Blood of the Impaler (2 page)

"
Ja,
is in the warehouse out back. Wait, I get the papers ..."

The sun touched the tips of the distant Carpathian Mountains.

When he awakened, it was not slowly or with confused distraction as living humans awakened. His hands suddenly flexed as his serpentine tongue flicked hungrily against the tips of his fangs. He sensed the movement of the sun closer to the horizon, and his dead body was infused with a sudden, horrible semblance of life. His eyes shone crimson in the darkness of the box, and he laughed softly. He did not wish to disturb the nails which had so tightly secured his temporary home, so he dissolved into mist and seeped out through the narrow, almost imperceptible space between the box and the lid.

Skinsky and Hildesheim were talking in the office, and when they walked back to the warehouse neither thought it unusual for the sunset to have brought fog. It was November, and the moist air drifting in from the Black Sea often mingled with the colder air from the snow-laden lands of the Danube valley to produce such mists.

They did not notice that the fog waited motionless until they had entered the warehouse and were not outside to see it move slowly out onto the dark street where it coalesced into the figure of a tall man, clothed in black. The only things interrupting his darkness were the patches of white at his temples, the iron gray of his drooping mustache, the cadaverous hue of his waxen flesh, and the hellfire which burned in his unearthly eyes.

He walked slowly along the streets of the port town of Galatz, listening to the sounds coming from the taverns and the houses. His gaze shifted rapidly back and forth, and his tongue eagerly licked his cold lips. At such times, when the
hunger was upon him and the hunt was underway, his movements were like those of a carnivorous animal.

A prostitute stood near the dim signpost of a tavern, and he walked toward her.
"
Nacht'n, Min Herr
,"
she said drunkenly in her gutter Balkan German.
"Such'st en Freund f
ü
rm Aben'?
"
She was young in years, no more than twenty, but excessive drinking and the diseases incumbent upon her profession had aged her, and the bloom had long since faded from her sallow cheeks. He stopped walking a few yards away, and she tried to sway her hips provocatively as she came to him, but she had drunk too much to do more than stumble.
"
Ik heiss' Lara,
"
she slurred.
"
Wa' heiss'n Sie, Min Herr?
"
He did not respond to her words.
"
Such'st een Kuh f
ü
r de fickend? Mein'st b'reit, Liblin . . .
"

He smiled coldly as his eyes bored into hers. At first she attempted to feign a seductive smile, but then she felt herself drained of strength by the inhuman power of those eyes, and she neither cried out nor offered resistance as he grabbed her by the hair, pulled back her head, and sank his fangs into her throat.

He drank deeply and long, for he was very, very hungry. He had taken a few crew members on the long voyage from the coast of England to the mouth of the Danube, but he had forced himself to go without food for a few nights. The crew of a ship the size of the
Czarina Catherine
was not large, and he did not wish to repeat his arrogantly confident gluttony of the previous year. Then, when he had sailed on the
Demeter
from Varna to Whitby, the ship had been tempest-tossed into port with a dead crew and a dead captain whose hands were tied to the wheel.

There was no need to draw such attention again. Not when he was fleeing and in danger, for the first time in four hundred years, in true danger of being destroyed.

He drained the woman of every drop of blood, and he felt much better as he let the corpse drop onto the wooden platform before the tavern. As a rule, he disliked turning to such people for his sustenance, for the dregs of human society held no appeal for him. He preferred the highborn or at least the well-bred, for he had been a nobleman, a prince, in those distant days when he had been alive. His greatest joy was in degrading the pure, profaning the sacred, destroying the well-beloved. To destroy the outcast and the unwanted was not particularly satisfying. Still, blood was blood. He dared not take the time to be selective, for he was being pursued.

He turned and walked back toward the warehouse, but he did not enter. The arrangements had all been made through intermediaries, even as Skinsky himself was an intermediary between Hildesheim and the Szgany, even as Hildesheim had been an intermediary between Donelson and Skinsky. Everything, including the impending meeting with Skinsky, had been arranged by letter and telegram. He was to meet his agent in the graveyard of the Petruskirche, St. Peter's Church, as soon as he had accepted delivery of the box which held all that remained of the supply of Rumanian soil.

Fifty boxes of earth
, he thought angrily, though with grudging admiration for the old man who led his enemies. Fifty boxes of earth shipped to England not one year ago. And now he had only one left. He had shipped a few to Varna in an attempt to throw them off his trail, and the rest had been rendered useless to him, sealed forever with bits of sacred wafer, of consecrated host.

He stood in the shadows and waited. The half-moon floated in a starless, cloudy sky, and only the quiet gnawing of nocturnal rodents and the ubiquitous sounds of insects disturbed the silence of the graveyard.

It was an hour before dawn when his agent arrived, and he stepped forward from the shadows into the dim moonlight. "Herr Skinsky," he said.

Skinsky peered at him through the darkness. "Is that you, Voivode?"

"I am here," he replied. "Is everything in order?"

"Yes, Voivode," Skinsky replied, looking around nervously. "The Jew Hildesheim has delivered the box to me, and I have it in my warehouse near the wharves."

"Is it secure?"

"Oh, yes, Voivode, quite secure."

"Excellent," he said with satisfaction. "And the other arrangements?"

"I have carried out your instructions to the letter, Voivode. At dawn, my Slovak boatmen will get the key to the warehouse from my man Riasanovsky, and will load the box onto one of my barges. They will ferry it up the Danube to the junction with the Siretul River, where they will transfer it to your Szgany servants."

"And you have made it clear to them that you will not be there when they embark?"

"Yes, Voivode."

"And you have spoken of this to no one?"

"No, Voivode." He paused. "But those Gypsy Szgany, I do not think they can be trusted, Voivode. Once they have taken the box from my Slovaks, they may dump it in the river to avoid the hard poling upstream."

"My Szgany are faithful servants," he replied. "They have served ... my people for centuries, and they know what fate awaits them if they disobey."

"Yes, Voivode." He paused again. "And may I ask what further services you require of me? You said I would not be here in the morning when my Slovaks load the barge ..."

"That is correct," he said, walking up to his agent. "You have another task to perform, a very important task." He reached out and grabbed Skinsky by the collar. "You must bleed, Skinsky, and you must die." Before the man could react to the swift movement, the Voivode closed his teeth upon Skinsky's throat and ripped it open.

Petrof Skinsky tried to scream, but the blood pouring from his throat turned the sound into a frenzied gurgle as he stumbled backward, clutching madly at the huge gash. Skinsky fell to his knees and then pitched forward onto his face.

The Voivode gazed down impassively at the bleeding body as it twitched and quivered in its death throes. "This must not be my
fate
,"
he muttered. I have cheated true death for four centuries. I will not, I
must
not end as a pile of rotting dust and bone. My heart must
not
be host to the wooden stake of the executioner. I must defeat them, destroy them, survive, triumph. I must!

He smiled in the darkness, amused at his own thoughts.
What is this, Voivode? Are you nervous, Lord of Wallachia? You, who waged war upon the Ottoman Turks, are you now afraid of the miserable cattle who pursue you? Do you fear them, that aged German, that American barbarian, those effete Englishmen, that pathetic woman?

He walked quickly from the churchyard toward the wharves. He did not need to know precisely where Skinsky's warehouse was to be found, for his nostrils could smell the inviting warmth of his native soil. When he reached the warehouse, he dissolved again into mist and seeped through the doorway and then through the space between the box and the lid. Once inside, again safe upon the earth of his homeland, he resumed his physical form.

And then he slept and dreamed the dreams of the dead.

He heard the liquid sounds of the Slovak tongue when he awakened with the next sunset, but he steeled himself to remain within the box until the sun had again completed its circuit. He needed the Slovaks to ferry him to the mouth of the Siretul River, and he dared do nothing that might cause them to jettison their cargo with the dawn. He lay silent and motionless in his conscious state, and the hunger gnawed at him.
I must have blood
, he thought, and then told himself,
no, no, tomorrow night, wait until tomorrow night
.

Dawn. He slept. He dreamed.

Dusk. He awakened.

He gnashed his teeth angrily when he heard that the boatmen were still speaking Slovak, which meant that he was still on the Danube. Again he steeled himself against his hunger, again he lay motionless through the long night as his self-imposed famine gnawed at him. The hours passed slowly, torturously, and he was on the verge of losing control when dawn broke and he fell back into his death dreams.

At last, when his empty eyes again moved with the setting of the sun and he listened to the voices from without, the words he heard were in the language of the Szgany.

He seeped out as mist to find himself on an old barge, surrounded by his Szgany Gypsies, the terrified and obedient servants of his many years of mastery. He solidified in their midst, and they dropped their barge poles onto the deck and fell to their knees. He looked from face to face. "Where is Kurda?" he asked imperiously.

"He . . . he is dead, V . . . Voivode," said a young Szgany. "He died last week. I am his son, Miklos."

He nodded. "And you command here?"

The young man bowed his head.
"
You
command here, Voivode."

He nodded, smiling. "Then my needs are known to you, Mikios Kurdescu."

The Gypsy scurried over to the rear of the barge and returned with a burlap bag. He undid the rope and then took the immobile body of a seven-year-old boy from the bag. He held the child out as if it were an offering to a bloodthirsty deity

He did not take the child from the Szgany. He smelled the blood but saw no signs of life. "If you know of me from your father, Miklos Kurdescu, you know that I am like unto the serpent, which does not devour the dead. If this child is dead, he is of no use to me, and one of you must serve in his stead." He could hear the frightened intakes of breath as he spoke these words. "Does the child still live?"

"Yes, Voivode," Miklos replied, praying in his terror that the bag had not suffocated the child, praying that he had not failed in his first service to the dark lord who had ruled his people for centuries.

"Then rouse him," said the Voivode.

Miklos knelt down by the edge of the barge and took a few handfuls of water to splash on the child's face. In a few moments the little boy began to squirm and whine. Miklos and the other Szgany emitted audible sighs of relief as he again held the child out to the dark lord.

He took the child in his dead hands and waited for the eyes to open. He smiled and spoke softly to the semiconscious little boy, seeming to coo soothingly. Then he placed his mouth over the unlined white throat and began almost gently to drink. The child moved his little hands slowly for a few moments as the life was sucked out of him. Slowly his eyes grew blank and empty, and the boy fell still.
The fresh young blood of an innocent child
, the Voivode thought.
So sweet, so sweet
. When the body was cold and bloodless, he tossed it callously into the gently rolling waves of the Siretul River.

He looked at the Szgany. If they had been horrified or repulsed by what he had just done, they did not allow it to be seen on their faces. "Return to your task," he commanded, and they quickly picked up the barge poles and began again to push the barge on its long upstream journey toward the junction of the Siretul and Somesul rivers. He turned to Miklos as the other Szgany labored against the current. "Miklos Kurdescu. Come here."

The young Szgany came closer to him and swallowed nervously. "Yes, Voivode?"

"Do you know what must be done?"

"We . . . we are to take the barge up the Siretul to the Somesul and then to the Bishta River, and we are then to go up the Bishta to the last dock, thirty kilometers from Oradea. Then we are to load the . . . cargo onto a cart and take it to your castle."