Soul Intent (31 page)

fifty-one

Present Day

Dubnik Mine, Slovakia

Ten minutes later, Chief Dara Sabol and five men in identical gray uniforms stood in front of me. “Tell us what to do,” she said.

Sue handed me her intruder display. I saw fourteen red dots in the clearing, and no dots anywhere else. That was good.

I motioned to Val, and she and Madame Flora joined me. “Val will translate,” I said.

Val spoke to the police in Slovakian, and they nodded. I noticed Dara give one of her men an uneasy look.

I pointed at Madame Flora. “Two men and this lady came to visit your mines in October 1946,” I said.

Val translated, and the team turned to look at the old Gypsy.

“They brought three very special boxes to store in the mine,” I said. “They hired a local guide named Vlado to help them.”

After Val translated, one of the older men whispered something into Dara’s ear. The chief looked at me. “Jan is son of Vlado,” she said.

Talk about luck—maybe Jan could help me spin this story. “Did your father tell you about the boxes?” I asked him.

He nodded and spoke to Val.

“His father told the story many times,” she translated.

I smiled at him, but I didn’t say anything.

Jan looked at me, then at Val. I waited for him to think it through.

Then his eyes went wide, and he blurted something to Val, and his buddies gasped.

“He wants to know if we’re here for the
strigoi morti
.”

 I nodded at Jan. “Tell me what your father told you,” I said.

He spoke for two minutes, waving his hands and raising his voice a few times. When he finished, Val turned to me and Madame Flora.

“Jan says his father guided a beautiful Roma girl, a German soldier, and an old man on a cane to this entrance. They brought three
strigoi
in their coffins along with many barrels of cognac.

“Jan says they showed his father the three vampires. They slept fully dressed with their arms folded across their chests. Their skin was pure white, and their hair was fire-red. One of them had a long beard, and one was a woman.”

Madame Flora snorted, and I glared at her.

Val continued. “Jan says his father helped place the vampires into the mine—”

“I wish he
had
helped,” Madame Flora whispered.

“—but when they were finished,” Val said, “the vampires burst out of their coffins and attacked the four of them. Jan says his father fought them off, saved the girl, and escaped.”

Madame Flora opened her mouth, but I quickly grabbed her arm. “Ask him what happened to the vampires,” I said to Val.

Val asked, and after Jan answered, she translated. “After he recovered from his injuries, his father returned with some German soldiers who were chasing the
strigoi
. The mine had half-flooded, the bodies had vanished, and the coffins and cognac had disappeared. The only thing anybody found was a ruined campsite here on the surface.”

“And the girl?” I asked.

“I was about to translate that. Jan says his father talked about the beautiful dark-haired girl for the rest of his life. After they escaped, she thanked him and kissed him, but then she clapped her hands and vanished in a flash of blinding white light.”

I leaned close to Madame Flora’s ear. “Yet another admirer.”

“The story sounds like it’s been improved over the years,” she whispered.

“It suits our purposes,” I said. I turned to the police chief. “We are here to finish what was started sixty-four years ago.”

Dara swallowed and looked away. Val translated, and the five men shuffled their feet and looked down at the ground. Jan spoke after a minute.

Val translated. “What do you want them to do?”

“The
strigoi morti
will soon awaken,” Madame Flora said, “from the cognac we brought to keep them satisfied.” She paused for Val to translate.

The six riveted their eyes on the old fortune teller.

Madame Flora sighed. “Unless we take care of them once and for all, they will start to hunt outside of the mine.”

“How will you take care of them?” The police chief asked, shuddering.

“We must follow the old ways to kill them,” I said. “Cut out both hearts, put garlic under their tongues, drive a nail in their skulls, and smear them in oil.”

Val translated, and the police chief and her men stared at me with their mouths open.

“We have finished only one so far,” I said. “The old man.”

As Val translated, I motioned to George and Sue. “Bring the boxes,” I called.

George signaled to Rose and Marie, and the four of them brought the three wooden boxes out of the cave. They laid them out by the entrance.

George came over to me. “Ned is on the far end,” he said.

I pointed at Val. “Tell our friends that I wish to show them what a vampire looks like once we kill it.”

Jan walked over and spoke to Dara. She shook her head, and Jan grabbed her arm and stared at her as he spoke again, this time more urgently.

“What’s he saying?” I asked Val.

She watched them for a minute. “Jan wants to leave, right now,” she said. “Dara is telling him he will be well paid. She just ordered him to stay.”

Jan loosened his grip on the chief’s arm and sighed.

I walked over to Ned’s box and slid my fingers under the cover. “Tell them it’s safe,” I said. “They can come closer.”

Val translated, and after looking at each other, the six of them gathered in a circle around the box.

I cleared my throat. “After we performed the procedure, we placed the vampire face-down in the coffin. He grew old before our eyes.” I waited for Val to translate, and then I lifted the cover off the box.

All six of them flinched, and Jan gave a slight groan as he looked at Ned’s bones.

“He’s harmless now.” I reached in and grabbed Ned’s skull. “Even the nail disappeared—see for yourselves.” I held it out to Jan, but he shrank back.

I offered the skull to the others as Val translated. Nobody seemed to want to touch it, so I placed it back in the box and put the cover on top. “The old one wasn’t too difficult,” I said, “but it took four of us to hold him down while we drove the nail into his head.” I pointed to the other two boxes. “These two know what’s coming, so it will be much harder. We need all of you to help us kill them properly.”

The translation sparked off a loud and contentious conversation between the six of them. After a few minutes I asked Val to translate.

“They’re almost ready to help,” she said. She listened some more. “The chief told them they each would make two hundred bucks. That seems to have clinched it.”

Another few minutes of discussion and the chief turned to me. “We are ready. What do we do?”

I pointed at the middle box. “When I lift off the top, hold her down.”

George gave me a hammer and a long steel spike, and Sue handed Val a clove of garlic and a bottle of olive oil. I set the hammer on the ground, then got ready to lift the top.

“Ready?” I asked.

They each took a deep breath and nodded. Two of the men crossed themselves.

I pulled the top off as fast as I could and let out a yell. The six of them grunted and leaned forward, holding their hands out in front of them.

Except for the extra pair of women’s boots we recovered, the box was empty.

Jan let out another moan, and I gave a loud gasp. Then I chewed on my bottom lip. “Let’s check the other box,” I said.

Val translated, and the six gathered around. When that box came up empty, they looked even more worried.

I swung around and pointed at the cave entrance. “They must have escaped—we must catch them before it’s too late!” I yelled.

Dara motioned to her men. They huddled together and held a whispered conversation. After a minute, Dara came over.

“We go now,” she said, chin up in the air.

I glared at her and tried to put on a big frown. “We need your help,” I said.

“We are police, and I could arrest you for murder,” she said. “Maybe even kidnapping.” The police chief put her hands on her hips. “Clean up and leave by midnight, or your team goes to jail.”

“So you’re just going to leave us here?” I stuck out my lower lip and let it tremble just slightly. “With them?”

She shrugged. “Good luck,” she said. She turned to George and stuck out her hand. “Give me rest of money.”

George looked at me.

I scowled at her. “What are we paying you for? Give us the six hundred back.”

She stared at me for a minute. Then she stalked off.

The six of them headed in a tight bunch to the edge of the clearing. Jan turned back and frowned, but then he waved his hand and walked away.

After five minutes of watching the intruder display, Sue smiled. “They’re gone. That leaves just the eight of us.”

George looked at his watch. “We’d better hurry.”

fifty-two

Present Day

Dubnik Mine, Slovakia

Since we had to wait for more nitrogen to bleed out of our bodies before we dove again, we spent the next two hours packing our surface gear. Val and I helped George and Sue tear down the tents while the twins went into the mine, checked the diving gear, and replaced the scrubbers and tanks on the rebreathers.

When all we had left on the surface was the packed green van, the intruder gear, and the ashes from the fire, all eight of us went into the mine. Both Archie and Madame Flora insisted on being present when we pulled the gold out of the water, so we helped them negotiate the low spots in the tunnel, and we made our way to the top of the Viliam gallery.

“Are you sure it’s okay to leave the outside unguarded?” I asked George.

He shrugged. “We don’t really have a choice. We’ve only got five more hours, and I need Sue’s help.”

“Mr. Morgan and Flora are safer down here with us,” Sue said.

I nodded. We were jammed for time.

George and Sue helped the four of us suit up. The twins descended, and Val and I stayed on the surface.

“Pull her up, George,” Rose said over the intercom after a few minutes.

George turned the lever on the winch. Val and I waited for the first barrel to rise, and as soon as the top showed, we swam over and helped George maneuver it to the ledge.

Madame Flora walked over to the barrel and used her hands to wipe away the silt. She bowed her head and stood with both hands on its rim. Archie came and put his arm around her shoulders, and when she looked up and grinned, the six of us let out a cheer.

George lowered the cable back down, and in the next thirty minutes, we raised eight of the barrels.

“Okay, it’s time to switch,” Marie said. “We’re heading up.”

The reason we were switching was because our residual nitrogen level had climbed with all the diving. If Rose and Marie stayed down any longer, they’d be stuck in decompression for more time than we had left. As it was, they needed to hang out at fifteen feet for a half hour.

When their time was almost up, Val and I descended to the bottom of the shaft.

“Good luck,” Rose called as we passed them.

We saw the remaining four barrels when we reached the bottom. Val tilted the first one, and I slid the cable loops underneath it. “Take her away, George,” I called.

We watched the cable pull taut. The barrel slowly rose above us. A few minutes later the cable came back. We sent the other three barrels one by one to the surface.

I looked at Val when the last barrel went up. “That’s it, then.”

She nodded. “Should we retrieve our lights from the alcoves?”

I tapped my dive computer. “We barely have enough time for decompression.” Our time was tighter than the twins’ because we had retrieved Ned’s bones from one hundred feet.

“Leave the lights,” George said. “Come on up so we can get these barrels out of here.”

So we made our final ascent through Viliam gallery. As we floated for our twenty minutes at fifteen feet, I thought about the mess we had made to the alcove, and I hoped it wouldn’t come back to haunt Soul Identity.

My dive computer showed a minute left before we could return to the surface.

Then George’s voice came over the intercom. “I’m sorry,” he said. “We have a private permit to use this mine. You’ll have to come back after midnight.”

Who was he talking to? I grabbed Val’s arm and switched off my wrist-mounted video camera.

Silence for a moment, and then I heard George again. “Hey buddy, you don’t have to point that thing at me. Let me get—”

I heard what sounded like a car backfiring, followed by a woman’s scream. Then a man’s sharp voice, laced with a German accent. “You will do exactly what I say, or I will shoot the old man next.”