Return of the Wolf Man (19 page)

The vampire’s upper lip curled slightly, exposing the long white canines. He had needed the Monster back then. Doctors Van Helsing and Jeffrey Garth and their newly formed League of Anti-Diabolists had become relentless in their search for the vampire’s coffin. Count Dracula had feared that they would find his soil and satin resting place and send him to eternal damnation. The vampire had needed a tireless guard, and he had worked with Dr. Mornay to give the Monster an obedient brain. It was an effort that that accursedly self-righteous Wolf Man had foiled.

What a foolish mistake we made,
Count Dracula thought. He and Dr. Mornay should have replaced the brain of the sanctimonious Talbot with that of the compliant Wilbur Grey. What a dogged guardian the Wolf Man would have been.

Count Dracula often wondered what had become of his old nemesis. Like him, the Wolf Man was not subject to the natural laws of death and decay. Even if his mortal form died, it would be reborn during the full moon. Dracula had no difficulty imagining Talbot still searching for him, still yearning to atone for the blood on his own lips by destroying the vampire. Dracula would have slain the cur the last time they met, if only it hadn’t been so close to sunrise and he’d had time to find something made of silver.

Count Dracula looked down. There was an ivory-white arm in his lap. The woman who owned it had been leaning against him as she gasped her life away. Now that her pulse had finally stopped throbbing, the vampire picked up the arm and laid it aside. The woman’s lean, bloodless body followed it with a thump to the planks of the portico. The vampire peered into the night.

The Anti-Diabolists. The Wolf Man. The Monster.
Count Dracula had thought he was done with them all. Doctors Van Helsing and Garth were surely dead by now. The Wolf Man had wanted to die; perhaps he had succeeded. But the Monster—the Monster was alive!

The percussion of old ambition returned loudly. Not just the desire to survive. Count Dracula no longer needed the Monster for that. Here on Marya Island, midway between Key West and Havana in the Morgan Islands, the vampire had no need of another guardian. His estate was located more than three and a half miles from the nearest shore, in the jungle-thick foothills of Mt. Mord. Unlike himself, who had to be bidden to enter a place, people could come into his home—if they got that far. Should anyone approach the estate, the vampire would be warned by a native population that feared the black arts and revered its practitioners. And then his slaves or his trained wolf pack would attack the intruder. Sometimes Dracula himself would go forth and greet the tourists. Invariably they were journalists seeking exiled political figures, psychologists researching voodoo, or military officers hoping to train an army in secret. To him, if he hadn’t yet fed, they were the evening’s bill of fare. If he’d already eaten and could take no more, he would invite them to his home where he kept them until the following night. Because of the skyscraping peaks of Mt. Mord, the sun set early and Dracula was free to leave from his coffin before dark. Many of his most cherished encounters occurred during those twilight hours, when the unwary thought the only dangers were clouds of black flies or venomous snakes.

But while Count Dracula was perfectly safe, he was not content. As the ring continued to tingle, the vampire’s mind returned to the old war. Not the battle with his personal enemies. The war against the new oppressors of Wallachia.

“Andre, come here.”

A tall, bald, shirtless man came through the open double doors. He moved slowly as though in a dream, his eyes wide and unblinking. His bare feet hardly made a sound as he walked past the mansion’s plain white columns. His thickly muscled arms swung easily beside him. The silver smallsword he wore through a loop in his belt gleamed brightly in the moonlight.

Andre was the one who had brought Dracula this woman, a student who had been doing a doctoral thesis on the history of sugar cane. Andre was one of eleven
sarpe
who dwelt on the estate. They were zombies, the animated dead who had been raised from the grave over sixty years before by a
houngan,
a voodoo priest. Once resurrected, the
sarpe
responded only to their leader. Without one, they would collapse and revive when the fragmented memories of what they were rose from the mists of the past. And they would become that again, imperfectly, until they could be decapitated. Andre had been a murderous smuggler and was the ideal bodyguard. If anything ever happened to him—and there was always the chance that a fire or an accident at the mill could destroy him—the vampire would be without his bodyguard and manservant.

Andre stopped a respectful distance from where the vampire was sitting. His eyes were dry and disinterested.

“Take her,” the vampire said without looking down. His manner was imperious, his accent thick with his proud Wallachian ancestry.

“Yes, Master.”

The servant picked up the slender body in jeans and a halter top. The pale, glassy-eyed youth would carry it to the swamp and make certain that she was never found. The authorities would see to it that whoever came looking for her would receive no help. Count Dracula paid them well from his account in London.

“Before you leave,” said Count Dracula, “have Maurice ready the boat for a trip to the Continent.”

“Yes, Master.”

“Be sure there are two coffins onboard and that Maurice brings proper documentation from the governor.”

“I will, Master.”

The vampire continued to gaze at the foliage as Andre walked off with the dead woman in his arms. From the corner of his eye he saw a large, mottled gray underwing moth bat toward the light. With an easy snap of his elbow he caught the insect by pinching its wing. The moth struggled violently as Count Dracula rose. He held the insect inches from his face.

“If I let you go,” he said, “you will die in the flames of the torch. Yet you struggle. Perhaps only vermin can appreciate the beauty to be found in death.”

The vampire regarded the moth a moment longer and then released it. The insect fluttered away quickly. It circled the flame once and darted closer. Then it wobbled and dropped to the ground. Its wings moved sluggishly for a few beats before stopping.

Count Dracula seemed sad. “The soil offers you eternal peace,” he said softly. “For me, the earth I rest upon is a reminder of a vanished home, a lost life.” The black leather of his shoes crunched sharply as he stood. He pulled his shoulders erect and made a fist. His strong chin rose along with the bold profile of his nose. “But a Szeckler does not lament. He acts. And the time has come to resume an old crusade, and this time to win it.”

His soul filled with fire, Count Dracula closed his eyes. In his mind he saw a large black bat. The creature was a vision made of mind and spirit. It left the portico and flew across jungle and sea. It flapped low over the breakers and came to rest on a patch of overgrown land. There, in the shadow of a dark stone edifice, the wings became a cape and the ribs became fingers. The tiny legs grew long and sturdy as the black silhouette of the bat became the black silhouette of a man. The man looked down at a small stone marker.

Come,
the vampire commanded silently.
Come here.

After a long moment, he heard a small, raspy female voice reply,
“Yes . . . Master.”

The Monster’s body was too weak, his brain too simple, to respond to a command across so many miles. But there was another who would answer the call of the vampire. One who had been waiting for him. One who for a short time had been his.

One who would serve him again after a too-long rest.

TEN

E
verything had been black. Blacker than the mind dared to imagine.

And it had been damp. Moisture was everywhere. It was on her pale flesh and on her white dress. It was in her matted black hair and even under her eyelids and long fingernails.

And there were things. Warm, wet, wriggling things. She felt the small creatures squirming all over her from the moment she heard the voice. They were on her pale lips and in her nostrils when she drew a sharp, sudden breath. They slipped inside her dry mouth as she opened it slowly and uttered her first, raspy words—

“Yes . . . Master.”

They wriggled on her hands and forehead as she lay there for a moment, adjusting to a different kind of blackness. A blackness in which you can feel and smell, hear and think, but not see. She lay there trying to grasp what she’d been told to do. Then she heard it again, that familiar voice.

Come . . .

She raised her hands. Countless things slid from her hands and from her white sleeves. She felt them crawl under her back and along her bare shoulders as she moved, but she ignored them. She splayed her fingers and raised them and put them stiffly against the satin just inches above her face. It was odd to experience touch again, to feel. She pushed on the lid of the coffin.

The old fabric tore easily beneath her palms. The rending sound was exciting, like clothing being pulled away before an incision could be made. It brought back memories of living organs being removed. Of screams. Of blood. Her heart beat quicker and now she heard that too. Beneath the satin above, her hands encountered metal. She felt around with the tips of her fingers. She hesitated. Her mind and her body didn’t seem to be her own.

Come to me . . .

“Yes, Master.”

There was no question about obeying.
He
had spoken. Memories returned quickly now. She remembered the night that the insurance investigator had arrived looking for the Frankenstein Monster. Joan Raymond, her name was. She remembered telling Count Dracula that they had to cancel the operation, that she didn’t want to be found out and arrested. She remembered insisting that her will was as strong as the vampire’s, that he could not force her to do his bidding.

She curled her fingertips inward and dug her nails into the smooth surface. She would have to go through the metal. The metal resisted. She pushed harder. She felt the lid begin to bulge where she was pressing. She pushed harder still. A moment later her nails punctured the metal. She pushed her long fingers through and felt the cool, damp, refreshing soil beyond.

The soil of my grave,
she thought. The only place where she had ever known peace. Peace from her critics and from persecution. But now it was time to leave the grave and the dreamless state in which she had existed for so long. It was time to finish her work.

She bent her fingers and pulled down. The metal came toward her. Particles of dirt showered through the finger-holes. Turning her elbows toward the sides, she pulled outward. More earth fell in as the metal ripped in the center. She withdrew her fingers from the holes and peeled the lid back. Soil poured down in sheets, filling her mouth and covering her face, neck, and shoulders. She ignored it, even as it filled her mouth. She moved her arms, pushing through the dirt as though she were a swimmer beginning a breaststroke. When her arms were directly above her, she raked them outward until they were lying on top of the coffin. Then she extended her fingers and grabbed the sides of the lid.

Come . . . come . . .

She pushed down hard with her hands, wrists, and arms. The sides of the coffin creaked as she sat up. She twisted her head so it would fit through the opening she’d torn in the lid. More of the cold earth spilled around her. She sat with great effort and then she reached up again. Her hands moved like spades through the damp soil. Bent beneath the weight of the falling earth, she rose slowly—first to her knees, then to her feet. Dirt fell along her back, and when she straightened it poured down even faster. When the shower finally stopped she was standing immobile, surrounded by the cool earth, her arms straight above her. Then she turned them like an exotic dancer, writhing through the soil and loosening the dirt.

Her left hand was slightly higher than the right. Her fingers touched a meshwork of roots. She worked her fingertips through the tangled canopy, slipping them through the tendrils and into the hard-packed soil above. Then, with a final push, she broke through to the fresh air. She forced her right hand through the roots and dirt and stretched her fingers toward the sky. The air felt even better than the soil had when she pushed through the coffin lid.

As her palms worked up through the surface, she began wrigging her shoulders and rotating her hips. Earth shifted around her, some of it rising and some of it falling into the now-empty coffin. She stepped on the dirt as it collected beneath her like silt. Her forearms worked through the roots and broke the surface. She placed them flat on the warm earth and spread her fingers again. She pushed down with her newfound strength until the top of her head emerged. She turned her face upward. Scraped and jabbed by roots, it broke free of the earth. It was followed by her neck and shoulders. She continued to push until her torso and waist cleared the grave. Then she slumped forward, though she didn’t rest. There had been rest enough. The dirt and living things fell from her as she clawed along the sliding carpet of earth. Upon reaching solid ground, she rose unsteadily. Her legs buckled, unused to her weight, and she dropped to her knees. Silently, dirt and worms tumbling from her open mouth, she stood again on her bare feet. This time she wavered but did not fall. And for the first time in fifty years, Sandra Mornay opened her eyes.