His voice was barely a whisper as he pierced Gregor with his stare.
“You’ve disappointed me, Gregor. Earlier this evening you petitioned me for greater responsibility, but you’ve yet to demonstrate that you can handle what you have now.”
“Master, it is a temporary situation.”
“So you keep saying, but it has lasted far too long already. Besides our strength and our special powers, we have two weapons: fear and hopelessness. We cannot control the cattle by love and loyalty, so if we are to maintain our rule, it must be through the terror we inspire in them and the seeming impossibility of ever defeating us. What have the cattle witnessed in your territory, Gregor?”
Gregor feared where this was headed. “Master—”
“I’ll tell you what they’ve witnessed, Gregor,” he said, his voice rising. “They’ve witnessed your inability to protect the serfs we’ve induced to herd the cattle and guard the daylight hours for us. And trust me, Gregor, the success of one vigilante group will give rise to a second, and then a third, and before long it will be open season on our serfs. And then you’ll have real trouble. Because the cattle herders are cowardly swine, Gregor. The lowest of the low. They work for us only because they see us as the victors and they want to be on the winning side at any cost. But if we can’t protect them, if they get a sense that we might be vulnerable and that our continued dominance might not be guaranteed, they’ll turn on you in a flash, Gregor.”
“I know that, Master, and I’m—”
“Fix it, Gregor.” The voice had sunk to a whisper again. “I will be in this territory for three days. Remedy this situation before I leave or I shall place someone else in charge. Is that clear?”
Gregor could scarcely believe what he was hearing. Removed? And to think he’d just made the Master a gift of the pregnant cow. The ungrateful—
He swallowed his anger, his hurt.
“Very clear, Master.”
“Good. It is only a few hours until dawn—too late to take any action now—but I expect you to have a plan ready to execute tomorrow night.”
“I will, Master.”
“Leave me now.”
As Gregor turned and hurried up the steps, he heard an infant begin to cry in the depths of the mausoleum. The sound made him hungry.
Sister Carole spent most of the next day working around the house. She knew it was only a matter of time before she was caught and she wanted to be ready when they came for her.
I wish they’d come for you NOW, Carole. Then this shame, this monstrous sinfulness would be over and you’d get what you DESERVE!
“That makes two of us,” Sister Carole said.
She didn’t want to go out again tonight but knew she had to.
Her only solace was knowing that sooner or later it was going to end—for her.
Gregor smiled as one of his assistants smeared makeup on his face. He would have preferred to have kept his plan to himself but he couldn’t use a mirror and he wanted this to look right. Scruffy clothes, a cowboy hat, a crescent-on-a-chain earring, and a ruddy complexion.
He was going to decoy these vigilante cattle into picking on him as their next cowboy victim. And then they’d be in for quite a surprise.
He could have sent someone else, could have sent out a number of decoys, but he wanted this kill for himself. After all, the Master was here, and his presence mandated bold and extraordinary measures.
He checked the map one last time. He had marked all six places where the dead cowboys had been found. The marks formed a rough circle. Gregor set out alone to wander the streets within that circle.
Miles later, Gregor was becoming discouraged. He’d walked for hours, seeing no one, living or undead. He was wondering if he should call it quits for tonight and return tomorrow when he heard a woman’s voice.
“Hey, mister. Got any food?”
As Sister Carole led the cowboy back to the house, she had a feeling something was wrong. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but she sensed something strange about this one. He wore the earring, he’d reacted just the way all the others had, but he’d been standoffish, keeping his distance, as if he was afraid to get too close to her. That bothered her.
Oh, well, she thought. God willing, in a few moments it would be over.
She rushed into the candlelit foyer but when she turned she found him poised on the threshold. Still standoffish. Could there be such a thing as a shy collaborator?
“Come in,” she said. “Have a seat while I fetch Lynn.”
As he stepped inside, she dashed upstairs, being sure to take the steps two at a time so it wouldn’t look strange hopping over the first. She went straight to the bedroom and began rubbing off her makeup, all the while listening for the clank of the bear trap when it was tripped.
Finally it came and she winced as she always did, anticipating the shrill, awful cries of pain. But none came. She rushed to the landing and looked down. There she saw the cowboy ripping the restraining chain free from its nail, then reaching down and opening the jaws of the trap with his bare hands.
With her heart pounding a sudden mad tattoo in her chest, Sister Carole realized then that she’d made a terrible mistake. She’d expected to be caught some day, but not like this. She wasn’t prepared for one of them.
Now you’ve done it, Carole! Now you’ve really DONE IT!
Shaking, panting with fear, she dashed back to the bedroom and followed the emergency route she’d prepared.
Gregor inspected the dried blood on the teeth of the trap. Obviously it had been used before.
So this was how they did it. Clever. And nasty.
He rubbed the already healing wound on his lower leg. The trap had hurt, startled him more than anything else, but no real harm had been done. He straightened, kicked the trap into the opening beneath the faux step, and looked around.
Where were the rest of the petty revolutionaries? There had to be more than this lone woman. Or was there? The house had an empty feel.
This was almost too easy. Gregor had had a bad moment there on the threshold. He couldn’t cross it unless invited across. He’d still be out there on the front porch if the silly cow hadn’t invited him in. But one woman doing all this damage? The Master would never believe it.
He headed upstairs, gliding this time, barely touching the steps. Another trap would slow him up. He spotted the rope ladder dangling over the window sill as soon as he entered the bedroom. He darted to the window and leaped through the opening. He landed lightly on the overgrown lawn and sniffed the air. She wasn’t far—
He heard running footsteps, a sudden loud rustle, and saw a leafy branch flashing toward him. Gregor felt something hit his chest, pierce it, and knock him back. He grunted with the pain, staggered a few steps, then looked down. Three metal tines protruded from his sternum.
The cow had tied back a sapling, fixed the end of a pitchfork to it, and cut it free when he’d descended from the window. Crude but deadly—if he’d been human. He yanked the tines free and tossed them aside. Around the rear of the house he heard a door slam.
She’d gone back inside. Obviously she wanted him to follow. But Gregor decided to enter his own way. He hurled himself through the dining room window.
The shattered glass settled. Dark. Quiet. She was here inside. Where? Only a matter of time—a very short time—before he found her. He was making his move toward the rear rooms of the house when the silence was shattered by a bell, startling him.
He stared incredulously at the source of the noise. The telephone? But how? The first things his night-brothers had destroyed were the communication networks. Without thinking, he reached out to it.
The phone exploded as soon as he lifted the receiver.
The blast knocked him against the far wall, smashing him into the beveled glass of the china cabinet. Again, just as with last night’s explosion, he was blinded by the flash. But this time he was hurt. His hand . . . agony . . . he couldn’t remember ever feeling pain like th
is. And he was helpless. If she had accomplices, he was at their mercy now.
But no one attacked him, and soon he could see again.
“My hand!” he screamed when he saw the ragged stump of his right wrist.
Already the bleeding had stopped and the pain was fading, but his hand was gone. It would regenerate in time but—
He had to get out of here and get help before she did something else to him. He didn’t care if it made him look like a fool, this woman was dangerous!
Gregor staggered to his feet and started for the door. Once he was outside in the night air he’d feel better, he’d regain some of his strength.
In the basement, Sister Carole huddled under the mattress and stretched her arm upward. Her fingers found a string that ran the length of the basement to a hole in one of the floorboards above, ran through that hole and into the pantry in the main hall where it was tied to the handle of an empty teacup that sat on the edge of the bottom shelf. She tugged on the string and the teacup fell. Sister Carole heard it shatter and snuggled deeper under her mattress.
What?
Gregor spun at the noise. There. Behind that door. She was hiding in that closet. She’d knocked something off a shelf in there. He’d heard her. He had her now.
Gregor knew he was hurt—maimed—but even with one hand he could easily handle a dozen cattle like her. He didn’t want to wait, didn’t want to go back without something to show for the night. And she was so close now. Right behind that door.
He reached out with his good hand and yanked it open.
Gregor saw everything with crystal clarity then, and understood everything as it happened.
He saw the string attached to the inside of the door, saw it tighten and pull the little wedge of wood from between the jaws of the clothespin that was tacked to the third shelf. He saw the two wires—one wrapped around the upper jaw of the clothespin and leading back to a dry cell battery, the other wrapped around the lower jaw and leading to a row of wax-coated cylinders standing on that third shelf like a collection of lumpy, squat candles with firecracker-thick wicks. As the wired jaws of the clothespin snapped closed, he saw a tiny spark leap the narrowing gap.
Gregor’s universe exploded.
I’m awake! Gregor thought. I survived!
He didn’t know how long it had been since the blast. A few minutes? A few hours? It couldn’t have been too long—it was still night. He could see the moonlight through the hole that had been ripped in the wall.
He tried to move but could not. In fact, he couldn’t feel anything. Anything. But he could hear. And he heard someone picking through the rubble toward him. He tried to turn his head but could not. Who was there? One of his own kind—please let it be one of his own kind.
When he saw the flashlight beam he knew it was one of the living. He began to despair. He was utterly helpless here. What had that explosion done to him?
As the light came closer, he saw that it was the woman, the she-devil. She appeared to be unscathed . . .
And she wore the headpiece of a nun.
She shone the beam in his face and he blinked.
“Dear sweet Jesus!” she said. Her voice was hushed with awe. “You’re not dead yet? Even in this condition?”
He opened his mouth to tell her what she no doubt already knew very well: that there were only certain ways the undead could succumb to true death, and a concussive blast from an explosion was not one of them. But his jaw wasn’t working right, and he had no voice.
“So what are we going to do with you, Mr. Vampire?” she said. “I can’t risk leaving you here for the sun to finish you—your friends might show up first and find a way to fix you up. Not that I can see how that’d be possible, but I wouldn’t put anything past you vipers.” What was she saying? What did she mean? What had happened to him?
“If I had a good supply of holy water I could pour it over you, but I want to conserve what I’ve got.”
She was quiet a moment, then she turned and walked off. Had she decided to leave him here? He hoped so. At least that way he had a chance.
But if she wanted to kill him, why hadn’t she said anything about driving a stake through his heart?
Gregor heard her coming back. She had yellow rubber gloves on her hands and a black plastic bag under her arm. She rested the flashlight on a broken timber, snapped the bag open, and reached for his face. He tried to cringe away but again, no response from his body. She grabbed him by his hair and . . . lifted him. Vertigo spun him around as she looked him in the face.
“You can still see, can’t you? Maybe you’d better take a look at yourself.”
Vertigo again as she twisted his head around, and then he saw the hallway, or what was left of it. Mass destruction—shattered timbers, the stairs blown away, and . . .
Pieces of his body—his arms and legs torn and scattered, his torso twisted and eviscerated, his intestines stretched and torn. Gregor tried to shout out his shock, his horror, his disbelief, but he no longer had lungs.
Vertigo again, worse than before, as she dropped his head into the black plastic bag.
“What I’m going to do, Mr. Vampire, is clean up as much of you as I can, and then I’m going to put you in a safe place, cool, dark, far away from the sun. Just the sort of place your kind likes.”
His remaining hand was tossed into the bag and landed on his face. Then a foot, then an indescribably mutilated, unidentifiable organ, then more, and more, until what little light there was left was shut out and he was completely covered.
What was she doing? What had she meant by “just the sort of place your kind likes”?
And then the whole bag was moving, dragging across the floor, ripping as it caught on the debris.
“Here you are, Mr. Vampire,” she said. “Your new home.”
And suddenly the bag was falling, rolling, tumbling down a set of stairs, tearing open as it went, disgorging its contents in the rough descent. More vertigo, the worst yet, as Gregor’s head tumbled free and bounced down the last three steps, rolled and then lay still with his left cheek against the cellar floor.
The madwoman’s voice echoed down the stairwell. “Your kind is always bragging about how you’re immortal. Let’s see how you like your immortality now, Mr. Vampire. I’ve got to find another house, so I won’t be around to see you any more, but truly I wish you a long, long immortality.”
Gregor wished his lungs were attached so he could scream. Just once.
Sister Carole trudged through the inky blackness along the center of the road, towing her red wagon behind her. She’d loaded it with her Bible, her rosary, her holy water, the blasting caps, and other essentials.
You’re looking for ANOTHER place? And I suppose you’ll be starting up this same awful sinfulness again, won’t you? When is it going to END, Carole? When are you going to STOP?
“I’ll stop when they stop,” Sister Carole said aloud to the night.
JO FLETCHER is the founder and publisher of the eponymous Jo Fletcher Books, a specialist fantasy, science fiction and horror imprint that is part of the Hachette group. She is also a poet, author, and ghost-writer, following her earlier careers as a film and book critic and a Fleet Street journalist.
She has been published widely, both in and out of the genre, with her work appearing in numerous anthologies and magazines including, most recently, In the Shadow of Frankenstein and the Zombie Apocalypse! series. Her poetry collection, Shadows of Light and Dark, was short-listed for the British Fantasy Award.
She has won a number of awards for her writing and her services to the genre, including the British Fantasy Society’s Karl Edward Wagner Award, the World Fantasy Special Award—Professional, and the International Society of Poets Award.
Lord of the Undead
Jo Fletcher
Down through the centuries, the legend of Dracula endures . . .
In bloody dark you first were born,
From mortal innocence were torn.
With flash of
teeth, an evil grin,
This legend of our time begins.
While man pursues his daytime dream,
Your Children of the Night, unseen.
Through each new moon their powers increasing,
Yet man’s own thirst for blood’s unceasing.
Turns the century, Victoria’s gone,
Yet still the Empire lingers on.
In dawning age of marvels bright,
You sate your hungers in the night.
The Ottoman Empire fades with dawn,
Another new republic born.
Long live the Proles, the Tsar’s no more,
Watch millions die in two World Wars.
A grayer world where annihilation’s
The fear that looms over every nation.
Your sensual murders still repel,
While civil wars wreak merry hell.
Your needs no longer out of place,
With serial killers commonplace.
Worldwide bloodshed grows apace,
As man first walks in outer space.
There’s ethnic cleansing, genocide,
A new bloodbath on every side.
As 20th century fades away,
It seems your power’s had its day.
And yet still, in nightmares dark,
The Lord of the Undead does stalk.
With gleaming fangs, hypnotic eyes,
Your fatal charm still terrifies.
As New Millennium overtakes us,
Dracula is still Prince of Darkness.
A legend forged of blood, allure,
To rule the night for evermore.
About the Editor
Stephen Jones lives in London, England. A Hugo Award nominee, he is the winner of four World Fantasy Awards, three International Horror Guild Awards, five Bram Stoker Awards, twenty-one British Fantasy Awards and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Horror Writers Association. One of Britain’s most acclaimed horror and dark fantasy writers and editors, he has more than 145 books to his credit, including The Art of Horror Movies: An Illustrated History, the film books of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline and Stardust, The Illustrated Monster Movie Guide and The Hellraiser Chronicles; the non-fiction studies Horror: 100 Best Books and Horror: Another 100 Best Books (both with Kim Newman); the single-author collections Necronomicon and Eldritch Tales by H.P. Lovecraft, The Complete Chronicles of Conan and Conan’s Brethren by Robert E. Howard, and Curious Warnings: The Great Ghost Stories of M.R. James; plus such anthologies as Horrorology: The Lexicon of Fear, Fearie Tales: Stories of the Grimm and Gruesome, A Book of Horrors, The Mammoth Book of Vampires, and the The Lovecraft Squad, Zombie Apocalypse! and Best New Horror series. You can visit his web site at www.stephenjoneseditor.com or follow him on Facebook at Stephen Jones-Editor.
In the Footsteps of Dracula Page 68
