Carpathian Devils
Page 13
There was a laugh behind it, sweetly girlish, and then mist began to curl through the keyhole and seep through the cracks around the hinges and the underneath. "No!" said Frank and ripped away the curtain that concealed the other door and bolted through. This too he tried to secure behind him, but it had no bar or lock, so he only shut it and ran out onto the landing.
Narrow stairs, too cramped to go fast, and a larger flight to his right. He turned onto them, bolted down past symmetrical displays of weapons, stars of pistols and pikes. There must be a chapel somewhere, mustn't there? There would be in an ancient house in England. Somewhere for the family to pray when it was simply too much effort to go out of doors.
There must be a chapel. He could hide under the altar. Mirela said they hunted by smell? He could smoke himself with frankincense and attar of roses and cower beneath the altar and hope...
He threw open the next door - a gentleman's study, brown with smoke, lined with more books. A suit of armor on a stand in the corner. Bizarre helmet and a jacket with wings spreading from the back. Not that way. But there was a smaller door out of this room, and it opened as he hesitated. He had time to see a music room beyond - harpsichord and harp, some odd zither-like instrument flat on a table, a footman holding open the door, his many-colored uniform inappropriately gay in this moment of terror.
Frank had looked for no more than an instant when a strength like that of a shire horse hauled him backwards, bent him like a bow. His spine curved, complaining, while his feet kicked out to stop himself being folded in half. Alaya's small hand held tight and cold in his collar, her knuckles against the nape of his neck, and her pretty little face upside down to his, wide eyed and disappointed. "All of that healing, Frank, for such poor sport? I did not expect you to be caught so easily."
She lowered her mouth as if to kiss him on the forehead. No smell of breath from her, but this close the clay-cold reek of sodden soil was all but choking. He got one hand behind his own neck and batted at her grip, as ineffectually as if she was made of steel. With the other he tried to fend her mouth off, succeeded only in getting her two long fangs - close together in the front of her jaw like the incisors of rats - wedged in the heel of his hand.
It was not a great pain, but it made him go cold. She leaned further forward and the teeth drove through between his bones, came out the other side of his hand. She put out a long pink tongue and lapped at the blood that pumped out.
Frank shouted "Argh!" more in disgust and outrage than in pain, just as behind him another voice shouted "No!" and Radu Vacarescu hurled himself into his grandmother like the captain of a village football team trying to wrestle his opponent to the ground.
It should have been ridiculous - he was three times broader than her and almost twice the height. But she stopped him like a brick wall. Frank thought he even heard bones breaking.
Alaya took one step back, her teeth sliding out from Frank's palm like saw blades, and in a curiously delicate version of Radu's own dismissive backhand, she slapped him across the face. The blow lifted Radu off his feet and flung him backwards into a beautifully painted globe of the world that stood by the bookshelf. His spine met the polished wood with a splintering sound, and he sat in the wreckage just long enough, shaking his head as if to try and settle his brains, for Frank to be terrified she had broken him.
For a flickering second it seemed Alaya was worried too, she paused in her attack, waited until Radu began trying to struggle to his feet.
Frank, pressing down on the puncture wounds, blood hot and slippery between his fingers, took the chance of her distraction to run to his host's side as though he would be safe there.
His instincts played him false - the position just made it easier for Alaya to sweep up to them both, grab Frank by the throat and push his head back with her other hand, baring the great vein in his neck. He didn't think he was scared. Didn't think he was in his right mind enough to have any true emotion, but he whimpered nevertheless and kicked her hard in the legs, kneed her in the stomach.
"No!" yelled Radu again, weaving on his feet a little, wincing as he forced himself to stand. "Let him go. He's mine." He drew his sword, a long line of silver in the brown room, the blade whispering against the metal lip of his scabbard. He looked terrified, but his hand was steady.
Yes! Frank thought, exulting at the fact that Alaya could not simply force Radu do what she wanted him to do. By the look of malevolent concentration on her face, she was certainly trying. Cut her head right off.
But Radu hesitated. He pulled his hand back for the blow, hesitated again. A mist coalesced behind him into the form of Constantin, who wrapped his iron fingers around his descendant's wrist and stopped him like shackles.
Hand in Frank's hair, Alaya bent him all but double again, lifted him off the floor entire, his feet dangling. She raised him to her mouth.
Radu cursed and punched Constantin in the mouth with the basket hilt of his saber. The flesh split there but did not bleed, white and dry as bread dough, and Constantin slapped him in return, making his teeth rattle, turning the whole of one cheek red as a graze.
Alaya's lips were cold on Frank's neck, not like a kiss at all, but like a physician's cupping glass, narrow and tightly sealed. Frank's scatter of panicked emotions merged suddenly in one great wail of denial. He didn't want to die. Not at all. But especially not like this.
Teeth against his skin, rough edged, dirty. He was scared to breathe, wanted to recoil. Wanted even more not to move so that they came no closer.
Constantin held up the hand he was not using to restrain Radu, gestured imperiously. Halt. Alaya obeyed, Frank still bent double in her hands and silently screaming.
"My son, why should you have what you want when you will not defer to us in one simple request?"
Radu was trying to pry open Constantin's grip on his wrist, but the fingers would not bend, nor even loose their grip enough to allow the blood through to his purpling hand. He stopped at the end of this sentence and laughed, bitterly. "Bribery, father?"
"Fairness," Constantin smiled. It was the same absurdly sweet smile Frank was used to in Alaya, but seen upside down, with his neck aching fit to break, its sinister quality was far more evident.
"It is but a little thing that we wish – to go to Bucharest.You do this little thing for us, and we allow you to keep your pet. Defy us again, and we have here the means to punish you in a way that will count. Shall he live or die, Radu? It is your choice."
End of Part One
~
Will Frank live or die? Will Radu ever get the courage to free himself of his parasitic parents? Why exactly do Alaya and Constantin want so very much to go to Bucharest? When will we discover what Zayd has to do with any of this?
Find out in Enchantress of Bucharest - Atlantean Devices, part two. Coming on 1st March 2019
Or if you want to know right away, see below:
~
NEWSLETTER
My dear chaps, chapesses and those who are both or neither. (Chappersons, perhaps?) I’m delighted that you’ve reached this far in this, the first of my transcribed memoirs.With parts translated from the original Romanian and Turkish sources, this re-telling of a series of early Etheric Age diaries taxed both my skill and my invention, and I have had to take a small break between each part in order to satisfy my teaching and research duties here at the university.
Nevertheless, the next two parts are available, and if you wish to enter into correspondence with me, I would be very pleased to send them to you for free in the form of this splendid boxed set my assistant has concocted!
Just let me know your address on the ethernet, and I will send them along to you at once.
Enter your email address HERE to receive the box set
Please also drop me a review if you can - the business of a professor in this august institution, when not immediately life-threatening, can be somewhat isolated, and hearing from a reader is always a treat.
I hope to make your acquaint
ance again in part two.
Alex
(Professor the Right Honourable Alexis Octavius Oliver, PAD, MVril, MSocEC.)
Copyright: Alex Oliver 2019
Cover Art by Alex Beecroft