Dracula Lives (23 page)

“A chance, I suppose. His hatred has been simmering for years. The fact that he was driven to write that letter after all this time tells me it might have reached the boiling point. I’ve been keeping an eye out for him ever since.”

“It’s probably a long shot that he would show up,” Quinn said, “but stranger things have happened.”

“Even if Max is planning something, all we need is for him to drag his feet for a few more hours. Then whatever he has planned will be too late.”

Quinn held out his hand. “For you it is not too late, Johnny. Together we can make it a happy ending.”

“A happy ending.” Tenderness softened her expression as she gave his hand a gentle squeeze. “Something I have fantasized about my whole life.” She released his hand, and her steely determination was back. “Time to bring about
my
version of destiny.”

Destiny.

Markov had repeatedly mentioned his belief in it, but to Quinn it had sounded like a way of justifying the Dracula obsession that had led to his murderous cravings: if he was only a helpless pawn in the clutches of an inescapable fate, he couldn’t be held accountable. Now, hearing Johnny saying she believed in it too, he thought about it for a moment. If there was such a thing, maybe this was his: the first real test of his vow never to look away from evil again.

“Whatever you want to call it,” he said, “let’s get this done.”

Johnny was leading him to the secret passage in the fireplace when her cell phone rang. Her determined expression started to melt as she listened to what the caller was saying. “I still have to check the Garden. Then I was going to run a test on all the cameras, make sure we don’t have any technical problems once shooting starts.”

Quinn couldn’t hear Markov’s response, but as Johnny listened, her expression hardened. “Yes. I will.”

She ended the call with an angry stab of the button. “Full moons have been affecting him more and more, and there have been many Blood Moons over the years, but this one … on this night…. He’s obsessed with making sure there are no interruptions. He’s particularly paranoid about someone wandering in from the woods, so he’s ordered me to check the perimeter again. He’ll undoubtedly be monitoring my movements.” She shook her head. “You’ll have to go to the Garden alone.”

Quinn gave a curt nod. “We have to be prepared for the worst-case scenario, Johnny. Which could be us running for our lives. After I finish in the Garden, I still want to look around some more outside. The more I know about the possible escape routes, the better.”

“Agreed,” Johnny said. “The easiest thing would be to take you on my patrol now and show you, but if he sees us together, he’ll know we’re up to something—if he doesn’t already.” She shook her head in frustration. “He’s going to be keeping me on a short leash from here on out. Finding the time to do everything we need to do is going be tricky. We need to stay in close contact so we can set up a time and place to meet and launch our attack.”

“Where can we make our calls so he can’t see us?”

“There are a few blind spots. One is in the Garden.” She thought for a moment. “Maybe we won’t have to make any calls. My patrol of the perimeter shouldn’t take more than fifteen minutes. Unless he calls me for something else, I can meet you in the Garden before you go outside.”

“I’ll be looking for you.”

“Leave your cell phone on in case I need to reach you.”

“I will.”

Johnny’s iron resolve had fully returned. “We need to leave the bags in here for now. It’s the one place where we can be sure he won’t see them.”

Quinn hesitated.

“What?” Johnny said.

“If I go to my room for cargo pants, then have to come back here for the wristbands and spray.… It would make more sense to take the bag with me and use the stairs in my chamber to get to the Garden.”

Johnny shook her head. “We can’t let him see us carrying those bags around. I was taking a chance just getting them in here.”

“Okay. But once I’m back here, the quickest way to the Garden will be the staircase by the Chamber of Horrors. That’s a lot of time out of your room where he can see us.”

“I can disable the cameras, but I can’t leave them off for long.”

“How long?”

“Ten minutes, at most. Even then, if he’s watching and gets suspicious, he could override my command and turn them back on. There’s just no way to be absolutely certain you won’t be seen.”

“Disable the cameras. I’ll be quick. And hopefully lucky.”

Johnny’s already intense gaze narrowed. “Forget Markov’s cute little description of his life as a descent into the maelstrom. You will be descending into the bowels of Hell, Adam. Remember what I said about staying fully alert.”

“I will.” Quinn didn’t want to say what he was thinking, but he had to. “You do the same. Markov is no dummy. If he smells a conspiracy—”

Johnny held up a hand. “Don’t worry. If he tries anything, he’ll have another monster to deal with: the Monster from
my
Id. It’s been growing since that sword hit my leg. If it gets loose, God help the bastard.”

Having been born and raised in a world of movie horror, it did not escape Max Tilton that the neglected church graveyard outside Boston was the perfect setting for the scene he was in. Against the backdrop of gathering storm clouds in the darkening sky, the jagged brown limbs of the leafless trees looked like the decomposing skeletal fingers of giants, reaching out from beyond their graves to drag unwary souls from the land of the living into the land of the dead.

Max stood directly under one of those trees in the most isolated corner of the graveyard. In the years since he had escaped his father’s reign of terror, he’d made this pilgrimage every year. This would be his last.

The feeble sunlight filtering through the leafless branches on this chill October afternoon was still strong enough to cast stark spidery shadows on his mother’s tombstone:

He and his father had argued over the inscription. Max had not wanted “beloved wife” on there, because he’d never believed his father had loved her enough. As a compromise, Max had been allowed to write the verse.

Crouching, he placed a vase of flowers next to her tombstone. He gently patted the ground beneath which she was buried, then pressed his palm on the patch where he imagined her heart would be, keeping it there to convey his loving reassurance as he spoke softly.

“I shall be coming to join you soon, Mother. This painful sequel to
Dracula
that has been our lives will finally have a happy ending. I have one last familial duty to perform, one I have postponed far too long. The polluted blood that flows through the Tilton veins must be cut off at its source. Only then can we be free.”

When he reached his car to leave, he glanced at the back seat. What lay there brought a grim smile.

Vlad Dracula’s sword. After all those years of hearing his father’s tiresome lectures about how making a movie of their lives at the castle was a fulfillment of his destiny, Max was going to make a last-minute change to the script—a fantastic twist that would give
George Tilton
a destiny far different from whatever one he envisioned for himself. As Markov, he had often said that ending his movie on the night of the Blood Moon would be the perfect culmination of his life’s work.

Which made this the perfect night for Max to change the ending. Tonight it would be
his
destiny that would be fulfilled, not Markov’s.

Before getting in the car he looked up at the thunderclouds getting blacker in the ominous sky, and felt a moment of anxiety over all he had left to do. He had a couple scores to settle before he headed for the castle, and they would take time. By the time he reached that trail through the woods that led to the castle—which was treacherous in the best of circumstances—it would be dark, and he’d almost certainly be driving his beat-up old sub-compact, with its worn-out tires, through a thunderstorm. As dangerous as that might be, picturing that final scene brought another grim smile.

The gothic horror story that had been their lives would end on a dark and stormy night.

Markov sat in his studio staring blankly at the scriptwriting program on his computer screen, feeling as though his head was about to explode. He had been rearranging shots and scenes for hours and gotten nowhere. He got up and began to pace, grappling with the numerous problems they needed to overcome before he could write a shooting script for the final sequence.

His plan had been simply to record Quinn as though he were being chased by the various monsters, then edit them into the sequence later. But he was losing control—not just of his monsters, but of Johnny and Quinn. They weren’t fooling anyone. He saw the furtive glances. They had both been out of view for some time now, so he suspected they were together somewhere. They were forming a bond, and that could only lead to trouble. That realization brought his pacing to an abrupt halt.

Whatever script he came up with, they couldn’t be relied upon to stick to it. As if he didn’t have enough to worry about, he needed to keep a close eye on them. Even so, one way or another, he had to get the final sequence shot before everything got completely away from him. He had until midnight to wrap his movie. His life.

He looked at the clock. Almost four. He’d been up for twelve hours and accomplished nothing. He had often storyboarded entire scripts in a day. Now, on a single sequence—the most important one of his life—he was blocked.

After a few more minutes of trying to work out a sequence that would include everything he wanted in it, he finally stopped pacing and faced the inescapable truth:

It was too complicated. There wasn’t enough time to bring all the different elements together. It was almost with relief that he heard himself saying, “The ending cannot be scripted. It will have to be
cinéma vérité
in its purest form.”

Standing in front of the large monitor he used to manipulate his special effects, he noticed that its built-in camera projected him onto the screen. Even though he was standing perfectly still, there was movement.

The only thing moving was his face.

It bubbled and stretched as the moon-driven monsters inside him fought to get out. The split-second glimpses of his inner demons faded until one face stared at him.

Vlad Dracula.

Staring at the face on the screen, Markov finally accepted another truth, one he’d been denying for decades: Despite his efforts to maintain the proper balance of vampire and human blood in the elixir, over the years the vampire blood had taken over, becoming the dominant element in his very life force. Gradually—inevitably, Markov now realized—it had made Dracula the ruler of the monster brood growing inside him. Now he felt the vampire stirring.

Dracula’s mouth suddenly opened wide in what looked like a silent scream. A head erupted from the mouth and began pushing frantically against the screen, as though trying to escape the realm of cyberspace. The screen stretched and warped but did not yield to the maniacal pushing. Finally the head managed to poke through.

It was the head of George Tilton, darting eyes ablaze with terror. The head kept jerking around to look behind itself, as though being chased by some demon from Markov’s virtual world. Finally the eyes looked directly at Markov.

“Save me!”

Gazing into the pleading eyes of his former self, Markov felt a twinge of pity, but that quickly passed as he stared at the overall image: Vlad Dracula’s face frozen on the screen, with George Tilton’s head jutting out. A mutant hatchling trying to break free from its egg.

Suddenly Dracula’s eyes glowed a hotter red, and the mouth swallowed George Tilton in one gulp. The vampire’s cheeks rippled and his lips twitched as Tilton fought to get out, but in seconds the battle was over and the face became still.

A small sadistic smile came onto the lips, and the glowing red eyes bore into Markov.

Last night the power of Dracula growing inside him had willed him to bring the impalement stake from his bedchamber to the studio. Now the mesmeric power streaming from the eyes in the mirror was willing him to use it.

Staggering away from the monitor, Markov went to retrieve the stake. When he came back, he saw no traces of himself in the monitor, only glimpses of the monsters steadily overtaking him. Instead of alarm, the montage brought a feeling of peace.

He didn’t need a script. He didn’t need Johnny.

I am an auteur.

He could simply leave all the cameras on, and they would record the ultimate truth of his life.

He
was the monster rally.

Max had seen the Grim Reaper do many digital beheadings at the castle when his father and sister were working on their special effects, but this was no special effect.
He
was the Grim Reaper now.

He knocked on the door of the downstairs unit in a small duplex apartment just outside Boston.

A man’s voice came from behind the door. “Who’s there?”

“I have a package for Mr. Owens.”

“Can you just leave it at the door?”

“No, sorry. I need a signature.”

Max readied himself as he heard the chain being removed and a lock being unlatched. The door opened a few inches and Max bulled his way in, knocking the frail man backwards and quickly shutting and locking the door.

“Who—? What—?” the man stammered.

Max swung Dracula’s sword with all his might, slicing cleanly through the man’s neck. His severed head tumbled across the floor of the small apartment and wedged in the corner. Max walked toward it, smiling at how fitting it was for the head to come to rest there. On the walls behind the head were posters from plays the idiot had directed last year at a small theater outside of Boston.

With their last spark of life, the director’s eyes followed Max as he put the sword aside and sat on the floor beside the head. He grabbed it by the hair and turned it to face the poster of
Macbeth
.