by Lynne Murray
They know not how they tempt me with their blood running rich, so close to the surface, and I just risen from the grave to feed.
Chapter 36
Kristin Marlowe’s typed notes
August 5th continued
Bram looked stunned after exchanging a few words with Sir John.
The old rogue clambered out of his box. He leaned against the edge and coughed a few more times. “Pardon, gentles all. I lost a bit of substance to the sun and breathed in my own dust on rising. And who are you, sir?”
“I am Bram Van Helsing.”
Sir John stopped in mid cough. “A branch from the famous vampire hunter’s tree?”
“Only in fiction.”
“Ah. Fiction—that holds the mirror up to nature.”
“That reminds me—you have a reflection.” Vi pointed to a mirror in the twilit room. It reflected all four of us. “They say vampires don’t show up in mirrors.” She took her notebook and small pen out of her pocket.
“A mere myth.” He coughed again, “Some lose ourselves, and then become well nigh invisible. ‘Tis a long road for the undead.” He pointed at the black bag Bram carried. “What have you there?”
“Uh, it’s a vampire kit.” Involuntarily Bram moved it further away from Sir John.
“Vampire kit.” The tilt of Sir John’s head expressed his skepticism. “You mean a vampire-killing kit, do you not? Show me.”
Glancing at me, Bram opened the black case, laying it flat on the bedside table. We all gathered round to examine it. In separate compartments it held a stake over two feet long with a wicked metal tip, a wooden crucifix, a few labeled bottles, and a small derringer pistol with what looked like silver bullets.
Sir John laughed.
Bram reached for the stake, but Sir John snatched it out of the box quicker than I would have thought possible.
“Hey!”
“This, sir, could do some damage.” Sir John dropped the stake into his pocket and patted it. “Can’t have it falling into the wrong hands.”
“So it worries you, does it?” Bram’s voice was tight.
Sir John ignored him and bent over the case, his nose close to the crucifix and vials marked Garlic and Holy Water.
“It’s a replica of an antique kit that sold on eBay for $12,000.” Bram’s voice betrayed his anger. “The real kit was made in the early 1900s when Bram Stoker’s Dracula was popular.”
Sir John picked up the crucifix without cringing, and held the vial marked Holy Water up to the light.
Curiosity overcame Bram’s irritation. “I thought vampires couldn’t handle holy objects.”
“So they say. But so you see.” Sir John put the cross down in the case and held up one of the bottles. “Where did you get the holy water?”
“That came from eBay too.”
“Holy water comes from a font, not a bay.”
“This eBay is more of an electronic marketplace.”
Sir John shook his head mournfully. “Holy water bought and sold in the marketplace.”
Vi scribbled notes, leaning forward to catch everything, utterly fascinated.
“Do you believe in this?” Sir John reached out and tapped the vial of water against Bram’s nose. All of us jumped, and Bram stepped back out of reach a second too late. “I see. Water from this eBay you speak of inspires no awe.”
Vi and I laughed. Bram’s face grew red.
Sir John pointed to the crucifix without a hint of his usual twinkle. “This cross. Do you have faith in this?”
“Um—” We looked at one another. Clearly none of us were seriously involved in any religion.
“I see you do not. You probably have more faith in the garlic. But I use it to perfume the blood of those I drink from. I am no threat to your life.” His voice sank to an eerie whisper. “There are things. Right outside your window, if you had the eyes to see them. Things undreamed of that frighten even vampires. Ponder this—what do you believe in? What can protect you?” He picked up the derringer gingerly between his thumb and forefinger. He didn’t touch the bullets, though.
Bram recovered enough to ask. “What about silver bullets?”
“Better. Pricey. Invest in some. These are silver plate. If you want to at least slow down a vampire, get thicker plate. But there are those who stop at none of these toys. Never invite any of the Others in.”
“Others?” I asked.
“Never mind.” His stomach rumbled loudly. “Just don’t invite anyone, or any unknown thing, into your home.”
“Sir John—” Vi held up her hand as if in class. “I’ve been meaning to ask you—”
“Can a man break his fast before the inquisition?”
Vi’s smile dimmed. “Do you have to go out?”
“I must feed and soon.”
“Could I offer you a snack here?”
“Violet!” I was shocked.
“Indeed?” Sir John examined her with interest. His voice, already deep, seemed to go down another octave.
“Vi, that’s a bad idea. Sir John, isn’t that some kind of violation of hospitality?”
“If my hostess freely offers—” He raised his bushy white eyebrows with such entreaty that it was very hard not to laugh.
“Come on, Kit, he drank your blood. Why should you have all the fun?”
“Fun! It was terrifying.”
“You wound me, madam. I had the distinct impression you enjoyed our interlude.”
“He drank your blood?” Bram looked from me to Sir John and back to me again.
“Yes.” I held my collar aside.
Bram came close and examined the scar. “Wow.”
“He jumped me with no warning. I didn’t know what happened till I got home and saw the mark.”
Sir John turned to me. “I never drink without permission.”
“You never asked me. You just, blanked out my mind and—you know—?
“This lady bid me enter her small car—” Sir John took a step back and seemed to cast back in his memory. His deep rumbling voice was hypnotic. As he described it, I found my memory of the event had grown fuzzy. Surely I never offered him my blood. “We sat so close we almost touched. Famished and faint with hunger, as I am now—” He held up a hand. “A sip, I took a sip. I do confess it.”
“So he drank your blood without your consent?” Bram’s hand hovered around the scar on my neck. My hand went to pull up my collar to cover it.
“I’d hardly agree to it.” My voice sounded strange to me. “I had no idea that such a thing was possible. I never offered him anything but a ride up to the VA.”
“Madam, I trespassed, but ‘twas your beauty that drove me to it, and the closeness of your lovely neck.” Sir John bowed his head. “But you know I have not touched my hostess or yourself since being here.”
“That is true.” I admitted.
“It’s hard to separate the fiction from your reality.” Bram’s eyes were on Sir John. “If you drink their blood, will it turn them into vampires?”
“That is no such easy matter.” Sir John looked away as if to avoid the subject.
Vi’s eyes were shining. “Come on, he drank blood from Kit, and she didn’t turn into a vampire.” She moved very close to Sir John, like a flirtatious toddler. “Will drinking my blood give you the strength to go on and answer our questions?”
“Yes.” His voice deepened to the point where I could feel the vibrations in the pit of my stomach. “I will be yours to command the whole night long.”
“Come on, let’s go in the front room.” She took his hand and led him there. Bram and I followed, leaving the vampire kit open on the table in the room with the casket.
Once we reached the front room, Sir John drew Vi into a corner next to the fireplace and put his arms around her in an embrace that slightly lifted her feet off the ground. He held her as lightly as if she were a small bird rather than a full bodied woman. I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t seem to move.
Sir John turned his
massive back to us so that Vi seemed to disappear into his embrace. We could not see how he was piercing her neck. There might have been a faint sucking sound, but Vi’s breathing changed. First she took in deep, sighing breaths, then quickened into short, panting gasps. There was no other sound in the room.
A breath near my ear made me turn to find myself looking directly into Bram’s eyes. Green with streaks of yellow. His nearness made my breath catch, and I noticed he seemed short of breath as well. A wave of heat washed over both of us. Pulses of lust radiated from Sir John and Vi.
No more able to resist than a flower can resist seeking the sun, we stood together, managing not to embrace by sheer force of will.
Bram took my chin in his hand and turned my head till he could look into my eyes. Then he ran his hand over the small scars on my neck and my knees got as weak as if he had touched me much more deeply. “He did that to you?”
“He must have,” I sighed. “Frankly, I don’t remember what happened, but I didn’t invite him. I think he hypnotized me. Then the next night when he came to Vi’s, I took him to a restaurant and a woman sneaked off with him to the restroom.”
“Really?” Bram chuckled a little, I could feel his whole body respond to the idea. He looked down at me. “He did that to a woman in a restaurant?”
“Well, she was definitely willing and eager. She made a lot more noise than Vi. And whatever he did to her appeared to involve removing her panties, because he had them in his pocket when we got to the car.”
I glanced over at Sir John, and looked away immediately when I saw how Vi was moving slowly, ecstatically, in his embrace. I turned back, looking up into Bram’s eyes.
“And your panties, were they missing when you got home?”
I laughed a little giddily, then for some reason I remembered Sir John talking about drinking men’s as well as women’s. Lust was here, and I was totally confused. “I’m sorry. All this sensuality, I think it’s a vampire thing. I realize that you’re—one of Larry’s friends.”
“Yes.” Bram reached out a tentative hand and touched my hair, then he froze. “What?” Anger rose up to replace the lust in his eyes—well, not entirely. “Because I stayed at Larry’s house you thought I was gay?”
“Uh—”
He turned aside with a harsh bark of laughter. The tide of passion receded for a moment. “I can’t believe this. In supposedly enlightened San Francisco.”
Now I was blushing from embarrassment. “Bram, I apologize. In my situation, a widowed older fat woman, it’s safest to assume that attractive men in a gay setting are gay, until proven otherwise.”
The “attractive” part brought him back to look at me. “So you want proof, eh?”
“I just got rejected pretty brutally,” I whispered.
“I’m not about to reject you.” He took my hand and led me over to the sofa. We sat down together, trying mightily to ignore the moans and sighs coming from the other end of the room.
Bram pulled me close enough to kiss, but instead he murmured, “This is the worst day of my life. I’ve always wanted to meet a real vampire—not that I thought they existed—well, not since age 12 or so. But I finally meet one and he laughs at my vampire kit.”
For a moment we just sat breathing and looking into each other’s eyes. He reached out and stroked my hair. “Now I meet a woman who arouses me on every level and you say you think I’m gay. Open your eyes and look. You must be able to tell that I really like you. All you had to do is call—at an ungodly hour, I might say—and I came running.”
“I liked you from the moment I saw you.” I put a hand on his arm in apology, somehow couldn’t make myself move it, enjoying the feel of him through his shirt. “Oh. I think it’s a pretty good night.”
“It’s improving by the minute.” He slipped both arms around me and pulled me close in a passionate kiss. No flirting. No circling around to building up anticipation. Even young impetuous Hal and I had teased back and forth for a little while before jumping on each other.
But sensuality hung in the air like incense smoke, and the entire room seemed to be raw and throbbing with lust. Bram and I began caressing and kissing each other as if we had been waiting months for the opportunity. Our kisses grew deeper and more intense until a scream from the other side of the room made both of us break away and look over.
Vi struggled out of Sir John’s embrace, not reluctantly, but dreamily, as he lifted his face away from her neck and cast blank eyes over us. The expression on Vi’s face was dreamy and dazed. Two small puncture wounds glittered on her neck like rubies. I looked away as Sir John leaned down to lick the last drop of blood from the rapidly closing wound.
Sir John kept his arm around Violet and walked her over to the sofa where Bram and I were still entwined. His cheeks were pink and he looked strong, while her skin was noticeably paler and she half staggered. He held her on her feet. She had a big goofy grin on her face.
I broke away from Bram to lean close to her. “Are you okay?” I turned to Sir John. “Did you take much blood?”
“The blood’s a mere condiment. Salt and pepper to the life force that’s my main meal. And a lovely meal she gave me.”
I felt like kicking him, but Vi was blinking as if happily drunk. “What’s wrong with her?”
“Something in this—” he touched a finger to what I now saw was a sharp fang, hidden under his white moustache and beard—”Gives the pleasure that you see.” He nodded at Vi.
I guided Vi to sit at the end of the sofa. Bram moved to the other end, so I could sit in the middle.
Sir John stretched and moved to sit in the wing chair. He hooked a boot around the ottoman, pulled it close, propped up his feet and leaned back to survey us with contentment. “Questions? Ask them.”
I glanced at Vi, who was just surfacing from her trance. Bram didn’t say anything either. So I started. “Who ARE you?”
Chapter 37
Kristin Marlowe’s typed notes
August 5th continued
He laughed. “You think I am not Sir John Falstaff?”
Vi roused herself enough to say, “You can’t be Falstaff, he’s a fictional character.” She sighed, half wistfully and half contentedly.
“But Falstaff was modeled on Sir John Oldcastle, who was a real historical figure,” I said, primed by a day of research on the net. “But his descendents made a big fuss, so Shakespeare changed the name and put in a line to say it wasn’t Oldcastle.”
“Oldcastle died a martyr.” Sir John tapped his chest. “This is not the man.” But his bright blue eyes had lost a bit of sparkle on hearing the surname.
“A direct quote from the end of Henry the Fourth, Part Two,” Violet beamed. She seemed to be coming round again. “Lawyers give writers the same advice about avoiding slander to this very day. Like—‘The characters in this book don’t resemble anyone, and least of all my rat of an ex-husband. Not in the slightest. Nuh-uh. Nope.’”
“Okay,” I continued, “There were witnesses to Sir John Oldcastle’s death. He was burned in front of a crowd in St. Giles Field in 1417. I found a picture of it on the net.”
“A picture?” Bram’s voice was skeptical.
“Well, a reproduction of a woodcut. Want to see?”
“Yes,” Vi and Bram both said.
Sir John’s face, which had grown ruddy with Vi’s blood, paled visibly. “Do not bid me remember my end.”
“Does the picture bother you?”
“Do as you wish.” But he turned his face away as I went to get my folder. I brought it back to the sofa and sat down between Vi and Bram. Sir John stared at the empty fireplace as I opened the folder.
We all looked at the woodcut. “It’s not a likeness to you,” Bram said to Sir John, who refused to look.
“It’s also not very gory,” Vi said, “compared to modern day pictures.”
“Like a line drawing,” I agreed. “Or a really grisly coloring book with no crayons.”
The woodcut depict
ed simple, grim figures. Men in hats, puff-sleeved antique jackets, and knee breeches surrounded a man a lot thinner than Sir John, bound hand and feet, who dangled suspended from a chain, fixed to a cross-beam so low that his feet and legs nearly touched the wood of the fire. A few men stood watching in the background. A hat and jacket, perhaps the dying man’s clothing, occupied the foreground.
“Why burning?” Bram touched the outlines of flames in the picture. “Isn’t that the typical punishment for a witch?”
“Maybe that was about the heresy,” I said. “Oldcastle was a follower of John Wycliffe, who was an early Protestant. See the text under the graphic?”
Bram read it. “It says Wycliffe—and his followers like Oldcastle—were considered heretics because they read the Bible in English.”
“They also had some radical ideas about the Catholic Church not owning property and women being allowed to preach. Come to think of it, those ideas are still considered radical in some circles.” I said.
“Cool!” Vi said.
There was a faint sound from Sir John. He had his face turned to the fireplace, so I couldn’t tell—but my guess was that it was a snort of derision.
“Oldcastle was the first layperson to be martyred in England,” I concluded.
“Roasted alive.” Sir John’s voice was hollow and he still averted his eyes.
I read the paragraph that accompanied it. “It says here—hanged by a chain by the middle, he was consumed by fire, the gallows and all. The gallows must be that wooden thing he’s hanging from like a crossbeam. It says while he was burning alive, he prayed for his persecutors and prophesied that he would rise on the third day.”
“Like a vampire,” Vi exclaimed.
Sir John snorted again. “There’s Another that rose on the third day that was no vampire.” He was looking at us, but still avoiding the woodcut.
We all looked at each other blankly.
“You call yourselves Christians!” Sir John snorted.
“Well,” I said. “I don’t belong to any organized religion.” I looked at Bram and Vi.
“Me neither—I’ve always thought of myself as a kind of New Age Druid,” said Vi.
