The Delicate Dependency: A Novel of the Vampire Life (50 page)

We broke into a run.

A cab pulled out of the darkness ahead of us and I hailed it. There was the sound of footsteps on the cobbles behind us. When we reached the cab I flung open the door but the very moment I had stepped inside I saw that it was already occupied by a young woman. She gazed at me with wide, dark eyes. She was very beautiful and very frail. She wore a graceful hat of osprey feathers, and her collar and cuffs were frilled and tight around her delicate ivory hands. She leaned forward as if to inquire what was going on when suddenly one of her hands sprang forward and clamped around my wrist like a steel vise.

I screamed and tried to pull away, but the cold white hand held me with a preternatural strength. The woman gazed at me with the fascination of a serpent who was about to encoil her prey. Her eyes were obsidian, hypnotizing. She opened her delicate mouth and brandished her fangs. From nowhere the man from the
società
brought a piece of wood crashing down upon the small wrist. The fingers released me immediately as she let out a bloodcurdling scream of pain.

The horses of the carriage reared as we stumbled back and made our way around them. The vampire with the Russian sable coat was almost upon us. In the distance we spotted another cab. I prayed that this one was empty. Dr. von Neefe reached it first and opened the door fearfully. There was no one inside. She jumped in and offered her hand to me.

“
Fretta!
” cried the man from the
società
to the driver, hastening him on. He looked confusedly at the scene before him. “
Fretta!
” the man screamed again.

The cab started up.

I jumped in, making sure the virus was still securely within my coat, and then turned around to offer my hand to the stranger who had just saved my life. It was too late. The vampire with the Russian sable coat had reached him. He grabbed ahold of his shoulders and snapped him back as if he were a rag doll. As we swiftly drew away I saw his face, his red, frightened eyes as he screamed and flailed and they drew him into the carriage.

The carriage remained behind, but the driver of the antique black
calèche
with its unseen occupants cracked his whip at the horses. We tore through the dark streets of Florence, the
calèche
with its two large wheels keeping up with our every maneuver. We passed the moonlit Boboli Gardens and raced southwest through the outskirts of the city. We were headed toward Massa Marittima.

For forty minutes we rolled through the dark Italian countryside. We managed to stay ahead of the black
calèche,
but it was a losing battle. Our horses were pulling much more weight and they began to tire more quickly. In a bewildered panic our driver informed us that he could not keep our lead much longer. I looked out the window of the carriage and saw that the
calèche
was only a few hundred feet behind us. We had no weapons. We were powerless against their infinitely superior metabolisms. There was nothing we could do.

I was about to turn to Dr. von Neefe and make my last amends when she cried exultantly, and gestured toward the window. I looked out and saw that, impossibly, the black
calèche
was slowing. It paused in the middle of the road as if watching us for the last time and then turned around. I frantically withdrew my pocket watch and saw that it was just a little before dawn. They had to turn back. Soon the sky would be light, and the sun would begin to shine.

The sun! First god of the ancients. I had never greeted that magnificent and glowing orb with so much rapture and adoration before. Ours was a strange thankfulness, for the world had never looked bleaker. Dr. Weber was dead, and the fates of my two daughters were unknown. The
società
had been destroyed. The image of that flailing man, the horror in his eyes, was still burning in my mind. Our every source of hope had been torn savagely from our arms. We had been reduced totally and utterly. We were so exhausted with shock we could scarcely think or speak, and perhaps that was why the one pitiful flicker of spirit left in us luxuriated so desperately in the sun.

I paid the driver a hundred pounds to continue on to Massa Marittima and he happily obliged. We reached the little village by late afternoon. The sun was intense. The little walled town was lost in time. On the outskirts of the sleepy settlement several glass blowers tended their glowing kilns. Grass grew among the cobbles of the matchbox-sized piazza, and in the shade of a plane tree a bartender had brought a chair to the door to escape from the suffocating heat.

We sat down at a table in one of the little outdoor cafés, just to sit, not to think. Just to sit.
Where was Ursula?
I could barely allow the question to pass through my mind, for the pain that accompanied it was extreme. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a tousled man rise rheumatically, discussing something in a slow, impenetrable dialect with the woman seated across from him. Dr. von Neefe gazed numbly into space, her nails tapping distractedly against her glass.

I gaped lifelessly at the crowd. I felt like a bird or quail who had momentarily outwitted the hunter, only instead of among shadows, it was in the sunlight that I hid. There were half a dozen people sitting in the café and fanning themselves against the heat. Beneath the arches of the portico sat two men, one of them a worker, the other a man in a pea-green waistcoat with a very wide-brimmed straw hat. His back was to us.

I became aware of the sounds of the August afternoon, the hissing of the insects, the rattling of the glasses. I became aware of something else.

“Wait,” I told Dr. von Neefe, beckoning her to stop the drumbeat of her fingers against her glass. Even through the fabric of her gloves her nails clicked loudly. She paused and listened. Behind us there was a shifting of chairs, and I turned to see that the man in the pea-green waistcoat had stood and was turning toward us. There was no mistaking the graceful and extraordinary way he moved, the face’. He smiled as he approached. The broad straw hat cast a shadow over his eyes, but we knew the eyes all too well. They were blue, icy blue. He carried himself and his finery with the same enviable panache. The sun shone brightly on the green of his waistcoat.

The sun.

“
Bonjour, monsieur et madame,
” came the voice of the gentleman monk. “You look surprised to see me.”

“How can it be?” I asked.

He balanced dapperly upon his cane. An opal ring glinted. “Because nothing is as it seems,
monsieur.
Everything is an illusion.”

“And the sun?”

He squinted in the brightness, adjusting the tilt of his hat. “Oh, yes, the myth that the vampire is a completely nocturnal creature. Ah, Monsieur le Docteur, how many times have I asked you to consider logic? It is true that our eyes are more sensitive to the day than mortal eyes. But as you see, we do not wither. Centuries do not suddenly flake and powder in our faces. As for the myth, it was started by the vampire themselves very long ago. As I say, think about it. What better protection could we provide for ourselves,
non?
Our enemies are so eager to believe and accept. Imagine their surprise when they steal into our dwellings in the full of the day, feeling completely confident that they are going to drive a stake through our hearts, only to hear the door shut behind them and find us sitting, smiling in our chairs. Yes, that rumor, carefully spread and nurtured, has proven to be one of our simplest and greatest protections.”

Monsieur des Esseintes clicked his thumbnail in a subtle and rapid succession and I realized that was what I had heard. Against the background of the summer sounds that remarkable mode of vampire communication had provided a macabre counterpoint. Even more disarming, commingling with the sibilance of the insects and the clinking of the cups against the tables there was the sound of a distinct reply.

I turned to see Dr. von Neefe rapping her nails in a purposeful and alien rhythm against her glass.

How many times had I suspected she was a vampire, but dismissed the thought when I saw her standing in the sun? Had I ever seen her eat? Here and there a pretended bite, but during most of the meals we had shared we had been conveniently divided by the walls of our cells. What other clues had I been given? I had often brushed against her and been comforted by the warmth of her flesh, but hadn’t it been revealed to me through the story of the troubadour that the vampire possessed the yogic ability to control their pulse and body temperature? Had she not displayed incredible strength when she had artfully lifted the sewer cover above her head during our escape in Paris? And what of our escape out the window of the train? I had attributed her strength and dexterity to the adrenaline of fear, but what normal woman would have behaved as she did?

I had been accompanied by the vampire all along. They had coaxed me here, tricked me here to this isolated little village. I had fallen neatly and simply into their trap. Her lip curled up in a snarl to reveal her fangs. Her hand reached out. I pulled the virus back.

In a sudden show of rage her gloved hands gripped the sides of the table and flung it upward with such inhuman strength for a moment it seemed to be tumbling toward the sky before it fell and crashed in the roof of a building across the piazza. Screams rose from the crowd as I gripped the satchel containing the virus and broke into a run. I ran as I Have never run before, pulling tables and street carts in my wake.

I was only dimly aware of the sounds of the crowd and the excited shouting. I prayed that the milling people might somehow slow down my pursuer. I knew of only one place that suited my purposes. I reached the outskirts of the village and the glowing kilns of the glass blowers. In the tiny courtyard behind the shop were racks upon racks of shimmering vases and decanters of aquamarine glass. There were two or three workmen wandering about and they looked up when I entered their vicinity. In the back against the stucco wall of the adjacent building stood the immense tiled kiln, its maw gaping like the inferno itself.

“
Che cosa desidera?
” prattled a plump little man in white overalls as he ambled toward me through the racks.

I approached the furnace. “
Che cos’e
,” he said, smiling and trying to understand. “
Mi displace, ma non capisco
.” I looked at the satchel. The heat was intense upon our faces. He knitted his brow. It was at that moment that the woman who had deceived me reached the hill and looked down toward the courtyard containing the kiln. Des Esseintes was close behind. They stopped in mute horror as I dangled the satchel before the blazing furnace. They dared not advance.

They had me, but they would not get the virus. I moved closer to the conflagration. My hand was just inches away from the opening of the kiln. I realized that for the sake of human life, for the sake of the world I had to destroy the virus, and yet, out of the haze of my bewilderment, spun a host of uncertainties.
If she had wanted the virus so desperately, why hadn’t she just taken it? She had had numerous opportunities. If the vampire could move about in the sunlight, why had the black
calèche
turned back before dawn? Why?
Nothing made any sense. It was all insane.

Out of nowhere came a voice. “Father!”

I turned to see that Ursula had appeared on the hill and was standing about thirty feet from them. She was safe! The sight of her gave me new strength. I looked at Dr. von Neefe. I could not believe it. I had respected her. I had felt for her as I had not felt for any other woman for quite some time. I might have even loved her, but now all that was meaningless. Her ability to communicate through the clicking of her nails indicated that she had been a vampire for quite some time, long before she had introduced herself to me as Lady Hespeth Dunaway. But if she had been a vampire all along, what of Dr. Weber? The
società?
Had they all been lies? And if I had been accompanied by a vampire from the very beginning, what purpose had there been to the terrifying chase, the alleged war between mortal and vampire? Was it possible it was all a deception, an elaborate and stupendous hoax? Why? To achieve what ends? Niccolo’s words came rolling back to me:
Never trust the vampire, for everything they say and do is for some other purpose. They will play a cruel and enigmatic “game of the mind” with you and it will be up to you to solve the puzzle, unravel the Gordian knot.
I looked at the devouring flame and in one prodigious flash of understanding I realized. What had they driven Chiswick to do, but to destroy his work? Hadn’t they done the same to the engineer at Oxford? What was Hatim’s senseless harassment of the woman in the garden if it was not a tactic to fill her with unreasoning fear? What had they nearly accomplished with Cletus, and they were now carrying to completion with me? In a blaze of crystalline awareness I comprehended the fateful emptiness I had experienced in the street outside of Dr. Hardwicke’s, and again after Dr. von Neefe had begged me to sacrifice my work and I had refused. When Cletus had failed they had switched the focus of their game to me. They had never wanted the virus. They had only wanted
me
to destroy it.

I pulled my hand away from the fire.

The expression that swept over the faces of the vampire was distinct. They had played the game and lost. In an instant they both turned to flee, and in that same instant the game reversed itself.

Ursula looked at them in confusion.

“After them!” I cried as I charged up the hill. Dr. von Neefe grabbed one of the horses tied up outside the tiny shop and mounted it, while des Esseintes vanished among the buildings. One of the workmen began to run up the hill. I could not believe what I was doing. I tucked the satchel back into my coat and mounted one of the horses. Ursula mounted the other.

“
Polizia!
” I heard a voice cry. “
A quale punto polizia!
”

It did not matter. Only one thing was important now, to catch these creatures, the last threads of the puzzle before they pulled away from us like kite strings.

I looked in the direction in which des Esseintes had vanished and decided to pursue the woman. Through the outskirts of the village we sped, past the low buildings and the slatted wagons. Just outside of Massa Marittima we collided head-on with a herd of sheep indolently crossing the unpaved read. The horses reared, trying to get by, and I held on tightly. It had been a long time since I had ridden. At last Ursula broke through and just as I swerved by the last frightened creature, I spotted her. She had left the road and had reached the summit of an adjacent hill.