Covenant With the Vampire (14 page)

But that God seems very far from this place. Though I have privately never
believed in the Devil, no stranger can fail to sense that some malignant Power
holds sway here. Indeed, God seems no longer to hear my prayers. I woke to the
sorrowful knowledge that what I had seen had been no dream.

Far from it; the evidence for what I have witnessed grows. I pray that what
I have learned today is false, but my heart and mind are divided. My mind knows
that it is insanity, and utterly false; my heart, that it is true. But I cannot
trouble Arkady in his time of grief with such terrible, fantastic things until
I myself am certain of them.

Yesterday, when Zsuzsanna failed again to come down for breakfast, I paid another
visit to her bedchamber. Before I could knock, Dunya opened the door and was
hurrying out with a trayful of dishes; and this time, she did not duck her head
as is her usual custom. This time she met my gaze, and her own was so plainly
terrified and desperate that I remarked in German, “Dunya! Is something the
matter?”

Beneath knitted reddish-black brows, her eyes betrayed such anguish that, when
she gestured for silence and motioned with her head for me to step back into
the corridor, I obeyed unquestioningly. She balanced the tray on one hand and
with the other closed the door behind her, softly, then moved down the hall
several paces before stopping and turning to be sure I followed.

At last she stopped and faced me, and leaning forward over the tray, whispered
hoarsely, “He has done it! He has broken the
Schwur!”

“I don’t understand,” said I; I did not recognise the word. “Who has done this?”

“Vlad,” she replied, looking fearfully about. Had she not been holding the
tray, she no doubt would have crossed herself. “The
domnisoara,
the
young miss, is very bad. Very bad.”

“Zsuzsanna?” I glanced back at the bedroom door. “Is she ill?”

Dunya nodded vigorously. “Very bad.”

At that point I was still undecided as to the explanation for what I had seen
the night before; I was toying with the notion that my own mind had created
a visual metaphor. After all, Vlad's seduction of his own niece and his flirtatious
manner with me clearly marked him as a predatory beast. And so I blushed to
think that Dunya knew about Vlad's nightly visits, and was alarmed by Zsuzsanna's
resulting nervous condition - which was apparently worse this morning. Soon the
news would be all over the manor, and then the village.

“I must talk to her at once,” I said, and made for the door. As I did, Dunya
hissed behind me: “Frau Tsepesh!
Doamna!
You must believe! He has bitten
her. Your husband I know will not, but someone here must believe, and help her!”

I froze instantly, then turned back slowly to face her; she set the tray down
with a clatter of dishes, crossed herself, then hurried toward me, her manner
so beseeching that at first I thought she would throw herself at my feet.

“What do you mean?” I demanded, softly lest Zsuzsanna hear. “What do you mean,
he has bitten her?”

She pointed at once to her neck, just above the collarbone. “Here,” she said.
“He has bitten her here.”

It was as if I had spent my entire life in a darkened room, and for the first
time, someone had entered and lit the lamp. I stiffened as I thought of Mister
Jeffries’ laughing words:
A vampire, madam… and the souls of innocents are
the price…

“Strigoi,”
I whispered, without realising it until the word passed
my lips. Dunya nodded, desperately grateful to have at last been understood.

“
Strigoi
, yes. Yes! We must help her!”

I am not sure what I believed at that moment. I only know that, as I turned
the doorknob, my heart pounded with dread at what I would find.

Such an ominous pall hung over the room that a sense of foreboding came over
me as I crossed the threshold. The air seemed heavy, chill, as stifling as the
air had been inside the family tomb during Petru's funeral. I fancied I smelled
a faint odour of decay. Perhaps the gloom was created by imagination and a sense
of revulsion at the fact that I knew Vlad had been here only hours before.

Zsuzsanna lay with her dark hair spread on the pillow. Brutus sat on the floor
with his great square head resting on the edge of the bed, near the pillow,
gazing up into his mistress's face with a worried, attentive expression. As
I entered, he turned his furrowed, mournful countenance towards me and whined
softly, as if pleading for help.

At the sight of Zsuzsanna, I raised my hands to my lips and repressed a gasp
of horror.

She resembled a living corpse - as pale as her pillows or nightgown. Her dark
eyes were shadowed deep purple above and beneath; her skin, no longer supple
but a lifeless grey-white, had drawn taut, accentuating the prominent cheekbones,
the sharp, narrow nose, the huge dark eyes beneath slashes of jet black brows.
The high, sculpted cheekbones and slight upward tilt of her eyes gave her an
oddly feline appearance, and the extreme pallour a strange, consumptive beauty.

Her face had the pinched, waxen look of the dead. Only the eyes seemed alive,
shining, liquid, full of a peculiar excitement. She did not so much sit as lie
against three pillows, breathing in quick little gasps as she struggled to write
in a diary propped on a lap tray. The effort seemed almost too great for her.

My appearance startled her. With a swiftness that clearly exhausted her she
turned the little book over (though not before I chanced to see it had been
written in English, presumably to render it unintelligible to prying servants).
She smiled up at me with a flash of teeth; her grey gums had receded, making
the teeth appear abnormally long.

I returned the smile, trying to keep the horror from it, for gazing on her
I could think of nothing but a grinning skull. I was appalled to see that she
had grown so ill so quickly; she had seemed slightly worn and tired the day
before, but nothing like this - so close to death's door. “Zsuzsanna!” I exclaimed.
“My poor dear, what has happened?”

She did not rise; she could not, but struggled to draw sufficient breath to
whisper, “I don’t know. I feel so weak, and my back aches so dreadfully.” She
gestured weakly at it with a hand, and it seemed to me - it is impossible, of
course - that her shoulders were almost even, whereas before one had been a few
inches higher than the other. “But it's all right, Mary. I don’t mind…” She
smiled again, her eyes aglitter with beatific madness.

“Don’t talk,” I ordered. “You’re too weak.” I turned to Dunya, who had followed
me in, and was watching with an air of horrified conviction, her thin hands
clasped together at her waist, as if she was secretly praying. “Dunya,” I said,
“send one of the servants to fetch a doctor.”

“I do not need a doctor,” Zsuzsanna whispered, but we gave no attention to
such a ridiculous statement.

“The nearest doctor is in Bistritsa,” Dunya replied. “If he will come at once,
he will arrive here tonight, but he is not so good. The best is in Cluj, but
that is too far away to be of help.” She paused, lowered her voice, and said
with utter conviction, “I know what to do to help her.”

I frowned, concerned that she might say something which would upset Zsuzsanna.
I did not want to speak of Vlad or superstition or the impossible thing I had
seen here in front of Zsuzsanna, who was already given to fancy. “Tell one of
the men to fetch the doctor from Bistritz, then.”

She nodded, pausing to cast a final, mute glance at Zsuzsanna, and in her intelligent
young eyes I saw rage, fear, and loathing, the look of a woman who had been
violated and would never forgive.

She left, and I sat on the edge of the bed, careful not to disturb the writing
tray with the pen and bottle of ink. Poor Brutus nudged me, and I stroked his
great, warm solid head, but the puckered gathers of skin on his troubled brow
never relaxed. Zsuzsanna still did not sit up, but moved her hand swiftly to
slide the overturned diary farther away, over the blankets, as though she feared
I might snatch it from her and read.

I should have liked to. I was desperately curious to know what it said.

I gently rested a hand on her arm, and laid the other on her forehead. It was
not at all warm, which surprised me, as I expected her glittering eyes were
due to fever. Rather, it was quite cool, and I involuntarily thought of Vlad“s
icy grip at the
pomana.
She shrank from my touch a little, still weakly
smiling, but clearly eager to be rid of me.

“I don’t need a doctor,” she whispered again. “I only need to rest, and be
alone.”

“Nonsense,” I said firmly. “Zsuzsanna, you are ill. You need care.” I thought
of the tray Dunya had been carrying, and realised in retrospect that the food
thereon had been untouched. “Have you eaten anything?”

She shook her head, letting it loll weakly to one side. “I can’t. It just seems
such effort.”

In reply, I shot a questioning glance at the writing implements. “I’ll fetch
you something from the kitchen myself. Some broth, perhaps, something that will
go down easily.” I began to rise.

As I did, Zsuzsanna absently raised a hand to the throat of her nightgown and
tugged at the ribbon, loosening it a bit and worrying with her fingertips at
the skin there. The fine white cotton fabric gaped, allowing me a glimpse of
a small, red mark on her neck, just above the collarbone.

“My dear, you have scratched yourself,” I said, and without thinking gently
pulled away the fabric to examine the wound. My second impression, upon seeing
the injury more clearly, was that she had accidentally pierced the skin with
a brooch. There were two marks, not one, both of them small, dark red, and perfectly
round, with tiny white centres at the exact spots the skin had been punctured.
Just beneath one of the wounds, a drop of dried black blood had crusted.

My third impression consisted of a visual and an auditory memory: Vlad, standing
by Zsuzsanna's bedroom window, bending low as he embraced her; and Dunya saying,
He has bitten her…

It was of course ridiculous and impossible. My mind scoffed at such reasoning
and dismissed the possibility at once, but I drew my hand away as swiftly as
if I had uncovered a coiled serpent. While I sat staring at the wound, my heart
began to pound, and a sense of unspeakable dread came over me. The child in
my womb made a swift, violent movement.

An animal, I told myself. The marks had been made by an animal. Perhaps Brutus
had scratched her - but no, these were puncture wounds, and I could not believe
the gentle, doting creature had bitten her. Besides, these did not conform to
the size and shape of a dog's mouth - nor did they conform to those of any animal
with which I was familiar.

But they were the right size and distance to have come from a human - or inhuman - mouth…

My dismay must have been evident. Zsuzsanna lowered her heavy, coal-lashed
lids and gave me a sidelong glance. Her fingers went back to the wound, her
gaze straight ahead, and her expression -

Her expression, as she fingered the marks, was the most profoundly disturbing
sight of all. Her colourless lips parted, and her chest began to heave as her
breathing quickened; her eyes widened with a look of pure wonderment, followed
by joy - then narrowed again with sly sensuality. She lowered her hand, languidly,
voluptuously, letting her fingertips drag lightly over the curve of a breast,
and remained absorbed in some private rapture at this revelation, as though
I were not present.

I thought,
She is mad,
but surely she is not alone. Is Vlad any more
sane? Am I, to consider that the old legends and superstitions are true?

She cast me another sidelong look from beneath a long, thick fringe of eyelashes,
and her lips curved in a coy grin that made me think of her great-uncle at the
pomana,
of the wolf at my window. “It's only a little pinprick, Mary.
You mustn’t worry so.”

“Of course,” I stammered, and straightened, murmuring, “Let me get you something
from the kitchen, then. You need to eat,” and I left, eager to be freed from
the cloying, poisonous atmosphere of the room. I stepped over the threshold,
shut the door behind me, and drew a deep breath of the purer air out in the
hallway.

As I stood, trembling and confused, head bowed and one hand against the wall
for support, I sensed movement at the far end of the corridor and glanced up
to see Dunya.

“I sent Bogdan for the doctor,” she said. Her eyes held a hint of fear, but
that emotion was eclipsed by a more intense one: determination, which communicated
itself in the firm set of her square jaw, the erectness of her posture. A tiny
girl, a full head shorter than I, she nevertheless managed to project height.
Her hands were curled into tight fists. At that moment, her cultural timidity
was outdone by her natural willfulness, and I took comfort from the strength
I saw in her expression.

I straightened, and forced myself to stop my foolish trembling. There is nothing
I hate worse than weakness; had I been weak when Mother and Father died, I would
not have survived. Dunya and I shared a grim look.

I said, “I saw her neck.”

She nodded, understanding perfectly. “I found Brutus in the kitchen this morning
again. I set him free so he could do his duty.” She drew a breath, then said,
in a rush, “He has broken the
Schwur.
”She seemed to think these words
an explanation. At first I was confused, thinking she referred to the dog - and
then an eerie certainty settled over me, and I knew, by the way she lowered
her eyelids and voice furtively, by the way she glanced with that same fearful
expression over her shoulder, that she referred to Vlad.

“I do not know this word,” I said, recognising it as one she had used earlier.

“Schwur, Bund. ”
Dunya held my gaze with her own somber, unwavering
one. Clearly she felt this matter so important that it transcended all show
of servility. “He has broken it, and if we do not stop him, Zsuzsanna will die.”