Blood of the Impaler (11 page)

Malcolm looked up and Quincy said, "That was when he infected my mother."

A moment of uneasy silence preceded Malcolm's response. "Gramps, you've got to be kidding! This is absurd!"

"Turn two pages, to the next section marked with pencil. Read it to yourself. Read what he told her." Malcolm turned a few pages, found the marked section, and read:

And so you, like the others, would play your brains against mine. You would help these men to hunt me and frustrate me in my designs! You know now, and they know in part already, and will know in full before long, what it is to cross my path. They should have kept their energies for use closer to home. Whilst they played wits against me—against me who commanded nations, and intrigued for them, and fought for them, hundreds of years before you were born—I was countermining them. And you, their best beloved one, are now to me flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood, kin of my kin . . .

Malcolm threw the book down angrily. "Goddamn it, Grandfather, I'm not going to read any more of this garbage. Are you trying to tell me that I'm not feeling well because I've inherited . . . I mean, that I'm infected . . . I mean . . ."

"Dracula's blood flows in your veins," his sister Rachel's
voice said from the doorway. "And in mine and in our grandfather's, and it was in our father's as well. We are all his bastards." Rachel walked in slowly and sat down on the bed beside Quincy. She looked at her grandfather and asked, "Has he read the diary yet?"

"No," he shook his head. "Not yet."

Rachel turned to her brother and continued, "You must read it, all of it, from cover to cover. Our
great-grandmother's diary
."

Malcolm stared at his sister in disbelief. "Rachel, don't try to tell me that you believe all this crap! Good God, I mean, you of all people! You're so straight-laced and religious and conventional . . ."

"Of course I am," she replied softly. "I have to be, and so do you." She sat down on the edge of the bed, and Malcolm noticed that her eyes, usually narrow, cold, and radiating unrelenting puritanical propriety, seemed somehow soft and moist. He found himself wondering if his sister had been weeping.
No, that's impossible
, he thought.
I've never seen her cry, not once
.

"When I was a teenager," she said, "I was . . . well, I was as bad as you are."

"I'm not . . ."

She cut him off. "Please, Malcolm, just listen to me. I was almost sixteen when Grandfather told me the truth about our family. He could see that I was heading down the wrong road, that the blood was struggling to assert its power over me, just . . . just as it had over our poor father. And when I realized that what he had told me was true, I also realized that I had to make a decision, just as you have to now." She leaned forward, took his hands in hers, and squeezed them earnestly. "Don't you see, Malcolm? The only way any of us can keep the power of the blood submerged is by living upright, moral lives, by devoting ourselves to God, by partaking of the sacrament . . ."

"Oh, come on, Rachel, cut it out," he hissed angrily through clenched teeth.

Rachel closed her eyes and sighed. "Malcolm, haven't you ever wondered why Daniel and I don't have any children?"

He shrugged. "Not really. I suppose I just assumed you didn't want any."

"Daniel doesn't," she nodded. "He never has. That's one
of the reasons I married him." She paused. "And I've seen to it that I can never have any."

"What are you talking about?" he demanded.

"I didn't want to have to live alone my whole life, but I just would not pass this . . . this
plague
on to another generation of Harkers. So I married a man who had no interest in being a father, and I took steps to insure that I would never become a mother."

He stared at her. "You mean you . . . you had some kind of surgery? You had yourself sterilized, because of this crazy story?" She nodded sadly. Malcolm looked from his sister to his grandfather and said, "No offense, but I think you're both nuts!"

"Sit down, Malcolm," Quincy said. "We aren't finished."

"Well, I am," he replied heatedly. "This is the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my whole life!"

Rachel's voice was tired and sad. "You must read Mina Harker's diary. Not the part that was published. The rest of it, the later sections."

"Listen, Sis," he shouted, "I've seen my share of vampire movies, you know? I know that when the vampire gets killed, which he always does—even Dracula—then the people he's bitten are okay. They heal or something. The things—you two are telling me don't even make sense as a vampire story!"

"Malcolm, listen to me," Quincy said patiently. "Stories are stories, movies are movies, and facts are facts. We are discussing facts here, not fiction."

Rachel took one of the other old books from the table and dropped it into Malcolm's lap. "This is the diary of our great-grandmother, things she wrote subsequent to the materials published in the book. Read this carefully, from start to finish."

"It will explain everything," Quincy added.

Malcolm looked at his grandfather hard and long before he said, "Gramps, I'll read this as a courtesy, because I love you. But don't think that I'm going to take any of this as being anything more than goddamned, superstitious bullshit."

"Don't blaspheme, Malcolm," Rachel said.

"What's the matter, Sis?" he asked sarcastically. "Vulgar language brings out the Dracula blood?"

"And don't be flippant. This isn't funny."

"Well, it seems awfully funny to me," he snapped. "I'll
look through this junk later. Right now I'm going to take a shower." He rose and left the room.

Rachel watched him go and then muttered, "He doesn't believe us."

"Of course not," Quincy responded. "Did you believe it, when first I told you of this?"

"No," she shook her head. "I didn't. Of course I didn't. On the surface, the story simply isn't believable."

"I had always hoped that after three generations the blood would be so diluted that . . . well, I had hoped that neither you nor Malcolm ever need be told." He emitted a soft, bitter laugh. "I wouldn't have told you, Rachel, if you hadn't been such a rambunctious young girl. I could see what was happening to you. It terrified me, especially after what happened to my son."

She smiled at him sadly. "I've done what had to be done, Grandfather. And don't think my life has been a pleasant one for it."

"You believed me, at least. Malcolm's reaction is like his father's. Abraham didn't believe me either."

Rachel sighed. "Perhaps our father simply didn't care."

M
alcolm Harker huddled in the shadows of the doorway on the side of Austin Street opposite Holly Larsen's apartment house, watching with a peculiar mixture of sorrow and fury as she drew nigh her doorway. Her arm was entwined in that of a blond man of medium height and athletic build, someone unknown to Malcolm. His lips pressed together tightly, growing white and cold, as he watched Holly lean forward and kiss the stranger deeply upon the mouth.

"'It doesn't matter,' she said," Malcolm muttered. "She told me it doesn't matter, and so she dumps me and starts seeing someone else the first chance she gets." He hissed as he drew in a breath. "Bitch!" he whispered. "Goddamn bitch!"

Holly's voice carried to him softly through the cold night air, unintelligible yet softly seductive words drifting to his ears. She turned and entered her building and the stranger began to walk away, heading down the street toward Continental Avenue. After a moment's pause Malcolm leaned out of the doorway, looked right, looked left, and then began quietly to follow him.

The stranger walked to the subway station on the corner
of Continental and Queens, pausing to smoke a cigarette on the street before descending the stairs to the train. Malcolm passed by him, not looking at him, not drawing attention to himself, and proceeded down the stairs. He turned to the left when he reached the bottom and hid in the doorway of the men's room. He drummed his fingers nervously against the grimy tiles and waited.

A few minutes later he heard the footsteps of his rival as he walked easily down the steps. The stranger walked directly past Malcolm, not suspecting anything, unaware of the danger until Malcolm jumped out from the doorway. He wrapped his right forearm around the stranger's throat, pulled it back with his left hand, throttled him, crushed his windpipe, and left him lying on the dirty, gray cement floor, trying with pathetic futility to draw breath into his lungs. The stranger died in a few moments, but by then Malcolm was already up the stairs and back on Continental Avenue.

He walked casually toward Holly's apartment. The only people he passed on his brief journey were a stumbling, disheveled couple who were quite obviously enraptured by their own narcotic preoccupations and a young black man who was waiting impatiently for the bus.

He opened the front door of the co-op apartment building and rang Holly's bell. A few moments passed, and then he heard her voice, fuzzy through the intercom, ask, "Who is it?"

"Telegram, Miss Larsen," he said, laughing.

"Malcolm? Is that you?"

"Yeah, Holly. Let me in, will you?"

"Do you know what time it is!"

"Yeah. I'm sorry I'm coming over so late, but this is important."

"What could be so important that you'd come over here this time of night?"

"Just let me in, Holly, just for a few minutes. I have something very important to show you."

There was a pause and then the buzzer sounded, unlocking the interior door that led into the lobby of the building. Malcolm pushed it open and ran up the stairs toward Holly's apartment. He knocked softly on the door and waited for her to open it. When she finally did, he was a bit surprised at her appearance. Her burgundy hair was up in curlers and there was a film of white grease covering her face.
Guess you don't
think you have to worry about what you look like when you see me
, he thought bitterly. "Hi," he said.

"Okay, Mal, come on in, but just for a few minutes," she said. "I've had a hard day."

And a hard night, no doubt
, he thought, following her into the apartment and closing the door behind him. "How are you?" he asked.

Holly placed her balled fists upon her hips, and without a hint of friendliness she said, "Mal, what do you want? What are you doing here?"

He drew closer to her and smiled. "I want to show you something," he said.

"Well? Go ahead." She was impatient and uninterested.

"Watch," he whispered. He drew close to her, and moving much too rapidly for her to stop him, he reached behind her and grabbed her hair in his right hand. A gasp escaped her lips as he wrenched her head backward, sending curlers bouncing onto the floor.

"We're going to have a new type of relationship, honey." He smiled, then leaned forward, opening his mouth and then closing it upon the smooth white skin just below her left ear. He could sense her beginning to scream, but before she could utter a sound he had closed his teeth upon her and pulled her head back forcefully, tearing open her throat.

The blood spurted horribly as if from an unblocked fountain, and Malcolm pressed his mouth down upon the wound, relishing the bitter warmth of the thick liquid as it flowed over his tongue. With every drop of blood he drank he felt stronger, healthier, more vibrant, more alive. He drank cheerfully as the struggling woman grew weaker and weaker, at last hanging limp in his arms.

And then Malcolm heard a sound, a sucking sound, very close to his ears, and he realized with a start that he was not the only one who was drinking from Holly's neck. He had not noticed it until that instant, but there were two other arms wrapped around her limp form. He looked up and stared in wonder into the face that seemed simultaneously to withdraw from the other side of Holly's throat to stare at him. Standing beside him, his red eyes shining in the darkness, his lips red with blood, the collar of his cape pulled high, was Bela Lugosi.

Malcolm sat up in bed.

"Goddamn it," he said aloud.
Stupid nightmare! First time in weeks it looks like I'm going to get some decent sleep and I have a goddamn stupid nightmare!
"Thanks a lot, Gramps!" he muttered as he reached over and switched on the lamp upon his night table.
Goddamn stupid stories! Curse of Dracula! Christ!

He picked up the book he had been reading on and off for the past few weeks and opened it, intending both to get his mind off the conversation he had had with his grandfather and sister and to read himself to sleep. The book was a collection of the letters of the ancient Roman essayist Pliny, and Malcolm paged through it until he found the section in which Pliny describes the eruption of Vesuvius. Malcolm always found that section oddly relaxing.