TO: CSS REINHARD HEYDRICH, RSHA, REICHSFUHRER-SS
FROM: SS MAJOR WALTRAUD REIKEL
CC: HEINRICH HIMMLER, REICHSFUHRER-SS
(BY SPECIAL COURIER)
MOST SECRET
What follows is an update on our progress so far:
Our prisoner is an intransigent subject. For the last thirty-six hours he has been throwing himself against the bars and door to his cell. Repeatedly, with full strength, and without letup. His neighbours are complaining about the constant clamour--those who still have tongues in their mouths.
His fervour is such and the collision between the Creature and the steel is so forceful that it must cause the Creature great pain. Still, it persists despite any anguish it must feel. In fact, it has been reported to me that the impact is oft-times so vicious that it has dislocated a shoulder. The Creature then wrenches the dislocation back into place with its own hands. I have suffered such an injury and I can attest to the agony involved. And this has occurred more than once! Whether it was the same shoulder each time I cannot state as the eyewitnesses were so discombobulated as to be unreliable in that detail.
(For your consideration: The Creature’s recuperative powers are a wonderment. It should also be noted that the spike punctures in his hands have healed completely and show not even scar tissue.)
The steel of the cell door and bars has already begun to show some distress, bending outwardly but not breaking--so far. An astonishing display of strength and resolve.
We have considered the possibility of an escape attempt, improbable as that may be (improbable becoming commonplace in this whole incident). I have set an MG34 heavy machine-gun emplacement at the end of the corridor near the Creature’s cell. The machine-gun crew is supplemented by rotating squads of my personal SS. This is a twenty-four-hour detail.
There was a problem with further examination of the Creature, since it is for the moment unrestrained within the confines of its cell. So I devised an assault that would put the Creature back under my control.
In order for you to understand our problem: The window that allowed sunlight into the cell and served as our only control over the creature has been obscured. The vampire has stuffed the aperture with the late Corporal’s blouse.
Two of my best men descended by rope down the outside of the castle. At the cell window they waited for my signal.
The timing was coordinated with the declination of the sun’s rays. While I approached the cell door, the Creature watched me with a superior attitude, inquiring whether there was another German for his feasting on the menu today.
I ignored the jocosity and gave the order to proceed.
At that command, the two outside soldiers reached through the cell window for the obstruction that blocked the sunlight. The obstruction was subsequently removed and the light entered the cell to fill a major part of the room.
The Creature was forced to retreat to the one corner still in shadow.
We took the opportunity to fling open the cell door and two of my men dragged out Corporal Schreck’s body. The door was immediately shut and secured.
Again the Creature quipped, thanking us for removing the corpse, commenting that leaving the body in his cell was unhygienic.
I was not interested in the Creature at the moment.
My attention was drawn toward the late Corporal, more specifically what he held in his clenched fist. The SS medallion he so cherished was still clasped in the dead man’s hand. I pried it from his cold fingers and examined it. There was nothing out of the ordinary about the necklace, two centimetres by three, and a rather plain execution of the SS runes resembling two bolts of lightning. There was no indication of a manufacturer’s stamp, just the notation stamped on the back that the material was 90 percent silver.
I turned my attention back to our prisoner, studying the burned impression of the SS runes still apparent upon his neck. This had obviously been made when the Corporal had tried to strangle him with the medallion still in Schreck’s palm.
The resulting burn mark has not healed as have the other wounds he suffered in the struggle to free himself--cuts and abrasions as he tore his shackles from his wrists and ankles. There are no signs at all of these wounds, some deep, as demonstrated by healing of the spike-pierced hands.
Yet the burn mark remains.
Silver.
I have a theory--and with it a plan to subdue this Creature to our bidding.
FROM THE WAR JOURNAL OF J. HARKER
(transcribed from shorthand)
JUNE 17, 1941
Lucy and I are both worried about her father. Another fruitless day of meandering about these mountain trails, some not suitable for a goat, much less an old man and a woman, no matter their innate hardiness. He is a man of iron nerve, indomitable resolution, self-command, and vigor, but his age has become a factor, and he is quite knackered.
Our rest stops have become more frequent, necessitated by Professor Van Helsing’s shortness of breath, which, despite his denials, is not entirely caused by the thin air of our elevation. By my map, we have climbed to over fifteen hundred metres today.
Watching Lucy care for her father has shed a new light on her character; her tender ministrations reveal a solicitude and sensitivity I have not seen before, a feminine side to the fierce Amazon she usually presents. That this woman contains all these aspects in such a becoming form has only heightened my ardour. What occurred before I must admit might have been more of an infatuation, a momentary calf love, if you will, caused by such intimacy at a vulnerable moment for both of us. But now my affection has matured with my knowledge of the woman.
How to express this newfound emotional state, that is the question I must answer. And soon. Before Lucy and the Prince are reunited.
We stopped this afternoon inside a dense copse of gnarled, wind-tortured pines. Dr. Van Helsing needed assistance to even sit, and I could see that Lucy was also spent. I, too, was tired, sore of muscle, my ankle now swollen. But I was even more exhausted by how unproductive our search had been thus far.
Lucy agreed with me. She was pleading with the Professor.
“I’m sorry, Father, but this is a useless endeavour,” she told him. “Tomorrow we leave the mountains, go someplace for you to rest. Then we can reassess our plans.”
“We will never find the gypsies, ambling about like three blind mice, Professor,” I added.
“You do not find gypsies,” the Professor began his epigram again.
“They find you,” a voice said from the shadows in the trees.
To our extreme surprise, the speaker stepped into view. It was Ouspenkaya, the gypsy leader I had met during the train rescue of his people.
He whistled and from behind trees and rocks there appeared a dozen armed gypsies. How we had been surrounded without being alerted in any fashion, I do not know. I had not seen or heard anything of their approach.
We were led back the way we had come, about a kilometre, on the same trail, the gypsies relieving us of our backpacks. That small courtesy gave me much relief, and my step became so much lighter that I forgot the misery I had been experiencing just minutes before.
At a cluster of oak scrub, a mass of bushes we had passed without a glance earlier that day, Ouspenkaya parted the foliage as if it were a curtain, and his men slipped through, into a hidden cleft in the rock.
He gave orders to a pair of his fellows to wipe away any tracks for a kilometre in both directions and then gestured for us to enter the revealed passage.
Stepping inside the mountain was like sitting in a West End theatre as the curtain rose to reveal a new world.
We walked into a huge cavern, a space to rival Winchester Cathedral, with a similar feeling of grandeur. A great bowl at least fifty metres high at its peak, with side vestibules much like a church, separated by massive stalagmites that rose off the floor like stately stone soldiers at eternal attention. From above, stalactites hung like a succession of Damoclean swords, creating the same insecurity in
me that they could fall upon my head at any time. Some had joined their fellow accretions rising from below and had formed mighty columns, amplifying the basilica simile.
The whole chamber was lit by oil lamps and flickering candles, casting upon the walls eerie shadows that danced a macabre jitterbug.
“Stalagmite, stalactite, I could never remember which is which,” Lucy remarked.
“Stalagmite from the ground up, stalactite from the ceiling down,” I told her, proud of my erudition. “My geology teacher, Professor Milton Ford, taught me a handy little reminder: If it’s tight, stalactite, it sticks to the ceiling. If not, it might build up from the floor, stalagmite. Did you catch that?”
“Watch where you step, young Harker; that before you is bat guano,” Van Helsing, in turn, edified me.
I performed a clumsy Highland fling to avoid the whitish pile, then craned my neck to search the cave ceiling for the vile animals, but saw none in the dark recesses.
Then, as my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I was able to survey more of my surroundings. The gypsies had converted the interior into a subterranean village.
There was a kitchen where a deer was being dressed, pots were boiling, and women were busy at makeshift tables and around open fires. In one of the side chambers I noticed a school was in session, the children squatting on logs, hunched over tablets by the light of hurricane lamps.
In another side vault, a young man was tumbling across the floor in a series of acrobatic somersaults before a cluster of older children who, in turn, imitated the youth’s gymnastics with varying degrees of success.
We took a turn into a side tunnel and, to my amazement, a young woman appeared above me, seeming to hover in midair. As we came closer I was able to make out a wire suspended between two stalagmites that she walked upon as easily and as daintily as if she were crossing a ballroom floor. Our gaze met and I do not know if it was the firelight reflected in those dark eyes, but something made the hair on the back of my neck rise and the skin on my face burn. The latter I put to sun and windburn, but the former I could only explain as some gypsy spell.
Ouspenkaya was speaking and I tried to focus on his words.
“. . . following you for the last two days to see if you had any soldiers on your trail.”
“Were there any?” Van Helsing asked.
“None,” the gypsy leader said.
“We were careful,” I told him. “Careful and alert.”
“So careful and alert that you knew we were stalking you?” Ouspenkaya asked.
I had no answer as we entered a narrowing of the cave tributary, a hallway of a sort that widened momentarily. Two gypsy men were smoking fish over a smouldering fire, the fillets laid out upon a grill of woven green saplings.
“What are you doing?!” Ouspenkaya shouted as he began kicking dirt over the embers. “No fires in this room.”
The men apologised and scurried to move their operation to another location. I took their immediate and forthright obeisance as a tribute to Ouspenkaya’s leadership and power among his clan.
“Why is fire forbidden here?” Van Helsing asked. “Is there some kind of cave gas?”
“No, the smoke would harm these.” Ouspenkaya jerked a thumb upward. We looked. The roof was lower here, and, painted or daubed upon it were pictographs—what was obviously a horse, the image of two humans, one a woman with extreme feminine accoutrements and a male with exaggerated masculine qualities. At least, I hope they were exaggerated, for the man’s balance and mobility, if no other reason.
“Cave paintings.” Van Helsing gazed up in admiration. “Most likely Paleolithic.”
“They’re beautiful.” Lucy’s voice was hushed in awe. “They would put most of the art in the Louvre to shame.”
And they were just that. We all paused to take in the wondrous sight. A small menagerie of animals had been painted with a delicate and charming hand. You could see the little form of a deer in full flight, a bear in fierce pursuit.
“There are over eleven thousand caves in Rumania and Transylvania,” Van Helsing explained. “I was part of a mapping expedition in the twenties. There are probably more, hidden like this one. This pestera”—he used the Rumanian term for “cave”—“was formed by the leaching of limestone. Some are salt caves. Very ancient.”
“We found the bones of more than one bear when we set up our home here,” Ouspenkaya told us.
“Ursus spelaeus.” The old Professor nodded. “Cave bears. I’m afraid they have been hunted to the point where they are now a rare sight.”
“To our benefit,” the gypsy said. “Now have a rest, share our food, become settled among us. You have sanctuary.”
Lucy turned to him. “Sanctuary is the last thing we seek.”
EXCERPTS FROM UNIDENTIFIED DIARY
(translated from German)
June 18
Herr Wolf could not wait any longer. His curiosity has overwhelmed him and he ordered his private rail car and a train to proceed to Rumania. The war can be handled by cable and phone. Herr Wolf’s doppelganger will make public appearances and speeches and show his face in the appropriate places to maintain the illusion that the Fuhrer is in Berlin. The double is but a superficial likeness, in Herr Wolf’s opinion, but others aware of the deception say he has a remarkable resemblance. Herr Wolf has doubts but has found that any cursory similarity will suffice; people only look at the mustache. As for the speeches, the ersatz Wolf is hammy, demonstrating his former vocation (actor). The twin knows his lines, mimics the gestures, but speaks with no heart. He is sufficient. The audience responds, the public’s expectation doing most of the work, more likely a response to the idea of the man than what they behold.
No one knows that Herr Wolf is absent, not even HG, who would disapprove. HG is always haranguing Herr Wolf about the safety of his person and attempts to control Herr Wolf’s every movement. Much of this anxiety about Herr Wolf’s welfare is just pretense, an attempt to wield more influence. Herr Wolf is aware of this ulterior motive and so is able to manipulate the man, and others who try the same tactic. This is how one fulfills his Destiny.
Of Herr Wolf’s motivation—he could not help himself. He must view the mythical Creature for himself in person. The tests are not completed, but Herr Wolf could wait no more. Even if the capabilities of the Creature are not transferable, Herr Wolf must witness the phenomenon with his own eyes.
What is at stake is too great. This could be the key to Herr Wolf’s own Legend, the Path to Valhalla. Herr Wolf has been Chosen by Supernatural means to save his Nation. This discovery could be part of the Greater Plan.
EXCERPTED FROM THE UNPUBLISHED NOVEL THE DRAGON PRINCE AND I
by Lenore Van Muller
There was a certain comfort sitting around a fire of fragrant logs crackling and spitting sparks that wafted up into the darkness overhead. Listening to the gypsies with guitar and violin perform the manele songs lulled Lucille into a sense of safety she had not felt for . . . ages.
Since she had been a child, this oriental-tinted music would remind her of home and her mother’s soft singing at her bedside. The memory was faint, her mother’s face out of focus, as if a faded photograph, but it was there, and it gave her comfort in troubled times.
Later she heard these melodies from street singers along the Seine in Paris, a Spanish beach at twilight, once in New Orleans, Louisiana, and every time the music gave her solace.
She stood up and walked through the caverns, the music following her becoming more and more muted, the cave giving the songs a haunting echo, much like she heard in her dreams when she felt lonely or afraid. She came upon a small antechamber where a woman crouched over a mortar and pestle, grinding away as she muttered to herself in a cadent chant. Lucille squatted next to her, curious.
“What are you making?” Lucille asked. “A potion?”
The woman ignored her, continued her chanting until she was finished, then raised her head up to peer at Lucille. She was middle-aged, with a w
eathered, tanned face, and sported a nose that had been broken and angled to one cheek. But what stood out were the woman’s eyes—one a piercing blue, the other deep brown. Lucille had seen this phenomenon only once before, in a Chinese dog.
At this moment those eyes were boring into her own, a deep look. Lucille felt like the woman was peering into her soul, her very being.
“You are a sister.” The woman took Lucille’s hands into her own. “In the diablerie. I am Vesta.”
“I’m Lucille.” She had been taken by surprise. “I, uh, only dabble.”
“Dabble? What is this dabble?”
“I play at it.” Lucille shrugged and smiled dismissively.
“There is no ‘play,’” Vesta sneered, revealing a dead tooth. “The spirits can be harsh sovereigns.”
She released Lucille’s hands and instead laid her own palm over Lucille’s heart.
“You have power,” the witch said, for indeed that was what Lucille now recognised in the gypsy. “Power untapped. Oh!”
The woman gasped and stepped quickly away from Lucille as if pushed.
“What?” Lucille asked.
The woman grabbed her mortar and pestle and tried to walk away, muttering to herself. Lucille hurried after her, grabbed the woman by the shoulder, and turned her so that they were face-to-face again.
“What did you see?” she demanded.
“In my calling one learns very soon to never deliver anything but good tidings,” she replied. “If what you see harkens bad tidings it is best to remain silent. Or lie. People like ourselves cannot lie to each other, so I say nothing. I will not reveal the shadow that looms before you.”
“What shadow?” Lucille asked.
The gypsy woman didn’t answer, rather set the mortar and pestle aside as she fumbled in the deep pockets of her patched coat, pulling out a handful of strange items. She picked through them, stuffing some back into the pocket until one item was left: a small leather pouch tied with a simple string long enough to be a necklace. The old woman had to strain onto her tiptoes to be able to drape the cord over Lucille’s head.
Dracula vs. Hitler Page 42
