The Strain, the Fall, the Night Eternal (69 page)

Setrakian half-turned, frightened. “Mynheer Blaak?”

He was mistaken. There was no one behind him.

“Monsieur Pirk, I presume?”

Setrakian jerked to his right. In the shadowy entrance to an alleyway stood a portly figure dressed in a long, formal coat and a top hat, supporting himself with a thin, metal-tipped cane.

Setrakian swallowed his adrenaline, his anticipation, his fear. “How did you ever find me, sir?”

“The book. That is all that matters. Is it in your possession, Pirk?”

“I … I have it near.”

“Where is your hotel?”

“I have rented a flat near the station. If you like, I would be happy to conduct our transaction there—”

“I am afraid I cannot travel that far conveniently, for I have a bad case of the gout.”

Setrakian turned more fully toward the shadowed being. There were a few people out in the square, and he dared to take a step toward Dreverhaven, in the manner of an unsuspecting man. He did not smell the usual earthy musk of the
strigoi,
though the hash smoke acted on the night like a perfume. “What would you suggest, then? I would very much like to conclude this sale this evening.”

“And yet, you would have to return to your flat first.”

“Yes. I guess I would.”

“Hmm.” The figure ventured forward a step, tapping the metal toe of its cane on a cobblestone. Wings fluttered, the pigeons taking flight behind Setrakian. Blaak said, “I wonder why a man traveling in an unfamiliar city would entrust such a valuable article to his flat rather than the security of his own person.”

Setrakian switched his portmanteau from one hand to the other. “Your point?”

“I do not believe a true collector would risk allowing such a precious item out of his sight. Or his grip.”

Setrakian said, “There are thieves about.”

“And thieves within. If indeed you want to relieve yourself of the burden of this cursed artifact for a premium price, you will now follow me, Pirk. My residence is just a few paces this way.”

Dreverhaven turned and started into the alley, using the cane but not reliant upon it. Setrakian steadied himself, licking his lips and feeling the bristles of his disguising beard as he followed the undead war criminal into the stone alleyway.

T
he only time Setrakian was allowed outside Treblinka’s camouflaged barbwire fences was to work on Dreverhaven’s library. Herr Doktor maintained a house just a few minutes’ drive from the camp, workers transported there one at a time by a three-man squad of armed Ukrainian guards. Setrakian had little contact with Dreverhaven at the house, and, much more fortunately, no contact with him whatsoever inside the camp surgery, where Dreverhaven sought to satisfy his medical and scientific curiosity in the manner of an indulged boy left alone to cut worms in half and burn the wings off flies.

Dreverhaven was a bibliophile even then, using the spoils of war and genocide—gold and diamonds stolen from the walking dead—to spend outrageous sums on rare texts from Poland, France, Great Britain, and Italy, appropriated with dubious provenance during the black market chaos of the war years. Setrakian had been ordered to do finish work on a two-room library of rich oak, complete with a rolling iron ladder and a stained-glass window portraying the rod of
Asclepius. Often confused with the caduceus, the Asclepius image of a serpent or long worm coiled about a staff is the symbol for medicine and doctors. But the head of the staff on Dreverhaven’s stained-glass representation depicted a death’s head, the symbol of the Nazi SS.

Dreverhaven personally inspected Setrakian’s craftsmanship once, his blue eyes crystal-cold as his fingers traced the underside of the shelves, seeking out any rough spots. He praised the young Jew with a nod and dismissed him.

They met one more time, when Setrakian faced the “Burning Hole,” the doctor overseeing the slaughter with the same cold blue eyes. They did not recognize Setrakian then: too many faces, all indistinguishable to him. Still, the experimenter was busy, an assistant timing the interlude between the gunshot entering the back of the head and the last agonal twitching of the victim.

Setrakian’s scholarship in the folklore and the occult history of vampires dovetailed with his hunt for the camp Nazis in his search for the ancient text known as
Occido Lumen.

S
etrakian gave “Blaak” plenty of leeway, trailing him by three paces, just out of stinger range. Dreverhaven walked on with his cane, apparently unconcerned about the vulnerability of having a stranger at his back. Perhaps he laid his trust in the many pedestrians circling the Wallen at night, their presence discouraging any attack. Or perhaps he merely
wanted
to give the impression of guilelessness.

In other words, perhaps the cat was acting like a mouse.

Between two red-lit window girls, Dreverhaven turned a key in a door lock, and Setrakian followed him up a red-carpeted flight of stairs. Dreverhaven had the top two floors, handsomely decorated if not well-lived-in. The bulb wattage was kept low, downturned lamps shining dimly onto soft rugs. The front windows faced east. They lacked heavy shades. There were no back windows, and, in sizing up the room dimensions, Setrakian determined them to be too narrow. He remembered, at once, harboring this same suspicion
at his house near Treblinka—a suspicion informed by camp rumors of a secret examining room at Dreverhaven’s house, a hidden surgery.

Dreverhaven moved to a lit table, upon which he rested his cane. On a porcelain tray, Setrakian recognized the paperwork he had earlier provided the broker: provenance documents establishing a plausible link to the 1911 Marseilles auction, all expensive forgeries.

Dreverhaven removed his hat and placed it on a table, yet still he did not turn around. “May I interest you in an aperitif?”

“Regrettably, no,” answered Setrakian, undoing the twin buckles on his portmanteau while leaving the top clasp closed. “Travel upsets my digestive system.”

“Ah. Mine is ironclad.”

“Please don’t deny yourself on my account.”

Dreverhaven turned around, slowly, in the gloom. “I couldn’t, Monsieur Pirk. It is my practice never to drink alone.”

Instead of the time-worn
strigoi
Setrakian expected, he was stunned—though he tried to hide it—to find Dreverhaven looking exactly as he had decades before. Those same crystalline eyes. Raven-black hair falling over the back of his neck. Setrakian tasted a pang of acid, but he had little reason to fear: Dreverhaven had not recognized him at the pit, and surely would not recognize him now, more than a quarter century later.

“So,” Dreverhaven said. “Let us consummate our happy transaction then.”

Setrakian’s greatest test of will involved masking his amazement at the vampire’s speech. Or, more accurately, his play at speech. The vampire communicated in the usual telepathic manner, “speaking” directly into Setrakian’s head—but it had learned to manipulate its useless lips in a pantomime of human speech. Setrakian now understood how, in this manner, “Jan-Piet Blaak” moved about nocturnal Amsterdam without fear of discovery.

Setrakian scanned the room for another way out. He needed to know the
strigoi
was trapped before springing on him. He had come too far to allow Dreverhaven to slip free of his grasp.

Setrakian said, “Am I to understand, then, that you have no
concerns about the book, given the misfortune that seems to befall those who possess it?”

Dreverhaven stood with his hands behind his back. “I am a man who embraces the accursed, Monsieur Pirk. And besides—it seems no misfortune has befallen you yet.”

“No … not yet,” lied Setrakian. “And why this book, if I may ask?”

“A scholarly interest, if you will. You might think of me as a broker myself. In fact, I have undertaken this global search for another interested party. The book is rare indeed, not having surfaced in more than half a century. Many believe that the sole remaining edition was destroyed. But—according to your papers—perhaps it has survived. Or there is a second edition. You are prepared to produce it now?”

“I am. First, I should like to see payment.”

“Ah. Naturally. In the case on the corner chair behind you.”

Setrakian moved laterally, with a casualness he did not feel, finding the latch with his finger and opening the top. The case was filled with banded guilders.

“Very good,” said Setrakian.

“Trading paper for paper, Monsieur Pirk. Now if you will reciprocate?”

Setrakian left the case open and returned to his portmanteau. He undid the clasp, one eye on Dreverhaven the entire time. “You might know, it has a very unusual binding.”

“I am aware of that, yes.”

“Though I am assured it is only partially responsible for the book’s outrageous price.”

“May I remind you, Monsieur, that you set the price. And do not judge a book by its cover. As with most clichés, that is good advice often ignored.”

Setrakian carried the portmanteau to the table containing the papers of provenance. He pulled open the top under the faint lamp light, then withdrew. “As you will, sir.”

“Please,” said the vampire. “I should like you to remove it. I insist.”

“Very well.”

Setrakian returned to the bag and reached inside with his black-gloved hands. He pulled out the book, which was bound in silver and fronted and backed with smooth silver plates.

He offered it to Dreverhaven. The vampire’s eyes narrowed, glowing.

Setrakian took a step toward him. “You would like to inspect it, of course?”

“Set it down on that table, Monsieur.”

“That table? But the light is so much more favorable over here.”

“You will please set it down on that table.”

Setrakian did not immediately comply. He remained still, the heavy silver book in his hands. “But you must want to examine it.”

Dreverhaven’s eyes rose from the silver cover of the tome to take in Setrakian’s face. “Your beard, Monsieur Pirk. It obscures your face. It gives you a Hebraic mien.”

“Is that right? I take it you don’t like Jews.”

“They don’t like me. Your scent, Pirk—it is familiar.”

“Why don’t you take a closer look at this book.”

“I do not need to. It is a fake.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps, indeed. But the silver—I can assure you that the silver is quite real.”

Setrakian advanced on Dreverhaven, the book held out in front of him. Dreverhaven backed off, then slowed. “Your hands,” he said. “You are crippled.” Dreverhaven’s eyes went back to Setrakian’s face. “The woodworker. So it
is
you.”

Setrakian swept open his coat, removing from the interior left fold a sword with a silver blade of modest size. “You have become indolent, Herr Doktor.”

Dreverhaven lashed out with his stinger. Not full-length, merely a feint, the bloated vampire leaping backward against the wall, and then quickly down again.

Setrakian anticipated the ploy. Indeed, the doctor was considerably less agile than many others Setrakian had encountered. Setrakian stood fast with his back to the windows, the vampire’s only escape.

“You are too slow, doctor,” Setrakian said. “Your hunting here has been too easy.”

Dreverhaven hissed. Concern showed in the beast’s eyes as the heat of exertion began to melt its facial cosmetics.

Dreverhaven glanced at the door, but Setrakian wasn’t buying. These creatures always built in an emergency exit. Even a bloated tick like Dreverhaven.

Setrakian feigned an attack, keeping the
strigoi
off-balance, forcing him to react. Dreverhaven snapped out his stinger, another aborted thrust. Setrakian responded with a quick sweep of his blade, which would have lopped it off at full length.

Dreverhaven made his break then, rushing laterally along the back bookcases, but Setrakian was just as fast. He still held the book in one hand, and hurled it at the fat vampire, the creature recoiling from its toxic silver. Then Setrakian was upon him.

He held the point of his silver blade at Dreverhaven’s upper throat. The vampire’s head tipped back, its crown resting against the spines of his precious books along the upper shelf, his eyes staring at Setrakian.

The silver weakened him, keeping his stinger in check. Setrakian went into his deepest coat pocket—it was lead-lined—and removed a band of thick silver baubles wrapped in a mesh of fine steel, strung along a length of cable.

The vampire’s eyes widened, but it was unable to move as Setrakian lay the necklace over its head, resting it upon the creature’s shoulders.

The silver collar weighed on the
strigoi
like a chain of hundred-pound stones. Setrakian pulled over a chair just in time for Dreverhaven to collapse into it, keeping the vampire from falling to the floor. The creature’s head dipped to one side, its hands shivering helplessly in its lap.

Setrakian picked up the book—it was, in fact, a sixth-edition copy of Darwin’s
Origin of the Species
, backed and bound in Britannia silver—and dropped it back into his portmanteau. Sword in hand, he returned to the bookcase toward which the desperate Dreverhaven had lunged.

After some careful searching, wary of booby-traps, Setrakian found the trigger volume. He heard a click and felt the shelf unit give, and then shoved open the swinging wall on its rotating axis.

The smell met him first. Dreverhaven’s rear quarters were windowless and unventilated, a nest of discarded books and trash and reeking rags. But this was not the source of the most offensive stench. That came from the top floor, accessible via a blood-spattered staircase.

An operating theater, a stainless-steel table set in black tile seemingly grouted in caked human blood. Decades of grime and gore covered every surface, flies buzzing angrily around a blood-smeared meat refrigerator in the corner.

Setrakian held his breath and opened the fridge, because he had to. It contained only items of perversion, nothing of real interest. No information to further Setrakian’s quest. Setrakian realized he was becoming inured to depravity and butchering.

He returned to the creature suffering in the chair. Dreverhaven’s face had by now melted away, unveiling the
strigoi
beneath. Setrakian stepped to the windows, dawn just beginning to filter in, soon to trumpet into the apartment, cleaning it of darkness and of vampires.