Blood of the Impaler (35 page)

"Oh, two in the morning, maybe. Something like that."

"Okay, so she had to find a safe resting place immediately. She didn't have time to do anything else."

"Anything else?" Jerry asked. "What else? What do you mean?"

"I'll explain later," Malcolm replied. "The point is, if Rachel has seen to the security of the house, then we're safe from her, safe from the remains."

"Wait a minute," Holly said. "How can she find a place to sleep? Doesn't she have to sleep in her own grave, or something like that?"

"In her native soil," Jerry answered her. "She brought a knapsack filled with dirt with her. Brought it all the way from England to Rumania, before shipping the English and Rumanian dirt to New York."

Holly frowned and shook her head. "This doesn't make sense. If she could get from England to Rumania all by herself, why did she need you to get to America? And why would she need Rumanian soil?"

"We can't be all that certain of our facts," Malcolm replied. "We don't know for sure that she did get from England to Rumania all alone. Maybe she had another . . . maybe she did to someone else what she did to Jerry. Maybe she only needed him because of the luggage, because of the dust of the Count. And as for the Rumanian dirt . . ." He paused for a moment. "I don't know. Maybe the remains have to rest in their native soil for the blood in Lucy's body to remain potent. I just don't know."

"Mal, what are we gonna do?" Jerry whined.

Malcolm took hold of his friend's hands and squeezed them tightly. "We're going to find her and kill her, and then we're going to find the remains of the Count and scatter them. And then we'll he safe, all of us."

"But how can we find her?" Jerry asked. "We don't have any idea where she is!"

Malcolm nodded in agreement. "I know, but we also know that she's going to come after us, you, me, Gramps, and Rachel. We're going to have to be extremely careful and wait for her to make the first move, give us some clue as to where she's hiding. If we can find that out, we can find her during the daytime, and we can kill her."

"And the remains?"

"They won't be far from her. If we find her, we find them." Malcolm turned his attention to his drink, and his two companions did the same. There seemed, for the present at least, to be little else to say.

A
n hour later, Malcolm Harker and Holly Larsen stood in uneasy silence at the door to her co-op apartment. Neither of them knew what to say. This was, each knew, in all likelihood the last time they would see each other. Each loved the other, each wished that circumstances were different, and each knew that a parting of the ways was necessary; inevitable.

Malcolm coughed. "I'd better get back outside. Jerry'll be getting impatient."

"Yes," she said, and nodded.

A long silence ensued. Then Malcolm said,
"I'm
sorry, Holly. I'm sorry for everything."

"So am I, Mal." She unlocked her door and stepped inside, wanting to end the conversation quickly. "Good-bye."

"Good-bye." He watched the door swing shut, heard the lock click softly into place, and then he turned and walked toward the elevator.

Inside, Holly listened for the sound of the closing elevator door. As soon as she heard it, she went over to the window and looked out at the street below. Jerry Herman was standing beneath a
light pole, nervously smoking a cigarette. She watched as he paced back and forth, watched as Malcolm came up to him, watched as they conversed briefly in words she could not hear, and watched as they walked away.

And so, good-bye, Malcolm
, she thought sadly.

Holly turned sorrowfully away from the window and went into her bedroom. She sat down before her vanity and stared at her tired face in the mirror.
Back to work tomorrow
, she thought.
Back to the singles' bars tomorrow night. Back to being alone, back to trying to separate the decent guys from the jerks. Back to the superficial conversations and the pathetic, posturing games. Back to wondering if there will ever be a good man, a decent man, someone to be trusted and admired and loved.

Someone other than dear, sweet, poor Malcolm
.

Sighing, Holly removed her earrings and her necklace and then set about the task of removing her makeup. She was wiping off her mascara when she thought she heard a sound from the other room.

Lucy . . .

She felt a brief surge of panic, then realized that,
no, it couldn't be Lucy, it's impossible. Vampires can't enter a house unless they're invited in first, and I certainly never invited her in. Imagination. All my imagination
.

She was rubbing cold cream on her face when a thought occurred to her. This isn't a house, this is an apartment. And isn't an apartment just like a room in a building? When Dracula wanted to get at Mina Harker, he induced the lunatic Renfield to invite him into the asylum, and then he was able to go from room to room in the same building. And couldn't Lucy somehow get someone to invite her into the apartment building, a janitor, the superintendent, some old man who would hold the door for her and say, please, after you, or something like that.
Couldn't she get in here if she wanted to?

A moment later she heard soft laughter close to her ear and she glanced up into the mirror. The only reflection she saw was her own. In that split second before Holly could turn her head, Lucy Westenra was upon her.

A
s Malcolm approached the front door of his home, the pungent aroma of freshly sliced garlic assailed his nostrils, and he smiled slightly as he examined the garlic bulbs that hung from the doorknob. Anyone else, he for example, might simply have tied the plants to any convenient protuberance without concern for appearance or regularity, but not Rachel. She had split each garlic bulb neatly in half, peeled them, and tied red string carefully about each one. Three split bulbs dangled from the doorknob. Three others hung from the windows on either side of the door, and Malcolm could see that the acrid plant had been placed both within and without the house. Shaking his head with amusement at Rachel's orderliness under even these circumstances, he unlocked the front door and entered.

He found his sister in the kitchen where she was washing off the long kitchen knife she had used to prepare the garlic bulbs. She turned as she heard him enter and said, without any further formal greeting, "I've put garlic on all the windows, inside and out, and on all the doors, including the interior doors to our bedrooms. I've also managed to rummage up more crucifixes from Mother's trunks in the basement. I've put them at strategic points about the house."

"Good." Malcolm nodded. "We're safe now, anyway. The sun has been up for at least twenty minutes."

"And so then, we wait." She smoothed her apron. "I've been up all night, waiting for you, tending to Grandfather, and getting the house prepared for our defense. I'm going to go and check on him now, and then I think I'll lie down for a few hours. I'm exhausted."

"Me, too," Malcolm yawned. "I've got bad jet lag. Jerry's going to come over later on this afternoon, so we'd better set
some alarm clocks to wake us up. The way I feel right now, I'd sleep through the doorbell and almost anything else."

"Well, I wouldn't," Rachel said. "Don't worry, Malcolm. I'll wake you when he arrives." She frowned slightly. "I thought you had no idea where he was?"

"We found him at the Strand, Holly and I," Malcolm said as he began to walk toward the staircase. "He has no idea where Lucy is, no idea where the remains of the Count are."

"Well, then, what . . ."

"Remember in the book, the Stoker book, how Van Helsing used the psychic link between the Count and our great-grandmother to track him down? Well, we're going to try the same thing." He began to mount the stairs, and Rachel followed close behind him. "It isn't a sure thing, but it's the only thing I can think of doing."

She nodded approvingly. "It's a good idea. It might work."

"If it doesn't, I don't know what we'll do. We'll never be free of this thing until we've killed Lucy and scattered the remains of the Count."

"Trust in God, Malcolm," his sister said as she reached the door of their grandfather's room. "This is an old battle for Him. We have a potent ally." She closed the door of old Quincy's room behind her.

Malcolm gazed at the shut door for a moment, then continued on down to his bedroom. He was trying not to think about Holly.

He dropped down upon his bed and folded his hands behind his head.
So beautiful
, he mused as his eyelids grew heavy and a yawn forced its way from his chest.
She is so beautiful, so warm, so kind, so beautiful
.

"She is still a child, of course," the Gypsy said, "but you can tell, My Lord, that she will be ravishing when she comes of age."

He nodded, stroking his mustache and leering at the little girl who stood trembling before him. He dropped down upon one knee and smiled. "What is your name, little one?"

"S . . . Simone," the child mumbled.

"Simone," the Voivode repeated softly. "That is a lovely name. Have you a last name, child, a family name?" The little girl shook her head. "Well, tell me, Simone," he went on, "would you like to live in a big house and have lots of food and dogs to play with and servants to wait on you?" The child, terrified and confused, did not answer. The Voivode
stood up and gathered his collar tight around his neck against the damp, cool wind of the Hungarian autumn. "Where is she from?" he asked the Gypsy.

What is happening here
? Malcolm wondered.
I am in my bed, but it is cold, it is cold . . .

"She is from France, My Lord," the Gypsy replied. "From the city of Aachen."

"But that is Germany, surely!" the Voivode said.

The Gypsy shrugged. "As you wish, My Lord. Borders mean but little to us."

"A little Frank," the Voivode mused, gazing down at the little blond-haired girl. "A little Teuton. How much do you want for her?"

The Gypsy pretended to do some mental calculation before stating the price he had long ago decided upon. "I think that five pieces of silver would be a fair price."

The Voivode laughed. "Yes, it would indeed be a fair price, if you were selling ten mature women! For this child I shall give you one silver piece, and you can account yourself lucky with that." He cast a nod at the servant who stood in obsequious silence behind him, then turned and walked back into the villa. He would not bargain with the Gypsy, and the Gypsy would not refuse the one piece of silver. This was known and understood by all. The servant handed the Gypsy the coin and then took the little girl by the hand. He led her toward the servants' quarters.

The Voivode walked through the opened doors to his villa, paying not the slightest attention to the servants who closed the doors behind him. He returned to the large dining room and sat down at the end of the table opposite his guest. "I'm sorry for the delay, Your Majesty. Local business, private business."

"I was watching you out the window, Little Dragon," Matthias Corvinus, the king of Hungary, replied, laughing. "Your confidence astounds me! That child will not be grown for ten years! How can you be so certain that ten years from now your head will still be sitting upon your shoulders?"

The Voivode shrugged. "Nothing is certain, Your Majesty, not life and not even death."

Corvinus drank from a wine goblet. "Death is the only certainty, Voivode."

"Perhaps," he agreed. "But the day of its coming is not.
Perhaps I shall die tomorrow. Perhaps I shall still live twenty years from now. Who is to say?"

"I am to say," Corvinus reminded him. "Make no mistake, Little Dragon. The sultan still wants your head, and if it ever serves my purposes to do so, I shall give it to him."

"Of course, My Lord." The Voivode smiled sweetly, hating the man who sat before him, hating him with every fiber of his hate-filled being. "But you know as well as I that your purposes will be better served if I can present you with the sultan's head."

Corvinus laughed. "Indeed it would, Little Dragon! But your recent attempt to do so was not, shall we say, designed to inspire my confidence in your abilities,"

Son of a maggot, the Voivode thought as he smiled again and replied, "I made an error, Your Majesty. I should have seen to my defenses before invading the territory of the Turk. And it was not so recent, if I may be so bold as to remind you. I have been your guest for over four years now."

King Matthias Corvinus laughed and nodded at the shared bit of humor. When the Voivode had fled into Hungarian territory after his disastrous defeat by the forces of the sultan under Torghuz Beg in 1462, he had expected to be protected, rearmed, and sent back to do battle. Instead he had been imprisoned by the Magyar king, kept in chains for over a year. True, the past three years had not been unplesant. He had been provided with a large villa on the outskirts of Buda-Pesth, he had servants, he had a stipend, he had his two wives—and now this little girl, who would be serviceable in a few years—but he was still a prisoner, still under guard. And he was still far from Wallachia, his rightful domain, still far from Transylvania, his birthplace, still far from Constantinople and the Byzantine crown, which he regarded as his destiny.