Dead on my Feet - The Halflife Trilogy Book II

by Wm. Mark Simmons

  I thought about how much the Hun would have liked that. My own blood was too diluted by the intervening generations: I hoped the fire would be out very soon. Maybe somewhere back along the line I had an ancestor who was adopted. Preferably after great-times-something grandmamma.

  She descended from one of the largest and most powerful clans, the Gutkeleds, who occupied territories that would eventually become Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, and a couple of quaint fiefdoms named Wallachia and Transylvania.

  Cataloging my family registry kept my mind off the pain that jarred through my leg, back, and ribs as I hobbled along home. I turned and gimped back across the road and oriented on my property line.

  Where was I? Oh yeah . . . by the thirteenth century the Gutkeleds had given up the nomadic, tribal lifestyle and become landowners. They also went for a name change, adopting the moniker of one of their “estates.” The word Bátor meant “valiant”—had a nice ring to it—and, somewhere along the way, it became Báthory.

  Maybe, I pondered, there was something in a name since the Báthorys grew in power and influence, producing a number of notable personages. There was Stephen Báthory, a loyal adherent of John I of Hungary. In 1529, he became voivode of Transylvania—more governor than warlord by that time. His youngest son, also named Stephan but with an “a,” became king of Poland in 1575—which allowed his brother, Christopher, to succeed him as prince of Transylvania.

  I turned off the main road and started up my long and winding drive as the first fire truck flickered around a curve in the distance.

  Alas, in-breeding produced a flip side to all this royal success, surfacing when Christopher married Elizabeth, sister of Stephen Bocskay.

  Sigismund Báthory, his son and successor, seemed of the opinion that sanity was somewhat overrated. That attitude may have actually helped his political ambitions. In 1594, he crushed the pro-Turkish faction of nobles and was recognized by the Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolf II, as a hereditary prince. Court intrigues proved a bit more challenging than kicking Turkish ass and taking names: Siggy abdicated in favor of the Hapsburg king of Hungary in 1597, then came back to assume power in 1598. He then abdicated again the following year in favor of his cousin, Andrew Cardinal Báthory, who died that same year so he had to be “coaxed” out of retirement a second time. With the help of Stephen Bocskay, he returned to power as a vassal of Sultan Muhammad III but abdicated (finally, this time) in 1602—once more in favor of Rudolf—and retired to Silesia. Maybe he wasn’t crazy, just conflicted.

  And maybe I wasn’t tired to the point of hallucination: Maybe there was someone walking up the driveway, ahead of me.

  The encompassing trees and encroaching shrubbery effectively blocked ninety percent of the moon and starlight. The flames from the wrecked car and the flashing red and blue lights from the emergency vehicles gave me just enough ambient illumination to see that the figure was man-sized. It didn’t reveal whether it was man-shaped. But it appeared to be moving up the drive, away from me.

  I thought about calling to him—not that I could be sure it was even a “him.” I decided, instead, to close some of the distance while “he” was still unaware of my presence. I picked up my pace and, as I limped along, a detached portion of my mind continued to review the Báthory legacy.

  Gabriel Báthory was a nephew of Andrew Cardinal Báthory, who became prince of Transylvania in 1608. His efforts to become the “Carpathian Caligula” eventually provoked a rebellion by the nobles. Since impeachment was a political concept whose time had not yet come, he was conveniently murdered. He did manage one notable accomplishment before the nobles served the ultimate recall petition: by marrying his niece Sophia to George Rákóczy II, he oversaw the union of these two noble families. Some say the Rákóczy line has never been the same.

  Up ahead, my “quarry” seemed to be having as much difficulty walking as I was—perhaps he had lost his shoes, too. This was silly: stalking an unknown pedestrian in the dark. I decided to approach him but I was determined to do it carefully. In my experience, the Twilight Zone still lurks around certain corners. Too bad Rod Serling’s dead and gone: more than once I would have benefited from his stentorian warning—Look, there’s the signpost up ahead. . . .

  In Erzsébet’s case, the warning signs were in place before she was even born. Her mama, Anna Báthory, married Gáspár Dragfy and gave him two sons: János and Gyorgy. History is closemouthed about the details but Gáspár died in 1545. Then Anna moved on to hubby number two: Antal Drugeth. He died shortly thereafter. In 1553, she married her cousin, Baron Gyorgy Báthory, then gave birth to four more children before the Baron croaked in 1570. Again, no details were forthcoming in my reading but, given Anna’s run on husbands, I would be more inclined to hire a cook than let that woman anywhere near the kitchen.

  Thinking of kitchens, mine was nearby and my stomach was starting to rumble in anticipation of some much-needed sustenance. I was also close enough to my target for him to know he was being stalked. He was either one cool customer or stone-cold deaf.

  Which brings me to “stone cold” Erzsébet, better known in the West as “Elizabeth” Báthory. She was born August 7, 1560, into one of the oldest and wealthiest families in Transylvania, the second of the four siblings fathered by the baron. Although their dominance would decline by 1658, at the time of her birth she had a very distinguished pedigree with a cardinal, several princes, members of the judiciary, clergy, civil posts, a prime minister of Hungary and a couple of kings sharing her lineage. There was even a connection—one for sure, the second only hinted at—to my dark Sire, Vlad Drakul Bassarab.

  Nearly a century earlier, in 1476, Dracula rode into Wallachia to regain his throne. Accompanying him was Prince Stephen Báthory, leading a contingent of his own forces. Both families had a dragon design on their family crests and a Dracula fief, Castle Fagaras, became a Báthory possession during Erzsébet’s time.

  That association is a fact of history.

  The other, a hundred years later, was a matter of gossip and speculation.

  My own connection to the Báthory line was unclear. My great- great-grandparents were from Romania. We bore the name Cséjthe but records between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries had largely disappeared. The oral traditions regarding the Witch of Cachtice or the Blood Countess of Cséjthe are rife with tales of blood and torture and death and degradation—but notoriously mum on any other aspect of the subsequent generations. It was as if the family went into hiding.

  My blood ties to Dracula were more recent and disturbingly clear. . . .

  So what Mama Samm’s disjointed ramblings meant beyond a red-eyed vampire with a cell phone remained to be seen. As did my walking companion. I reached out and tapped him on the shoulder as we came out of the tunnel of trees and onto the expanse of recently mowed grass.

  He didn’t start, didn’t jump, and didn’t even flinch. He had almost no reaction, at all. He took a couple of additional steps before stopping and then turned as the motion detectors turned on the security lights around the house.

  “Can I help you?” I asked, trying to peer into the backlit silhouette where a face should be.

  Maybe I had startled him: it took him a few extra moments to answer.

  “A phone,” he said slowly. “I need . . . to make a call . . .”

  “Sure,” I said, after a little hesitation of my own. “This is my house. Come on up.” I moved to take the lead and he fell in behind me after another protracted pause.

  Standing on the front porch, I fumbled for my key. After a minute of fumbling it became apparent that I had lost my key along with my shoe. Now what? Yell for an invisible, disembodied spirit to come down and unlock the door? Not with company standing behind me. And damn but the paper mill was venting something particularly odious tonight! What kind of chemical makes wood pulp smell like burned pork?

  “Hold on,” I said. “I’ve got to go around back to get in. I’ll come through and let you in the front in a min
ute or two.” Stepping off the porch I got a better, sidelong glance at my visitor. Hospital, I thought, hurrying around the side of the house, got to get an ambulance for this guy ASAP! The driver of the wrecked car looked like he was in worse shape than I was. It was a wonder he had managed to walk all the way up the hill. He was probably in shock.

  I got to the back door, which was just as tightly locked as the front, and sat on the step.

  I closed my eyes. Squeezed my breathing into a regulated cadence. Worked on regulating the rest of me.

  Relax!

  Be calm.

  Focus. . . .

  “Death is but the doorway to new life. . . .” I whispered.

  We live today.

  We shall live again.

  In many forms shall we return. . . .

  This time there was no dream state, no hallucinations, nor a sense of falling between dimensions.

  I opened my eyes, expecting this attempt to have failed like most of the others. Instead I found myself sitting on the floor in the kitchen.

  Naked.

  That’s the problem with translocation. In vampire lore they have Dracula and a dozen other long-toothed clones turning into mist and flowing through keyholes and under doors and such then reassembling, perfectly coiffed and without a wrinkle in their formal evening wear.

  In real life—and don’t you even get me started on the concept of “real” life—translocation doesn’t involve mists or fogs, at all—unless the practitioner uses a little hypnotic suggestion on his or her audience. It’s actually a psionic talent brought about by the vampiric mutations in brain chemistry. And it isn’t a gift that most undead develop. It is restricted to the Domans of the underground communities who secretly break the wampyr taboo against mingling their blood with that of a lycanthrope—something that Lupé and I had ignorantly done on a couple of occasions.

  Perhaps it was my not being “technically” undead that made successful translocations, even without my clothes, so unreliable.

  That, or the lack of a discipline and frequency in my practice sessions. I scrambled to my feet and unlocked the back door.

  Grabbing my puddle of clothing from the back porch, I hurriedly dressed and then grabbed the cordless phone on the way to the living room. The man on my doorstep flinched away from the light as I opened the front door. I caught a glimpse of a blistered cheek, a singed moustache and goatee, and a bloody eye socket before he stepped inside and pulled the wall switch back down.

  “Why don’t you come inside and rest?” I invited. Before you collapse from shock.

  He took the phone and punched in a number. “Got to get back to my car,” he said slowly, remaining just inside the doorway.

  “At least let me get you some bandages, some ointment.”

  He raised the receiver to a bloody ear as I backed toward the first-floor bathroom. “Hello, Susan?” he said softly. “I’m going to be late . . . I just wanted to tell you that I love you. . . .”

  It took me a couple of minutes to gather a handful of first-aid supplies. When I returned, the outside door stood open and the phone was on the floor buzzing a fresh dial tone.

  I went to the doorway and peered out across the front yard. Between the outside security lights and the flickering illumination of the burning car and flashing lights from the main road, I could make out a lone figure shuffling back down the driveway between the trees. I looked down at the bandages and salves in my hands. The emergency vehicles down at the accident site would be better equipped to deal with any serious trauma. I closed the door, picked up the phone, and headed back to the bathroom.

  The phone rang as I finished putting away the bandages. “Haim residence,” I answered, leaving the first-floor bathroom and starting up the stairs.

  “Hello?” The voice was feminine, hesitant. “Hello? Is Bradley there?” Undertones of fear and barely repressed panic were layered into her precise diction.

  “Bradley?” I asked, trying to remember if I knew any Bradleys.

  “Sinor,” she elaborated. “He just called me. The number didn’t come up on my caller-ID so I hit star-sixty-nine. Is he there?”

  “Is this—” What name had my accident victim said? “—Susan?”

  “Yes!” Overtones of relief crept into her voice. “Is he still there?”

  “Um, no.” I opened the front door and peered down the hill. “He left.” It was as if the night had swallowed him whole.

  “Is he all right? He sounded so strange!”

  “Well . . . ?” How to phrase this so it didn’t sound worse than it really was? “He had a little accident. . . .”

  “Accident?” Relief took a powder: panic surfaced like a submarine with blown ballast tanks. “What kind of accident?”

  I told her. Described the crash site, suggested that the car might be DOA but Bradley must be pretty okay if he could walk up the hill to my place and right back down again. Most healthy folk find the uphill trudge leaves them a little breathless. I assured her that Bradley would probably call her from the hospital. . . .

  Which set off a new round of quavery questions in spite of my reassurances that any crash you could walk away from was not that serious.

  She didn’t seem inclined to wait by the phone so I gave her directions and threw in my address for good measure—though the fire and flashing lights would prove beacon enough once she got close. Since most ERs treat nonfatalities with the speed and promptness of a tax refund, she was probably right in deciding to not “cool her heels” at home.

  She most likely had a cell phone anyway.

  I hung up and the phone rang again. Unlisted number, line-filter against caller-IDs, and they still track me down. I glanced at my own caller-ID: the block was one-way so I could still see who was calling me even if they couldn’t see who was calling them. It was the office.

  “Haim Mortuary,” I announced blithely, “you stab ‘em, we slab ‘em; you plug ‘em, we plant ‘em.”

  “Sam.” It was my secretary. Her tone suggested I might want to be a little less blithe.

  “I’m running a little late, Olive.” In point of fact it was just a little before ten p.m. I glanced back to see if I—or my transitory visitor—had dripped any blood on the carpet.

  “Sorry to bother you at home, Boss, but I figured you’d want the heads-up.”

  I groaned. “The Snow Queen?”

  “My, my, a detective and a psychic!” I heard laughter in her warm, dulcet voice.

  Walking into the hall bathroom, I turned on the lights, and considered my reflection in the mirror. It was just a little blurry tonight. “I—I’ve run into a few complications so I won’t be in right away. Try to set up an appointment for Mrs. Cummings next week.”

  “I’ll do my best, Chief, but—you know . . .”

  I sighed. “I know.”

  “Are you okay? Want to take the night off?”

  I considered my bruised face and throat. Even without an infusion of hemoglobin I was starting to look and feel better. Already the dark purples and reds were fading to pinks and pale greens. My cuts were closed. Were I still completely human it would have taken two to three days to heal to this point.

  Of course, if I were completely undead, I would have totally recovered in minutes, if not seconds. “I’m fine,” I answered. “I’ll be in shortly. But don’t tell her that.”

  “Do my best.”

  I opened the shower doors. “See you soon.” I clicked off and reached over to turn the hot water faucet enough to start the showerhead dribbling on the floor of the tub. Then I wrenched the cold water handle as wide as it would go. A few minutes later I was properly thankful that a well-insulated house and twenty acres of property kept my neighbors from wondering about all the yelling.

  * * *

  It was closer to eleven-thirty by the time I squeezed the Merc past the fire trucks, drove down to the river, and parked next to the abandoned railroad spur.

  In 1867, George Pullman, already renowned for redefining the co
ncept of railroad luxury, rolled out the acme, the pinnacle, the Alpha and damn near Omega of the Pullman Palace Railway Cars. Called “The President” and essentially a hotel on iron wheels, it incorporated the finest accommodations imaginable for sleeping, dining, and passing many a long hour with all of the amenities of a penthouse suite. The sleeping compartments had been lined with cherry wood, and heavy, brocaded curtains afforded each window a measure of elegance to go with complete privacy. Over fifty feet long and ten feet wide, the interior was paneled and trimmed with teak, mahogany, and black walnut. Chandeliers hung from the ceiling and French plate mirrors adorned the walls. All of the upholstery was plush and the floors were softened with thick Brussels carpeting.

  Once I’d finished the project, I couldn’t say which was more expensive: acquiring a genuine Pullman and setting it up on an abandoned railway spur on the western bank of the Ouachita River or restoring this relic from a bygone age to all its former glory. The forty thousand I spent on converting the toilets to chemical recyclers, the oil lamps and chandeliers to electrical, and getting the solar-powered heat exchanger to interface with the plumbing was a mere dribble in the bucket in comparison.

  But I could afford it: Prince in Exile, Vlad Drakul Bassarab had treated me well. Between the suitcases of cash he had provided and the protected investments he had set up in my name, I could buy a whole train if I wanted to.

  Never mind that it was essentially blood money for the lives of my wife and daughter.

  I grabbed my equipment bag out of the back seat and walked to the end of the Pullman. Up the stairs, onto the platform and, sure enough, there it was on the glass window of the narrow door: “After Dark Investigations.” Just as Mama Samm had “foreseen.”

  Too bad she hadn’t been more forthcoming about Je Rouge.

  “Go long!” I called, as I opened the door.

  Olive looked up and kicked her rolling chair back from the desk as my camcorder went sailing across the room. One arm went up for a perfect, left-handed catch. Before I could launch into my crowd-goes-wild routine I became aware of another presence in the front office.