Department 19: Zero Hour (50 page)

“Will you do as I have ordered?” asked Dracula, his swirling eyes turning Valeri’s stomach. “Now, and always? Or have we reached the end of our association? Think hard, old friend, before you answer.”

“I … will …” managed Valeri, and, all at once, the pressure on his neck was gone. He slid to the wet ground, his hands going to his damaged throat as he sucked in air that felt like cold fire. He raised his head, his heart thumping with dreadful misery, and saw Dracula extending a hand down towards him. There was a long, pregnant moment, second after second that thrummed with tension, until Valeri took his master’s hand, as both vampires had known, deep down, that he would, and allowed himself to be pulled to his feet.

“You are a proud man, Valeri,” said Dracula. “You always have been. Pride is a virtue, but it bruises easily. It scars. If you and I are to continue on our path together, swallow down your pride, and do it now. I cannot have you with me unless I can rely entirely on your obedience. Do you understand?”

“I do,” said Valeri, his voice cold and dead. “
My lord
.”

The first vampire narrowed his eyes and stared at him. Long seconds passed, during which Valeri knew his fate was being decided, and in which he realised, to his own surprise, that he cared little about the decision.

I gave you my life,
he thought, his heart a ball of ice in his chest.
Both my lives. You live now only because of me. And this is how you repay me.

Then something occurred to him, a thought that sickened him to his very core.

Valentin was right.

A smile rose on to Dracula’s narrow face. “Good,” he said, and clapped Valeri hard on the shoulder. “Then let us say no more about this unpleasantness. Rouse your comrades and bring our guest to the courtyard. I will meet you there.”

The first vampire turned and leapt gracefully over the wall of the balcony, from almost exactly the same spot where Henry Seward had made an ill-fated escape attempt.

Can it only have been a month since then?
wondered Valeri.
It seems so very much longer.

He stared at the empty balcony, then flew back through the study and down the wide staircase of the château, to carry out the orders he had been given.

As Dracula descended slowly to the cobbled surface of the courtyard, he gave serious consideration, not for the first time, to killing Valeri Rusmanov.

To do so would give him no pleasure; his old friend was the first human being he had ever turned, and he had rarely regretted the decision. Valeri’s long service had been solid, if sometimes lacking the imagination and appetite for improvisation that distinguished the truly great servants, qualities that had always been far more evident in the youngest Rusmanov, the man who was now approaching in the darkness. But regardless of Valeri’s limitations, the truth, that he would never have spoken out loud, was that Dracula would always be grateful for the diligent quest that had restored him to life, a quest that had taken over a century to achieve. He was simply no longer sure that it should be enough to guarantee Valeri’s continuing survival.

The eldest Rusmanov had undoubtedly proved useful during the long, maddening months of Dracula’s recuperation, but the first vampire was beginning to believe that it had given him an inflated sense of his own value; he could not permit
anyone
to consider himself irreplaceable, or anything that came close to approaching his equal. Everyone, human and vampire, was his subordinate, and that was how it must stay.

Valeri had seen him at his very worst: as weak as a baby, and just as unable to feed and care for himself. And although nobody else in the château had been granted access to him during those first terrible weeks, Dracula sensed that the perception of him among the gaggle of Rusmanov acolytes who filled the cellars was of a sick man, a vampire far below the height of his powers. Now that was clearly no longer the case, it was possible a demonstration was in order; a restatement of the hierarchy, an illustration of the punishment awaiting even the slightest instance of subordination or presumption.

And nothing would send a greater message, to both the vampires in the château, and the ones in the wider world who were awaiting news, than if he pulled his oldest friend’s beating heart from his chest and drank its blood in front of everyone.

But as the courtyard rose up to meet him, Dracula again ruled it out, at least for now. Fear had always been his weapon of choice, the cornerstone upon which his new authority would be built, but fear was unreliable; it prompted the subservient to make decisions based purely on self-interest, in the hope of their continued survival. This could be powerful, when wielded carefully, and Dracula was a veteran of such bloody work. It could not, however, replace the comfort that came from true, selfless loyalty. Providing the lesson he had just been forced to teach Valeri had been truly taken in – which was something he knew he was going to have to keep a careful eye on – then his oldest companion could be relied upon to make decisions based only on what was best for his master, with his own profit, even his own life, a secondary consideration. This was something more valuable even than fear; it was adoration.

It was love.

Valentin Rusmanov’s breath froze in his chest.

So it’s true,
he thought
. Part of me didn’t want to believe it, even now, but it’s really true. He is risen.

He had swooped down into the tightly packed mass of pine trees half a mile from the low stone wall that marked the edge of Château Dauncy’s grounds, and made his way towards it, floating above the increasingly sodden ground. Light glowed from what seemed like a hundred windows, and warm yellow lit the courtyard beyond the wall; the grand old building looked as though it was preparing to host some official function, rather than hiding the most dangerous creature in the world.

When he reached the edge of the forest, where the tall trees gave way to row after row of low vines, Valentin paused. His dark suit blended into the shadows as his supernatural eyes scanned the château for any sign of his brother or his former master; he had realised he could smell them both when he was still halfway across the forest, but he had not turned back, even as his heart sank in his chest and a chill crept up his spine.

Until he saw them, he would not believe.

Rain lashed down in sheets, sliding in diagonal lines across the old stone walls, battering out a drumbeat on the cobbles of the courtyard. Valentin watched from the treeline, concentrating on preventing his eyes from glowing involuntarily red; he did not want to give his position away to any watching guards. He scanned the outbuildings, the sheds and huts that had presumably once been used to tend the vines, the low eastern and western wings, then focused on the courtyard before the towering wooden doors, and gasped.

To one side of the door, a man stared down at him from empty eye sockets. The point of the wooden pole he had been impaled on emerged from his mouth, encrusted with blood. The man’s long, soaking wet hair whipped back and forth in the strengthening wind, sliding across his naked shoulders and chest. His arms were broken, his wrists and ankles bound. Blood had poured in enormous quantities down the man’s legs and pooled on the cobbled ground into which the pole had been sunk.

Valentin stared at the stricken man, and tried to remember the last time he had seen someone impaled. It had been more than five centuries earlier, in the last weeks of Dracula’s final reign as Prince of Wallachia, when Valentin had first made peace with the prospect of his own death; there had seemed little chance that he, or his brothers or their master, would survive the battle that was coming. Dracula had been raging, accusing his court of betrayal and sedition, ordering torture and death with furious abandon; new heads appeared on spikes each day, fresh bodies twisting on poles on the castle walls, as blood ran in rivers through the streets.

Then the impaled man coughed around the pole that had been forced through his body, a wet explosion of phlegm and blood and gathered rainwater that splattered the stake, and it took all Valentin’s strength not to cry out in shock. The man’s body spasmed, rattling against the wooden pole, then was still. Valentin looked closer and saw bloody fangs emerging from the man’s mouth, scraping against the wood, and his stomach churned.

A vampire,
he realised.
Impaled alive and left up there in endless agony. The birds have had his eyes, but he still lives. Dear God.

He wondered what the man had done to deserve his fate, although long experience told him that the crime, whatever it was, was unlikely to have justified such terrible punishment. Then movement caught his eye, near the long, slanted roof of the building.

A dark silhouette leapt casually over the uppermost wall and descended gracefully towards the ground, its jacket billowing in the wind, the telltale red glow visible in its eyes, even through the driving rain. It touched down on the cobblestones of the courtyard, and stepped forward into the yellow glow of the lights.

Dracula’s face was exactly as Valentin remembered it: pale and narrow, a tight covering of skin over sharp bones. The chin was pointed, jutting out beneath a mouth that was thin, the lips barely visible, even when curled into a smile, as they were now. A jet-black moustache sat beneath a steep nose, either side of which boiled the red-black eyes of madness, of terrible, unholy power. Valentin stared at them across the rows of vines and felt himself drawn in, experiencing a strong, almost overpowering urge to rush forward and throw himself at Dracula’s feet, to prostrate himself and beg forgiveness for his disloyalty. He blinked furiously, shook his head, and looked back at his former master.

The first vampire was staring directly at him. His long black hair was rippling in the wind, and his smile had widened into a grin that chilled Valentin’s blood. He was wearing a dark blue suit, now soaked black by rain, and hanging from his belt was a sword so large its tip almost scraped the ground.

“Valentin!” shouted Dracula, his voice warm and friendly. “Come out and let us see one another. It has been far too long, old friend.”

For a long moment, Valentin did nothing. He briefly considered fleeing, as fast as he was able; he had seen his former master with his own eyes, which meant the promise he had made to Paul Turner was fulfilled. But fleeing was not in Valentin’s nature.

He took a deep breath, and floated out of the trees.

“Dracula,” he said, his voice steady. “It has indeed been many years. How are you?”

The first vampire narrowed his eyes. “Dracula?” he said. “Would you not call me lord? Or master?”

“I would call you by your name,” said Valentin. “As I am no longer in your service.”

“That saddens me, Valentin,” replied Dracula. “Your long second life, which you have chosen to fill with baubles and indulgence, you owe to me. Have you forgotten?”

“I have not forgotten,” said Valentin. “But nor would I have you pretend that you turned me out of altruism, or for any reason other than it suited you to do so. So I say I owe you nothing.”

“I disagree,” said Dracula, his grin disappearing.

“And that saddens
me
,” said Valentin. “But it changes nothing.”

The two vampires stared at each other across the vineyard. Valentin hung in the cold air, the rain lashing against his face, his every muscle screaming at him to turn and run. Dracula had also risen off the ground as he spoke, and was floating easily above the cobbled stones of the courtyard.

“I see your sword has found its way back to you,” said Valentin.

Dracula glanced down at the heavy blade hanging from his belt and smiled. “It was found while I slept,” he said. “A museum in Bucharest was kind enough to look after it for me.”

“That was certainly good of them,” said Valentin.

For a long moment, there was no sound other than the steady percussion of rain on the ground. The air was thick with the strange, bittersweet taste of nostalgia, of something that felt – to Valentin, at least – almost like camaraderie.

“I will make you this offer only once, Valentin,” said Dracula. “Renounce this foolish rebellion and take your place at my side. Your sins can yet be forgiven.”

“And I will give you my answer only once,” said Valentin. “Never.”

“You disappoint me,” said Dracula. “And your capacity for treachery astonishes even me. You would truly stand with the enemies of your family, against your own blood?”

Valentin grunted with laughter. “You are no family of mine. And neither is Valeri. I am flattered to see you so desperate for me to join you, although if my brother is the best that you have been able to recruit, I must confess I am not surprised. But I will remain where I have always been, Dracula. On my own side.”

The first vampire opened his mouth to answer, but a rush of movement cut him off before he formed his first syllable. Vampires, at least a hundred and fifty of them, maybe more, flooded into the courtyard: men and women, young and old, of every conceivable shape and size. They ran and flew and shambled through the rain, growls and high-pitched hisses emerging from their throats, their glowing eyes all fixed firmly on Valentin. As a show of strength, it was pitiful, as Dracula would well know; if he had presented Valentin with a thousand vampires, or five thousand, it would have been very different, which suggested his former master had other motives for filling the courtyard with his followers.

He’s not trying to impress me,
realised Valentin.
It’s the other way round. He wants
them
to see their enemy.

A chill ran up his spine.

It’s really coming. It’s coming and I don’t know if I can stop it.

War.

The vampires twitched and snarled across the soaked cobblestones of the courtyard. Dracula floated easily in the air in front of them, regarding Valentin with an expression that seemed almost sorrowful.

“Last chance, old friend,” said the first vampire. “Join me, and we will forget this insubordination. Otherwise go, and enjoy what time you have left.”