Diaries Of The Family Dracul - Children Of The Vampire Part 2

LeBeau's blood had relieved the painful craving enough to allow me to savour the hunt; but as I slowly pressed towards Lyons, the smells awakened my appet.i.te again. There came the smell of copulation, of a dead man's body cooling, of a living man's heated sweat and skin and blood.

I placed my hands, feather-light, atop his shoulders. As he did not face me, there would be no chance to mesmerise-but in my newfound decadence, I had no concern for my victim's comfort.

With swift brutal force I bared my teeth and pierced the skin of Lyons' neck, felt the astringent sting of brine against my tongue.

He flailed backwards, screaming in pain and drunken terror. Zsuzsanna disengaged herself and turned towards us to watch the spectacle, b.r.e.a.s.t.s and legs still exposed as she settled comfortably against the velvet cus.h.i.+ons to watch with sensual approval.

G.o.d help me, I took vicious pleasure in his struggles. I held him fast as he thrashed against me, biting into his neck again, again, again as he fought, until the skin was slashed and hanging, until at last a great vein was pierced and began to spray blood.

It spattered Zsuzsanna's face and b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Laughing, she opened her mouth to catch the gus.h.i.+ng blood with the innocent delight of a child trying to capture a snowflake on her tongue. But I soon pressed my mouth over the life-giving stream, pulling fiercely against it, drinking until Lyons grew weak and ceased his struggles. He sagged against me, his heart beating like a trapped sparrow's.

I drank quickly, letting him drop heavily when at last he was dead. Suddenly dizzied, I staggered to the couch and fell against it, letting my head loll against the cus.h.i.+ons; the man's drunkenness made my thoughts reel.

I closed my eyes and fell into a dream. I was no longer a miserable murderer trapped in the Viennese night, but an innocently mortal man bound from Vienna to Buda-Pesth, lying on the rocking train berth beside my wife and soon-to-be-born child. Had I known what had awaited me at home, in Transylvania, I would never have returned, would have fled the continent with them both. Mary, my Mary! Unwittingly I brought you into a den of unguessable evil, and now I can only pray that you and our son are well, and safe from V. ...

In my drowsy vision, I reached towards my sleeping wife. She stirred, and the s.h.i.+ning golden lashes that fringed her pale eyelids fluttered. At last, her eyes opened, revealing that calm gla.s.sy sea of blue, and I wept at the comfort, the love offered there. I reached ...

. . . and found us both trapped in that timeless moment when, amid the screams of horses and snarls of wolves, against V.'s arrogant laughter that soon turned to a cry of dismay, she raised my father's pistol to my chest and stared deep into my eyes.

I gazed back into hers and saw terrible love and pain.Explosion. The acrid sting of sulphur. Pain that pierced my heart.

This time, I did not die but reached-and, in my desperate dream, caught her white s.h.i.+ning arms and sobbed as they reached for me in turn. She was real, solid in my arms, and as I held her, my face pressed to her sweet golden hair, wet with my cold tears, I was consumed by a pa.s.sion greater than any I had known as a living man. Even death could not still my desire for her.

I yielded to her caresses, her coaxing, and took her -or was it she who took me? My ardour was veiled by a strange, sweet languour. And at the moment of my release, her beautiful image wavered and became that of the serving-girl, Dunya.

My cry of pleasure became one of alarm. But the languour overtook me once more; there came darkness for a time, then again I fell into another strange dream of pa.s.sion. Again I reached for my wife; again, I took her, only later to remember that her face was smeared with fresh blood.

Again, I cried out to discover that the woman was not Mary. This second time, to my utter horror, it was my own sister.

My horror grew as the sense of languour evaporated and I realised that, indeed, Zsuzsanna's body was pressed against mine. I pulled away from her in unspeakable revulsion to find that we lay upon the couch; on the floor beside us-oblivious to the stiffening corpses nearby-Dunya lay snoring, her own clothing in disarray.

Zsuzsa sat up and casually began fastening her own dress, but her air of coquettish revelry had vanished; her expression was now solemn, as if for the first time that evening she had committed an act of consequence.

"You," I choked, my voice trembling with shame and fury as I covered myself, "you intentionally mesmerised me. You have done this-but why!"

The candles had all burned down; the darkness had eased to the soft grey of approaching dawn. Zsuzsa's preternaturally brilliant beauty was fading with the night. She was still lovely, fetching, but the flashes of electric indigo in her hair, the moonglow incandescence of her skin, the burnished gold in her eyes-all had dimmed so that her beauty, her radiance seemed merely mortal.

After a cautious glance at her sleeping servant, she looked back at me and replied softly, "To save you. To save us all, Kasha." And at my questioning gaze, she sighed. "You are only recently dead; V. says that, for a brief time, you might still be able to produce heirs. A child, Kasha. It is only a child-"

Only a child. I groaned with disgust that my own sister could so casually speak of sacrificing her own child-our child. Did she think that, because it was the product of incest, it was any less human, that I should love it any less? Find it any easier to condemn it to a horrific fate?

At my aghast reaction, her tone grew heated, defensive. "I was denied many things in my short life; do not deny me this. Or would you rather he tracked down your only son?"

I looked away, too overwhelmed with self-loathing to answer.

"He would have you killed," she continued quietly. "He has paid your own man to come after sunrise and destroy you, just as you paid him to destroy your victims."

"And why not you?" I asked bitterly. "Why did you not simply kill me as you lay with me, when I was helpless?"Hurt marred her lovely features, but another emotion soon eclipsed it: surprise. "Then you do not know . . ."

"Know what?"

"He cannot destroy you, Kasha, nor you him. The pact forbids it; we may die only by a human hand."

I marvelled at this in silence, until at last she said urgently, "There is no time. You must leave-"

"With you?" I wheeled on her with sudden fury. "And what fresh deception shall I expect now?"

"No." She lowered her lovely face, and for the first time, bitterness crept into her tone. "No, I am not asking that you come with me, or tell me where you are going. But I will tell you this, because whatever you may think of me, the truth is that I still love you." She looked up again. "You are too easily swayed, Kasha, too easily controlled. He has found you once, and he will find you again; he is too wily, too accomplished, too strong for you."

"If that is true," I said, "why did he not come for me himself? Why would he send you-a woman?"

"It is the price he paid for making you a vampire: He is trapped now for the span of a generation, perhaps more, on the family property in Transylvania. Nevertheless, you must prepare yourself; for even in this short time, he has taught me tricks that have allowed me to do as I will with you."

She paused, and a strange light that looked incongruous with her confidence, her beauty, came into her eye; it was only later that I identified it as fear. "You have heard of the Scholomance?"

"I have heard."

"It is no myth, Kasha. It is all true. You must go there; he would kill me if he knew I have told you. Go there. Learn, and become as strong as he is, or he will destroy you."

"If I go," I said, my face and tone hard, "I will become stronger than he. And I will see us all destroyed and sent to h.e.l.l."

Uncertainty and fear flickered over her features once more; she turned away from me and said only: "Go."

I left her then, she kneeling over sleeping Dunya to wake her; left my sister with the lonely rooms and the bloodied corpses and boarded the first train for Buda-Pesth that would take me, ultimately, to another train bound further east, for the lands beyond the forest: to Roumania, and Lake Hermanstadt, where the Devil dwells.

Listen: The thunder roars. The dragon himself calls, and I go. ...

Chapter 2.

Zsuzsanna Dracul's Diary 4 NOVEMBER 1845. I came into this world a cripple, with a hunched spine and a twisted leg. Even now in memory I hear the sound that haunted every step I took: the scuffling thump of my uneven footfall as I staggered graceless over the hard stone floors of the family estate.

As a child I knew my mother's tender love-yet knew early that the affection she bore me differed from that borne for my brothers. After she died young, I knew my father's and brother's. They adored me; oh yes, adored the pathetic doe-eyed shuffling creature, with a love tainted by pity.

Pity, that I should be homely; pity, that I would never know any other's love: surely not that of a lover, a husband, a babe of my own. So lonely did I grow that I went slightly mad and in my mind created lovers; created an imaginary companion-my dead brother Stefan, who in reality had been killed as a little boy. But in my mind, he was still alive-and not my brother, but my own child-following me faithfully from room to lonely room as I read aloud to him from books of the life beyond those walls.

For though my body was ungainly and frail, my mind was swift and robust. Thus my life was limited to academic pursuits, to letters and literature. It was uncommon for Tsepesh women to be permitted an education, but my mother was a strong woman of modern ideas, and a poetess. She taught me my letters early; by the age of eight, a few years after her death, I had mastered not only Roumanian but French and German, and Father had begun my instruction in Latin. As we grew older, Arkady and I amused ourselves with word games and conversed with each other in foreign tongues. To hide my diary from prying eyes, I began keeping it in English. And I dreamt and dreamt of the foreign lands I would never see.

How I despised mirrors then! They always revealed a girl sickly pale from never having seen the sun, never having ventured into the world beyond her stone prison. Unlovely- with features aquiline, severe, and large, longing brown eyes. And beneath that desperate face, a crooked body, the hump of one deformed shoulder rising higher than its mate.

I despise mirrors still: for now they refuse to bear witness to my transformation, showing only a void, an emptiness, in the place where I now stand. How I yearn to see my own face, my own form in my stylish new gowns, to admire myself as others do. I am perfect now- with a body straight and whole-and quite beautiful, possibly the most beautiful woman in the world. I need no mirror to confirm it: The answer is all too clearly writ in men's eyes.

Who turned the duckling into a swan?

Vlad, who during my naive human life I thought of as my father's uncle. He was sworn not to Change any of his family into immortals such as he-but he broke that promise for love of me. Love because I openly adored him; love, perhaps, because he saw the spirit entrapped within the body.

He woke me to this new life with a kiss; and paid a price for breaking the covenant-the loss of control over my brother's mind. This put him in jeopardy, for once Arkady became impossible to manipulate, he tried to flee-and Vlad's very existence was threatened.

But Vlad willingly paid the price and became my lover. He wooed me, sought me, led me gently over the precipice of death into a life more brilliant than I could ever have imagined.

I am immortal now; because of him, there is no fear of death, no aging, no suffering (except the hunger), no crippled limbs. There is only beauty, the sensual thrill of the seduction and the kill, the reality that I am admired, adored, l.u.s.ted after, loved.

And when I learnt that, during my first Changed year, there was a chance I could become with child, I took as many human lovers as I could. But I fear I am already barren. . . . Even so, I shall take men as often as I wish. I will be denied no pleasure; not the caress of a lover, and someday, too, I shall find a way to have my child.

It is Vlad who ended the anguish that was my human life and gave me this new and s.h.i.+ning sensual existence. I cannot deny him my love or my grat.i.tude -even if he were to turn on me one day in hatred. I shall always owe him that.

And he denies me nothing. He delights in buying me finery, in spoiling me, delights daily in my beauty. Only one conflict lies between us: my brother Arkady, known to me as Kasha.

Because of what he has done for me, I love Vlad; because of what he has done to my brother and father, I hate him. For Vlad's survival depends upon the d.a.m.nation of my brother's soul-as it depended on the d.a.m.nation of my father, my grandfather, and all firstborn Tsepesh males before him. Each generation's corruption purchases him an extension of life and power.

But the covenant forbade him to make vampires of those of his family. Just as he paid a price to make me as I am, so he has paid a heavier toll for making Kasha an immortal: Vlad is trapped now on his ancestral land and cannot leave it for the span of roughly twenty-five years.

At the same time, he says he now has only that same amount of time: one generation in which to dispatch poor Kasha, thus delivering his corrupted soul- or we will both lose our immortality, our power, our beauty . . . and perish. Since Vlad cannot leave Transylvania, he must rely on me and others to achieve his goal.

Only a generation . . . But my brother was my dearest friend; how shall I allow harm to come to him?

The recourse is to indulge myself for that time and hope that, when that generation is past, I can gracefully surrender this sparkling life along with him who gave it to me. Of course, the danger is that Arkady will grow too strong before then and destroy Vlad, my saviour and first lover-a love that, unlike Kasha's, was never darkened by pity.

And if I do permit Vlad's destruction (after all, I have given my brother the means to become a worthy adversary)-what shall become of me? Vlad is my creator; will the death of my G.o.d bring my own? Or does he lie when he says his demise means mine?

The only solution is to protect them both for as long as I can.

Even so, I fear Vlad will have me destroyed if he discovers the truth of what happened in Vienna. He cannot harm me himself, but he can always instruct a hired mortal. Of course, he has failed to find anyone of suitable mental strength and skill willing to risk life and afterlife to destroy a vampire; but someday he will find such a one, if my brother does not discover that strong soul first.

But I shall never tell him how much I revealed to my brother; and Kasha surely will not, and Dunya knows nothing, poor thing.

I wept upon my return to Transylvania. Vienna was paradise: such beauty and riches and opulence as I had never seen in my brief sheltered existence. As a mortal woman I was always too sickly to travel, had never been beyond the walls of the family estate. Vienna was only a dream, a fairy tale recounted by my father and brother.

But now I have seen for myself the bustling streets, the fine apparel, the pastries as decorative as tiny jewels, the grand opera houses. And the people that attended them-ah, the people! Warm and clean and fragrant, attired in satins and silks and diamonds like royalty, prettier than the pastries and far more toothsome. To sit in the opera as one of them, to inhale their scent- the scent of young strong blood flavoured with rich cuisine, the finest wines-and feel the presence of all those warm beating hearts was pure intoxication for me.

And the men-the men! Every male eye in every crowd looked on me with longing. I had my pick of them, thinking all the while, Surely this is life!

And if I could experience it only as one dead and d.a.m.ned-well then, dead and d.a.m.ned let me remain.

But this castle is so dull and dark and silent by contrast, especially now that the servants have all gone. The entire village surrounding us lies deserted, empty because Vlad dared break the covenant by transforming me into an immortal. In their foolishness, the peasants feared he would break his agreement with them and begin to prey on them.

So they all fled, and we are alone, forced to rely on our own wits to survive. And the castle grows more desolate and in need of repair each day. I find myself staring out its windows towards the Borgo Pa.s.s, praying to catch sight of a carriage filled with warm blood and beating hearts. . . . But soon the snow will render it impa.s.sable. There will be only one more visitor until the spring.

One more visitor. In the meantime, the underground cellar lies empty. Had my brother fulfilled his role in the family's covenant with Vlad, the cellar's prison would now be filled with visitors, ensuring an adequate supply over the coldest, bleakest months.

As it is, it seems we will starve . . . and grow weak-and hideous.

Writing this makes me want to take the horses and flee back to the city, makes me wish (guiltily) that I had never warned poor Kasha, for my generosity towards him may be my undoing. How shall I bear losing my beauty now?

I understand all too well Vlad's desire to go to London. Transylvania seems less hospitable every day; travellers grow fewer, despite continuing good weather. To be back in a large city again, with streets full of warm, unwitting people . . .

We should have gone to England long ago-yet Kasha's very existence makes it impossible for us to leave. Vlad will remain trapped in Transylvania until his agents manage to destroy my brother-or until he perishes at the end of twenty years' time.

Perhaps I could have freed Vlad by doing as he wished in Vienna, by sending in the mercenary mortals to kill Kasha. But they, too, were badly trained, of small minds that could focus on nothing but the gold that awaited them once the task was complete.

Shall I be the tool that destroys my own brother?

No. Not yet, at least . . . not yet. At the same time, I am not ready to give up this exquisite new existence; so I am bound to protect Vlad as well. I will harm none of my kin.

I arrived at the castle to-night full of sadness and exhilaration-and hunger. It had been an arduous journey home, much of it by wagon. Our driver refused to take us farther than the Borgo Pa.s.s and from there departed for Bucovina, whilst Dunya and Jean and I were left with a wagon and horses (provided for us by Vlad) to fend for ourselves.

Dunya is st.u.r.dy but small and haggard after the long trip; and Jean was spent after all our arduous nights together and my surrept.i.tious sips from his strong, sweet throat. So when night fell, I rose to take the reins while the two mortals slept heavily. The horses' fright of me served to make our pace swifter, and soon we were home. I roused Dunya, then carried sleeping Jean to the guest quarters.I should have kept him near me; leaving him unguarded was a grievous mistake. But I was drowsy after my journey, for I had taken every opportunity to drink my fill of blood. I had done so that evening as well, upon the Bistritz coach, from an elderly Hungarian man (though the poor driver certainly never realised, I am sure, until after he arrived in Bucovina, that his one remaining pa.s.senger was stone dead!) So replete and eager for rest was I that I took my latest mortal paramour not to the upstairs chambers but to one rarely used on the ground floor. (And in truth, I hoped that this would serve to delay Vlad's discovery of him until I had risen.) I, rather than go to the innermost chamber to sleep in my coffin alongside Vlad's, staggered to the nearest casket- down in the cellar.

There I slept until the following night; then I rose -late, some time after sunset-and found, to my dismay, Jean missing from his room. I knew at once I had failed to protect him from Vlad's predilection for torture; nevertheless, I roused Dunya and insisted she accompany me to the throne room. She was reluctant, fearful to do so, but I knew Vlad would insist upon it.

He was in his inner chamber, as I knew he would be, seated upon his throne.

When Arkady left us, Vlad had been as young and beautiful as Kasha. Now he is still strikingly handsome, still possessed of a haunting resemblance to my brother with his pale hawkish features, his coal-black brows, his large upward-slanting eyes. But there the resemblance ends, for the past months have seen him ill-nourished and aging: his once jet- coloured hair is heavily streaked now with iron, and the lines are returning to his face. (I fear so: How soon shall the same happen to me over the long, barren winter?) There are more differences than mere age between my ancestor and brother. Vlad's lips are thinner, crueller, and more sensual, and his eyes are unlike any others I have seen: the deep evergreen of the forest, heavy-lidded and thickly lashed.

To-night they were full of that peculiar, predatory light I have so come to despise.

As I swung open the great door that separates his chambers from the rest of the castle, with Dunya clutching my skirts like a frightened child, he called out.

"Ah, Zsuzsanna! You are in time to enjoy the entertainment our guest has provided-thanks to your thoughtfulness!"

He was quite right in understanding that I had brought him a gift from Vienna-how could I not, after his generosity to me? But I had hoped to indulge myself with poor Jean once more before Vlad had his way. . . .

I entered swiftly, holding Dunya on my right to s.h.i.+eld her from the distressing sight to the left: the black velvet curtains were parted, to reveal the occupied theatre of death with its black iron manacles, its chains, strappado, rack, stakes.

We crossed to where he sat, in full view of that grisly theatre, upon a platform of dark, polished wood, inlaid in gold with the words JUSTUS ET PIUS, just and faithful. Above, upon the wall, hung a centuries-old s.h.i.+eld, crumbling with age, adorned with a barely discernible winged dragon: the symbol of the Impaler.

I ascended the three steps leading up to the throne and presented my cheek for his cold kiss.

"My darling!" he murmured, taking my hand to study me with honest appreciation from arm's length- the appreciation of both a doting patriarch and a pa.s.sionate lover-and for an instant I remembered why I loved him. "Look how ravis.h.i.+ng you are!"I smiled, knowing that his compliment was sincere; I had fed so well in Vienna that without the aid of mirrors I could sense my own beauty, my magnetism, increase. For the first time in many months, I saw an appet.i.te for me, and me alone, in his eyes.

But our pa.s.sion for each other has faded since my Change. We have made cold love, yes, when the thrill of the hunt and the kill has enflamed us and our human prey has crossed the great abyss. (I am a vampire, but not a fetis.h.i.+st; I take no pleasure in loving the dead.) But his need is to dominate, to rule, to enslave, to strike fear, not to pleasure. And my desire is sparked by the presence of warmth and the scent of blood, my greatest excitement found in the link among hunger and l.u.s.t and death. And when I have taken from my lover his very essence, all his warmth, all his life-then my love cools as rapidly as his flesh.

Still I smiled at Vlad, twirling to better show off my new dress of silvery silk and satin, the handicraft of a Viennese dressmaker. He admired it but an instant, then gazed beyond me at the poor mortal suspended, naked, from the manacles. "Monsieur Belmonde," he cried aloud in French, "I believe you are already quite familiar with my niece-and consort- Zsuzsanna. Is she not lovely?"

Reluctantly I turned and faced the piteous, terrified visage of our guest. My poor Jean, hung spread-eagled and trembling against the bloodstained stone! He had been such a dandy, a gigolo, an aspiring man looking for his fortune, hoping it would come easily once he wed the wealthy princess I claimed to be-and in fact am. Under pretense of an impending marriage, I lured him here to meet the family-but in a way quite different from that he envisioned.

And in Vienna on carriages, across eastern Europe upon trains, in wagons-lits and rocking compartments and even upon the diligence from Bistritz, I partook without shame of his lean well-muscled body and his blood: now they were revealed for the others to admire as well.

Chained to the grey stone wall, he hung from his wrists, head lolling, ribcage protruding like a crucified Christ: such a handsome young man, fair-haired, fair-skinned, with pale eyes wild with horror and that beautiful body that never failed to spark my hunger and desire.

But his ribs were striped red; he had been lashed. The game had already begun; ominously, his ankles, too, had been manacled so that his legs were spread wide apart.

"Beloved!" he cried, straining against his fetters to reveal even more muscle, to reveal white, even teeth inside the full, sh.e.l.l-pink lips I longed to kiss again. The manacles clattered against the stone. "My Zsuzsanna! For the love of G.o.d, help me! Help me!"