Blood of the Impaler (48 page)

"I know. It'll stop hurting in a few minutes, believe me."

"Yeah."

Malcolm paused. "Hey, Jerry, you see the silver cache in the bag?"

"Yeah. What about it?"

"There are two consecrated communion wafers in there.
Don't eat 'em." He smiled over at Jerry, and Jerry slowly returned the smile. "In fact, give them to me. I think I'll feel safer if I keep them in my shirt pocket."

Jerry took the cache from the bag gingerly and passed it to Malcolm. "Here. Take them out yourself. I don't even want to touch them, not after what happened with the wine."

"They're weapons, Jer, not dangers. They're a little warm to the touch for people like you and me, but as long as you keep them away from your face, they can't cause any pain."

"Good, then you keep them. I'll stick to the garlic and the crosses." He shook his head. "Communion wine, crucifixes . . . You know, my great-grandfather was a rabbi, back in Poland. He must be turning over in his grave."

Malcolm laughed grimly. "Not the best expression to use under the circumstances, Jerry."

It was two forty-five, a good four and a half hours before sunset, when they pulled into the driveway of the Harker home in Forest Hills Gardens. Daniel Rowland was sitting on the steps of the side porch, his elbows resting on his knees, his face buried in his hands. He looked up when he heard the approaching car, then walked over to greet Malcolm and Jerry as they climbed out. "Hello, Malcolm," he said softly.

"Dan," Malcolm responded, shifting the black bag from his right hand to his left and then shaking hands with his brother-in-law. "You remember Jerry Herman."

Daniel nodded at Jerry. "Mr. Herman."

"Jerry," was the reply. "I think that since we're all in this together, Dan, we shouldn't be so formal."

"As you wish, Mr. Herman," Daniel replied coldly, and then ignored him, turning to enter the house.

Hey, fuck you too!
Jerry thought.

"Where's Rachel?" Malcolm asked as he followed Daniel up the steps to the door.

"In the basement. They're all in the basement."

"All of them?" Malcolm's voice was filled with sudden hope, and then equally sudden despair. "You mean that . . . you mean that Rachel . . ."

"She's in one of the coffins in the basement," Daniel said sadly, his few words answering all of Malcolm's unvoiced questions. He felt tears beginning to well up in his eyes at the thought of what must have happened to his sister, but he fought them back.
Not now. I'll mourn for her later. I'll grieve
when she's at peace, when Holly is at peace, when Gramps is at peace. And Lucy, too. I'll weep for her as well. Later. Not now. Later.

"Tell me the whole story, Dan," Malcolm said as he and Jerry followed Daniel down the stairs to the basement. "How long have they been here? For that matter, how did they get
in
here? Rachel and I had garlic and crosses all over the—"

"Not now, Malcolm," Daniel sighed. "Let's do what needs to be done first. We'll have lots of time for conversation afterwards."

Daniel flicked on the ceiling lamp when they reached the bottom of the stairs, and Malcolm and Jerry gasped at what they saw. The basement was filled with coffins, most of them old and fragile, rotting wood joined to rusted metal, but one of them apparently brand-new. Malcolm counted them quickly. "Seven! Daniel, seven? They made four more like themselves?"

"Rachel, and three others," Daniel said quietly. He turned to Malcolm and said, "I have some stakes ready, over in the corner. I called you because . . . because of Rachel. I just couldn't . . . I couldn't . . ." He began to weep.

This was the first time in the many years that Malcolm had known Daniel that his brother-in-law had displayed any emotion other than self-satisfaction, and he smiled at him warmly. "I understand, Dan. I'll do it. I'll be freeing her, sending her to God. She'd do the same for me."

"Let's get at it," Jerry said eagerly. "
Lucy
first, okay? And I want to do it." His face was determined, grim, eager.

Malcolm walked over to the corner and picked up the stakes. He handed one to Jerry and one to Daniel, saying, "I have some hammers in the bag, Dan. Get them out, will you?" Malcolm walked over to the new coffin as Jerry went to one of the old ones, and then, as with one motion, they lifted the respective lids.

Jerry frowned. "Hey, Malcolm! There's nothing in here but bones!"

Malcolm did not reply. He was looking into the coffin at his sister Rachel, bound, gagged, only semiconscious but unquestionably alive. He was about to turn to Daniel to demand an explanation when he heard the dull thud of the gun butt as it struck the back of Jerry's head, and the subsequent moan as his friend fell to the floor.

He turned to see Daniel Rowland level the revolver at him. "You son of a bitch!" Malcolm shouted, his fists clenching.

"Don't," Daniel said. "Don't try anything, Malcolm, please. I'd have to shoot you, and if you die now, you know what your blood will do to you at sunset."

Malcolm's body was shaking as his reason told him to remain motionless and his emotions told him to attack Daniel Rowland. "You son of a bitch!" he repeated.

Daniel shook his head. "I'm sorry, Malcolm, but I don't have any choice."

It was only when Daniel spoke these words that Malcolm realized why his brother-in-law was wearing a turtleneck sweater. "That sweater hiding the wounds on your throat?" he asked in a furious, trembling voice.

"Yes." Daniel nodded.

Malcolm stared at him, his anger unabated, feeling no pity for Daniel even though he was yet another victim of the Harkers' ancestral curse. "How long?"

"Lucy took me two months ago. She wants you alive, Malcolm, but she told me to kill you if I had to, and if I have to, I will." He took a pair of handcuffs from his pants pocket and nodded in the direction of the stairs. "Go sit on the bottom step and put your hands on either side of the newel post." Malcolm did not move to comply, and Daniel cocked the hammer of the pistol. "Now, Malcolm."

His eyes blazed with anger as he moved to the base of the stairway and sat down slowly, his eyes shifting back and forth from Daniel's face to the revolver to the handcuffs. He put his right hand between the final banister spoke and the thick newel post that served as the terminus of the banister, placing his left hand on the other side of the post.
I can't let him kill me. If I die now, I'll be undead in a few hours. Delay, think, calm down, plan. He gritted his teeth. Plan! Plan to do what? She's beaten me, she's won.

He's won. That bastard has won.

Daniel Rowland kept the barrel of the gun pointed right at Malcolm's forehead as he slapped the cuffs shut on his wrists. And when Malcolm heard the snap that bound him to the thick wooden post that he knew was sunk into cement, he had to fight to repress his panic.

After checking to make sure that Malcolm was securely locked onto the banister, Daniel proceeded to tie Jerry's hands behind his back and then bind his feet and knees.

When he was finished, he stood up and sighed. "Now we wait until sunset." He looked at Malcolm. "I'm sorry, I truly am. But I'm like Renfield was. I have to obey."

"Like Renfield," Malcolm muttered. "I assume then that you've read Stoker's book."

"Yes," he said softly. "I've read Stoker's book."

"Renfield rebelled," Malcolm said. "When Mina Harker was endangered, Renfield rebelled." He awaited the response, which was not forthcoming, then asked bitterly, "How did they find Rachel?"

"Oh, Lucy knew where all of you were. You couldn't hide from her for long."

He frowned. "But how . . . ?"

Daniel sighed. "It's the blood, Malcolm, the blood that ties all of you"—he paused—"all of us together. When she wants to, she can hear your thoughts over a great distance."

"Damn it!" Malcolm said. "I thought she'd have to actually physically have one of us with her to do that, like Van Helsing had Mina with him."

"She isn't Van Helsing," Daniel said softly. "Van Helsing was a human being." He turned from Malcolm, sat down in a chair against the wall, and closed his eyes wearily. Malcolm looked around the basement, seeking something, anything that might help extricate him from his situation. There was nothing.

A few desultory moans were all that came from Jerry Herman and Rachel Harker. Neither of them awakened as the hours passed in slow silence, as Malcolm wept softly and the sun sank down toward the horizon. He was trapped, defeated, hopeless. He was a dead man.

Worse than a dead man.

"M
y goodness, it's warm in here!" Lucy Westenra said conversationally from the top of the stairs. Malcolm snapped his head around, startled at her sudden appearance behind him. He had been watching the coffins with trepidation ever since sunset, waiting for the lids to open and the undead to emerge; but the lids had remained motionless, and the silence in the basement had remained undisturbed.

"How . . . I didn't see . . ." he stammered.

"You didn't see me get out of the coffin?" she finished for him amicably. "Of course not, little Harker. I wasn't
in
one of these coffins."

"But then, what . . ."

She ignored his unfinished question. "Why is it so warm?" She frowned, perplexed, and then smiled, the points of her fangs glistening in the lamplight. "Oh, of course! Consecrated host! You really are such a clever boy, Malcolm!" She swung her legs over the banister gracefully and seemed to float down to the basement floor below. "Not clever enough, of course, but clever, nonetheless."

"Hi, Mal, honey," Holly Larsen said from above him. He looked up to see her floating slowly along the ceiling of the basement, moving from the door at the top of the stairs to the center of the room before descending to the floor. Malcolm's attention was drawn by movement to his side, and he turned to see Quincy Harker crawling along the wall like a spider. His grandfather passed by him and then hopped down to stand beside Holly.

"Our dear Malcolm has some consecrated host with him," Lucy said calmly. "He thinks that it will protect him from us."

"And
it would," Holly nodded, smiling, "if he could get his hands on it." Her cadaverous mouth smiled with amusement. "In your shirt pocket, is it? Well, fine. Let's just leave it there, shall we?"

Malcolm looked from creature to creature, simultaneously terrified and infuriated. They were just as they had been in the cemetery a few months before, the women in the same diaphanous gowns, the old man in the same black suit. Their faces wore the same mocking, sardonic smiles, and their voices had the same cruel, sadistic tone. The dead flesh was chalky white, and the inhuman eyes glowed in the dimly lit basement. Malcolm did not speak to them, for he had nothing to say. To plead and beg would only be to invite ridicule, and to attempt to reason with them would be futile. All he could hope for now was a death that was permanent, and he had little cause to hope for even that.

Quincy walked over to the open coffin and lifted Rachel from it easily, almost as if she were weightless. He took the gag from her mouth and then slapped her face gently a few times. She rose slowly to consciousness. "Rise and shine," her grandfather whispered.

All of the successive emotions that Rachel experienced as she gathered her wits about her were mirrored in her eyes. Confusion as she awakened; pain and discomfort from her bonds; confusion again as she stared into her grandfather's malevolent face, confusion turning to pity and anger and panic; fear as she looked around; hope followed by despair when she saw her brother handcuffed to the banister, "Malcolm," she said hoarsely.

"I'm sorry, Rachel," he whispered. "They tricked me."

"Yes, and it was oh, so difficult to do." Lucy laughed. "Almost as difficult as enlisting the unwilling aid of this fat fool in getting you all here." Daniel stood nervously in the corner, his eyes downcast, terrified and ashamed.

Quincy Harker tore the ropes from Rachel's arms and ankles and then pushed her toward Holly Larsen. Holly caught her and held her fast by the wrists. Rachel tried to break free of the cold hands that held her, but Holly's supernatural strength was not even remotely challenged by the mortal's struggle. As Rachel collapsed to her knees in front of Holly, Quincy walked over to the stairway and ripped the handcuffs from Malcolm's wrists. The instant his hands were free, Malcolm made a quick gesture toward his pocket,
hoping to be able to grab one of the consecrated wafers; but Quincy grasped his grandson's hands before Malcolm even came close. "Not so fast, boy," Quincy said, smiling. "You heard what Holly said. Let's just leave them where they are for the time being." He looked at Lucy. "What about Herman?"

"We'll wait until after," she said. "I'm not hungry yet." Lucy looked around the basement and frowned with mock distaste. "My goodness, but it's filthy down here!" She took a broom from the closet and began to sweep the floor in a hideous parody of Victorian domesticity.

Malcolm felt rage rise up in him as he sought in vain to escape from the two dead hands that were like vises on his wrists. "God damn you!" he shouted at Lucy. "God damn you to hell!"