The Nosferatu Scroll
THE NOSFERATU SCROLL
“What do you want with me?” Marietta said, her voice trembling with fear.
“You’ll find out soon enough,” the man snapped. “Now, do exactly what we tell you, or—” He triggered the Taser again, then pointed to the house. “Go up there,” he ordered.
Marietta stared around her, at the small island with its grass-covered slopes, clumps of bushes and occasional small trees, and at the house itself. Beyond it lay the waters of the Venetian lagoon. A surge of pure terror coursed through her body as she realized she was beyond help.
“I have a friend,” she said desperately. “I was on my way to visit him. When I don’t arrive, he’ll call the police.”
The man with the Taser smiled at her, but it was not a smile of amusement. “I’ve no doubt he will. The police will never find us, or you. And even if they did,” he added, “it wouldn’t make any difference, because you’re not the first.”
Marietta stared at him, and then she screamed.
“Feel better now? Get moving. We have people waiting for you.”
Marietta gasped for breath and stared round again, looking desperately for anything or anyone that might offer her some hope. But there was nothing.
A
LSO BY
J
AMES
B
ECKER
The First Apostle
The Moses Stone
The Messiah Secret
NOSFERATU
SCROLL
J
AMES
B
ECKER
A SIGNET BOOK
SIGNET
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Published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Previously published in a Transworld Publishers edition. For further information contact Transworld Publishers, a division of Random House, Ltd., 61–63 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA, England.
First Signet Printing, February 2012
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Copyright © James Becker, 2011
All rights reserved
ISBN: 9781101575475
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PUBLISHER’S NOTE
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To Sally. For always and for everything.
Acknowledgments
No book is ever the work of just the author: it’s invariably a team effort. In this case, the original spark came from the talented team at Transworld, and specifically from my dedicated and forceful editor there, Selina Walker. She liked the idea of Bronson and Angela mixing it with the undead, as a departure from their usual haunts of dusty caves, ancient manuscripts and clay tablets. My brilliant agent, Luigi Bonomi of LBA, liked the idea as well, and we all thought Venice was pretty much the ideal location for the story. Throughout the writing process they both offered invaluable insights and suggestions, all of which improved the book immeasurably.
Author’s Note: The Real Vampire Chronicles
ROLOGUE
10 May 1741
Krumlov Zamek, Český Krumlov, Bohemia
“Open it.”
The torchlight gave the priest’s face a haunting, almost satanic, quality, an impression reinforced by the chamber in which he was standing. It was a small underground room in the castle, located in the same part of the building as the cages that held the wolves. Four flickering torches were mounted in sconces, one on each wall, but they failed to drive away all the shadows.
A sturdy table stood in the center of the room, and on it lay a large, ornate, black wooden coffin, the closed lid divided into two parts and hinged on one side, the other edges secured with screws. The coffin had arrived from the Schwarzenberg Palace in Vienna two days earlier and had immediately been carried into St. George’s Chapel in the castle. There, the upper section of the coffin had been
opened to allow the mere handful of mourners who had appeared in the building to see the thin, white face of the body inside.
The princess had come home for the last time.
Masses for the immortal soul of Princess Eleonora Elisabeth Amalia Magdalena von Schwarzenberg had been held all over Bohemia, but few people made the journey to the vast castle—which wasn’t a single structure at all, but a complex of huge yellow and gray stone buildings roofed with red tiles—that stood on the north bank of the Vltava River.
It was here that her burial was about to take place, and there were preparations—important preparations—to be made.
Four servants had carried the coffin down from St. George’s Chapel. Now one of them moved forward in response to the priest’s instruction and removed the handmade iron screws that secured the upper part of the lid. His task done, he stepped back.
“No. Take all of them out,” the priest ordered.
The man looked surprised, but obediently removed the remaining fastenings that held down the lower section of the lid. As he worked, he glanced back at the priest, wondering why the man who’d so publicly shunned the princess while she was alive was now so concerned with her dead body.
The priest’s name was Bohdan Řezník, the surname meaning “butcher,” and in truth he looked as though he
would be more at home in a bloodstained apron than in the plain, dark brown robes he habitually wore.
When the body of the Princess Eleonora Amalia had been delivered to the castle, one of the escort party had walked down into Krumlov town, found Řezník at his home and handed him a single folded sheet of parchment. The document bore three separate seals, one of them the distinctive double-headed eagle mark of Karel VI, King of Bohemia, the current ruler, and a member of the Habsburg dynasty, which had governed the country since 1526.
The instructions contained on the parchment were unambiguous, and made perfect sense to Řezník. He’d noted with satisfaction that his orders had been prepared by Dr. Franz von Gerschstov, Eleonora Amalia’s preferred physician, and a man whose other, less well-known, qualities struck a chord with Řezník.
The servant removed the final screw, and stepped back from the coffin once more, awaiting any further instructions the priest might issue.
“Swing back the lid,” the priest said, and watched as two of the servants did so, to reveal the whole interior of the coffin.
“Now leave me with her. You may return in half an hour.”
Only when the door of the small room had closed behind the men did the priest step forward. He walked across the flagstone floor to the coffin and looked down
with distaste at the slight figure of Eleonora Amalia. Her hands were placed demurely on her breast, the right hand resting on the left, her wasted body clad in a long white dress, her small feet bare.
Řezník felt in the pocket of his habit and pulled out a folding knife with a black wooden handle. He’d spent several minutes the previous evening putting a fine edge on the dark steel blade.
He made the sign of the cross and muttered a prayer—not for the immortal soul of Eleonora, but for himself, asking for forgiveness and divine protection for the actions he now had to take. He lifted the princess’s hands and laid her arms at her sides, then snapped open the knife. Řezník inserted the blade under the neckline of the dress and in a single fluid movement ran the knife all the way down to Eleonora’s feet, slicing through the layers of material. Then he peeled aside the two cut halves of the dress and looked down at her naked body. The skin that had been so white in life was now mottled and discolored, with livid brown and purple marks where the initial stages of decay had taken hold.
But that wasn’t the most noticeable feature. What held Řezník’s attention was the crudely stitched cut that ran from between the princess’s small, wrinkled breasts down to her pubis.
Her nakedness offended him, but he had his instructions. His expression of distaste deepened as he again used his blade, this time to slice through each of the rough stitches that held the skin and flesh of her abdomen
closed. Then he put down the knife, inserted his fingers into the wide incision and with little difficulty pulled apart the two sections of dead tissue. He was looking for one thing, one single object in the chest cavity, and in seconds he knew it wasn’t there—which was as it should be. But Řezník had been ordered to make absolutely sure before the burial took place.