preparations, military movements, troop armament, intel gathered from other Resistance cells as well as from their own observations. This time he was relaying what they had found at the Luftwaffe HQ. So, for now, he was busy enough to leave Lucille to her own devices. She was going to query the Prince, who had ensconced himself in Blasko’s library and was cherry-picking a stack for his own amusement. She watched him peruse the shelves and saw the joy in his eyes. She decided to not bother him and went back to the others.
But then the Marx Brothers began loudly arguing over whether the Americans would enter the war. Desperate for some peace and quiet, she had taken the stairs to the roof.
Renfield was already there, having rejected the apartment because all that dark wood bothered him. He had set his bedding under the stars, and Lucille envied him. It was a balmy night, the whispered breath of summer in the air. A few small clouds ambled across an otherwise clear, starry sky.
In the kitchen of the apartment Lucille had found a delicate white porcelain cup and made herself a pot of tea. She took the pot and cup onto the roof with her. She offered to fetch another cup for Renfield, but he was in one of his non-communicative fugue states. Stepping away from him, taking a corner of the roof for herself, she poured a cup and drank the contents in one quick swallow. It was hot but she managed.
Then she stared into the cup to read the leaves, as was her habit. All she saw was a dark clump on one side. Tea reading, as taught to her by an Irish hag from Dalkey, was driven by the reader’s interpretation of the pattern made in the bowl. There were certain images, symbols formed. Birds meant good news. But the other forms, cats, dogs, kites, snakes, were all free for explanation by the reader. The symbols could be created by the dark matter, the leaves against the white background, or seen in the reverse, reading the white space.
She saw neither here. Just a dark lump of no defined shape. She thought the error was in her technique and tried to relax, let her mind open itself to the spheres around her.
She dumped the leaves and poured another cup, this time slowly sipping the drink so as not to disturb the serene receptiveness she needed to be able to read. Lucille was careful to read from the present, starting at the handle and following the symbol downward in a clockwise spiral. And again she saw nothing but a dark lump gathered at one side of the cup. She focused on the congregation of damp leaves. Nothing.
Lucille tried to remember the teachings of the Irish hag, a tiny, toothless woman whose accent was so thick Lucille had asked her to repeat things three, four times. What had she missed in the lesson?
She made another attempt. Renfield was watching now, so she turned away from him. Lucille had always been shy about demonstrating her abilities, knowing she could face either derision or fear.
Pouring another, this time draining the tea into her saucer, since drinking more liquid would only lead to frequent visits to the loo, she concentrated on the results. A repeat of the amorphous mass, facing a different direction from the handle but still unreadable. At least for her.
Then she caught herself. At each reading the clump had been on a different side of the cup. Did that mean anything? She whished she had spent more time with her teacher. But the witch also read the Tarot, and Lucille had been in a hurry to study the cards so she could foretell the future of her relationship with an English opera baritone.
What was she missing? Suddenly the insight came to her. At every reading the collection of leaves had been on the east side of the cup, no matter her position. Lucille walked to the eastern side of the roof, peered out into the night.
The small town was spread before her, so peaceful looking. The only hint of war was the blackout curtains that had turned the windows into neatly lit outlines of squares and rectangles. She thought about how behind those windows people were going about their mundane lives.
She was not so naive that she thought they were ignorant of the death and destruction gathering about them. But she did envy their momentary solace of family and friends, lives of order and comfort. She longed for even a brief respite from the stress, the killing.
She was wallowing in this rare moment of self-pity when she saw a whole section of the city suddenly go dark.
Serendipity. Janos had a phrase: “Serendipity, I lean on it.” It was his word for luck. Lucille didn’t believe in either. Not in war.
But the fact was if she had not argued with Harker, if she had not had her fill of the Marx Brothers’ interminable quibbling, if she had not turned away from Renfield, if she had not decided to read the leaves on this very night, if she had not stood there mooning over the life she did not have . . .
Serendipity. Maybe her beloved Janos had not been off the mark.
The lights flickered back on. A small section of town, only four or five blocks, at some distance from her perch. A possible power outage?
But then another section went black. An area of about six square blocks adjacent to the previous area. She stared at the great swath of black until the muted lights returned. And then another bit of the city lights went out, again next to the previous and this one closer, only three blocks from their hideout.
This last event turned her curiosity to alarm.
“Renfield! Grab your gear! We have to go!” She helped him gather his pack. “Forget the bedding! Go!”
She pushed him to the roof access door and they ran down the stairs. Leaving him in the vestibule she burst into the apartment. Harker was still at his radio transmitter, tapping out code. She yanked the earphones off his head, ripped out the improvised antenna, tore the power cord out of the wall.
“Cut the transmission!” she yelled into his astonished face. “They’re on to us! We have to run!”
The three Marx Brothers stared at her dumbfounded.
“NOW!” she screamed.
And then the lights went out.
Lucille cursed. They all quickly collected their weapons and belongings, fumbling in the dark until Horea located his flashlight. The Prince calmly stuffed a handful of books into the valise he had commandeered after the Gestapo raid. Harker closed up his transmitter. Lucille grabbed her own duffel and they hurried to the stairs.
Renfield was waiting on the landing like an abandoned child, rooted to the spot until someone fetched him. Lucille took him by the hand as they rushed down the stairwell, Horea lighting the way.
On the way she told them what she had witnessed on the roof.
“I don’t understand,” Horea said. “So some people lost power. Happens all the time in my neighbourhood. Wiring’s a rat nest.”
“Somebody was turning the power off in a systematic way. One quadrant at a time,” she told them.
She explained that this was a method the Army and Secret Police used to seek out clandestine radio transmissions. She had heard of it as a Gestapo tactic used against the Resistance in Paris. Once they discovered a suspicious signal they turned off the power in designated areas. If the suspicious transmission ceased at the same time, that meant the radio resided within that location. If it remained transmitting, they moved on until they pinpointed the right section of town.
That was what was happening right now. And the horrendous coincidence of the lights going out just as Lucille had stopped Harker from sending had given away their location.
“That is a most clever stratagem of the Hun,” the Prince said.
“And deadly,” Lucille answered.
They made it to street level and stopped at the door. It was a lesser dark outside than in the stairwell but not by much.
“How can they find us?” Closca asked.
“House-to-house searches,” she replied. “They were probably stationed at the border of each designated zone. As soon as the signal stopped they would begin their search.”
This was instantly proven co
rrect. As they made their way up the sidewalk to the first intersection headlights were seen down the right hand street.
“Trucks!” Crisan yelled. The vehicles were three blocks away. Then headlights splashed the corner to their left, two blocks away. The headlights were half-masked for blackout purposes, giving the trucks a sullen aspect, even evil.
Their hearse and apple truck had been stationed in an old auto repair garage three blocks from the hideout, straight ahead. Harker was leading them in that direction, keeping to the deeper shadows. They cautiously but hurriedly made their way up the block.
Lucille’s Luger hung from a lanyard around her neck and she flipped off the safety, held the gun waist high, ready.
As they approached the next corner they hugged the wall. Crisan, the stealthy one, made his way up front to see if the going was clear. Lucille heard him curse under his breath as he quickly pulled his head back.
“Sentry,” he told them.
Lucille and Harker took a peek. Yes, one lone Rumanian soldier standing, smoking, his rifle at his side. Harker reached for his pistol and Lucille put a restraining hand on him.
“A gunshot will just draw the others to us,” she warned.
Crisan pulled out his garrote, eyed the sentry, and then turned to Lucille for permission. It was evident that Lucille had deposed Harker as leader, and the partisans once again looked to her for major decisions. Harker had not complained and seemed to accept the turnabout. Maybe he would grow into a decent commander.
“Allow me,” the Prince whispered. She nodded to the Prince. He stepped around the corner and casually walked toward the guard.
“Halt!” The guard snatched up his rifle and aimed at the vampire. But by then the Prince was only six feet from the soldier. Raising a hand the vampire fixed his eyes upon the man.
“You have checked our credentials, found them in order,” he said to the sentry.
“You may move on,” said the hypnotised soldier. Lucille and the others began to move out of the shadows.
Dracula vs. Hitler Page 24
