"A vampire, they think."
In the dim light filtering across the gorge from the keep, Magda saw his eyebrows rise. "Oh? Is that what they've told you? Do you know someone in there?"
"I've been in there myself. And my father's in there right now." She pointed to the keep. "The lowermost window in the watchtower is his—the one that's lit." How she hoped he was all right.
"But why would anyone think there's a vampire about?"
"Eight men dead, all German soldiers, all with their throats torn open."
His mouth tightened into a grim line. "Still ... a vampire?"
"There was also a matter of two corpses supposedly walking about. A vampire seems to be the only thing that could explain all that's happened in there. And after what I saw—"
"You saw him?" Glenn turned and leaned toward her, his eyes boring into hers, intent on her answer.
Magda retreated a step. "Yes."
"What did he look like?"
"Why do you want to know?" He was frightening her now. His words pounded at her as he leaned closer.
"Tell me! Was he dark? Was he pale? Handsome? Ugly? What?"
"I—I'm not even sure I can remember exactly. All I know is that he looked insane and ... and unholy, if that makes any sense to you."
He straightened. "Yes. That says much. And I didn't mean to upset you." He paused briefly. "What about his eyes?"
Magda felt her throat tighten. "How did you know about his eyes?"
"I know nothing about his eyes," he said quickly, "but it's said they are the windows to the soul."
"If that's true," she said, her voice lowering of its own volition to a whisper, "his soul is a bottomless pit."
Neither of them spoke for a while, both watching the keep in silence. Magda wondered what Glenn was thinking. Finally, he spoke.
"One more thing: Do you know how it all began?"
"My father and I weren't here, but we were told that the first man died when he and a friend broke through a cellar wall."
She watched him grimace and close his eyes, as if in pain; and as she had seen hours earlier, his lips again formed the word "Fools" without speaking it aloud.
He opened his eyes and suddenly pointed to the keep. "What's happening in your father's room?"
Magda looked and saw nothing at first. Then terror clutched her. The light was fading. Without thinking, she started toward the causeway. But Glenn grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her back.
"Don't be a fool!" he whispered harshly in her ear. "The sentries will shoot you! And if by some chance they held their fire, they'd never let you in! There's nothing you can do!"
Magda barely heard him. Frantically, wordlessly, she struggled against him. She had to get away—she had to get to Papa! But Glenn was strong and refused to release her. His fingers dug into her arms, and the more she struggled, the tighter he held her.
Finally, his words sank in: She could not get to Papa. There was nothing she could do.
In helpless, agonized silence, she watched the light in Papa's room fade slowly, inexorably to black.
EIGHTEEN
The Keep
Thursday, 1 May
0217 hours
Theodor Cuza had waited patiently, eagerly, knowing without knowing how he knew that the thing he had seen last night would return to him. He had spoken to it in the old tongue. It would return. Tonight.
Nothing else was certain tonight. He might unlock secrets sought by scholars for ages, or he might never see the morning. He trembled, as much with anticipation as with fear of the unknown.
Everything was ready. He sat at his table, the old books piled in a neat stack to his left, a small box full of traditional vampire banes within easy reach to his right, the ever-present cup of water directly before him. The only illumination was the cone of light from the hooded bulb directly overhead, the only sound his own breathing.
And suddenly he knew he was not alone.
Before he saw anything, he felt it—a malign presence, beyond his field of vision, beyond his capacity to describe it. It was simply there. Then the darkness began. It was different this time. Last night it had pervaded the very air of the room, growing and spreading from everywhere. Tonight he watched it invade by a different route—slowly, insidiously seeping through the walls, blotting them from his view, closing in on him.
Cuza pressed his gloved palms against the tabletop to keep them from shaking. He could feel his heart thumping in his chest, so loud, so hard, he feared one of the chambers would rupture. The moment was here. This was it!
The walls were gone. Darkness surrounded him in an ebon dome that swallowed the glow from the overhead bulb—no light passed beyond the end of the table. It was cold, but not so cold as last night, and there was no wind.
"Where are you?" He spoke in Old Slavonic.
No reply. But in the darkness, beyond the point where light would not go, he sensed that something stood and waited, taking his measure.
"Show yourself—please!"
There was a lengthy pause, then a thickly accented voice spoke from the dark.
"I can speak a more modern form of our language." The words derived from a root version of the Daco-Romanian dialect spoken in this region at the time the keep was built.
The darkness on the far side of the little table began to recede. A shape took form out of the black. Cuza immediately recognized the face and the eyes from last night, and then the rest of the figure became visible. A giant of a man stood before him, at least six and a half feet tall, broad shouldered, standing proudly, defiantly, legs spread, hands on hips. A floor-length cloak, as black as his hair and eyes, was fastened about his neck with a clasp of jeweled gold. Beneath that Cuza could see a loose red blouse, possibly silk, loose black breeches that looked like jodhpurs, and high boots of rough brown leather.
It was all there—power, decadence, ruthlessness.
"How do you come to know the old tongue?" said the voice.
Cuza heard himself stammer. "I—I've studied it for years. Many years." He found his mind had gone numb, frozen. All the things he had wanted to say, the questions he had planned all afternoon to ask, all fled, all gone. Desperately, he verbalized the first thought that came into his head.
"I had almost expected you to be wearing evening clothes."
The thick eyebrows, growing so near to each other, touched as the visitor's brow furrowed. "I do not understand 'evening clothes.' "
Cuza gave himself a mental kick—amazing how a single novel, written half a century ago by an Englishman, could so alter one's perceptions of what was an essentially Romanian myth. He leaned forward in his wheelchair. "Who are you?"
"I am the Viscount Radu Molasar. This region of Wallachia was once mine."
He was saying that he was a feudal lord of his time. "A boyar?"
"Yes. One of the few who stayed with Vlad—the one they called Tepes, the Impaler—until his end outside Bucharest."
Even though he had expected such an answer, Cuza was still aghast. "That was in 1476! Almost five centuries ago! Are you that old?"
"I was there."
"But where have you been since the fifteenth century?"
"Here."
"But why?" Cuza's fear was vaporizing as he spoke, replaced by an intense excitement that sent his mind racing. He wanted to know everything—now!
"I was being pursued."
"By Turks?"
Molasar's eyes narrowed, leaving only the endless black of his pupils showing. "No. By ... others ... madmen who would pursue me across the world to destroy me. I knew I could not outrun them forever"—he smiled here, revealing long, tapered, slightly yellowed teeth, none of them particularly sharp, but all strong-looking—"so I decided to outwait them. I built this keep, arranged for its maintenance, and hid myself away."