Woermann sighed. "I'll ask the sergeant to see what he can do—perhaps some scrap lumber." He turned to go, then turned back to them. "Let me tell you two something. The major will snuff you both out with no more thought than he gave to that cigarette he just finished. He has his own reasons for wanting a quick solution to this problem and I have mine: I don't want any more of my men to die. Find a way to get us through a single night without a death and you will have proven your worth. Find a way to defeat this thing and I may be able to get you back to Bucharest and keep you safe there."
"And then again," Magda said, "you may not." She watched his face carefully. Was he really offering them hope?
Captain Woermann's expression was grim as he echoed her words. "And then again, I may not."
After ordering wood brought to the first-level rooms, Woermann stood and thought for a moment. At first he had considered the pair from Bucharest a pitiful couple—the girl bound to her father, the father bound to his wheelchair. But as he had watched them and heard them speak, he had sensed subtle strengths within the two of them. That was good. For they both would need cores of steel to survive this place. If armed men could not defend themselves here, what hope was there for a defenseless female and a cripple?
He suddenly realized he was being watched. He could not say how he knew, but the feeling was definitely there. It was a sensation he would find unsettling in the most pleasant surroundings; but here, with the knowledge of what had been happening during the past week, it was unnerving.
Woermann peered up the steps curving away to his right. No one there. He went to the arch that opened onto the courtyard. All the lights were on out there, the pairs of sentries intent on their patrols.
Still the feeling of being watched.
He turned toward the steps, trying to shrug it off, hoping that if he moved from this spot the feeling would pass. And it did. As he climbed toward his quarters, the sensation evaporated.
But the underlying fear remained with him, the fear he lived with every night in the keep—the certainty that before morning someone was going to die horribly.
Major Kaempffer stood within the dark doorway to the rear section of the keep. He watched Woermann pause at the tower entry arch, then turn and start up the steps. Kaempffer felt an impulsive urge to follow him—to hurry back across the courtyard, run up to the third level of the tower, rap on Woermann's door.
He did not want to be alone tonight. Behind him was the stairway up to his own quarters, the place where just last night two dead men had walked in and fallen on him. He dreaded the very thought of going back there.
Woermann was the only one who could possibly be of any use to him tonight. As an officer, Kaempffer could not seek out the company of the enlisted men, and he certainly could not go sit with the Jews.
Woermann was the answer. He was a fellow officer and it was only right that they keep each other company. Kaempffer stepped out of the doorway and started briskly for the tower. But after a few paces he came to a faltering halt. Woermann would never let him through the door, let alone sit and share a glass of schnapps with him. Woermann despised the SS, the Party, and everyone associated with either. Why? Kaempffer found the attitude baffling. Woermann was pure Aryan. He had nothing to fear from the SS, Why, then, did he hate it so?
Kaempffer turned and re-entered the rear structure of the keep. There could be no rapprochement with Woermann. The man was simply too pig-headed and narrow-minded to accept the realities of the New Order. He was doomed. And the farther Kaempffer stayed away, the better.
Still ... Kaempffer needed a friend tonight. And there was no one.
Hesitantly, fearfully, he began a slow climb to his quarters, wondering if a new horror awaited him.
The fire added more than heat to the room. It added light, a warm glow that the single light bulb under its conical shade could not hope to match. Magda had spread out one of the bedrolls next to the fireplace for her father, but he was not interested. Never in the past few years had she seen him so fired, so animated. Month after month the disease had sapped his strength, burdening him with heavier and heavier fatigue until his waking hours had grown few and his sleeping hours many.
But now he seemed a new man, feverishly poring over the texts before him. Magda knew it couldn't last. His diseased flesh would soon demand rest. He was running on stolen energy. He had no reserves.
Yet Magda hesitated to insist that he rest. Lately, he had lost interest in everything, spending his days seated by the front window, staring out at the streets and seeing nothing. Doctors, when she could get one in to see him, had told her it was melancholia, common in his condition. Nothing to be done for it. Just give him aspirin for the constant ache, and codeine—when available—for the awful pains in every joint.
He had been a living dead man. Now he was showing signs of life. Magda couldn't bring herself to damp them. As she watched, he paused over De Vermis Mysteriis, removed his glasses, and rubbed a cotton-gloved hand over his eyes. Now perhaps was the time to pry him away from those awful books and persuade him to rest.
"Why didn't you tell them about your theory?" she asked.
"Eh?" He looked up. "Which one?"
"You told them you don't really believe in vampires, but that's not quite true, is it? Unless you finally gave up on that pet theory of yours."
"No, I still believe there might have been one true vampire—just one—from whom all the Romanian lore has originated. There are solid historical clues, but no proof. And without hard proof I could never publish a paper. For the same reason, I chose not to say anything about it to the Germans."
"Why? They're not scholars."
"True. But right now they think of me as a learned old man who might be of use to them. If I told them my theory they might think I was just a crazy old Jew and useless. And I can think of no one with a shorter life expectancy than a useless Jew in the company of Nazis. Can you?"
Magda shook her head quickly. This was not how she wanted the conversation to go. "But what of the theory? Do you think the keep might have housed..."
"A vampire?" Papa made a tiny gesture with his immobile shoulders. "Who can even say what a vampire might really be? There's been so much folklore about them, who can tell where reality leaves off—assuming there was some reality involved—and myth begins? But there's so much vampire lore in Transylvania and Moldavia that something around here must have engendered it. At its core, every tall tale has a kernel of truth."
His eyes were alight in the expressionless mask of his face as he paused thoughtfully. "I'm sure I don't have to tell you that there is something uncanny going on here. These books are proof enough that this structure has been connected with deviltry. And that writing on the wall... whether the work of a human madman or a sign that we are dealing with one of the moroi, the undead, is yet to be seen."
"What do you think?" she asked, pressing for some sort of reassurance. Her flesh crawled at the thought of the undead actually existing. She had never given such tales the slightest bit of credence, and had often wondered if her father had been playing some sort of intellectual game in his talk of them. But now...
"I don't think anything right now. But I feel we may be on the verge of an answer. It's not rational yet ... not something I can explain. But the feeling is there. You feel it, too. I can tell."
Magda nodded silently. She felt it. Oh, yes, she felt it.
Papa was rubbing his eyes again. "I can't read anymore, Magda."