Caleb and Alexandru exchanged a quick glance. What of their magical repertoire remained?
Liszka lit the sunstone once more, but Cuza quickly traced a complicated figure in the air that stopped the rays in their path, focusing them back into a narrow beam that seared her hair and made her yelp. She dropped it like a hot coal, and the brilliant stone hit the floor with a sharp crack, rolling toward the vampire. Cuza casually pointed a foot at the brightly glowing lump and kicked it behind him, his look daring them to retrieve it.
“That’s better,” Cuza grinned slyly. “Now I feel more at home. Your hospitality was much better on my last visit, Arghezi.”
Alexandru drew himself up to his full height, slightly taller than the vampire who stood some twenty feet in front of him. He spat two harsh words: “Get out,” raising his hand to cast a spell.
The vampire seemed nonplused. “Has not his hospitality worsened?” drawled Cuza, looking over the heads of all three of his foes toward the door behind them. “What do you say to that, my dear?”
A clear and brutal laugh made all three heads turn.
Not quite as tall as Cuza, equally thin, but rosy-cheeked and swaying slightly with tipsy pleasure, was Lamia. Two trails of blood dribbled from her pointed teeth down her chin and across the white hollows of her collarbone. As she spoke, she drew her tongue around her mouth so as not to miss a drop.
“Lamia!” cried Caleb, not with accusation but with wild grief. The arm holding the stake fell, unable to point it at her. He had just finished defending her, not only because he loved her, but because she stood for everything that he wanted desperately to believe—that darkness didn’t have to destroy those it inhabited.
His gesture and the tone of his voice might have gone unnoticed to Alexandru if it weren’t for Liszka’s response. She wasn’t jealous, she wasn’t even angry, but she clearly knew what the relationship between Lamia and Caleb had been. It was as if wild wolf had seen her mate trotting down a sidewalk wearing a collar and knitted dog sweater. “You’re foaming, mad dog,” Liszka grumbled, stomping her foot. “I don’t know why I came out here to save your tail.”
Alexandru looked quickly at her, paying less attention to her slangy statement than her blazing eyes and flushed face. “YOU!” he roared, losing his temper with Caleb at last, waving his arm in a vain attempt to cover both werewolves and both vampires at once. “With ANA MARIA!”
Caleb gaped at his mysterious lover, who continued to sway, dripping blood. He raised the stake—and paused. He was caught between Liszka and Lamia, two creatures who had only done what came naturally to them until he, mad Fido the monster-hunter, came along to try and stop them. What right could he possibly have thought he had?
In the second that he hesitated, Lamia reached for the sky and hurled a curse at Liszka.
40. Into the Abyss
Thick, black smoke began to fill the Great Hall.
It was not the result of any magical spell but the product of simple fire. The hangings on the wall, colorful tapestries that had once livened up the forbidding stone walls, had caught fire from the blasts of magical energy unleashed by four wizards. Flames licked upwards towards the great wooden roof beams.
Caleb was worried less about fire than about ominous rumblings from the roof above. He watched with horror and fascination as first one, then another of the huge posts supporting the roof came loose and tipped ominously toward the floor. Time slowed, allowing him to trace the path of the beams as they plummeted slowly downward, encumbered by large sections of the roof still attached to them.
Alexandru, intent on hurtling a curse at the back of his nemesis, didn’t notice the destruction arriving from above. Caleb shouted to him hoarsely over the tumult of roaring fire and falling roof. In an instant several things occurred that Caleb did not understand clearly at the time. Only months later, after agonizing endlessly over the events of that horrible day, did he piece together the crash and its aftermath.
His shout prompted Liszka to drop the large shard of mirror which she held in front of the menacing vampire. Cuza turned to face Alexandru, a look of ancient, alien hatred or longing on his face—Caleb was never sure if human emotions could be applied to vampires. As Liszka ran toward Caleb, Alexandru let fly a curse that struck Cuza full on, sending him sprawling across the floor.
Caleb had no time to wonder what spell the old wizard had used. He was more concerned with the immediate danger to Alexandru from above, and there was no chance afterward to ask.
If he could somehow deflect the falling mass of wood, the old wizard might escape the ruinous collapse. Alexandru seemed insensible to his shouts, too intent on the duel and on staring at Cuza’s fallen body.
Desperately, Caleb thought that together he and Liszka might be able to magically protect the old wizard. They had moved timber before while hunting monsters, although never so much and so quickly.
“Liszka!” he yelled frantically, gesturing upward and trying to create a powerful enough spell.
Her only response was to howl. She didn’t need words to tell him that she would never help the human who had callously tried to kill her son.
Then the crash came. Time resumed its normal flow as beam and plank met stone with an earsplitting uproar. Too many noises collided at once to be able to pick out the sound of wood crushing bone. But after several heartbeats, the din retreated and Caleb heard the anguished cries, saw the pained face of his former teacher and friend. Alexandru lay pinned under one of the roof beams, which was finally at rest after a long fall that seemed to take hours.
“Liszka,” he pleaded, no longer shouting but still retaining a sense of urgency to his voice. “Help me shift this.”
This time she complied, but none too hurriedly, like a fox-hunter removing his prey from a trap. Together they managed to move the huge hunk of wood enough to pull Alexandru free. Caleb knelt beside the old wizard, assessing the extent of his wounds and wondering whether he could heal so much damage.
“Fool,” murmured Alexandru, his face drained of color and looking harder than normal, like a rough imitation of a human face crudely chipped out of marble. Liszka uttered a low hiss in the background, but Caleb did not let go. He could not abandon the man who had sheltered and taught him for five years, in spite of the enormous gulf that seemed to separate them.
“Caleb, I was a fool,” he whispered, weakly gripping the young wizard’s arm, “not to tell you about her. If only you had known.”
“Hush, save your strength,” Caleb replied. The old man’s labored breathing filled him with dread. With a bitterness that took him by surprise, Caleb continued, “I am more the fool for believing her lies. Here, let me help you sit and take care of your—”
“No!” cried Alexandru sharply. “Listen to me now, I don’t have much time. I, too, was taken in by a vampire, but only my pride prevented me from telling you. I could not bear to tell you that I had admitted a vampire to this castle. Under my nose my wife, my brother, and others succumbed while I blindly pursued my own ambitions. You should have been prepared for what can happen when a vampire calls…”
“Nothing could have prepared me,” Caleb replied, angry.
“It is your curse,” began the old man.
Caleb flinched at the word, sure of what was coming next.
But Alexandru continued tenderly. “Your curse…to be able to see the human in everyone, even in monsters.”
Too shocked to speak, Caleb could only stare at his dying friend whose face had become an ashen gray and whose breath rattled hoarsely and shallowly.
“You taught me much,” Alexandru murmured, his voice becoming softer and less distinct, as if most of him had departed already. “Apologize to your…family for me. I wronged them as much as I wronged you.”
Caleb put his arms around the man’s once strong shoulders, unwilling to let him go.
“You must finish—for me. You must destroy the evil that was let—that I let out into the world.”
“I promise,
” Caleb whispered. “I promise.”
“Mircea,” was all that Alexandru managed to breathe before Caleb felt the life slip away, leaving him holding the shell of someone who had meant more to him than he ever realized.
Gently, Caleb laid the dead man’s head on the stone floor, wishing there had been more time for goodbye. At the same time he prayed that the leave-taking hadn’t given the vampires the upper hand.
His face was a grim mask when he rose and said to Liszka, “Have you seen them?”
“Think they’re buried under that,” she replied tersely, pointing to a large pile of wooden debris, at least six feet high and impenetrably dark inside.
The smoke was beginning to get thick, drifting heavily down to floor-level from the burning tapestries above. Caleb hoped that it hadn’t spread to the roof and thence to the west wing. He felt certain that Bela and Grigore would be safe from fire in the tower room, but the smoke might still kill them. Then there was Mihail, who was probably unconscious in the west wing somewhere.
Those were his secondary concerns. The primary one was finding the vampires.
He did not have long to wait, as a pair of bats fluttered above the large mass of debris, weaving in and out of the roiling and acrid smoke. Caleb retrieved the sunstone from the floor and levitated it so that its blinding light pierced the smoke. Both bats were stricken. One dropped to the floor several yards from Caleb while the other flew unsteadily away, fluttering out the door leading to the entrance hall.
One at a time, Caleb thought, grateful that he had hit one of them at least. There was no telling how long the effect would last. He wasted no time, ripping several strips of wood from a splintered roof plank to serve as stakes, hardly feeling the searing pain as sharp splinters jammed into his palms.
“Go get Bela and Grigore,” he directed Liszka. “We can’t stay in the castle much longer.”
She looked at him with a rough pride, happy to see the Alpha that she thought had disappeared, and quickly left. Caleb turned to face the vampire lying in a motionless heap on the floor. At first he saw only the folds of the dusty black cloak, not realizing that it was Cuza until he approached and stood over the body. The dizzying sense of relief stunned him. He didn’t have to face her yet.
Swiftly, he knelt and turned the corpse on its back. With a casualness born of many years’ hunting in the mountains of Transylvania, he drove one of the crude stakes through Cuza’s heart, feeling the end jam up against the hard stone of the floor underneath. This ought to finish off any vampire, but with all he had heard about Cuza, he had to wonder. He would feel much better after the corpse had been burned.
Before he could finally dispose of Alexandru’s worst enemy, however, he had to find his former wife.
Sunstone in one hand and stake in the other, Caleb left the Great Hall in search of the vampire he had loved. Was he mistaken to believe that some of the human still existed within her, and that he had touched it in some way? She was like the smoke filling the Great Hall and keeping pace with him as he strode across the entrance hall, a real presence but impossible to hold for long. He hardly knew what he would say or do when he found her, but he felt a strong compulsion to be with her, whatever the outcome.
He found her in the portrait gallery, limping slightly and trailing one hand along the wall, brushing her fingers over the ornate frames. The dim gallery, a wide corridor with no windows of its own, lay in deep shadow. A smoky haze clung to the ceiling. As he made his way slowly down the passage he remembered a much younger man, drunk on too much wine, stumbling down the same gallery staring at the same portraits.
She stopped near the end of the gallery, her attention fixed on the final pictures in the sequence. Caleb knew them well, knew why she would want to stop there.
Overwhelmed by the darkness, he suddenly called for wisps of Fire to light the candles placed in sconces along the wall. The flames danced and hissed in the smoky atmosphere.
She turned at the sound, raising her hand defensively. From her pale face, half in shadow and half in the flickering yellow light, depthless eyes regarded him impassively. For the first time he looked into their emptiness, without the peculiar lenses she had worn to shield them.
“Cuza’s dead,” Caleb called softly as he approached, “and so is Alexandru.”
His arms hung limply at his sides. Why couldn’t he raise his hand against her, knowing now what she truly was?
“You,” she moaned angrily, swaying slightly and steadying herself on the wall, “what are you? You are a lie straight through! I thought that you—” She broke off, her hand wavering, but still pointing directly at him. He stopped some six feet away from her. She could kill him any time, but maybe he deserved to die for being such a fool.
“I lied about many things,” he replied harshly, “but not about what I felt for you. What am I? A failed human? A failed monster?” At that moment, he could not understand himself any more than he could her. He continued more gently, almost to himself, “And I thought that you had changed. What happened, Lamia?”
Her hand shook more violently as she spat, “Don’t call me that! I’m not—I can’t be that any more. And you must…not…call me…that…”
Those last words came out slowly, painfully, through clenched teeth. She fought a battle inside herself, evident from the trembling that overpowered her, making her thin frame shake.
She turned away from him, face toward the wall, and gasped suddenly at something there. Caleb approached cautiously and saw that she faced the portrait of the Arghezi brothers: the familiar young, stony-faced Alexandru and his brother, Mircea.
She moaned his name softly, insensible to Caleb now standing beside her.
“He was so beautiful,” she murmured after several moments, acknowledging Caleb’s presence while staring raptly at the portrait.
He looked at the boy of about eighteen who smiled shyly from the painting. The same deep, dark eyes as Alexandru’s looked out at them, but in a softer face, almost beautiful with its sweeping cheekbones and delicately curving smile.
“I tried to find him, you know?” Lamia said dreamily. “Alexandru drove him away. I heard he went to New York or Miami, but I couldn’t find him. Alexandru hunted for him over there, so maybe he…”
Lamia turned to him, her eyes seething with emotions, almost human in a way that Caleb ached to touch. Even knowing her history and her crimes, he still loved that part of her that had been—was still—human. “Tell me your name, your real name,” she said, her dark eyes once again unreadable to him.
“Caleb O’Connor.”
“I loved you, Caleb O’Connor,” she stated with a quiet conviction that he would never forget. “If you loved me, there is a gift that I would ask from you.”
He understood her words fully as she raised her hands and grasped his other hand, the one containing the crude stake.
“No,” he began softly, denial, regret, and horror all creeping into his voice, forcing it to be louder until he shouted, “No! Don’t ask me to—”
She appeared not to hear him as she caressed his hand with hers and bent her head down to lick his wounds, tasting him in a way she had denied herself before.
“Now I shall go mad,” she murmured with a trace of her old humor. Straightening up, she faced him and said, “I tried, and failed, to live in two different worlds. Sleep is all I want now. That is the gift you can give me.”
Slowly he nodded, understanding her need, but reluctant to carry out her request. He felt keenly what it was to balance both the human and the wolf inside himself. Did that even come close to her struggle? He had believed that the Undead should not prey on the living, but should give up their imitation of life for some final rest. Could he give this to her?
He searched her face and found there a trace of her pain, scraps and shreds of human emotion that vampires were supposed to leave behind. He could free her from that pain.
Grigore found him kneeling on the floor, hunched over the still body as the flicke
ring candles threw monstrous shadows on the floor and walls.
“Lupeni,” he began hesitantly, “Liszka Alpha asked me to find you. She says we should leave.”
Caleb did not answer at first, making Grigore shuffle nervously. Then, without looking up, he said hoarsely, “There are a few things to do first.”
He lifted his head and stared up at the Beta with red-rimmed eyes, but his voice was clear as he said, “Find the other vampire in the Great Hall. Take it out into the castle yard and burn it.”
Slowly and with great reluctance, Grigore nodded his head, eyes wide with terror.
“Go on,” Caleb said, “it won’t bite. I will be out shortly.”
Despite those words, it was some time before Caleb came stumbling out of the castle, bearing her in his arms, ready to attend to his duty to the living once more.
41. Picking Up the Pieces
Caleb woke up in a dusty and dilapidated room, covered with werewolf bites. He couldn’t see the worst injuries without painfully twisting his neck.
His half-delirious thoughts flowed in odd directions. The graduate students…Mike had been bitten and scratched by many creatures he didn’t believe in. He had come to accept that Caleb was part of this mythical world; once he returned to a place free of monsters—New York City, or California—would he come up with a “scientific explanation” for everything that had happened?
A sharp pain…Was it Fang Formula that Mihail had prepared yesterday, or Poultice Potion? The book…well, it had probably been destroyed in the fire. Mihail couldn’t help, not suffering as he was from a vampire bite, smoke inhalation, and—Caleb smiled wryly—a good case of the heebie-jeebies. Mihail nearly had a heart attack when Caleb suggested he go to Grigore’s cottage with Liszka and Bela, rather than sleep in the granary with the mice. Mice or no mice, Mihail was not about to be thrown to the wolves.
Garlic, ginger, ginseng, spider silk, nightshade, mandragora floated through. That was the Fang Formula, the one Mihail had helped him make years ago for…
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