This Dark endeavor taovf-1

by Kenneth Oppel

  I felt her breath on my face, and realized she was very close to me.

  “You were very brave, Victor,” she said.

  I stroked her cheek with the three fingers of my right hand. I moved my face closer to hers, and our mouths met in the darkness. I felt her tears on her cheeks, and tasted their salt against my tongue.

  Abruptly she stood. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s get to the surface!”

  From below came the sound of Polidori shouting and cursing. I could not make out many of his words, for at times he seemed to be raging in another language.

  “He wanted it for himself,” I puffed as we raised the elevator together. “He wanted his legs back.”

  “He never meant for us to have it,” said Elizabeth. “He just used us to fetch his ingredients, the devil.”

  Suddenly the elevator bumped to a stop, and I saw the faintest crack of light before us. The secret panels! Gasping for air, as though we’d been trapped beneath the sea, I stepped forward to throw them open.

  “Wait!” Henry whispered, yanking me back.

  “What?” I demanded.

  “Krake,” he said.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  NIGHT FLIGHT

  Tensed, I pushed open the elevator doors, ready for the lynx to spring upon us.

  The empty corridor stretched out in near darkness, with only a pale flicker of orange light coming from the parlor.

  “When we entered,” I whispered to the others, “Krake was before the hearth.”

  “Let’s hope he’s asleep,” Henry breathed.

  “Keep watch behind us,” I told Henry. “Elizabeth, set your gaze high; he is a good climber.”

  As we stepped out of the elevator, its wooden planks groaned briefly, and the sound seemed huge in the silent house. Once more I cursed myself for not bringing the poker or Polidori’s clubbed cane. Slowly we made our way down the corridor, pausing before the branch in the passage that led to the lavatory and bedchamber.

  I listened. I sniffed, in case I could smell Krake. But he was the predator, not me, and his ears and nose were keener than mine. I leaned out around the corner. The corridor was empty.

  We hurried on, past the closed kitchen door, toward the parlor. As we neared it, more of the room became visible in the pale light from the crackling embers. On the mantelpiece ticked Polidori’s clock. The time was half past nine.

  In thirty minutes the gates of the city would close, and they would not open again until five o’clock the following morning.

  We could not be trapped inside the city for the night.

  The elixir had to be taken within four hours of its making.

  Stealthily I moved into the room, far enough to see the rug before the hearth. Krake sat upon it, his back to us, looking directly into the embers as though mesmerized. His ears were pricked high.

  I turned to the others and gestured for them to follow. We could move past, behind the lynx.

  With every step I watched Krake, but all his attention seemed hypnotically focused on the embers. Halfway across the room, I heard something-a kind of hiss emanating from the fireplace. It took me a moment before I realized it was Polidori’s voice, carried upward to Krake through the chimney. I did not catch the words, and did not want to know in what devilish way these two communicated. With every step I took, Polidori’s voice seemed to get louder and more urgent, and when it stopped, the silence was like a sudden noise. The clock ticked, and Krake turned and stared straight at us.

  “Run!” I cried.

  Krake snarled, and every hair on my body bristled. I bolted for the door to the storefront and flung it back. Lamplight from the street spilled through the grimy shop windows. Krake gave another terrible shriek, closer now. We hurtled across the shop, threw the door wide, and ran headlong down the dark cobblestones of Wollstonekraft Alley.

  Before we rounded the corner, I glanced back, but I did not see Krake pursuing us. Still we ran, until we came out upon a public square where there was torchlight and people about-though mostly of the drunken sort. Here I stopped and bent over, breathless, my amputated fingers throbbing as though they were still there.

  “We will need the horses,” Henry said. “We must get back to your stables.”

  From across the city Saint Peter’s tolled the quarter hour. Fifteen minutes till ten.

  “We will not make it to the Rive gate in time,” I said.

  We were too far from my house. Even if we ran all the way, readied the horses, and rode full tilt to the gates, they would already be locked for the night.

  “What do you intend to do, then?” Henry demanded.

  “The river gate,” I said. “We’re no more than a few minutes away.”

  It was the city’s only entrance by water. But the harbor itself was sealed off shortly after ten o’clock. Two massive chains were strung between the two shores and raised to prevent any vessel from leaving or entering.

  Henry looked at me as though I were feverish. “We have no boat!” he said.

  “We will obtain one.” I was already running. “But we must get there fast. The wind is from the southwest. It will blow us straight to Bellerive!”

  Elizabeth and Henry followed, easily keeping pace with me, for I was much weakened by my ordeal, and fighting for breath. We neared the city’s ramparts, and on the broad street that led down to the harbor, I saw three guardsmen with torches, making their way toward the gates to close them for the night.

  “Hurry!” I gasped. Calling upon the last of my endurance, I raced on, streaking past the guards, through the archway and onto the broad quay. Creaking at their moorings, tall ships were silhouetted against the dark sky.

  I rushed toward the marina, where the smaller boats were docked. There was a great deal of activity on the wharves, as sailors boarded and disembarked from their ships. Those wishing to spend their night within the city walls had only a few more minutes to get there. Not that there was any shortage of company quayside for the sailors. Small braziers burned everywhere, and there were whistles and hoots and the shrill laughter of loose women. The three of us fit right in. We must have looked like urchins, me especially, with my sooty face, singed hair, and bloodied bandages.

  At the marina my heart sang when I saw a smallish boat newly tied up against a slip, and two fishermen hauling out their catch. I rushed to them.

  “I have need of your boat for one night,” I panted. “Name your price, please.”

  They looked at me as though I were deranged, until they saw my purse. I spilled a pile of silver coins into my palm. “Will this do?” I asked.

  They looked at each other, knowing very well that the amount was nearly the value of their boat.

  “Who are you?” one of them asked.

  “Do we have a contract?” I said.

  “You know how to sail her?” he demanded.

  “Indeed.”

  I put the coins into his hand and closed his fingers around them. “I’ll have her back by tomorrow night,” I promised, and stepped aboard. “Henry, Elizabeth, we don’t have much time.”

  There was a bit of bustle and confusion, for the fishermen had not quite unloaded their catch, and Henry and Elizabeth helped them, while I relit the beacons and readied the boat for sail.

  “Where are you bound?” one of the fishermen asked me.

  “Bellerive.”

  “You’ll have the wind,” he said, pushing us away from the slip. “If you get out of the harbor in time.”

  “Haul up the sail!” I sang out to Henry. “Elizabeth-the jib!”

  Even as they pulled the halyards, I was at the tiller, trimming the mainsail so she best caught the wind.

  “Mainsail up!” cried Henry.

  “Forward now, Henry. You’re my eyes.”

  “Jib’s up,” said Elizabeth.

  She was a fine sailor, a better one than Henry, and I wanted her in the cockpit, ready to trim the foresail for me.

  The moon was bright, mercy of mercies, silvering everything. I
stood at the tiller, guiding the boat out of the marina and into the harbor proper. At its mouth a tower rose from either shore. Fires burned at their summits, making silhouettes of the watchmen.

  Within these towers were the giant winches which carried the chain that closed the harbor. Once, Father had taken Konrad and me inside to see the great windlasses. Five men were needed to turn the cranks and haul the weed-strewn chains from the lake bed. When the men finished winding, the chains stretched tautly across the harbor mouth, one three feet above the water’s surface, the other fifteen.

  Those chains were strong enough to snap the masts off much bigger ships than mine.

  In a moment we caught the wind fully, and I gave the order to let out more sail. With satisfaction and a quickening heart I felt our bow dig deeper into the water.

  In the distance a watchman shouted out from one of the towers:

  “Bear away! Bear away!”

  I held my course.

  “They are signaling at us!” Henry cried from the bow.

  I knew that in both towers the men were turning the windlasses-but I also knew we still had several minutes before the chains rose.

  We ran with the wind, the water churning at our sides. I set my course for the center of the harbor’s mouth, for it was there that the chains would be last to break the surface.

  “I see it near the shoreline!” Henry cried. “Victor, bear away! We’ll strike it!”

  I did not. “Elizabeth, mind the foresail!”

  She let out her sheet a few more inches, and I could feel it give the boat just a bit more lift.

  To either side I saw the giant links breaking the surface one after the other, soaring up into the air. If just one were to strike us, it would dash our hull to pieces-and us with it. I tightened my hand on the tiller. I would not stray from my course.

  We were nearly there, about to cross the line. Links shot up to the left and right, drenching us with spray and weed and lake mud. Closer and closer they came to our boat. Almost through, but not quite. I gritted my teeth. And then, not ten feet behind my rudder, the entirety of the chain breached the water like some great leviathan come up for air.

  “We did it!” Elizabeth cried.

  “Thanks to your fine trimming!” I exclaimed.

  Henry exhaled and shook his head, holding on to the shrouds for support. “I was not made for such adventuring,” he called back to me. “That could very easily have gone the other way, Victor!”

  “Think of what fabulous material this will give you, though, Henry,” I said, and sank down beside the tiller, utterly spent. The shoreline was well known to me, even by moonlight. In the distance I saw the dark outline of Bellerive’s promontory, and set my course. If the wind continued strong, we would be at the chateau’s boathouse within an hour.

  “The elixir,” I said, suddenly anxious. “Elizabeth, you still have it?”

  She drew it carefully out from a pocket of her dress.

  “It’s intact?” I asked, holding out my hand.

  “You don’t trust me?” she asked, with some irritation.

  “It will ease my mind to hold it.”

  With some reluctance she passed it to me. I slipped the vial from its protective leather sheath. The glass was unbroken, the cork still firmly in place. I put it back into the sheath and then into my own pocket.

  The wind held steady, the sails needed no trimming, and there was little to do for the moment. Henry returned to the cockpit.

  “What of Polidori?” he said.

  “The fall was not high enough to harm him,” I replied.

  “We cannot leave him trapped in his cellar,” said Elizabeth.

  “The wretch may have some other means of escape,” I said. I could not summon any sympathy for the fellow, and was surprised at my cousin’s compassion. “But we will send word to the city guard tomorrow. They can rescue him in his forbidden laboratory.”

  We sailed in silence for a while, Elizabeth looking up at the stars. I thought of how many times all of us had done so, and drifted and talked and shared our thoughts.

  “Can you see the future now?” I asked her.

  “No.” Her face was drawn, and I thought I saw a flash of tears in her eyes. “What if it doesn’t work, Victor?”

  The same question had been echoing in my head, and doubtless in Henry’s, too.

  “We’ve done something extraordinary, the three of us,” I said fiercely. “We’ve obtained the Elixir of Life. It is no spell or incantation. It’s no different from Polidori’s vision of the wolf. Or Dr. Murnau’s medicine. The elixir will work. We must believe it.”

  “That will not make it so,” said Henry.

  Before I could reply, Elizabeth said fervently, “If our prayers to God have any influence on the workings of this world, we can make it so. We must! Banish your doubts if you have them. Konrad will be well again.”

  She spoke with utter conviction, her face gleaming, and although I did not believe in God as she did, I found myself nodding. And the familiar, hateful thought stole into my head once more.

  She could be mine if…

  Right then I wished I could pray. I would pray to be free of my wayward thoughts. I would pray, Let him live. How reassuring it would be to believe there was a kindly God looking over us, that he would take pity on our toil and suffering and grant us what we asked.

  But I knew it was not true, and there was no point indulging in such fantasy. The only source of power on this earth was our own.

  We sailed on through the night, and though Henry reassured me again and again that hardly any time had passed, our voyage seemed to be taking forever. The dark line of the shore never grew any closer. We merely hovered in darkness.

  The pain in my right hand increased. The pain itself I could endure, but nothing would bring my fingers back. For the first time I felt resentment.

  I had sacrificed a part of my body.

  I had given something away.

  And in return I would get my brother’s life. He would live-and not just live. He would be immune to all illness, a paragon of health and strength. He would be even more beautiful and skilled than before. What chance would I have then with Elizabeth?

  Even if I bent my entire will to the task, tried my hardest, could I win her? I had kissed her lips too. I had sniffed her wolf scent and tasted her blood, like some vampire, always hungry for more. Konrad knew only part of her. Her sweetness and goodness and good humor and intelligence. But he had not witnessed her full power and fury and passion.

  I knew her better, and now I could never have her-and would be crippled for life.

  I felt the vial against my leg, its weight far greater than seemed right for its small size. Almost without realizing it, I drew it out.

  What would a drop do? I wondered. Just a drop. There would be enough for Konrad still. Would a drop ease my pain? Would it cause new fingers to grow, starfishlike, from the blackened stumps?

  I pulled the vial from its sheath and beheld its dark luster in the moonlight. If Polidori had thought it would heal his shattered legs, then surely it could birth two small fingers…

  “Victor,” said Henry.

  “Hmm, what?” I said testily.

  “Best put it back into your pocket. If the boat heels, you may drop it.”

  I noticed that Elizabeth too watched me closely.

  I sniffed. “Very well.” I slid it into my pocket.

  From within the boat’s cabin something shifted.

  “It is just a stray fish flopping about,” I said with a laugh. But I looked to shore. We were still a good thirty minutes away.

  Elizabeth stepped back toward me. “Victor, there is something in there.”

  I saw the flash of eyes. A dreadful elongated shadow burst from the cabin, aimed directly at me, and sank its teeth into my leg. I bellowed, but not in pain. Somehow the long teeth had pierced only my trousers.

  It took me a moment to realize what this thing was, for the moon had transformed Krake into
a ghostly apparition, with black eyes and a jagged, cratered mouth. Jaws clenched, he pulled back, tearing out my pocket.

  “The elixir!” I cried as the vial flew out and hit the deck. At once the lynx pounced upon it, mouth wide, as if to snap it up and crush it.

  Henry was closest, and immediately clouted Krake on the side of the head. The lynx recoiled with a snarl, spitting, and sprang up onto the cabin roof, his head swinging swiftly from Henry to Elizabeth to me, unsure of whom to attack. He showed his teeth, and they seemed unnaturally numerous-and sharp.

  We all faltered. Henry took a step back. On the floor of the cockpit the vial rolled to and fro. Krake’s eyes impaled it. Before I could make a move, Elizabeth ran for it. The lynx pounced, slamming against her legs and knocking her off her feet. With one paw he swiped at her face. She raised her arm to ward off the blow, but not quickly enough. She gave a cry. I saw bloody claw marks across her cheek.

  I let go the tiller and lunged at Krake, but in one supple move he avoided me and scooped the vial into his jaws.

  “No!” I bellowed, as the beast nimbly vaulted onto the cabin roof. I looked over at Elizabeth. “Are you all right?”

  “He wants the elixir for Polidori!” she shouted. “Look how he holds it in his mouth!”

  I too saw how the fiendish beast did not chew the vial but with his tongue pushed it delicately to one side. He was as wicked and clever as a witch’s familiar. He’d sat on the hearth, mesmerized by the hiss of his master’s voice snaking up the chimney, and received his orders.

  Krake looked now in all directions as if trying to decide which way was closest to land.

  “He means to jump!” I cried. “Elizabeth, take the tiller!”

  Overmastered by my panic and anger, I hurled myself again at the lynx, knowing he would fight me tooth and claw. But I had tooth and claw too, and meant to use them. Krake seemed to sense my bloody resolve, and darted toward the bow.

  “Come here, you overgrown puss!” I scrambled after him.

  Henry reached the lynx first and threw his body on top of him. Krake snarled and scratched, and the vial fell from his mouth and rolled along the deck toward the starboard edge. I watched in horror as it knocked against the low railing. A good jostle would send it into the lake.