Authors: Scott G. Mariani
And he knew right away he was on to something, because that was when Gheorghe suddenly clammed up tighter than if he’d been slapped. There was no more laughter, no more joking, and a deep silence fell over them. Any other time, Joel might have regretted killing the atmosphere of camaraderie they’d struck up – but his heart was racing and his hands trembling with excitement. He had no idea what road he was on, but he knew now that it was the right one.
It wasn’t long afterwards that the truck’s headlights picked out the mossy roof of a log house through the trees, then another, then the steeple of an old wooden church. Gheorghe seemed keen to continue alone, and the small village looked to Joel like a place where he could carry on his investigation. They parted amicably, almost apologetically, and Gheorghe took off up the road looking relieved.
Joel sighed and made his way into the heart of the tiny hamlet. The temperature had dropped a couple of degrees while he’d been with Gheorghe, and he dug his hands deep in his pockets as he walked. Light from the rambling rows of log houses spilled out onto the unpaved road; he could smell the woodsmoke drifting from their chimneys. As he walked on, he heard the sound of hooves from out of the gloom, and moments later a horse-drawn carriage passed by in the opposite direction, carrying a load of firewood. Just a few miles from the tourist trade of Sighişoara, and a few hours from the modern city bustle of Bucharest, he was in a whole other world. The place was a time capsule.
Light and music drew him towards what seemed to be the village’s only bar. A few drinkers turned to stare at him and eyed his rucksack and case as he walked in, ducking to avoid the low beams. He didn’t feel up to beer, and paid a few lei for a coffee. While he sipped it, sitting on a stool at the bar, he caught the eye of the barman and dared to mention the name Vâlcanul again. All he got were a lot of strange looks, but that didn’t deter him. Feeling braver now, he left the bar and stopped the first people he met in the street outside, a pair of tiny elderly women who looked like sisters. In the faltering mixture of sign language and pidgin English he was developing, he asked them the same question. ‘Can you tell me where I can find a place called Vâlcanul?’
The women shot glances at one another and scurried on past him. Joel wasn’t sure whether they’d understood his attempt at communication and was heading further down the street to find someone else to ask when he was halted by a shout from behind him. He turned to see an old man hobbling with a stick towards him. The two ladies watched from a distance.
The old man had a shaggy mane of pure white hair, skin like tanned leather and no teeth. He spoke even less English than Gheorghe, but the wary glint in his eye gave a clear message.
Why are you looking for Vâlcanul?
Then it really did exist. Joel was trying to formulate his next question when the old man grasped his arm with a bony hand of surprising power, waving his cane at one of the houses. He seemed to want him to come back there with him. Joel followed, wondering where this was leading.
A woman emerged from the finely crafted wooden door of the house, framed in the light from the hallway. She was in her fifties and bore a strong resemblance to the old man, but with black hair and a full set of strong white teeth – she was clearly his daughter. Her father spent a couple of moments jabbering at her in quick-fire Romanian, and she looked at Joel with concern.
‘You are American?’ she asked in English. Noticing his surprise, she added, ‘I am a teacher.’
‘I’m from Britain,’ Joel said. ‘I’m looking for—’
‘I know what you are looking for,’ the woman interrupted him. ‘Why do you wish to find this place?’
‘Can you tell me where it is?’
‘This is not a place you should go.’ She seemed unwilling to mention its name. ‘Nobody goes there. Nobody lives there any more.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Stay away from that place.’ She pointed at the case. ‘You are photographer, yes? Many beautiful pictures you can take here. No need to go to…to there.’
‘I’m not a photographer,’ Joel said. In the background, the old man was jabbing a gnarled finger up at the sky and muttering the same words over and over. ‘What’s he saying?’ Joel asked the woman.
‘The snows are coming early this year, and it will soon be night. My father is saying that it is not safe to travel up the mountain.’
Joel felt his eyes light up. ‘Then this Vâlcanul is further up the mountain?’ He turned to scan the dark horizon beyond the trees. ‘Which way?’
‘You must stay down here,’ the woman insisted. ‘Tomorrow the
autobuz
comes and will take you back to where you came from. You stay with us the night. We have a room and a bed.’ She smiled. ‘I make polenta with sheep’s cheese and sausage.’
‘It sounds delicious,’ he said, meaning it. ‘And I’m very grateful to you for your offer. But I really need to get to Vâlcanul.’
‘Then you will not come back,’ she said with a pained expression.
Joel thanked her as best he could, and she very reluctantly told him which road to follow out of the village and through the forest. Then, hardly able to keep from breaking into a run, he hefted his rucksack and started walking back down the street. There had to be someone around who could rent him a small truck or a cheap four-wheel drive.
A few minutes’ walk from the middle of the village, he came across a small garage. Light was shining from the main building, which was little more than a corrugated iron shack surrounded by a stained concrete forecourt. There were two solitary fuel pumps that looked like relics from the forties. As he walked nearer, he saw a scraggy Alsatian dog that might just as well have been a wolf lying on the ground between heaps of scrap car parts and old tyres. The animal appeared relaxed but its amber eyes were watching his every move. Joel was fifteen yards from the shack when its ears pricked up and it gave a low growl. It was only when he saw the chain that tethered the dog to a railing that he beat down the urge to turn round and walk quickly back the way he’d come.
He walked up to the shack and peered in through the gap in the doors. A rusty collection of cars and a couple of trucks were lined up against the back wall. Tools were littered all over the place. An engine stood partly dismantled on a workbench.
‘Hello? Anyone there?’ At the sound of Joel’s voice, the dog jumped to its feet and rushed at him, barking and snapping and baring its fangs, but was jerked short on the end of the chain. Joel repeated ‘Hello?’ There didn’t seem to be anyone around. Joel wondered where the mechanic was. Probably in the bar he’d just come from.
He slipped inside and looked at the vehicles. It was a desperate collection. The only one that still had all its wheels was a corroded old Matra-Simca. Joel lifted the bonnet and found himself looking at an empty hole where the engine used to be.
Outside, the dog was still going crazy on the end of its chain, but the noise didn’t seem to be attracting anyone. This wasn’t helping him. Time was passing too quickly.
That was when he spotted the tarpaulin-draped shape in the corner and walked over to investigate. Under the dusty cover he found a motorcycle. It was a Russian Dnepr mounted to a sidecar, an old Communist-era replica of a wartime Wehrmacht BMW. It was rugged and battered, with tyres that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a tractor. The machine was a far cry from the slick 200mph superbike he’d left behind him, but something like this would be a lot better suited to the kind of harsh terrain he expected to find where he was going. He gave the handlebar a waggle, heard the hollow slosh of fuel in the tank. The key was in the ignition. On the sidecar’s single seat was a scuffed open-face helmet, with a pair of antiquated leather gauntlets stuffed inside, and glass goggles on an elasticated strap.
Joel glanced furtively around him. The dog had finally stopped its noise. No footsteps on the forecourt outside. He twisted the key, clambered on board the machine and tried the kickstart. The old flat-twin 650cc engine rumbled into life. Everything seemed to work. It was crude, but it was perfect.
After five more frustrating minutes, still nobody had turned up. Opening up his wallet, Joel plucked out a thick wad of the banknotes he’d drawn out back in Britain. He counted out four hundred euros, left them in a curling pile on the bonnet of the old Simca, then chucked his rucksack and the case into the sidecar.
It had been an interminable, numbing wait for something to happen before the sound of footsteps echoed in the passage outside. Suddenly alert, Alex jumped to her feet as a key grated in the lock and her cell door creaked open.
‘Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?’ she said to the man who walked in the low arched doorway. He looked somewhat dishevelled in a rumpled suit and his face was pale, a nervous twitch making one eyebrow jump. In his arms was an oblong box, which he laid on the floor of the cell. Two guards stood behind him, swords at their sides, eyes fixed on Alex.
‘The Master requests the pleasure of your company for dinner in the great hall,’ the familiar-looking man said.
Alex stared at him. ‘I
do
know you. You’re Jeremy Lonsdale, the politician.’
The man flushed, said nothing, and motioned at the box. Alex shrugged and opened it.
Gabriel Stone was seated luxuriantly in an enormous chair in front of a roaring fire when Alex was ushered into the great hall. The place was something out of a medieval fantasy. Settings for two were laid out intimately close together on the gigantic oak dining table in the middle of the room.
‘So here I am in the hall of the mountain king,’ she said as she walked in. ‘And you must be the great Stone. I remember you from your little presentation.’
‘In the flesh.’ He rose from his chair and gave a stiff, formal bow. ‘The pleasure is all mine, Agent Bishop. And you must call me Gabriel.’
‘What’s the idea of sending this for me to wear?’ she asked, tossing him the long, white dress that had been in the box.
‘I thought you would look fetching in it,’ he said with a twinkle.
‘It’s ridiculous.’
‘A little dated, perhaps. It once belonged to Marie Antoinette. But very elegant, wouldn’t you say? Then again, I imagine when one is compelled to live cheek by jowl with the seething mass of humanity, one must get used to abiding by their strange fashions.’ Stone laid the dress on the back of his chair, walked up to the table and picked up a crystal decanter. ‘Drink?’
‘Some hospitality,’ she said. ‘At last.’
‘You must forgive my having kept you waiting so long.’
‘Only a whole night and most of the next day.’
‘My most humble apologies. I had some things to arrange for later tonight.’ He smiled. ‘All will become clear. I trust the accommodation was to your taste?’
‘Delightful.’
Stone gave a charming smile and poured out two goblets of fresh, sparkling blood from the decanter.
‘Please, have a seat.’ He handed her her drink. ‘Not what you would call ethically procured, I’m afraid. What’s that expression the humans use now? Fairtrade?’ He chuckled. ‘We don’t deal in that up here.’
Alex toyed with the stem of her goblet, then pushed it away from her.
‘Whatever have they done to you?’ he said with a shake of the head. Reaching in the pocket of his silk jacket, he took out the half-empty tube of Solazal tablets that she recognised as the one the guards had taken from her in Brussels. ‘Look at this,’ he sighed, dropping the tube disdainfully down on the table. ‘Vampires on drugs. Really.’
‘I didn’t say I liked taking the stuff. It’s how I was able to do my job, that’s all.’
‘Ah yes – your job. The muscle behind the evil minds of your ruling self-appointed elite. Enforcing the arbitrary rules of tyrants, worming the Federation’s insidious influence ever deeper into the daily lives of your fellow vampires. The incident with the actor is a prime example of just how petty and paranoid these despots are.’
Alex raised her eyebrows in surprise. ‘Baxter Burnett? Wow. Xavier Garrett really has been keeping you informed, hasn’t he?’
‘As if the youthful appearance of a Hollywood star could bring down the whole edifice of your Federation. Absurd.’ Stone gave a contemptuous wave. ‘Merely an exercise in control for its own sake, as anyone can see. And you. Are you not ashamed of what you’ve become? Passing yourself off as a human being? Mimicking the lifestyle of an inferior species? How far can a vampire fall, Agent Bishop?’
‘Some humans are better than others,’ she said.
‘You’re thinking of Solomon,’ he replied, watching her face very closely. ‘There is some special liaison between you, I see. More than a mere collaboration.’
She shrugged. ‘We used him, that’s all.’
‘You’re too used to dealing with rank and file vampires. I have the power to see deeper, and I can tell from the look in your eyes that your feelings are strong for this human.’ He paused.
‘Alex
Bishop. Short for Alexandra, I presume? You won’t mind if I call you Alexandra?’
She looked down at her hands. It had been a long time since anyone had called her that.
‘You’re thinking about the past,’ he said. ‘How long has it been?’
‘A little over a century,’ she said after a beat. ‘A hundred and thirteen years, if you have to know.’
‘A mere fledgling. Little more than an infant. Yet you were one of us long before the dark days of the Federation. You must surely remember the way it was before this grubby little hive of bandits introduced their era of tyranny.’ Stone leaned back in his chair, sipped his goblet. The flickering fire cast a glow over his handsome features, and there was a light in his eye as he talked. ‘To cheat the sun, embrace the night. Living dangerously, living free. To hunt, to feed like a real vampire, honouring our sacred heritage and a culture that had reached its pinnacle when human beings were still dragging their knuckles in the dust and grunting like apes. How far have they really come, I wonder?’ Stone smiled. ‘They call us Undead – but it’s the finest, most worthy existence there can be. And
this
—’ His eyes suddenly burned with rage as he snatched up the tube of Solazal, waved it in the air and then tossed it into the fire. ‘This is how your slavemasters repay countless millennia of hallowed tradition.’