Dracula Lives (26 page)

The moaning was louder. The smell had become almost smothering.

He stepped back to aim his light at the ornate lettering he had noticed atop the gate when Johnny had intercepted him before:

Quinn stuck his key in the lock.

The raspy moan of the hinges as the gate slowly opened was like the death rattle of the damned. The sound left icy trails on Quinn’s scalp and back as he tucked the pepper spray into his waistband. Flashlight in hand, he quickly crossed the craggy stone floor of the antechamber, stopping at the short set of stairs that led down to the sunken Garden. Light from stands placed throughout the vast space, combined with the flickering gaslight from torches along the walls, enabled him to put away the flashlight.

What lay beyond that threshold was the ultimate realization of Markov’s mastery of set design: a meticulously created burial chamber for the dead.

The moaning seized his attention and made him revise the thought:

Or the undead….

Several stone steps led down to the Garden. Peering out over the vast chamber from this higher vantage point, Quinn looked for Johnny. She had not yet arrived.

As he continued to scan the macabre scene in the pit below, he thought of Dante’s concept of the Inferno as having ever deeper and more agonizing levels.

Markov’s Garden of Evil was the nethermost level of his own private Hell.

Dozens of precisely arranged wooden coffins filled the space. Each rested on its own wooden bier to keep it off the dirt floor. All the lids had been left off and were propped against the coffins.

In the center of this underground necropolis, a single stone coffin rose higher than the rest. Its lid was in place, and what appeared to be a sculpture of some sort rested atop the lid. On all four sides, precise aisles running through the coffins ended at a neatly cleared perimeter around the stone coffin, as though the sarcophagus were the Capitol in this city of the dead.

The entire burial ground was situated under an elaborate dome-shaped vault, supported by four columns that created pointed arches on all sides. Obviously the work of skilled stonemasons, the structure conveyed the jarring air of a blasphemous cathedral, consecrating its unhallowed dead. Quinn wondered if the cobwebs scattered throughout were real or more set decoration.

The moans continued to ripple through the sea of coffins. Remembering Johnny’s warning that he would be entering the bowels of Hell, Quinn continually scanned his surroundings as he warily descended the last section of stairs and made his way to the nearest aisle. Through a mullioned window high up on the castle wall, red-tinged moonlight shone down.

The pungent odor finally overpowered his jumble of sensory impressions. It had to be coming from the small plants in stands interspersed here and there in the gaps between the coffins. Quinn instantly recognized the flowering shrubs from a Dracula tour he had once taken through the remote villages of Transylvania.

Wolfbane.

It could only be here for one reason: to keep the undead at bay. The lights on stands placed throughout the chamber were not for illumination. They were the growing lights for Markov’s botanical Garden of Evil. Their soft artificial glow combined with the flickering gaslight from the torches along the walls to create an eerie, writhing pulsation. Quinn became momentarily spellbound by the throbbing illumination, struck by the notion that it was the fluttering heartbeat of the light, locked in an eternally losing battle against the darkness.

Finally he began to move slowly between the rows of coffins on either side of the aisle, hoping the wolfbane would keep the restless dead from rising as he struggled to believe what he was seeing.

None of the bodies had completely succumbed to decomposition. Some were badly gone, with parts of the skeleton showing. On others the skin had remained intact, but had the desiccated, shriveled appearance of mummies. Some had ruddy cheeks and looked fresh.…

The range of decay was probably the result of the bodies having been harvested over a long period of time, but another factor might be that the elixir worked better in some than it did in others.

Although all the eyes were closed, moaning escaped from some of the mouths. Standing in the middle of four coffins on either side of the aisle, he noticed that the moaning wasn’t coming from all of the mouths. Sometimes one would fall silent, then another that had been still would emit the mournful sound. Throughout the massive chamber, moans erupted then died out, as though some invisible torturer of souls were floating through space, insinuating itself into one semi-corpse, then another, making sure they never rested in peace. It was like walking through a waiting room for the souls of the damned, trapped at the moment of their death throes, moaning to be released—either to complete their journey into the abode of the dead that waited below, or back into the world above to seek vengeance on the living.

As Quinn made his way through the coffins, the way the bodies were dressed added to his confusion. Their clothing was not the typical somber raiment of the dear departed. Some wore the attire of hunters or hikers; others wore nice casual clothing. He came to a dozen bodies grouped together that were dressed like hippies. T-shirts and jeans predominated. Some shirts were tie-dyed. On the front of one was the badly faded slogan: Make Love Not War. On another, a peace symbol.

The hippie commune that had disappeared…. Forty years ago….

As he continually scanned the vault for Johnny, he kept a wary eye on the corpses, half-expecting one of the undead to latch onto his arm and pull this new source of blood into its coffin. Just as he had convinced himself he was being paranoid, one opened its eyes and licked its lips. A jolt of fear shot through Quinn as he realized the full horror of Markov’s secret chamber.

No special effects could be this good. These things were
real
.

Pale hands began reaching out to grab him as he hurried past the coffins. A few managed to snatch at his shirtsleeve, but they were too weak to hold on. Thankful for the wolfbane, he finally he reached the end of the aisle.

The elevated stone coffin lay several steps ahead, further offset from the others by a perimeter of smoothly-packed earth that had been left completely clear—even of wolfbane—for easy passage. Curtailing his speculation about what it all meant, he urged himself forward to get an answer to his most pressing question:

In the twisted movie that had become George Tilton’s life, who was the star attraction entombed in that stone coffin?

Quinn thought he knew the answer but hoped he was wrong.

Much wider than a normal coffin, the tomb rested on a trapezoidal stone bier several feet high. The nameplate on the bier confirmed his worst imaginings:

Markov’s beloved second wife. The one whose “vampiric urges” had become so strong he’d had to “put her away.”

No death date….

Quinn went up a ramp at the end of the bier and stood on a wide ledge that ran on all four sides of the tomb. He became momentarily transfixed by the sculpture atop the lid of the coffin.

A Weeping Angel.

He’d seen many versions in his graveyard investigations, usually draped across or sitting beside an above-ground sarcophagus, a poignant expression of sorrow on its face.

This angel, however, did not convey the comforting feeling of a guardian from Heaven eternally protecting or grieving for a loved one.

This angel conveyed a sense of dread. The way she had thrown herself face down across the wide coffin lid, arms outstretched to their fullest extent so she could clamp her hands over the edge, looked like it had been an act of desperate urgency—as though she had needed to hurry before an evil spirit could get in.

Or was she trying to keep an evil spirit from getting out?

The expression on the angel’s face conveyed another, much more disturbing feeling. It was an image like none Quinn had ever seen in a graveyard. Despite the beautifully sculpted wings on the prostrate figure’s back, it was not the face of an angel. At least not the face of any good angel.

The eyes were open wide and showed only the stone equivalent of the whites, as though the eyes had rolled back in her head and a demon were taking over. The lips were parted far enough to reveal the teeth.

The incisors were elongated into fangs. Black stains trickled down from each corner of the mouth.

More evidence of Markov’s mad set design? Or—like the polluted blood that flowed through his veins—had the castle’s poisonous atmosphere seeped into the sculpture, replacing its original benevolent purpose with the soul-stealing thirst for blood?

The heavy stone lid of the coffin had shifted a few inches until the stone fingers the angel had clamped over the edge had broken off.

The tomb had been opened.

From the inside or outside?

Behind him the familiar voice slashed through the preternatural silence.

“There you are.”

“Jesus Christ you scared me,” Quinn said as Johnny came up the ramp to stand beside him.

“Sorry,” she said, “but pretty much everything is scary down here.”

“Tell me about it. Are the cameras disabled?”

“Yes. Unless he overrides my command.”

Quinn gave a sharp impatient shake of his head. “We can’t keep playing that game, Johnny. Obviously it’s better if we can take him by surprise, but if not, so be it. We still need to be as careful as we can, but whatever happens, happens.”

“You’re right. And you know what? Fuck him. If he sees us, he sees us. If the two of us can’t kick his ass, then we deserve to die.”

Despite the grimness of the situation, Quinn couldn’t suppress a tight smile at the sudden outburst of profanity he wouldn’t have thought she had in her. “I’m with you, Johnny. Except for the dying part.”

“I know. I haven’t lost my mind. Yes, we still need to be careful, but—whatever it takes—his reign of terror ends tonight.” She quickly scanned the space around the bier, and Quinn wondered if she thought one of the undead might have risen from its coffin. There were still the occasional moans, but nothing moved. “Wait here a second,” she said.

She went down the ramp and disappeared under the bier. When she returned a moment later, her accelerated breathing seemed to stem from the excitement of getting ready for battle, rather than exertion. “Now the whole Garden is a blind spot.”

“What did you do?”

“I bought us some time. I cut the cables to the cameras. I knew this day would come, so I hid some wire cutters down here.”

“Good thinking,” Quinn said.

“Now if Markov notices the cameras down here are off, he’ll have to come down and fix it.”

Quinn nodded, but didn’t relax. She’d bought them minutes, at most. “Have you finished everything you need to do?”

“No. I still need to get to the barn to gather up the rest of the things we need for our attack.”

“I thought you already did that with those two bags full of stuff you showed me.”

She shook her head. “The things in the bags were only what I could carry. I left a lot of the bracelets and bear spray behind. Also the spear gun. Even with all that, some of the things that will come after us are not going to just keel over and lie there. Especially the monsters that live inside him. There might be situations where we only temporarily weaken whatever we’re up against. Which is why I also want to get some things from the barn we can use to restrain them with.”

“That all sounds good, Johnny, but we’re running out of time, and it still sounds like too much to carry. And even if you could, Markov might see you between the barn and here.”

She shook her head again. “This is where Markov’s paranoia helps us. He wanted to be able to shuttle things around without being seen, so there’s an underground passage connecting the barn to the passage that leads from the lagoon to the Garden. And there aren’t any cameras in either one. I can load up one of the ATVs and use those passages to get everything to the castle, then disable the cameras in the Garden just before I get there. I only need to leave them off for a couple minutes so I can go up the passage from the Garden to my fireplace. From there I can get everything ready in the privacy of my chamber, so we’re ready to go when it’s time to unleash the hounds of hell.”

She looked at her watch. “It’s almost five-thirty. Markov wants you to meet him in the Chamber of Horrors at six to go over the final sequence.”

Quinn nodded. “I want to take a quick look around outside. He told me to familiarize myself with ‘the set,’ so if he sees me, I’ll just be doing what he told me I should do. That still leaves us time to meet in your chambers and get everything ready. Can you be there by quarter to six?”

“I’ll be there.”

“We need to get moving,” Quinn said, “but I can’t leave here without answers to a few more questions. You can give me the short versions.”

Johnny gave a curt nod.

Quinn pointed at the coffins he’d just walked through. “There’s a section over there where people are dressed like hippies. I read about a commune that disappeared up here in the ’70s. I’m guessing your father had begun to hunt. Am I right?”

“Yes. He justified it by saying they were on his land. First he would fetter them in the dungeon, giving them transfusions of the altered blood. When their blood had fully mutated into the elixir, he moved them into the Garden and kept them in this state of half-life so they would keep producing it. Over the years he kept adding people who had the misfortune of coming onto our land to create this netherworld of half-vampires.”

“A heavy price to pay for trespassing,” Quinn said.

“To him they aren’t even human. They are just producers of the elixir that keeps him from aging. Markov sugarcoats the method by which he injects it into his victims by calling it ‘vampiric’.”

She impatiently waved the euphemism aside and leaned forward. “He bites them on the fucking neck, okay? Which turns them into hosts for replicating the Dracula Virus. They’ve become inhuman …
things
, that live only to drink blood. If any of them somehow escaped, they could spread a vampire plague that would destroy the human race.”