The Fifth House of the Heart (31 page)

“You mean sexual energy?” Fra Dinckel said. “No.”

“I don't suppose you would,” Fra Giu joked, and laughed at himself, nudging Fra Dinckel in his bony side. “But in truth. One of the side effects, so to say it, of vampire infection is the victim gives off
clouds of something like pheromones. It makes them seem very attractive to the opposite sex. Everyone here will be feeling it. I myself had quite an
erezione
.”

“What?” Paolo gasped. He looked like a man who had just found an electric eel in his bath.

“Yes, it's true,” Fra Giu said. “They do not much discuss this in our order, of course, because of the confusion it might cause for some of the monks. And you trained in operations, not special medicine. But it is true. In that room above, I was overwhelmed with desire for the sick girl. It was madness. I have not felt such urges since ten years ago in a similar case.”

Here he smiled at Emily, bowed his head, and placed one hand on his heart.

“With apologies to you, mademoiselle, for my frank speech, but I am speaking now of medical matters, not genuine lust. You understand.”

“Yes, of course,” Emily said. There was nothing
of course
about it, but she didn't know what else to say. She'd felt it herself.

Fra Giu continued. “That is why I opened the window, although it made the room cold. Our minds would become clouded. That is the nature of the disease. It makes the uninfected person crave to be near the vampire, and when at last the victim can stand it no longer, he or she attacks and feeds on the victims close at hand. Again, something to do with the vampires, an
effetto collaterale
—side effect. The vampire itself can give off a powerful chemical that makes human beings go mad with desire, a psychotic response similar to the experience of heroin introduced into the bloodstream. The sound of beautiful music, bells, such colors as the real world does not have in it, and at the heart of it all, the vampire. That is why these creatures are successful feeders upon any species and any individuals. The influence of the poison is nearly irresistible.”

“My uncle survived a vampire attack. He told me about it,” Emily said. “He heard bells and saw a golden light, and strange colors. You know what saved him? The vampire was a girl, and he doesn't—well, you know. He doesn't go for women in that way. So the spell kind of broke.”

“It was far more than that,” Fra Giu said. “Your uncle is a man of hidden strength—strength beyond reckoning, in a way. It is also his weakness. He refuses to be a victim. That's why he survived the attack. That's why he's here. He won't tolerate the vampire taking his watchman's life, or stealing his clock. Paolo told me the whole story,” Fra Giu added, interrupting himself. “He thinks your uncle is a very worthy man. But a man that delights in throwing temptation in people's ways.”

Here Fra Giu fixed a peculiar look on Paolo, and Paolo blushed and looked down at his half-eaten sandwich. Emily wondered what was going on there.

“But Uncle Sax,” Emily said, “is the opposite of that. Not the temptation part. He's all
about
temptation. I mean personality-wise he's a total victim. When I was a girl, he was always getting robbed by someone he'd—he'd met, you know, I mean he'd wake up with no money and that sort of thing. And he always complains his clients are ripping him off and everything. Really.”

Fra Giu looked very amused by this. “It's a role, I tell you. He plays the victim part. He never paid for the, ah, for the favors he received from the wayward youths. But he left his purse of money where it could be taken.”

“He's not like that,” Emily said, realizing he was exactly like that.

16

France

The
maison
was warm and comfortable looking after the long drive through cold darkness with the sky shaking its black fists over the landscape, threatening storms. As Rock turned the car into the farmyard, rain spattered down, tossed by the blustering wind. There was going to be a hell of a downpour soon. Emily was standing in the doorway of the
maison
, for some reason. It took Sax so long to unfold himself from the backseat of the SUV that Rock and Gheorghe had already scattered by the time Sax had his feet on the frozen dirt.

Emily had thrown on a jacket by then, and helped haul Sax up by the wrists. As she guided him toward the house, Sax reminded himself for the thousandth time to get gravel laid down in the courtyard. He never would, of course, because he never had. Gheorghe urinated extravagantly around the corner on the wall of the cottage, decorum not being amongst his talents, while Sax limped inside.

Emily gave Sax a squeeze and he felt for a moment as if he was home.

“I've been so worried about you,” she said.

“Don't stop now,” Sax said, “being worried. Dear niece, please go and round up the crew. I have a report to make.”

E
veryone was there. This gathering of souls was so interesting, so rare, Sax hated to break it up. Nine extraordinary people present, not including Nilu, who was of course upstairs quietly surviving in the best bed. Sax had been to gala balls with five thousand guests at which there were not ten people worth talking to; this was a special group.

The kitchen of the
maison
was humid, the air fragrant with old cooking, the liquid dark outside the windows throwing back reflections of himself and the others like underexposed snapshots of the occasion. It was raining with increasing force outside, and the panes rattled with the suck and push of the wind.

Sax looked around the room at his companions. Emily leaned her rump against the island in the middle of the cooking area; Paolo inclined his shoulder against the fridge a few feet behind Emily, his black-furred arms folded. The others—Min, Abingdon, the monks Giu and Dinckel, Rock, and Gheorghe—were arrayed in a manner reminiscent of Jan de Bray's 1675 painting
Governors of the Guild of St. Luke
. Direct, expectant stares, with here and there a questing glance between them. Sax finished his inspection of the troupe and thought it was a pity they hadn't gotten together for some more realistic purpose. He might have enjoyed himself.

“So we're back from our reccy of Castle Mordstein,” Sax began, and quite poorly. Obviously they were back, or he'd be speaking on the telephone. Get on with it. “And—well, it's impregnable.”

“That's what they said about the Queen Mother,” Abingdon remarked.

“What I mean to say,” Sax said, “is the situation stands as follows. Were we to pursue our intended course of action vis-à-vis this
vampire, with regard to liberating its property and so forth—and of course avenging its various wrongdoings, obviously—we would all be slaughtered. Here are the obstacles: First, the castle itself can only be assaulted from the air, and even then, it's unlikely we'd make it inside. Second, it's not one vampire. It's two vampires, half a dozen hundings, and God knows how many sort of Igor types running around going ‘yes, master' and strangling people in their sleep.”

“What are you saying?” Emily asked, because she wasn't required to be polite.

“There has been a change of plans,” Sax said. “The whole operation is off. Sorry, but no dice, we're done, we fuck off out of it at first light tomorrow.”

There was a silence as enduring as Gibraltar.

“I apologize,” Sax amended, “for the unfortunate choice of words. I mean to say ‘pack up tomorrow and depart forthwith.' ”

“What you mean
depart
?” Min said, her voice simmering low.

“
S'en aller.
Quit the premises. Abscond, skedaddle, bugger off, leave.” Sax felt a fine hysteria building up. He terribly disliked having things not go his way. Disappointing people was not his strength, despite long practice. He wished now to shrivel up and hide in the corner, but the business must be concluded. “I'll see that those of you who entered into this project with expectations of compensation are remunerated appropriately, of course.”

“Bloody right,” Abingdon said, not meaning it.

“My price goes up after what happen,” Gheorghe said, meaning it.

“You are making a joke, yes?” Paolo said.

“I'm not joking,” Sax replied.

“We quit?
Ci fermiamo al progetto?
”

“If your Leaping Monks of the Righteous Order of Tooting Flamingoes want to assault the castle, be my guest. I told you what we saw. It pains me to admit I am defeated. But we were nearly
killed. This is a consortium of monsters we're up against, not one isolated crank stuck in the seventeenth century. She has a
helicopter
, for Christ's sake.”

“We have helicopters,” Paolo said. He just wasn't getting it.

Sax looked around the room, growing desperate. Emily was merely confused, but Sax saw Min, Gheorghe, and the other two monks were not well pleased. Now the scene looked rather more like Tintoretto's agitated 1570 version of
The Last Supper.
Fra Giu stood up and placed his palms on the table, leaning across it toward Sax.

“You do not the decision make for stopping this job,” he said. “There are forces at your back. We need this creature to be destroyed. But we cannot do it with ourselves because of the political situation and the nature of the Church in modern Europe. We cannot, you understand me? But every day that passes, that monster is kill more and more of the people. That girl upstairs is a heathen, but her soul is worth more price than anything you can take from the world. How many more souls?”

“Don't get biblical on me,” Sax said. This wasn't going at all well.

“Uncle Sax, nobody got hurt, right?” Emily said. She had a proper direct way of thinking, bless her. Sound mind, sound body. The rest is décor.

“Other than hypothermia and a few bruises I'd say we all survived,” Sax said. “And we used up all the luck we'll ever have. Listen, people. I'll pay you, I'll write a letter to His Holiness the Pope on my personal stationery. The whole bit. But one thing I will not do is go back to that castle, and none of you are going either. Not on my watch, anyway. You god-fearing celibates can organize your own picnic.”

There was a brief silence while this news soaked in. Rock ended it. “I'll go pack up my gear,” he said, and turned to leave.

“Chickenshit,” Gheorghe said.

“Say what?” Rock turned about a quarter of the way around, like a
partial eclipse, his expression bemused, eyes fixed almost dreamily on some distance that only he could see. Sax recognized the look. He was making an effort not to blow his stack, as the kids used to say.

“I say you are scared like baby,” Gheorghe elaborated. “The big baby jungle bunny.”

Sax pressed his fingertips into his eyelids, trying by force of will to make time speed up so that, in the next three seconds, it would be a week later and he could open his eyes in his place in New York City and go back to hating the Wolfgang Hoffmann coffee table, which was really all he was good for anymore.

“Gheorghe,” Sax said, when time failed to accelerate, “please don't use racial epithets.”

“It's okay,” Rock said. “I'm here in a professional capacity. If the mission is canceled, so be it. We'd need a platoon.”

Sax was grateful for Rock's self-control. It must have angered him, however, because he stepped outside. A rill of cold, wet air made its way through the kitchen.

“I'll walk you home,” Abingdon said, and followed Rock outside.

Although Rock outwardly showed no emotion, when he closed the door behind them, it shook the entire house.

“Min?” Sax said, because Min was visibly trembling, her fists clenching and unclenching.

“You make vampire go free?” she said, composing her thought with care.

“It's not my favorite idea,” he said. “I mean for one thing, it knows who I am. You have the advantage of anonymity. But if you want to scale the battlements on your own, be my guest. I'll give you a map.”

Min threw her head around at the entire crowd, furious. Her mouth worked on foreign words that wouldn't come.

“Everybody can go fuck you!” she barked, and stomped outside after Rock, probably heading back up to her stronghold on the hilltop
to pack her meager belongings. It was raining needles. She'd be half dead of the cold before she got there.

“I think you are making a mistake,” Paolo said.

“I didn't
ask
you,” Sax observed.

“I know something about these things, even if you do not trust me.”

“Don't trust you?” Sax was nonplussed. “Of course I trust you. I just can't bear to see you killed.”

“You don't bear to see him killed,” Gheorghe said, “because he is so pretty.”

“Yes,” Sax said. “He's lovely.”

“But is okay me and Negro baby get the death. That is fine with you.”

“That,” Sax said, with exaggerated patience, “is why you are here.”

“Okay,” Gheorghe said. “
Vechiul meu prieten, un poponar la
ş
.
Does he suck on your pee-pee also?”

Paolo lurched upright from his slouch against the fridge and stepped past Emily, suddenly angry. Sax had never seen him angry.

“You do not speak that way in front of a woman,” Paolo said.

Gheorghe smiled. “One woman, the rest girls,” he said, his hands at his sides, fingers outstretched with palms forward, in the pose that meant
take a swing at me
. Sax saw what was happening. Gheorghe was frustrated because the mission had failed, so now he was going to insult everybody until he got a big reaction. Then there would be a fight, and he could divert his frustration down that more familiar channel, and at least
he
would be satisfied.

“One woman, three castrati, and an old faggot, I think you meant,” Sax said. “Get out now, Gheorghe. Nobody here is going to fight you. Just leave.” Sax went to the door and placed his hand on the doorknob. Gheorghe detached himself from the wall and sauntered with consummate insolence across the room. He winked at Emily.

“Don't you wink at me,” Emily said.

Paolo advanced halfway across the room, and Fra Giu stepped between them.

“Paolo, this is not seemly,” he said.

“This man is a disgrace,” Paolo said.

“You are lucky, boy,” Gheorghe said. “If you went to the castle, you make wet in your pants and cry.”

Paolo surprised Sax when he didn't respond to Gheorghe, but instead pointed an accusatory finger at Sax.

“You have no right,” he said, “to keep me from what needs to be done. I'm not a Greek statue for you to look at, Sax. Do not think I haven't noticed. I am a professional. This is my job. You insult me and you insult the order.”

“Oh, come off it, you ravishing Roman reprobate. I'm running this thing. You want to take your lads for a butcher's holiday in Germany, that's no longer my business. It's not like you've suffered, have you? I've fed you well. You've been making googly eyes at my niece ever since she arrived—”

“Uncle Sax!” Emily interjected.

“Oh, Emily, don't be Edwardian,” Sax snapped. “You're the one that showed up uninvited and threw Paolo off his game in the first place. You were never supposed to be here, that's all, and you've made things more difficult altogether. I cannot thank you for it.”

Emily was stunned by this. Her mouth hung open but no sound emerged.

“Right,” Sax said, turning to the monks Giuseppe and Dinckel. “Anyone else want a go before we retire for the evening?” He knew he was behaving abominably—he'd taken the insult-slinging role from Gheorghe and done him one better, going after anybody the Romanian had missed. But they didn't seem to
understand
. It wasn't just because of cowardice on his part that he'd canceled the operation. Rock had
said as much—it was clearly suicide to proceed. And now they were all looking at him as if he'd spoiled somebody's birthday party, rather than kept them all from dying horrible, unnatural deaths.

Sax was angry and upset and he wanted everyone right there with him. That was all there was to it. To signal the end of his remarks, he wheeled around, stuck his finger in Gheorghe's chest, then opened the door and pointed out into the yard. Gheorghe turned to leave but remained in the doorway, letting the wind and rain get in. It was getting wetter by the minute outside, and cold enough that it might turn to snow.

“Will you please go,” Sax said. Gheorghe continued staring into the weather, apparently having forgotten everyone.

“That clock of yours,” Gheorghe said at last. “Gold with a blue middle?”

“Forget the clock. What do you care about the clock?” Sax said.

Gheorghe pointed out the door.

“It is here.”

E
veryone crowded in the doorway to see for themselves. Sax switched on the floodlights he had installed along the eaves of the house for summer parties. The courtyard glittered with the impact of the smoking rain.

There was the clock, a pompous little folly in gold and porcelain with a pompadour of stiff yellow curls above a white face, standing on its four slender legs in the middle of the frozen dirt and the rain and the cold night wind. Sax's first reaction was to run outside and bring it in so it wouldn't get soaked—the clock represented the single most overpriced object he had ever purchased. And besides, it was his, and it was back. He wouldn't let it out of his sight again.

That phase of his response took all of a half second. It was fol
lowed by a tremendous sense of dread. If the clock was here, it had been delivered by his nemesis. Somehow Sax didn't think the vampire had sent it by Deutsche Post. She was out there, or her servants were.