Vamparazzi

by Laura Resnick

  Bosko screamed and seized the shovel Max had dropped. He leaped to his feet and brandished it at the approaching vampire, shouting in Serbian.

  Two shots were fired in close succession, and Max heard shouts in German. One of the words he caught was, “Reload!”

  If he lived through tonight, he would obviously need to remind his Austrian retinue that firearms didn’t slay vampires and, unfortunately, seldom even slowed them down.

  When Miliza dived for Bosko, who jumped out of reach, particles of dirt flew everywhere—including into Max’s eyes.

  “Perdition!” He scuttled backward on the ground, his eyes watering and stinging fiercely, his vision obscured. He needed his ax, which he’d left lying close at hand—or so he thought at the time. Now, disoriented from his fall and unable to see, he didn’t know where the weapon was.

  “Yarrrgggghhh!” Miliza roared nearby.

  Bosko was still shouting in terror, so at least he was alive.

  Another shot was fired, and Max heard the lead ball whiz right past his cheek, barely missing him.

  “Hold your fire, man!” he cried, feeling around frantically on the ground for his ax, blinking hard as he tried to clear his vision.

  The earth under his hands bulged violently, and then burst upward in an explosion of noise, movement, and fury as another vampire leaped forth from its grave.

  “Gott im Himmel,” Max gasped, rolling away from the emerging monster which instantly reached for him, growling and drooling with hunger.

  His panicky, crawling retreat from the powerfully grasping hands brought him into unexpected contact with his ax—which he discovered by cutting his hand painfully on it. “Zounds!”

  Reflexively cradling the injured hand against his body, he seized the ax with his other hand, rolled to his feet, and took a wild swing at the approaching vampire. He missed its head but did manage to lop off its hand as it spun away from the blow. The vampire bellowed with rage, as well as with what may or may not have been pain—after so many battles against them, Max still wasn’t sure whether the creatures felt pain. In any case, loss of a hand was not a severe enough injury to disable a vampire, as he well knew. When the creature lunged at him an instant later, he danced to one side, holding his ax ready, seeking the opportunity to counterattack.

  He heard the shrill whinny of a horse and was vaguely aware that the approaching hoofbeats were very close now. There were male voices, deep-throated shouts echoing through the night. He realized from the howls and screams he heard all around him that more vampires were rising. The epidemic here was even worse than he’d supposed upon hearing the elders’ account. He had neutralized at least seven corpses before nightfall, and yet an alarming number of vampires were nonetheless bursting forth from the hallowed ground.

  Then he saw yet another vampire emerging from the darkness, coming from somewhere behind the one he was fighting. He noticed it was approaching from outside the graveyard. Max circled his foe, and the change in his position brought more vampires into view. They weren’t just in the graveyard, emerging from the soil, he realized with dawning horror; they were also attacking now from the woods beyond the cemetery. The victims had evidently fallen there in death and not yet been found or buried.

  Max heard more shouting, unfamiliar voices, words he couldn’t distinguish. He looked past the vampire he was fighting, and he saw strangers dismount their horses and run into the graveyard. Three men. One headed for Hoffman, who was frantically trying to reload his carbine while two vampires approached him from opposite directions.

  These brave reinforcements gave Max a moment of hope. But then he realized the foolishness of that optimism. The living in this battle were badly outnumbered by the undead. A quick, frantic glance around the cemetery revealed a shocking number of vampires. And more were emerging from the darkness even as Max returned his full attention to trying to defeat the one he was combating before another one could attack him.

  There were too many of them. There were just too many . . .

  He took a deep breath and recognized that he would die in Medvegia.

  Acceptance was best. Fear, panic, and vain protests against his fate would cloud his mind and make him more vulnerable to his adversaries. In this, his final battle, he wanted to fight well and take as many vampires to hell with him as he could.

  He also, he realized with sick dread, did not want to become one of them.

  Do not think about that. Think only of destroying these monsters.

  Max feinted to the right. The vampire followed his lead. He whirled around, turning a complete circle to the left, and swung a true blow, connecting exactly as intended. The vampire’s head flew off and rolled away. As the decapitated body fell toward him, Max took a step backward to avoid contact—and backed straight into the arms of another vampire.

  Heart thundering in his chest, he struggled against the powerful arms that held him, pinning Max’s own arms to his side. He felt blood dripping from his injured hand, making it slippery, making the ax handle difficult to hold onto—especially with his arms being squeezed ruthlessly against his body. The foul odor of the creature which held him was nauseating, and the way the thing snuffled hungrily at his flesh filled him with revulsion. He felt its grip tighten and its head move to sink its teeth into the back of his neck, where it would gnaw and tear, laboriously mauling his living tissue while he screamed in agony and struggled to survive ...

  And then he felt the vampire grunt in surprise as it was wrenched violently backward. Its arms flailed, releasing Max. He staggered away, then turned quickly—in time to see, to his utter astonishment, one of the newly arrived strangers turn the creature’s head sharply in his bare hands and rip it off the body.

  His blood roaring in his ears, Max just stared in openmouthed shock.

  After a moment, the tall, powerfully built, gray-haired man looked up and shouted something at him. Max didn’t understand the language, but the urgency of the tone returned him to his senses. He lunged to the right as he whirled sharply, his ax ready for engagement. The vampire that was attacking him from behind howled in frustration and lunged for him again. Max heard a faint humming sound shoot past him, then he saw the vampire flinch as if in response to a blow. It staggered back a few steps and clutched its chest with both hands. Then it let out a horrible sound and fell down.

  Max turned to see the stranger holding a crossbow still aimed at the vampire, which was when he recognized what had just happened. The stranger lowered the weapon, approached Max, and spoke tersely, still in that unfamiliar language. Max realized an instant later what he wanted; the man seized his ax as he strode past him, and he used it to behead the fallen creature.

  Just beyond where the stranger was doing this, Max saw the vampire which had once been Miliza Pavle wrestle the shovel away from Bosko and strike him with it. The dazed Serb fell facedown, and the vampire raised the shovel for another blow, clearly intent on bludgeoning the back of Bosko’s head with it.

  “No! Fly from her!” Max shouted in Latin, pointing at the shovel, concentrating all his energy on the animative spell.

  The shovel flew out of Miliza’s hands and disappeared into the darkness.

  The stranger saw this deed. He turned and met Max’s gaze. His heavily lined face, like his gray hair, was a puzzling contrast to his speed, strength, and agility in combat.

  He said to Max in Latin, “You are something out of the ordinary, aren’t you?”

  “So, it would seem, are you,” Max said in the same language.

  They continued staring at each other in puzzled curiosity for another moment.

  Then the stranger’s expression changed. “Get down!”

  Max dropped to the ground as the man hurled the ax over Max’s head. It connected with a heavy thud behind him. Even as Max was turning to see the attacking vampire fall backward, his ax now planted firmly in its chest, the stranger was already running past him to retrieve the weapon from its target and use it to decapitate the creature.
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  I might not die after all, Max realized in astonishment.

  That glimmer of hope renewed his strength and infused him with the first sense of optimism he’d felt in quite some time. He caught his ax when the vampirekiller tossed it to him, and he re-entered the fray with vigor—well aware, from that point forward, that the three strangers who had arrived in the nick of time were doing the lion’s share of the slaying.

  The battle was over in a remarkably short period of time. And to Max’s trembling relief, all five of the young soldiers who had accompanied him to Medvegia were still alive. Hoffman was babbling hysterically and seemed as if he might not be quite himself for a while, and another of the soldiers had a leg wound, but everyone had survived and would live to see the dawn.

  Breathing hard with fatigue and limp with relief, Max cradled his injured hand against his chest as he watched the stranger who had saved his life give instructions in his unfamiliar language to the other two men who had arrived with him. They mounted their horses and rode off into the night.

  “Where are they going?” Bosko asked, limping to Max’s side.

  “Are you all right?” Max was relieved to see the Serbian alive and in one piece.

  “Miliza Pavle changed a great deal after death,” he said seriously. “But I am well enough. And you?”

  Max looked down at his blood-drenched hand. The cut made by the ax was long and deep. “This isn’t serious, but it is messy. I need to wrap it in something.”

  Bosko made a strange gurgling noise. Max looked at him and, in the faint torchlight, saw that the Serb’s gaze was wide-eyed now, fixed on his bloody hand.

  “It’s bleeding rather copiously, but it is just a cut,” Max said reassuringly as he extended his hand to catch the wavering light and get a better look at it.

  “Magician!” The vampire-slaying stranger called in Latin, crossing the graveyard and coming toward him. “I think that you and I have much to discuss.”

  “I agree,” Max called back.

  Bosko started to pant anxiously. Max looked at him again and saw that the man’s gaze was still riveted on his bloody hand. The Serb’s face was contorting into an awful expression.

  “Does the sight of blood distress you?” It was an affliction Max had encountered before. He turned away, intending to conceal the injury from Bosko’s gaze.

  “No!” The man growled in his native language, stopping him with a rough tug on his shoulder. “Give me!”

  Bosko seized Max’s hand, dragged it up to his mouth, and sucked furiously on the bloody wound.

  “Good God!” Max gasped, trying to pull his hand out of the man’s powerful grasp—and away from that thirstily consuming mouth. “What are you doing?”

  “Magician!” the stranger shouted.

  As Max struggled for possession of his hand, Bosko made obscene grunting noises of satisfaction, slurping and sucking messily, biting and scratching as Max tried to escape his clutches.

  “Stop!” Max cried, caught off guard by the man’s unexpected strength and bizarre behavior. “Release me!”

  He heard rapidly thudding footsteps come up behind him, and then the stranger’s harsh breathing was near his ear as a big fist shot past him and hit Bosko sharply in one exultantly closed eye. Bosko cried out in pain and staggered backward, his hand covering his eye and Max’s blood staining his mouth and chin.

  The stranger raised his crossbow.

  “No!” Max shouted.

  Bosko uttered an abortive squeal even as Max lunged for the stranger’s weapon—too late.

  Too late.

  “No . . .”

  The crossbow bolt sticking partway out of Bosko’s forehead was still quivering as the Serb fell over dead.

  Max turned on the stranger in horrified fury. “What have you done?”

  “He was a vampire,” the man said simply.

  “No, he wasn’t!”

  “He was. And, based on the way he attacked you, he was not in control of himself. He would soon have become a killer, if he was not one already.”

  “You’re mad!” He felt he could scarcely breathe as he looked again at the deceased Serb—a man whom he had rather liked.

  “Do you imagine he was tending your bloody wound?” Max looked down at his hand in an appalled daze. “He . . . he . . . I . . .” What had Bosko been doing?

  “He was drinking your blood. Sating his hunger.”

  Revolted, enraged, and grieving over the murder of a good man, Max clung to the only rational thought he could find in his whirling confusion. “He was not undead ! He was as alive as you and I are!”

  “Yes, he was,” the stranger agreed. “And he was also a vampire.”

  Max stared at him, dumbfounded.

  “A made vampire,” the man added. “That much is certain.”

  “A made . . .”

  “Did you notice him exhibiting any symptoms?”

  “What?”

  “Heightened senses, for example? Did his hearing, vision, or sense of smell seem abnormally acute?”

  “He . . .” Max drew in a sharp breath. “His hearing.” His throat felt raw as he said, “He had unusually good hearing.”

  “And he let you notice.” There was a touch of condescension in the stranger’s voice. “That is typical of the made. Especially the newly made. They are unaccustomed to the superior senses of the vampire, and it often shows.”

  “The made? What on earth are you saying?”

  “He was not born a vampire.”

  “Who is ever born a vampire?” Max demanded in frustrated bewilderment.

  “He became one. Perhaps quite recently.” The man looked around at the vampire corpses that littered the graveyard. “Certainly there seems to be no shortage of opportunity in this village, if one is so inclined.”

  “Opportunity?”

  “Do you happen to know if he killed a vampire?”

  Max blinked. “Er, yes. He did. How did you know?”

  “That is presumably when he drank vampire blood. And thus became made as one.”

  “He became a vampire by drinking the blood of . . .” Max looked around at the odorous, decaying bodies of the undead which they had just fought and slain. His restless stomach roiled in revulsion. “Dear God! How could he?”

  “He was presumably seeking heightened strength, keener senses, and improved well-being. One who yearns for these gifts overcomes his disgust if only the undead are available. He did what was necessary to fulfill his desire.”

  “Necessary?” For a moment, as he imagined what Bosko must have done to become a vampire, Max thought he would vomit.

  “He very likely did not anticipate the blood hunger he would experience. And when it came upon him tonight . . .”

  Max’s grief and anger returned. “You should not have killed him!”

  “The made can be very dangerous. You obviously have no idea how dangerous. If they lack self-control, as he did, they must be executed.” The tall, gray-haired stranger added, “This is precisely why my people rarely allow a vampire to be made.”

  “Your peo . . .” Max took a few breaths, trying to steady himself and martial his madly careening thoughts. “Who are your people? Who are you? Where did you come from?”

  “My name is Jurgis Radvila. I have come from Vilnius.”

  “In Lithuania? That Vilnius?” Max blurted, still bewildered.

  “Yes,” said Radvila. “The journey was long. And I now realize that we should have come sooner.”

  “We . . .” Max’s gaze returned to Bosko’s corpse as he asked, “Where did your companions go?”

  “They are patrolling.”

  “It’s dark.”

  “We can see better by night than you can.”

  Images of the recent battle flooded Max’s mind. “You possess some form of mystical power,” he said slowly.

  “So do you, magician.”

  “My name is Maximillian Zadok.” He glanced at Radvila’s crossbow. “Why are your crossbows more effec
tive against the undead than our firearms?”

  “The bolts we use are made from a special alloy. An ancient formula known only to us.”

  “Us?”

  “Maximillian, the situation here has clearly passed the point of crisis and is now descending into all-out catastrophe,” Radvila said. “Therefore, I believe we should forego wasting time and be candid with one another.”

  Although still appalled by the slaying of Bosko, Max recognized that Jurgis Radvila seemed far better equipped than he to combat the vampire epidemic. Therefore, cooperation was advisable—no, essential.

  Max nodded in agreement. “Yes, by all means. Let us exercise candor.”

  “Very well. I should perhaps begin by telling you that my comrades and I are vampires.”

  Max flinched and fell back a step.

  Having apparently expected that reaction, Radvila added, “Not made. And certainly not undead. We are Lithuanian vampires.”

  “Does that make a difference?”

  “Of course. We are hereditary vampires.”

  “Hereditary?”

  “And we have come here to halt this vampire epidemic.”

  Recalling that the three Lithuanian combatants had slain a veritable army of vampires tonight—whose stinking remains were now scattered all over the graveyard—Max said, “I don’t yet understand what you’re saying. But I suspect that, once I do, I shall be very grateful for your presence here.”

  “We must act quickly and decisively,” said Radvila. “The Council of Gediminas is very concerned about the situation in this region.”

  “Who?” Max asked.

  “The Council of Gediminas,” Radvila repeated. “As I said before, you and I have much to discuss.”

  13

  “He told me they were an ancient council of hereditary vampires who governed, er, vampire matters,” Max explained to me. “They also thwarted vampire epidemics by slaying the undead with prompt and merciless efficiency, as well as executing unruly made vampires.”