Dracula Sequence - Seance For A Vampire Part 1

SIANCE FOR A VAMPIRE.

By Fred Saberhagen

Prologue.

Of course I can tell you the tale. But you should understand at the start that there are points where the telling may cause me to become rather emotional. Because I- even I, Prince Dracula-find the whole matter disturbing, even at this late date. It brought me as near to the true death as I have ever been, before or since-and in such an unexpected way! No, this affair you wish to hear about, the one involving the siances and the vampires, was not the commonplace stuff of day-to-day life. Hardly routine even in the terms of my existence, which for more than five hundred years has been-how shall I say it?-has not been dull.

It is difficult to find the words with which to characterize this chain of events. It was more than grotesque, it was fantastic. Parts of it almost unbelievable. You'll see.

Pirates, mesmerism, executions by hanging. Stolen treasure, murder, kidnapping, revenge and seduction. Women taken by force, attempts to materialize the spirits of the dead... I know what you are going to say. Everything in the above list is a bit out of the ordinary, but still the daily newspapers, those of any century you like, abound in examples. But in this case, the combination was unique. And soon you will see that I am not exaggerating about the fantasy.

Some of my hearers may not even believe in the existence of vampires, may find that elementary starting point quite beyond credibility.

Never mind. Let those who have such difficulty turn back here, before we really start; they have no imagination and no soul.

Still with me? Very good. Actually, no one besides myself can tell the tale now, but I can relate it vividly-because with your indulgence, I will allow myself a little creative lat.i.tude as regards details, and also the luxury of some help in the form of several chapters written decades ago by another eyewitness. He, this other witness, who is now in effect becoming my co-author, was your archetypical Englishman, a somewhat stolid and unimaginative chap, but also a gentleman with great respect for truth and honor.

As it happens, I was nowhere near London's Execution Dock on the June morning in 1765 when the whole fantastic business may fairly be said to have begun. However, somewhere past the halfway point between that date and this, less than a single century ago in the warm summer of 1903, I lived through the startling conclusion. In that latter post-Victorian year, I happened to be on hand when the whole affair was pieced together logically by-will you begin to doubt me if I name him?-by a certain breathing man blessed with unequaled skills in the unraveling of the grotesque and the bizarre, a friend of the above eyewitness and also a distant relative of mine. And this adventure involving vampires and siances was enough, I think, to drive the logician to retirement.

But let me start at what I will call the beginning, in 1765...

There had been laughter inside the crumbling walls of Newgate during the night; at a little past midnight, a guard in a certain h.e.l.lish corridor was ready to swear that he had just heard the soft giggle of a woman, coming from one of the condemned cells, a place where no woman could possibly have been. Naturally, at that hour all was dark inside the cages, and there was nothing that could have been called a disturbance; so the guard made no attempt to look inside.

Some hours later, when the first daylight, discouraged and rendered lifeless by these surroundings, filtered through to show the prison's stinking, grim interior, there was of course no woman to be seen. There had been no realistic possibility of anyone's pa.s.sing in or out. The cell in question contained only the prisoner, the tall, red-bearded pirate captain, still breathing, just as he was supposed to be-for a few hours yet. Breathing but otherwise silent, not giggling like a woman; no, he was still sane-poor chap.

And the guard, as little anxious as any of us ever are to seem a fool, was privately glad that he had said nothing, raised no ridiculous alarm.

No one in the prison had anything to say about impossibilities that might have been heard or seen before the dawn.

An hour or so after that same dawn, upon one of those raw, June British mornings suggestive of the month of March, a solemn procession left London's Newgate Prison.

At the heart of the grim train emerging from those iron gates there rolled a tall, heavy, open cart in which rode three doomed men, all standing erect with arms chained behind them. Their three sets of leg irons had been struck off only an hour ago by the prison blacksmith. Once out of the prison gate, the cart, departing sharply from its customary route, turned east. These prisoners had been convicted by the Admiralty Court, and as such did not at that time "go west" with the ordinary felons to hang on Tyburn Tree. Instead, a special fate awaited them.

Astride his horse at the very head of the procession was the deputy marshal of the Admiralty. Red-faced and grave, this functionary bore in prominent display the Silver Oar, almost big enough to row with, symbol of that court's authority over human activity on the high seas, even to the most distant portions of the globe. Next came the elegant coach carrying the marshal himself, resplendent in his traditional uniform, surrounded by his coachmen wearing their distinctive livery. After these, on horseback, rode a number of City officials, one or two of considerable prominence.

But whatever their station, few amid the steadily growing throng of onlookers had eyes for them, or for anyone but the central figures in the morning's drama.The high ceremonial cart in the middle of the parade came lumbering along deliberately upon great wooden wheels, which, though freshly greased, squeaked mildly. The three prisoners, standing more or less erect in the middle of the cart, had their backs to one another, and with their arms still in irons, had little choice but to lean on one another for mutual support. The executioner-Thomas Turlis in that year-and his a.s.sistant rode standing in the cart beside the prisoners, and a Newgate guard walked beside each of the great slow-turning wheels.

The cart was followed immediately by a substantial force of marshal's men and sheriffs officers, mostly afoot. These walking men had no trouble keeping up; those who calculated the time of departure from the prison had a.s.sumed that only a modest pace would be possible. The narrow, cobbled streets made progress for a large vehicle slow at best, and today, as usual, the throng of onlookers grew great enough to stop the death-cart altogether several times before the place of execution could be reached.

All three of the men who were riding to be hanged today had been convicted of the same act of piracy. The tallest of the condemned, the only one with anything exceptional in his nature or his appearance, was Alexander Ilyich Kulakov, red-haired and green-eyed, rawboned but broad-shouldered and powerful, his red beard straggling over his scarred cheeks and jaw. Kulakov was Russian, but at the moment, nationality did not matter. His Britannic Majesty's justice was about to claim all three lives impartially-none of them had any influential friends in London; quite the opposite.

The morning's procession carried its victims east, as I have said. A little over two miles east of Newgate Prison, pa.s.sing just north of the great dome of St. Paul's, through Cornhill and Whitechapel, past Tower Hill and close past the pale, gloomy bulk of the squat Tower itself, the procession would come to Wapping, a district largely composed of docks and taverns, nestled into a broad curve formed by the north bank of the Thames.

And with every rod of progress achieved by the doomed men and their escort, it seemed that the crowds increased. Last night and this morning, word had spread, as it always did, of a scheduled hanging. Hundreds went to London's various scaffolds every year, but despite the relatively commonplace nature of the event, the route of the procession was thickly lined with spectators. As often as not, when the high cart stalled in traffic, folk leaned from windows or trees to offer the condemned jugs or bottles or broken cups of liquor.

Kulakov's usual craving for strong drink seemed to have deserted him. He stared past the reaching arms and what they offered, and ignored the excited faces; but his two fellow prisoners did their best, even with their arms bound, to take advantage of the gifts. The executioners, with a practical eye to making their own job easier, a.s.sisted the pair to drink, now and again fortifying themselves from the same jug or bottle.

One of the Russian captain's former s.h.i.+pmates was well-nigh insensible with drink before the ride was over.

It was the other of the two English prisoners who, in that age when death was so often a social function, had a small handful of relatives present; these-weeping, expostulating, or stony-faced, according to their several temperaments-tagged after the cart and were jostled to the rear by the sheriffs men.

The authorities had long practice with such processions from Newgate; and this enabled them to time the arrival of the cart at Execution Dock to coincide almost precisely with the hour of low water in the tidal Thames, this being the only time when the gallows was readily accessible.

For hundreds of years, pirates and mutineers had been executed on this spot, while for occasional variety, a captain or mate would be dispatched for murderous brutality toward his own crew. On this morning, several of the fruits of last week's executions were still to be seen, each hanging in chains on its own post. Gulls and weather had already reduced the dead faces to eyeless, discolored leather and protruding bone, raking the pa.s.sing s.h.i.+ps with empty stares. Their continued presence was intended to impress the thousands of seamen on those s.h.i.+ps as examples of the Admiralty's long arm and exact justice.

The posts displaying these veteran corpses had been erected along the riverbank at various distances from the now ominously empty gallows. The latter was no more than two posts and a cross-beam, the horizontal member being not much higher than ten feet above the strip of muddy ground and gravel exposed now at low tide.

Somewhat closer to the gallows itself than were last week's bodies, another set of three stakes, also ominously empty, waited for today's victims.

Crowding nearby land and water were spectators even more numerous than those along the route. Folk of high station and low were out this morning, their numbers not much diminished by the weather, which so far had not improved. Every comfortable vantage point, and some perches fit only for the stoic or the acrobatic, had been occupied. The windows and terraces of taverns and other riverside buildings, as well as docks and jetties, were thick with onlookers. Scores of small boats pa.s.sed to and fro, or had cast anchor in the river. The current was very slow just now, with the tide about to turn. A barge moored no more than forty yards offsh.o.r.e afforded rows of seats for those willing and able to pay. At a somewhat greater distance over the broad face of the Thames, the crews and pa.s.sengers of a couple of anch.o.r.ed s.h.i.+ps presented on decks and rigging rows of pale faces. Well beyond these larger craft, the shadowy shapes of docks and buildings on the south sh.o.r.e loomed out of cold mist and drizzle.

One of the watchers, ensconced in a high-priced seat in the window of a tavern built upon a nearby promontory, was a dark-haired, smooth-skinned woman of somewhat exotic dress and remarkable appearance. Despite the sunless pallor of her skin, her countenance was undoubtedly Asiatic. Today she was keeping to a position where she herself remained inconspicuous, her pallid face shaded from even this clouded daylight. She was sharing a table-though she was not eating or drinking- with a well-dressed, well-fed, stoutish man of middle age, named Ambrose Altamont, a commoner very recently come into startling wealth. The weathered condition of Altamont's face suggested that he was no stranger to the sea and tropic suns.

The table was bare before the woman-she had a.s.sured her new patron that she was not hungry-but the man had dishes and bottles aplenty in front of him. He was dining early today, by way of celebration, on lamprey pie-then considered a rare treat-and sampling good wine.

As nearly as I can discover, Altamont at this point did not, strictly speaking, know that the woman with him was a vampire. That fact and all its implications still lay over his horizon. He certainly understood that she was strange-for several nights now he had reveled in her exotic antics in his bed. Whatever the limits of her strangeness, whatever disadvantages were yet to be discovered, here was an attractive female who gave delight and satisfaction beyond anything he had previously encountered in almost fifty years of a thoroughly unsheltered life. Altamont might well have betrayed a business partner for her favors alone-even had there been no jewels.

The creaking high wheels of the tall cart fell silent as the vehicle eased to a halt on Execution Dock. While the ma.s.sed guards cleared a s.p.a.ce of spectators, the prisoners-their bodies stiff with confinement, two of them reeling with drink, all three chain-laden-were helped down. The severely drunken man had to be lifted bodily. Then, one at a time, the sober Kulakov first, the three men were led-or carried-down through mud and gravel to the rude platform, which consisted of only a few boards laid in mud beneath the gallows.

Waiting for them at that threshold of eternity was the chaplain, Mr. Ford, Ordinary of Newgate, ready to lead repentant sinners in prayer or persuade them that they should seek divine forgiveness. No one today had thought to provide a Russian Orthodox clergyman; but if one had been present, the Russian doubtless would have snarled at him, as he did at Mr. Ford.

Under the circ.u.mstances, whatever prayers were possible for Kulakov, the first victim, were soon said. Then a ready noose was placed around his neck and he was blindfolded.

Meanwhile, at the tavern table, the pale and sheltered but vivacious lady had allowed herself to be distracted from the show by a sudden impulse to admire yet again a gift she had very recently received: a wonderful bracelet, fine gold-and-silver filigree sparkling with red rubies and clear diamonds. This masterpiece of the jeweler's art came into view upon her white and slender left wrist when she deliberately drew back her full sleeve to reveal it.

"It fits you loosely," her companion commented, his voice rich with wine and satisfaction.

"I'll not lose it. Where are the other things?" she inquired softly. "Your brother has them, perhaps?" Her voice was small but determined, her English marked with a strong accent, hard to define, but certainly as Eastern as her face.

Altamont winked at her and smiled. "They're where they'll be safe for the time being-and you may lay to that." Turning away again, he squinted, in the practiced manner of a s.h.i.+p's captain, through his sailor's bra.s.s-tubed gla.s.s at the proceedings on sh.o.r.e.Confident as Altamont was that no one could overhear their talk, he lowered his voice when he added: "My own suspicion-I've no proof of it, mind-is that they were meant as a gift for the Empress Catherine of Muscovy, from one of those nabobs in the East. Or they might have belonged to the Russian church, some of their clergy smuggling them abroad to keep them out of Her Imperial Majesty's hands. I hear Catherine's developed a taste for churchly property, as did our own dear Henry long ago." He shot his companion a sharp glance. "The Russian might have given you a better answer than I can give, as to who the first owner of your bangle was. Not that it much matters now."

The dark-haired woman did not seem to care. Indeed, her fascination with the beauty of the ornament was as apparent as her lack of interest in its origins. "Then the other things must be just as rich as this?"

The man almost sneered in his pride and his amus.e.m.e.nt. "Richer, by G.o.d! Half a dozen pieces in all, rings and necklaces, in the same style, but even more extravagant-a king's ransom. I am surprised you had no chance to see them on the voyage. You must have shared the Russian's cabin, sailing back to London."

The woman let her long sleeve drop, concealing jewels and precious metal.

"Captain Kulakov kept all well hidden."

"No doubt. I think he meant to keep such great treasure all to himself, and maybe to some of his men who knew of it. But to cheat his English partner-"* (*The details of the efforts of the pirate partners to cheat each other have never become perfectly clear, nor are they essential to our story. A perusal of Admiralty records of the time indicates that alliances between pirates and politicians were by no means as uncommon as all right-minded people would like to think. -D.) Altamont smiled and shook his head. "Well, greed, like pride, goeth before a fall. And now the Russian hath lost all; his treasure, his woman, life itself. Almost I could feel sorry for him-why are they taking so long about his stepping off?" He squinted through his gla.s.s again.

A prosperous man, Mr. Altamont, even before his recent dramatic accession of new wealth. He felt himself capable of handling even greater prosperity without undue difficulty. At the moment, his countenance was alternating between frowns at the delay and a faint expression of abstract pleasure as he s.h.i.+fted from wine to hot b.u.t.tered rum while watching from his comfortable chair.

The pallid woman remained patiently seated with him. Though the air on this June morning had turned quite mild, she was glad to shelter here indoors; in her case, it was in fact neither chill nor damp but the mild English sun that threatened.

On sh.o.r.e the experienced Thomas Turlis, and his a.s.sistant who was hardly less qualified, were proceeding about their business with deliberate speed. The junior member of the official team had already climbed to straddle the cross-beam, where he sat waiting until Turlis had guided his first victim halfway up the ladder, Kulakov's feet on the rungs awkward with the weight of chains and terror. Then, receiving from his senior's hand the loose end of the short rope already snug around the victim's neck, the a.s.sistant quickly and efficiently secured it tightly to the heavy cross-beam. The red-haired man cried out, loudly and articulately, in the last moments while he waited for the noose to choke off his breath.

"Al-ta-mont!" There followed a string of violent un-English words, sounds carrying well across the water between the two points on the curving sh.o.r.e.

"I understand very little Russian, really," the man at the table remarked comfortably. "Which no doubt is just as well."

"I un-der-stand a little, as with Ain-glish," the watching woman remarked abstractedly. "I spoke to him last night," she added after a pause. "He think he have give the jewels to you only for safekeeping, not?"

"You saw him last night?" Briefly her companion turned a puzzled but fascinated frown in her direction. "Really, I think that you did not, for you were pretty steadily with me. As I have good cause to remember, having got but little sleep." Lecherously Altamont displayed bad teeth. "But you know, I would wager my new fortune that it would not be beyond you to gain entry to a condemned cell-not when the guards are men."

"I spoke to him," the woman repeated. Not with an air of insistence, but as if she had not heard her companion's denial. "But he would not believe that I was real. I think these Russian must be very-what is word?-su-per-sti-tious." Pulling her dreamy gaze back from the sh.o.r.e, she fastened it upon the man beside her. "Will you believe me, Altamont, when I try to tell you what I am?"

He made a small noise compounded of amus.e.m.e.nt and satisfaction. "I think I understand well enough what you are. So, you visited the condemned cell, did you, and had a chat? And what do you want me to think that you told dear Alexei? That we have both betrayed him? That the jewels are all mine now, while he is come to dine today on hearty-choke and caper sauce?"

The woman very slightly shook her head. "He did not need me to tell him that you keep the jewels." Perhaps she intended to offer some explanation about her activities last night, or drop more teasing hints; but at the moment, her full attention, like that of all other watchers, had become focused on the sh.o.r.e.

For the s.p.a.ce of a held breath, the raucous cries of even the least reverent onlookers were silenced. Turlis, the older and paunchier of the hangman pair, with his feet planted solidly in mud-the planks had been disarranged in Kulakov's last awkward stumbling-took hold of the ladder and with a strong, twisting wrench, deprived the bound man of all physical support... except for that now afforded him by taut hemp, the smoothly clasping noose.

The drop was a short one, no more than three feet at the most, in this case not nearly enough to break the neck bones, to tear and quickly crush out life and consciousness from the vulnerable soft tissue of the spine and brain stem. There was only the steady, brutal pressure of the rope to squeeze the windpipe, veins, and arteries. Kulakov's powerful frame convulsed. His bound arms strained, his legs and feet moved in a spasmodic aerial ballet.Hearty-choke and caper sauce.

The fact that Kulakov had been first to be hanged meant that comparatively few among the audience were paying his prolonged death struggle as much attention as it must otherwise have received; rather, the fascinated scrutiny of the mob now rested in turn upon each of his colleagues.

Altamont commented knowingly to his companion that the knot of the rope had very likely slipped from the favored location behind the Russian's ear to behind his neck-but how could Altamont have known that, at the distance, unless he had made some private arrangement to have the knot deliberately adjusted in that wise? Trying to get the better of Altamont, as the man himself would have a.s.sured you, was likely to result in truly frightful punishment.

As for Kulakov, he had been denied his broken neck, so that he hung for a quarter of an hour, intermittently twitching and tensing in agony, all breathing not quite cut off.

"Are they not going to finish him?" Altamont's comment, coming after five minutes or so, was dryly lacking in surprise. "It would seem not."

It was common in such cases for one or both hangmen, when not entirely lacking in pity, to seize their client by the legs and drag down with their full weight upon the poor wretch's body to a.s.sist his soul on its way out of it. But at the moment, the executioners were busy. If any friends or relatives of the condemned were in attendance, that office might fall to them. But in Kulakov's case, no one had come forward with any such merciful intention.

One after the other, the two remaining pirates followed their captain to the scaffold. The executioners gave no thought to taking down the body of the first man to be hanged, until the third was dangling, and they had paused to fortify themselves with rum. The two Englishmen went quickly, so there was no need for relatives to intervene.

When, in the chief executioner's professional judgment, the third man had been well and truly hanged, he gave curt directions to his a.s.sistant. Between them, the two men loosened the knot holding the first body to the crossbar-there would be no wasteful cutting of the rope-and lowered their grim burden to the muddy sh.o.r.e.

Already the feet of the hangmen splashed in water; at this hour the lower Thames was entering that part of its unending tidal cycle in which the rising weight of ocean a few miles distant forced the river swiftly back toward its source, as if it would convey the brackish tide up into the middle of the great island.

Now Kulakov's body, hands still chained behind its back, had been dragged some twenty-five or thirty yards from the gallows, to its next temporary resting place.

There, with some difficulty, it was being chained upright, feet at ground level, to one of the three tall, empty stakes that had been driven deep into the muddy sands. By tradition, the freshly hanged at Execution Dock remained so mounted until their already lifeless lungs had been drowned thrice by the high tides.

One after the other, the Russian's now-unbreathing comrades joined him, were fastened to the trees that stood one on either side of his, forming a ghastly Golgotha.

Surely, in some of the onlookers' minds, the tableau evoked thoughts of a certain antique and much more famous triple execution. But no one commented aloud upon the fact.

By the time the dead body of the third pirate was thus displayed, and the day's task of the hangmen essentially concluded, many of those watching had gone on about their business.

But perhaps they had missed something of importance. Did a murmur of morbid excitement pa.s.s through the remaining crowd when the central one of the newly chained corpses was seen to move? Could it be that the captain and ringleader of this pirate band was still not dead after having been hanged for a quarter of an hour?

Such an event would not have been without precedent.

We will a.s.sume that Altamont, in his dry way, even commented to his companion upon the most famous such case, which some of those watching Kulakov might have seen with their own eyes-that of William Duell, executed at Tyburn a quarter of a century earlier, in 1740. Duell, though only sixteen years of age when hanged, had been widely noted for his sadism. Convicted of rape as well as murder, his body was turned over to medical anatomists... but when finally placed on the dissecting table, it displayed certain faint signs of life. The surgeons, ready to try a different experiment than that originally scheduled, applied their skills at healing and soon had the patient sitting up, drawing deep breaths and drinking warm wine.

Duell had cheated the hangman after all. Returned to Newgate, he was eventually ordered to be transported to America.

Hangings here at Execution Dock, with tide-drowning added as a flourish under Admiralty auspices, were somewhat more thorough. No one put up on one of these stakes for show had ever tasted wine again. Certainly the sharp-eyed Altamont did not find the signs of life so stubbornly displayed by today's first hanged man at all perturbing; rather amusing.

Altamont, alternately smirking and frowning over his latest gla.s.s of hot b.u.t.tered rum, made a few remarks on the case of young Duell to his fair companion, who took a somewhat different view of such phenomena.

The woman said in her abstracted way: "I think we will not have to worry about Kulakov-he will die to-day. I spent but little time with him last night."

"Oh, he'll die today, and no mistake." The man stared at her for the s.p.a.ce of several rummy breaths before adding: "Up to your mystification, are you, Doll? I've noticed you have a taste for riddles. But do go on with it-I like it well."

Altamont and the very un-English woman he called Doll-he had tried her real name once and found it unp.r.o.nounceable-remained in their snug tavern window for an hour longer, until he had made sure with his own eyes that the swiftly running tide had raised the surface of the Thames well above that pale dot of a distant, red- bearded face. Then, humming a sea song to himself and more than content with the day's events so far, the prosperous observer called for his waiting carriage, offered his arm to his woman, and leisurely took his way to the Angel Inn on the south bank, where snug, warm rooms awaited them.

Early next morning, Turlis and his helper returned to the scene to check on their most recent handiwork. June at that lat.i.tude brought full sunlight well before many folk of any cla.s.s or inclination were up and about. Both men expressed mild surprise on observing that the central stake of three was now unoccupied, the chains in which they had hanged the Russian's body for display lying in the mud below, still looped and locked together but quite empty. Surely mere tide and current could not have done this-yesterday these experts had secured their trophy well. But there were obvious explanations. Either relatives had shown up belatedly to spirit his corpse away-or someone, even in this enlightened seventh decade of the eighteenth century, had coveted morsels of hanged man's flesh as an aid to practicing the black arts of magic.

The hangmen, discussing these possibilities, were momentarily distracted by the sound of shrill feminine screaming. The sound was repeated several times, carrying readily over the water, through the bright incongruous early morning sun, all the way from the south sh.o.r.e. They were only momentarily distracted; at the river's edge in Wapping, such racket was common enough. Actually, what Turlis and his comrade heard were the screams of horror uttered by some innocent female servant who had just opened the door of a certain room in the dockside Angel Inn.

More than a hundred years would pa.s.s before any rational investigator connected that hanged man's disappearance during the night with the shocking sight that met the maid's eyes a few hours later. Not that the maid was startled by the walking undead form of Alexander Ilyich Kulakov-she was perhaps an hour too late for that.

No, she had unsuspectingly come upon a corpse much more severely mangled.

Shortly after the midnight immediately following the execution, Altamont had been awakened by something in his room. It was a supreme despair, more than terror, that choked off his first scream in his throat when he beheld what had roused him and now stood beside his bed. It was the figure of Kulakov, still wearing the prison clothes in which he had been hanged. The Russian's red beard was dripping water, his dead face a ghastly livid hue; his strangled throat, though no longer required to breathe, made croaking noises. But his limbs were free of chains, and his white hands were half-raised and twitching, groping toward the bed. The pirate's eyes, the only feature appearing to be fully alive in that corpse countenance, were fixed on Altamont.

Doll in turn was awakened by Altamont's hoa.r.s.e abandoned cry. On seeing Kulakov, she registered mild surprise-so, she had been wrong about Kulakov's dying a true death yesterday! It was obvious to her that the Russian, stimulated by her repeated attentions on the voyage and in his Newgate cell, had, after all, become a vampire instead.The woman immediately slid her compact, dark-nippled, quite un-English body naked from the bed. She smiled, and before her bedmate's uncomprehending eyes melted into mist-form and disappeared-pausing only long enough to pick up her jeweled bracelet from the bedside table, and slip it on her wrist. The bangle went with her when she vanished-we who are wont to travel in that fas.h.i.+on generally carry with us a few small items, most commonly our clothing, when we go changing forms.

Kulakov paid little attention to either the woman's presence or her departure. The red rage filling his mind concentrated his attention elsewhere. In the next moment, the hands of the undead man had fastened their icy, awkward grip on Altamont. Then the vampire-new to the powers he had been given, almost as bewildered as his victim by his own seemingly miraculous transformation, and still unsure of how to handle it-the neovampire plucked the treacherous, nights.h.i.+rted Englishman like a louse out of his bedclothes, and cast him aside with stunning force. In the next moment Kulakov, moving in a kind of somnambulistic fury, groaning and grunting foul Russian expletives, began ransacking the room in search of his stolen treasure.

Drawers, bags, and boxes were hurled about and emptied, furniture s.h.i.+fted in a grip of giant's strength. All in vain.

A moment later the searcher grunted in befuddled triumph, on discovering some small, hard objects sewn into a quilt or featherbed. Carrying his find to the moonlit window, smas.h.i.+ng the dim, smoky gla.s.s in a reflexive move to gain more light (not that his newly empowered eyes really needed any more, but Kulakov did not yet understand this fact) he ripped the cloth to shreds. Inside, to his great disappointment, the searcher discovered only sand and gravel, what was to him mere ordinary dirt. In anger he hurled the torn cloth from him, letting its worthless contents scatter into the Thames below.

It flashed across Kulakov's mind that Altamont, rather than risk carrying the treasure about with him in London, had very likely given it to his brother for safekeeping.

And he turned to complete his vengeance upon Altamont.

The doomed Englishman had turned back to the bed and now had both hands under his pillow. In a moment they were out again, not holding gems and precious metal, but newly armed with a loaded pistol and a dagger. A tough, resourceful man, old Ambrose Altamont; but both weapons very quickly proved completely useless.

There was really not much more noise-the pistol was never fired-and those among the others breathing at the Angel Inn who were awakened by m.u.f.fled screams and thumps only grumbled and went back to sleep. Soon enough-well before Kulakov really thought of trying to force him to tell where the jewels were hidden-Altamont had ceased to breathe.