Covenant With the Vampire

COVENANT WITH THE VAMPIRE

A DELL BOOK

Published by Dell Publishing a division of Random House, Inc. 1540 Broadway
New York, New York 10036

If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book
is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher
and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped
book.”

Source for some of the information on the Dracul Family Tree is
Dracula:
Prince of Many Faces
by Radu R. Florescu and Raymond T. McNally (Little,
Brown, 1989).

Copyright © 1994 by Jeanne Kalogridis

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written
permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. For information
address: Delacorte Press, New York, New York.

The trademark Dell is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

ISBN 0-440-21543-9

Reprinted by arrangement with Delacorte Press

Printed in the United States of America

Published simultaneously in Canada

October 1995

10 9 8 7 6 5

For S.

I am enormously indebted to:

My editor and evil twin, Jeanne Cavelos, for her saintly patience, her constant
encouragement, and her unshakable faith that this overdue manuscript would someday
materialize on her desk;

My agent, Russell Galen, for his exemplary professionalism and his suggestion
that I try my hand at historical fantasy;

My cousin, Laeta Kalogridis, whose painstaking edit of the manuscript powerfully
shaped this book for the better;

My dear friend, Kathleen O’Malley, whose comments had a profound influence
on how the tale was told; Toby and Ilona Scott, who freely offered their expertise
on all things Roumanian;

Most of all, the two men whose constant love makes all effort worthwhile: my
father, Irwin, and my beloved husband, George.

The devil is an angel, too.

—
Miguel de Unamuno

The Diary of Arkady Tsepesh

[undated, on the inside cover in jagged scrawl]

God, in Whom I put no faith, help me! I do not believe in You -
did
not, but if I am to accept such infinite Evil as I have become, then I pray
infinite Good exists as well, and that it has mercy on what remains of my soul.

I
am the wolf.
I
am Dracul. The blood of innocents stains
my hands, and now I wait to kill
him…

The Diary of Arkady Tsepesh

5 April, 1845.

Father is dead.

Mary has been asleep for hours now, in the old trundle bed my brother Stefan
and I shared as children. Poor thing; she is so exhausted that the glow from
the taper does not disturb her. How incongruous to see her lying there beside
Stefan's small ghost, surrounded by the artifacts of my childhood inside these
crumbling, high-ceilinged stone walls, their corridors a whisper with the shades
of my ancestors. It is as if my present and past had suddenly collided.

Meanwhile, I sit at the old oaken desk where I learned my letters, occasionally
running my hand over the pitted surface scarred by successive generations of
fidgety Tsepesh young. Dawn nears. Through the north window, I can see against
the lightening grey sky the majestic battlements of the family castle where
Uncle still dwells. I ponder my proud heritage, and I weep - softly, so as not
to wake Mary, but tears bring no release of sorrow; writing alone eases the
grief. I shall begin a journal, to record these painful days and to aid me,
in future years, to better remember Father. I must keep his memory ever green
in my heart, so that one day I can paint for my yet-unborn child a verbal portrait
of his grandfather.

I had so hoped he would live long enough to see - No. No more tears. Write!
You will grieve Mary if she wakes to see you carrying on like this. She has
suffered enough on your behalf.

The past several days have seen us in ceaseless motion, borne across Europe
in boats, carriages, trains. I felt I was not so much retracing my journey across
a continent as traveling back in time, as though I had left my present behind
in England and now moved swiftly and irrevocably back into a dark ancestral
past. In the rocking wagon-lit from Vienna, as I lay beside my wife and stared
at the play of light and shadow against drawn blinds, I was riven by the sudden
fearful conviction that the happy life we led in London could never be reclaimed.
There was nothing to tie me to that present, nothing but the child and Mary.
Mary, my anchor, who slept soundly, untroubled and unshakable in her loyalty,
her contentment, her beliefs. She lay on her side, the only position now comfortable
in this seventh month of her confinement, her gold-fringed alabaster lids veiling
the blue ocean of her eyes. I gazed through the thin white linen of her nightgown
at her taut belly, at the unguessable future there, and touched a hand to it,
gently, so as not to waken her - moved to sudden tears of gratitude. She is so
sturdy, so calm; as placid as a motionless sea. I try to hide my wellings of
emotion for fear their intensity will overwhelm her. I always told myself I
had left that aspect of my self in Transylvania - that part given to dark moods
and despair, that part which had never known real happiness until I deserted
my native land. I wrote volumes of black, brooding poetry in my native language,
before going to England; once there, I gave up writing poems altogether. I have
never attempted any literature other than prose in my acquired tongue.

That was a different life, after all; ah, but my past has now become my future.

On the rumbling train bound from Vienna, I lay beside my wife and unborn child
and wept - out of joy that they were with me, out of fear that the future might
see that joy dimmed. Out of uncertainty at the news that awaited me at the manor
high in the Carpathians.

At home.

But in all honesty, I cannot say that news of Father's death was a shock. I
had a strong premonition of it on the way from Bistritsa (Bistritz, I mean to
say. I shall keep this journal entirely in English, lest I forget it too quickly).
A strange feeling of dread overcame me the instant I set foot inside the coach.
My mind was already uneasy - we had received Zsuzsanna's telegram over a week
before, with no way of knowing whether his condition had worsened or improved - and
it was not soothed by the reaction of the coachman when I told him our destination.
A hunchbacked elderly man, he peered into my face and exclaimed, as he crossed
himself:

"By Heaven! You are of the Dracul!"

The sound of that hated name made me flush with anger. "The name is Tsepesh,"
I corrected him coldly, though I knew it would do no good.

"Whatever you say, good sir; only remember me kindly to the prince!" And the
old man crossed himself again, this time with trembling hand. When I told him
in fact my great-uncle, the prince, had arranged for a driver to meet us, he
grew tearful and begged us to wait until morning.

I had forgotten about the superstition and prejudice rampant among my uneducated
native countrymen; indeed, I had forgotten what it was like to be feared and
secretly despised for being
boier,
a member of the aristocracy. I had
often faulted Father for the intense disdain he showed toward the peasants in
his letters; now I was ashamed to find that same attitude aroused in myself.

"Do not be ridiculous," I curtly told the driver, aware that Mary, who did
not speak the language, nonetheless had heard the fear in the old peasant's
tone and was watching us both with anxious curiosity. "No harm will come to
you."

"Or to my family. Only swear it, good sir… !"

"Or to your family. I swear it," I said shortly, and turned to help Mary into
the coach. While the old man backed towards the driver's seat, bowing and proclaiming,
"God bless you, sir! And the lady, too," I tried to allay my wife's curiosity
and concern by saying that local superstition forbade night travel into the
forest. It was at least the partial truth.

And so we headed into the Carpathians. It was late afternoon, and we were already
exhausted from a full day's travel, but the urgency of Zsuzsanna's telegram
and Mary's determination that we should meet the prearranged carriage propelled
us onward.

As we rumbled past a foreground of verdant forested slopes dotted with farmhouses
and the occasional rustic village, Mary remarked with sincere pleasure on the
countryside's charm - cheering me, for I feel no small amount of guilt at bringing
her to a country where she is a stranger. I confess I had forgotten the beauty
of my native land after years of living in a crowded, dirty city. The air is
clean and sweet, free from urban stench. It is early spring, and the grass has
already greened, and the fruit trees are just beginning to bloom. Some few hours
into our journey the sun began to set, casting a pale rosy glow on the looming
backdrop of spiraling, snow-covered Carpathian peaks, and even I drew in a breath
at their awesome splendor. I must admit that, mingled with the growing sense
of dread, I felt a fierce pride, and a longing for home I had forgotten I possessed.

Home. A week ago, that word would have denoted London…

As dusk encroached, a lugubrious gloom permeated the landscape and my thoughts.
I fell to ruminating on the fearful gleam in our driver's eye, on the hostility
and superstition implied by his actions and words.

The change in the countryside mirrored my state of mind. The farther into the
mountains we ventured, the more stunted and gnarled the roadside growth became,
until ascending a steep slope I spied nearby an orchard of deformed, dead plum
trees, rising black against the evanescent purple twilight. The trunks were
stooped by wind and weather like the ancient peasant women carrying on their
backs a too-heavy burden; the twisted limbs thrust up towards heaven in a mute
plea for pity. The land seemed to grow increasingly misshapen; as misshapen
as its people, I thought, who were more crippled by superstition than any infirmity
of body.

Can we be truly happy among them?

Shortly thereafter, night fell, and the orchards gave way to straight, tall
forests of pine. The passing blur of dark trees against darker mountains and
the rocking of the carriage lulled me into an uneasy sleep.

I fell at once into a dream:

Through a child's eyes, I gazed up at towering evergreens in the forest overshadowed
by Great-uncle's castle. Treetops impaled rising mists, and the cool, damp air
beneath smelled of recent rain and pine. A warm breeze lifted my hair, stirred
leaves and grass that gleamed, be-jeweled with sunlit drops of moisture.