Descent into Dust

by Jacqueline Lepore

  The knock on my door came just before dawn. I’d been expecting him all night, knowing he would not allow too much time to pass before he sought me out. I had no hesitation of opening the door, and no thought for convention. My night rail was modest enough, and I’d drawn a wrapper around me.

  Fox was fully dressed. He said nothing until he’d closed the door softly. “I trust I did not wake you.”

  “I could not sleep.”

  He nodded. “I apologize for the intrusion into your bedchamber at this hour.”

  I laughed, then caught myself. “Mr. Fox, really, can we dispense with such useless observances of propriety. Men and women have been creeping in and out of bedrooms for centuries with less provocation than we two have between us this night.” I crossed to the bed and sat on its edge. “Go ahead,” I said, indicating the wing chair in the corner, “you might as well be comfortable.”

  He did as I requested. He studied me for a moment, then asked, “Mrs. Andrews, did you truly kill six snakes with nothing more than a three-tined pitchfork?”

  “Oh, Lord! Did they see?” It was bad enough I did not understand what had taken place—what would the others, who had rushed in upon hearing Mr. Fox’s shot, make of it?

  He shook his head, making a calming gesture with his graceful hand. “I did away with the carcasses before anyone noticed. I must say, some of them had been pinned, and quite smartly. I can only imagine the skill…Roger had bragged about your marksmanship, but this was beyond the pale.”

  “I’d no idea I was capable of such accuracy.” I thought of how my hands had grasped the handle of the weapon with expert balance, my shoulders easy with the weight of it, and I shivered.

  “You are uneasy,” he observed calmly.

  To my disgrace, tears stung my eyes. “I am terrified.” I jerked my head to confront him. “You must tell me everything you know. I am quite desperate.”

  He nodded. “Indeed, it is time for us to be honest with each other, I think. I regret caution has required me to refrain from speaking freely with you, as I wished to do, but I had to make certain that you were friend and not foe.”

  “Surely, you could not think I would ever intend any harm to a living soul.”

  “I have found that people do not often live up to appearances. I have also found that it is best to expect nothing from others, and anticipate everything.”

  “And you trust no one.”

  He inclined his head, pausing for a moment. “You did something utterly astonishing today. And I know you saw something at that tree when I found you and Henrietta near The Sanctuary, did you not? Yes, Mrs. Andrews, you are part of the disturbance here at Avebury. But I do not think you are at the heart of it. You are a bystander, like me, but connected all the same.”

  “I have the same sense,” I confessed. “The idea that this has something to do with me, or something about me. Why is it I see things, sense things, when no one else does? I thought I was going mad.”

  “You may wish you were,” he muttered. “My coming to Ave bury is not by chance. Through means far too lengthy to go into at the moment, I became aware of the thing you refer to as Marius. I have been hunting this thing for…many years.”

  “What is it?” I said. “What is this thing, Marius?”

  “I could explain,” Fox went on, “but that is not my preference. I have come here to request you come with me, now. With what you’ve already seen, showing you what you need to know will serve my purpose better than words that, I fear, will be too fantastic to digest and too easily dismissed as error, or my insanity, or pure malefaction. Will you dress and meet me outside your room?”

  “Where are you taking me?”

  He hesitated. “Dawn is nearly here. I would like to be underway as soon as possible.”

  I drew in a shaking breath, considering his unusual offer. I did not entirely trust him, but I was too intrigued to refuse his request. “All right,” I said at last.

  I donned an old woolen dress, for the chill of early spring was heavy on the ground, and wrapped a cloak around my shoulders. He met me in the hall and took me out through the library doors, onto the flagstone terrace. “Stay close,” he murmured, grasping my arm.

  We ventured into the thin, gray light, down toward the barn. He glanced at me. I guessed he was wondering if I would balk at returning to the scene of the attack. I did stay close to his side as we entered the stable. The acrid odor of horse sweat and manure assailed me, but it was at least pure. Not the putrid scent that had permeated my nostrils before.

  I proceeded close behind Mr. Fox, who paused to turn up his lamp. Placing a finger to his lips, he led me inside a stall. My boots crunched a fine dusting of small stones underfoot. A thick rope of something banged against the door, writhing like a snake and causing me to flinch. Fox saw what had startled me, and the corner of his mouth jerked down.

  “Sorry. Merely garlic,” he murmured.

  Garlic? I hardly had time to assimilate this when the light that spilled into the stall illuminated a shrouded figure laid out on a long plank set between two barrels. I stepped back quickly, slamming against the closed gate as I realized where he’d brought me. And who that was.

  “No!” Fox held his hand up to stay my panic. “Mrs. Andrews, please trust me.”

  “I most emphatically do not trust you, sir!”

  When I would have let myself out of the stall, he grabbed my shoulder. “For God’s sake, Emma, do not turn your back on it!”

  The use of my Christian name was perhaps more disconcerting than what he said. In any event, I froze, and my gaze connected with his through the light cast from the lamp he held in his hand. The shadows and planes of his face were like a mask. But his eyes implored me, and my body relaxed.

  “It?”

  “The man known as Wadim.”

  “What are you talking about, Mr. Fox? He is dead. You killed him.”

  The way his head moved slowly from side to side in denial caused my temperature to plummet. “I did not kill him. I merely dispatched him from one revenant form to another. Come and see.”

  Knowing full well I should have fled, I crept behind him as he lifted the covering from the body. I expected to see the gray-green pallor of death I’d looked upon before, when my father and Simon had lain in the parlor amidst the cloying scent of flowers; lips that would never speak or kiss faded to a shade of white tinged with violet.

  But these lips were scarlet, bright under the silky black of the groom’s mustache. The cheeks were flushed with vitality. I sprung back. “He is not dead!”

  “No, not in the sense you mean.” Taking me by the shoulders, Mr. Fox turned me to face him. “Do you know yet what I am about to confess?”

  I did. A part of me already knew. But the mind cannot fathom such a reality; it resists, as mine had done. It pleads a trick of light, a fanciful perception, even madness. It longs for reasoned explanation, it mutinies against the plodding advance of what is sensed and felt and, ultimately, realized.

  Of course I knew.

  “He is a vampire, Emma. This is a vampire, and we are going to kill it tonight.”

  The ridiculous statement was spoken aloud, heard by human ears, and now it existed as more than a thought. Or a fear. This is a vampire.

  “I saw him in the day,” I said, my voice strained. My eyes cast nervously to the body. “He cannot be what you say. They…”

  Say it. I swallowed. “Vampires cannot emerge in the daylight, isn’t that so? I mean, everyone knows this…the legends, I mean.”

  Fox bent to the satchel in the corner. I recognized it as the one he’d brought with him to Sarum Saint Martin’s churchyard. “The Romanians call them strigoi vii. Living vampires. Human servants, bound by a vampire master, to serve as minions while they are alive. They feed like any other revenant but do not have full power. They gain that, and immortality, when they die.” His tone was crisp, businesslike, and he spoke rapidly as he hefted the weight of a mallet in one hand. Then he straightene
d, his quick eye examining a long, sharpened stick double the width of my thumb. His head swiveled to his quarry. “Wadim will rise, now strigoi mort.”

  My mind screamed in rebellion against what he meant to do. I was shaking so violently it was like a palsy. He is wrong! I thought suddenly. What was I doing here? This man was going to drive a stake into this body under the absurd belief that he was killing a vampire.

  The body had not stirred. Fox approached it with his weapons in hand. “I did not kill this man, Wadim—if that is his real name,” he said. “He is not dead, but neither is he alive.”

  “If he is truly what you say,” I said, backing away, “then why is he lying there like that? Wouldn’t he defend himself?”

  “When he wakened tonight, he could not feed because I sealed him in with garlic and salt, trapping him here.”

  Salt, I thought. I had not crushed rocks underfoot earlier, but salt.

  “He is young,” Fox continued, “that is, newly made. He might have received the three bites years ago, but in death, he is a child. He is not strong enough to break the seal, as flimsy as it is.” He glanced out of the gate, down the corridors to the doors we’d left open. The sky was not much lighter. “I would have preferred to wait for full daylight. There is no sense taking any chances, especially with you present. But the servants rise early. Stablemen will be about their work when the sun rises. This was as late as I dared.”

  I said nothing. He glanced at me. “Are you all right, Emma?”

  I opened my mouth, but said nothing. He spoke more softly, as if sensitive to my incredulity. “He is what I have said. You will see.”

  And although I wanted to flee from this madness, I felt he was right. I did believe. Slowly, I nodded.

  He solemnly held my gaze for a moment, then turned to the body, raised the stake, and placed the point of it on the man’s chest. “You will see everything in a moment.”

  The hiss of my indrawn breath cut through the air as he raised the mallet. Sharp-edged sanity reared one final time, and I was struck with a deep sense of horror. I wished to scream, and to stop the sound, I stuffed my fist in my mouth. But I did not shut my eyes, and so when the body animated, I saw everything.

  There was no twitch of muscle, no stirring of breath. The eyes of the gypsy simply opened, the hands flew up, fingers clawed, as he sprang into attack. The action was utterly unexpected, and it took Fox by surprise, which allowed the vampire to throw off the stake. As the weapon hit the floor, rolling beyond the pool of the lamplight, Fox staggered back a step, brought the mallet up, and swung the massive head with an audible whoosh as the corpse rose.

  There was no question the fiend was, in truth, alive, not when I saw it draw back its blood-red lips. Fangs—nothing less than this term can suffice to describe the unnatural canines protruding from under the heavy black slash of the vampire’s mustaches—gleamed. Its eyes glowed malevolently, and it reached for Fox.

  Fox slammed the head of the mallet into the creature with a force that stunned it, but did not repel it for long. Catching its balance with shocking agility, it lunged forward and grabbed Fox by the throat. Fox did something with his hand, a sharp jab to the neck made with dazzling and seemingly unnatural swiftness, and the gypsy hissed and sprang back.

  “Fox!” I shouted, and snatched the rope of garlic from the peg, tossing it to him. His hand lashed out and caught it in midair. The gypsy grew more wary, eyeing the herb.

  “Get the stake!” Fox barked, but I was already on my knees, feeling around in the dark. I kept one eye on the creature. Its empty black eyes, when not fixed on the garlic, flickered to me. Its hateful mouth worked over those hideous teeth, and my fingers went nerveless with fear.

  “Here it is,” I called, standing and turning in one motion when suddenly the gypsy lashed forward. I dropped the stake as Fox and I jumped apart to avoid the strike. Now the gypsy was in the middle of us. He immediately turned toward me.

  His face was eager. The words he had spoken earlier drummed in my head. Your mother will weep, Dhampir. You should have stayed asleep.

  It was not a moment later when the pointed tip of the stake burst through the gypsy’s chest. There was no fountain of blood, no thrashing protests. He—it—simply fell to the ground, first to its knees, then back, the stake protruding squarely in the middle of its chest.

  I gaped, awed by the sudden transformation as the pall of death leeched the color from the creature’s face, bleaching it rapidly before my eyes. The point of the stake was rusty with dried blood. Fox had pierced it straight through, spearing the revenant with astonishing force. His strength took me by surprise, for he was lean, and though by no means frail, his lithe, elegant form did not give the impression of being capable of such power. But then I called to mind how he had lifted me so easily onto his horse when he’d carried Henrietta and me away from The Sanctuary. He had surprised me then, too.

  The gypsy’s mouth worked vaguely, and I imagined it was trying one last time to sneer at me, as if it weren’t defeated at all. As if it knew some secret that consoled it as it slipped into death.

  I felt numb. Over and over, I told myself that we together had not killed a man. It was already dead, I repeated in my mind, hoping to make it real.

  Fox went down on one knee beside the body. “Quickly. The servants will be up soon.”

  I did not move for a moment. My world had tilted, and I was off balance. Disbelief—despite the evidence of my eyes—held me in its fist. It is the nature of human love for predictability, safety, and the comfort of the known to want to deny that which threatens those things. At this moment, my every instinct wanted to flee from what had just happened. Had there been a retreat, some method to coil myself into a safer reality, I would have fled gladly.

  No such blessing came, however, and eventually I recovered slightly, and fell in beside him. Moving mechanically, furtively, I worked together with Fox to perform the laborious task of extricating the stake, then rolling the body on its back.

  As we did so, I noticed a small design on the corpse’s arm, what appeared to be a serpent’s tail. “Look at this,” I said, pointing to it.

  Mr. Fox frowned and peeled back the sleeve to expose the entire forearm, revealing a tattoo of a dragon rampant, its tail coiled around its body, its jaw open to show prominent teeth, and its forearms bristling with claws. Something about Fox’s reaction made me look at him, startled.

  “Do you recognize it?” I asked.

  “It is a dragon,” he said simply.

  “I see that. Is it important? You reacted strangely.”

  He seemed reluctant to say. “It makes me wonder about something, a legend. I do not know much about it. But perhaps this is something to do with the Dragon Prince.”

  Perhaps it was how he said it, but my blood suddenly went cold. “The Dragon Prince? What is that?”

  He snapped his gaze to mine, as if he’d been caught in his own thoughts. “I have heard whispers of the Dracula, but most do not dare to speak of him. More than the name, I do not know. I have seen others react to this symbol. The dragon is greatly feared, and the legends around it are shrouded in a great deal of mystery.”

  “And you think…this was him? I was attacked by this…Dracula?” I asked. The name was frightening. I could not understand why, but just the sound of it spoken aloud called forth a primal kind of dread inside me.

  He gave a dismissive laugh and a shake of his head. “No, surely not the Dracula itself. I am no doubt mistaken. Come, help me put him back onto the planks.”

  I did what I could to aid him in placing the body back on the slab and adjusting its clothing to cover the chest puncture. Then we draped the tarpaulin over it once again.

  “I will have to return to the corpse once it’s buried, to take its head.” He gathered up his tools, stuffing them into the sack. “The old Kashubian method of laying the severed head be tween the feet and anointing the whole with millet seeds will be enough for a revenant of his magnitude.”

>   One would not think I could still be horrified after what I’d just witnessed, but the brutal method of dispatch he’d described and his casual tone shocked me. “My God,” I could not help but utter.

  He gave me a curious look. “It’s what I’ve done to every victim of the damnable ‘wasting disease.’ It is no illness, Emma. The damned master vampire I’ve hunted here is feeding, although I do not understand why. He just glutted himself in Amsterdam…” He bowed his head under the burden of his thoughts. “I do not know if his intention is to make others like himself. Perhaps he seeks to raise an army. I’ve heard rumors to that end. He has come to Avebury for a specific purpose. Something about this place is special. It is not one of his usual haunts, and vampires are creatures of habit.”

  I was somewhat dazed by this information. “Make others? Other vampires?”

  “Of course. It taxes his strength, but he may have need of reinforcements.” He might have been discussing the habits of sheep for all the emotion he put into his words. And yet, each one fell like a brick, pelting the thin veneer of my old world and exposing me to a great and terrible knowledge I was suddenly sure I did not want.

  Oblivious to my horror, Fox continued, “That is why I have dispatched all of the dead, just in case.” He peered at me, half-smiling. “You did not think every vampire victim becomes one himself, do you?”

  “I…I can’t say I’ve given the matter much thought.”

  He was finished packing the sack, and began to scatter the salt with the toe of his boot, grinding it into the dirt, erasing all evidence of what we’d done. “If that were the case, vampires would have taken over mankind a long time ago. They’d keep us to feed, as we keep cattle.”

  I wrapped the cloak about me more tightly and stared at him. Fox shouldered his bag, and said, “That is it, Emma. The night’s work is done. But the battle is far from over. Marius will not like to have lost this one.”

  Chapter Ten

  We returned to the house under cover of the last vestiges of night. A gray vapor crawled knee-high along the ground, a cloying, choking mist, and I felt stifled, needing air. I stumbled, because my knees went weak, I think. My strength was gone.