Blood of the Impaler (49 page)

She laughed. "He
very well may. Or He may not. This is all the Master's doing, you know. It really isn't any one of us who is responsible." She walked toward him and leaned forward, smiling into his face. He could smell her fetid breath as she said, "We're dead, after all. And the bargain between the Master and the Devil was struck five hundred years ago. We made no bargain,
he
did." She stood up and walked to the center of the room, chuckling. "Contemplate the theological implications, my dears. Sin without guilt, transgression without culpability, crime without punishment. Why, it's enough to turn a prelate's miter!"

"God's justice will come in its own time, in its own way," Rachel said coldly.

"It will, no doubt," Lucy agreed. "At the Day of
Judg
ment, the Master will have much to answer for. But right now, the judgments of our lord . . .
our
lord, not yours . . . are the only ones that matter." She lay the broom against one of the coffins and then turned toward Jerry Herman, who was beginning to stir. "And another player enters the stage."

Jerry, lying against the wall, moaned loudly and then opened his eyes. When he tried to sit up, he became aware of his bonds. He struggled to a sitting position, and the tableau before him told him everything he needed to know. Daniel, silent and servile; Malcolm and Rachel, captive; Lucy and Quincy and Holly, triumphant. "Shit!" he muttered, trembling with fear.

"Good evening, lover." Lucy smiled. "You've awakened just in time for the best part of the evening. But where was I?" She paused and pretended to think. "Oh, yes. We were talking about how poor Malcolm just isn't clever enough, weren't we?"

Malcolm's face was red with frustration and anger. "Lucy, I swear . . . I swear I'll—"

"Oh, don't be pompous!" she snapped, as if he were an irritating child. "We've all reached the end of the charted course, Malcolm. You'll do nothing but bleed."

"What do you mean, 'charted course'?" he demanded.

"Why, surely you know that this has all been carefully planned," she answered. "I needed to gather up the Master's
dust, and so I sent you to Rumania. I needed to get into the
United States, and so I, shall we say, conscripted Jerry. I needed at least one assistant of my own kind for this evening's
endeavor, and so I invited Holly into our rather restricted
company. I could have completed what I had already begun with Jerry, but he was already on guard against me, and so Holly was the next-best choice. I needed a few months to make a few other preparations without your interference, and so I sent you three in different directions. And when I needed to gather you all together, I used Daniel."

"Bullshit," Malcolm said. "I made some stupid mistakes, but mostly you were just lucky, that's all. This plan of yours would have unraveled any one of a number of times if I had made the right decisions, drawn the right conclusions. You wouldn't have been resurrected in the first place if I hadn't made mistakes."

Lucy shook her head and smiled sadly. "Oh, my dear, I think I was wrong. You aren't the slightest bit clever. You're really rather stupid. Why, you haven't even figured this all out yet, have you! You still think that the plan was mine, that I arranged everything. It wasn't my plan at all. It was the Master's."

"What are you talking about?" Rachel demanded.

"It's all so simple," Lucy said, turning to her. "I'm not all that surprised at Malcolm's obtuseness, but I had expected better from you."

"What are you talking about?" Rachel repeated, trying again to pull herself free of Holly's iron grasp. "You said you didn't want to destroy us, didn't want to make us like you, didn't want the Count to live on within us. So what in God's name are you talking about?"

Lucy turned back to Malcolm. "I'm talking about Malcolm's stupidity. Your basic problem, Malcolm, my dear, is that you aren't observant, you don't think, you don't remember things! You don't remember what a vampire's powers are, you don't remember how we can be killed and how we can
not
be killed. You don't even remember how to bring us from death to undeath, even though you did it once yourself."

"Don't be ridiculous," Malcolm said. "Of course I remember that. I did it to you . . ." His eyes went wide with the shock of realization.

Holly Larsen's rippling laugh floated through the basement. "Getting the picture, sugar?"

"We have the Master's dust," Lucy went on. "All we need now is a generous helping of his blood, and he will rise again, just as I rose again." She looked from Malcolm to Rachel, smiling wickedly. "And guess who has been keeping his blood safe all these years?"

Rachel closed her eyes. "Sweet Jesus," she muttered.

Quincy laughed softly. "There were three of us, but I inconveniently died. You and I were here in America, Rachel, while Malcolm was in Europe. She couldn't use his veins to nourish the Master's dust while we were still free to figure out what had happened. That's why she had to bring the remains here before restoring the Count."

"My own blood is useless for such a purpose, of course," Lucy said. "I can visit the curse upon a mortal, but only such a mortal can nurture and nourish the blood that can restore the undead. The blood in the Master's veins can do it also, of course, but his blood is more potent than mine."

"And so you needed us," Rachel said softly, shaking her head sadly.

"Oh, I could have done it in Rumania with just Malcolm, I suppose, but it would have been unwise. The Master values security and caution. He might have returned no better off than he had gone, with his existence known and his enemies aware of it. Besides, the blood had to awaken fully before its power could be raised to its greatest level." She smiled. "That's why you had all of your delightful dreams, dear Malcolm. The Master's blood was waking up after a century of slumber."

"Where are the remains?" Rachel asked, her voice shaking.

Lucy pointed to the pile of dirt that she had just swept up on the basement floor. "Behold the lord," she said with genuine reverence.

As Malcolm gazed at the dirt he was so astounded that
he almost laughed. "On the floor? You dumped his remains
on the floor
!"

"Of course," Lucy replied. "When you were searching for the dust, did it occur to you to look on the dirty floor of a musty basement?"

Malcolm shook his head slowly.

"Even so," Lucy said with satisfaction. "Really, Malcolm, you are so terribly dense."

"But . . . but it could have been swept up and thrown out, stuck to the soles of our shoes when we walked on it . . ."

"Yes," Lucy agreed, "and it could have been blown away by the wind a hundred years ago after the Master was
stabbed. It doesn't take much of a wind to move dust, after all." She smiled. "But it did not blow away, and it could not be swept up, and walking on it would not disturb it in the least, because it is, shall we say, a particular, special kind of dust."

Malcolm looked up from the pile of dust and stared into Lucy's flaming eyes. "This doesn't change anything. You were still lucky. Okay, maybe I was stupid, maybe I couldn't see my hand in front of my face, but you were still lucky. If I hadn't made the mistakes I made, you wouldn't—"

"Oh, Malcolm," Lucy sighed wearily. "You just don't understand, do you?" She turned
-
to Daniel Rowland. "Daniel. Give me Holly's copy of that silly book." Daniel took the dog-eared paperback from his pocket as he scurried over to Lucy and handed it to her. "Where is it, Holly?" Lucy asked.

"Two pages before the end," Holly Larsen replied.

Lucy thumbed through to the back of the book and then said, "Ah. Here it is. Listen carefully." She began to read
from the final scene of Bram Stoker's
Dracula.
"But, on the
instant, came the sweep and flash of Jonathan's great knife. I shrieked as I saw it shear through the throat; whilst at the
same moment Mr. Morris's bowie knife plunged into the
heart. It was like a miracle; but before our very eyes, almost in the drawing of a breath, the whole body crumbled into
dust and passed from our sight." She looked up. "Understand?"

Malcolm glared at her. "Understand what?" He waited for the reply, which did not come, and then he shouted. "Stop this goddamned cat-and-mouse game! We're here, we're in your power, and you've won, okay? So what the hell are you trying to say?"

Lucy shook her head and then held the opened book in front of Malcolm's eyes. "Read it for yourself, and then think about it, little Harker."

Malcolm struggled to ignore her condescension and repress his own fear as he read the passage over and over again, seeking some clue that would make sense of what the vampire had been saying. He read and he thought and he read and he thought, and he saw nothing, nothing . . .

. . . Wait a minute . . .

Malcolm's brow furrowed.

. . . Wait a minute . . .

"'. . . on the instant, came the sweep and flash of Jonathan's great knife . . ."

But no . . . no, that's not . . .

"'. . . Mr Morris's bowie knife plunged into the heart . . ."

Malcolm Harker slammed his head furiously against the wooden newel post. "My God!" he shouted. "My God, my God!"

"Malcolm, what is it?" Rachel screamed.

"You never noticed, did you?" Holly asked. "When I was alive, I never noticed. That book was published a hundred years ago, and no one ever noticed."

Rachel looked from Holly back to her brother. "Malcolm, what is she saying? Malcolm?
Malcolm
!"

Tears were running down Malcolm Harker's face as he turned to his sister. "Don't you see, Rachel? You can't kill a vampire with a knife!"

Rachel's mouth hung open for a moment. "But . . . no, wait, Malcolm, no. We've read the original manuscript, the original documents. We both know what happened when Quincey Morris and our great-grandfather killed the Count—"

"Oh, Christ, Rachel, that's just the point!" Malcolm cried. "They
didn't
kill
Dracula! You can't kill a vampire with a knife!"

"The knives were blessed, they must have been!" she countered. "Van Helsing must have poured holy water on them or—"

"St. Peter himself could have wept on the blades, and it would have made no difference," Lucy said lightly. "Malcolm has figured out part of the truth, my dear."

"No," Rachel said again, shaking her head. "They killed him. I know they killed him."

"Rachel, you know how these things work as well as I
do," Malcolm insisted. "Face it!
You can't kill a vampire with a knife!
"

"They saw him die, Malcolm!" Rachel shouted. "Jonathan ripped through his throat and Quincey stabbed him in the heart, and his body rotted away. He had been dead for four hundred years, and what would have been four centuries of decay struck him in an instant." She looked at Lucy, her tear-filled eyes narrow and hateful. "You're lying to us. You're trying to heap humiliation onto our sorrow, you damned filthy bitch!"

Malcolm clung to his sister's words with pathetic desperation. "That's right, damn it, that's right! They saw him disintegrate. They must have killed him, they
must
have killed him!"

Lucy smiled at Holly. "What's the page, dear?"

"Two fifty-three," Holly replied, returning her smile.

Lucy flipped the pages until she found the section she was looking for. "Mina Harker's Journal," she said softly. "How poignant!" Looking at Malcolm, she went on, "This is your brave and wise Professor Van Helsing explaining our powers to his little band of vampire hunters." She cleared her throat and read, "He can transform himself to wolf, as we gather from his ship arrival at Whitby, when he tear open the dog; he can be as bat, as Madam Mina saw him on the window. He can come on mist which he create, he can come on moonlight rays as elemental dust, he can become small, he can see in the dark . . ." She paused. "That's enough, I think. Do you understand now, Malcolm?"

Malcolm did not respond, for at last he understood everything. He understood exactly what had happened and exactly why it had happened. He realized that he had not only lost: he had
never had a chance
to win.

He can turn himself into dust.

The words reverberated in Malcolm's mind as if they were the denouement of a black comedy.

He can turn himself into dust.

That was the risk, that was the chance, that was the gamble which the Voivode of Wallachia had taken on that Carpathian road a hundred years ago. He was being pursued, his enemies had reached him just as the sun was setting, armed with their puny knives and foolish rifles. He could have killed them all then and there; but his identity was known, and his castle's location was known. He had no way of
knowing who else knew about him, who else might have been waiting until the next sunrise before stealing into his crypt and pounding a wooden stake into his heart.