Lycanthropos (29 page)

"I warn you…" Janus began, and then he was struck by the stabbing pain that signaled the onset of the change. He screamed and fell to the floor, where he was joined a moment later by Claudia, who doubled over and writhed beside him,
shrieking in agony.

"Poorly timed, don't you think?" the vampire asked. "You
did not plan this well, my poor
Vroloki
. You should have waited a few nights, waited for the moon to pass from its fullness. We might then have had a longer conversation, for all the good it would have done you." He watched with amused and curious detachment as their limbs and faces and
flesh and bones bent and crackled and bled and shuddered and
changed. "You know, I've known about your type of creature
for quite a while, but I've never had the opportunity to see
one of you in the flesh." His cadaverous brow furrowed
thoughtfully.
"I'm
something of a shapechanger myself, you
know...one of the powers granted me by the Dark Lord in
exchange for my soul..." He pursed his lips and nodded. "Yes. Yes, indeed. I do believe I'll have a try at this.
Bats, rats, flies, mist, wind, dust, they all have their
uses. But
this!"
He opened his eyes wide as the werewolves
raised themselves unsteadily to their feet. "This is delightful! Most impressive, my dear
Vroloki
, most impressive indeed!"

The werewolves leaped at him as with one motion, but the vampire himself leaped upward and shrank himself into the form of a bat before their talons could reach his undead flesh. The bat flew up and attached itself to one of the huge rafters that supported the high ceiling of the vault, and in an instant the vampire himself was hanging from the ceiling, his hands and feet clinging to the wood and stone as if he were a spider. He looked down with calm curiosity as the werewolves jumped at him and raked the empty air with their claws, but the rafters were forty feet from the floor of the huge subterranean crypt and the creatures could not reach him. He spoke to them in tones of quiet amusement as they leaped again and again, until at last they stood motionless beneath him, looking up at him and growling angrily. The vampire appraised them, studied them, making
note of their form and their movements. Then, satisfied that
he had observed all he needed to observe, he released
himself from his position and fell downward. Before his feet
touched the stone floor he had changed himself into a creature indistinguishable from his two would-be attackers.

The two werewolves looked with confusion at the third,
their dim mentalities unable to understand what had happened. There
had
been prey, of that they were certain; but now another of their kind stood before them, growling like them, looking like them, smelling like them. They looked at the third werewolf for a few moments and then followed the instincts of their kind and ran from the room
to seek out human flesh and human blood.

The vampire resumed his customary shape after they left
him and, after emitting an amused grunt, went himself in
search of his nightly bread.

The sky of the deep, starless night was black but for the brilliant moon which gazed impassively down upon the landscape so replete with misery and death, and even the sounds of the nocturnal forest animals were momentarily hushed by the strange, piercing, frenzied howls which
drifted through the darkness. The sound of the flapping of
leathery wings was, of course, nothing new to them; that
particular harbinger of death was a permanent fixture of
the Transylvanian night. It had been so ever since the
Wallachian prince had been killed by the Turks one hundred
and forty years before.

The night moved slowly on toward sunrise, and the wreathes of garlic and sanctified crucifixes hung on the
locked and bolted windows and doors of straw huts and marble
palaces alike as peasant, burgher and noble slept fitfully,
tormented by dreams of the undead. They, at least, were safe
from the
nosferatu
, but there were always unwary travelers and foolish skeptics and ignorant foreigners who were able
to provide sustenance for the dark prince and his wives; and
sunrise showed the people that even garlic and crucifixes and prayers to Christ and His Mother had not sufficed to
protect them from the
hell
spawn which had ripped and torn and devoured their neighbors.

Sunrise
found Janus Chaldian and Claudia laying in the snow a league from the castle of the vampire. Claudia awakened shortly after Janus, and she rose to find him gazing up at the outline of the fortress against the gray
sky of winter dawn. She took a few handfuls of snow and used
it to wash the blood from her mouth and hands before walking over to him. "Shall we destroy him, Janus?"

"Hmmm?"

"Shall we do as we threatened? Shall we destroy him?"

Janus paused thoughtfully and then shook his head. "No.
For what purpose?"

"To keep him from killing!"

He laughed sadly. "Yes, let us execute the sheep thief so that we can slaughter all the lambs ourselves."

"But he is evil, Janus."

"And are we good?"

She sighed. "At least we cannot help ourselves. He can."

Janus shook his head again. "We don't know that, Claudia. I don't know anything, not really. I don't know what good and evil are anymore. I cannot judge, I cannot act, I cannot reason. All I can do is hope for death." He
turned to her. "If you wish to destroy him, go ahead.
I'll
wait for you here."

She looked up at the distant castle for a few moments and then shook her head. "No. It would not help me to die."

"No." he agreed. "It would not."
She sighed again. "Where shall we go, Janus?"

He shrugged. "What does it matter?"

He began to walk sadly away from the spot where they had awakened, and she followed close behind him at the same funereal pace. They had nowhere in particular to go, but walking seemed preferable to sitting; at least it helped to ward off the annoying, if harmless, cold.

For years they continued to wander aimlessly about the Romanian provinces, stopping only on the nights of the full moon, stopping only to murder. Eventually they wandered
into
Hungary
in the realm of the Hapsburgs,
and from there through the states of the German Empire into the
Kingdom
of
France
. It was five years after their encounter with the vampire that they found themselves brought before the Inquisition at Poligny, accused of werewolvery. And in all that time, as it had been throughout the unremembered centuries before, as it was to be throughout the long centuries to come, their lives were
nothing more than a monotonous cycle of sorrow and pain and
murder, and sorrow and pain and murder, and sorrow and pain
and murder.

"Who are we, Janus?" Claudia would ask over and over
again.

"I don't know, Claudia," he would reply.

"Did you make me what I am?"

"I don't know."

"Why can't we die, Janus? Why can't we die?"

"I don't know, Claudia. I don't know..."

 

The next cycle of the full moon was three weeks away.

Colonel Helmuth Schlacht studied himself in the mirror that
hung upon the wall of his quarters, and he liked what
he saw. He remembered the flush of pride he had experienced ten years before when first he donned the black uniform of
the S.S. and looked into a mirror to see himself attired as
one of the Nazi elite. The sensation of power and pride which had come over him at that moment had not diminished with the passing of years. Indeed, it had grown stronger as the S.S. had grown stronger, as the Third Reich had grown
stronger.

Satisfied of his appearance, Schlacht left the sumptuous suite of rooms on the top floor of the
Ragoczy
Palace
that he had designated as his quarters and walked briskly down the marble staircase until he reached the ballroom on the ground floor. He walked in and surveyed the preparations. The Hungarian staff had followed their orders to the letter, and the aromas of the great variety of hot, appetizing foods which were even now being brought into the
room for the buffet mingled pleasantly with the scent of the
hundreds of flowers on the tables.
Good
, Schlacht thought.
Excellent
.

Corporal Vogel approached him and saluted. After returning the salute, Schlacht asked, "Have the guests begun
to arrive?"

"
Jawohl
, Herr Colonel," Vogel replied. "They are being escorted here at this very moment."

"Good," Schlacht nodded. "I wish to be informed as soon as
Reichsführer
Himmler is here." He began to tell Vogel something else, but then he heard the sounds of footsteps and turned to see Admiral Horthy, the one-time regent of the
Kingdom
of
Hungary
and a loyal if fractious puppet of the Third Reich, smiling and drawing near.
Time to begin to play
host
, Schlacht thought.

When Schlacht had received a communiqué from Heinrich Himmler three days earlier informing him that the chief of the S.S. would be visiting him in
Budapest
, Schlacht had decided to take advantage of the opportunity to hold a reception for him in the
Ragoczy
Palace
. The war
so absorbed the energy and attention of all of them that the
pleasures of social life seemed a distant memory, and Schlacht felt that he both needed and deserved a party.

The guest list included all of the noble families of the Magyar aristocracy who, though disestablished by war and revolution over two decades earlier, still possessed wealth and prestige and influence and the
je ne sais quoi
of bearing and demeanor that was the common possession of all the old aristocracies of
Europe
. The Nazi elite of the
occupation forces in Hungary...
no
, Schlacht reminded
himself,
the German allied forces assisting the Magyars
...were also
invited, along with their wives, as were the diplomats from Italy, Finland, Sweden, Romania, Spain, and all the others nations which still maintained missions in Budapest. Gottfried von Weyrauch was invited also. Louisa von Weyrauch was not, a fact which afforded her nothing but relief.

Soon the ballroom was filled with people, and the musicians in the corner of the room farthest from the door
played Hayden's String quartet in C major as a background to
the conviviality. Schlacht thought himself the perfect host as he moved around the room, making introductions, engaging in light and superficial conversation, flirting easily with
the women and discussing war and politics with the men.

A movement near the large open doors of the ballroom
caught his eye, and he turned to see a stunningly beautiful
woman in a long black silk evening gown entering the room. It took him a moment to realize that the woman was Petra Loewenstein. Schlacht smiled and walked over to meet her in the middle of the dance floor saying, "Fräulein, you look
absolutely ravishing!"

She returned his smile and held out her hand for him to kiss as he bowed slightly. "Why, thank you, Herr Colonel. And thank you for the invitation as well."

"It is my pleasure," he replied honestly. "Had I known
that such beauty existed on my staff, I would have held social gatherings such as this more frequently."

She laughed. "An error easily corrected, I think."

"We must not hide you away in the laboratory, my dear," Schlacht said, his eyes twinkling. "This gown flatters you much more than does your white lab coat."

"Yes, but it is so unjust. Herr Colonel, that you look
as handsome in your dress uniform as you do in anything
else."

Schlacht continued the flirtatious repartee as he studied her more closely. The sides of her long black hair had been rolled up tightly against her temples and the back
had been pulled into a chignon. The effect was to accentuate
her high cheekbones and long white neck. Her gown, which shimmered in the light from the chandelier, was low cut and hugged her lithe form from shoulder to mid-thigh, where it billowed out slightly to an inch from the floor. Her makeup was understated to a delightful effect, and the single golden chain which hung from her neck contrasted delightfully with the ivory hue of her skin and the jet black of her gown. Schlacht found himself momentarily at a loss for something to say, so he simply repeated, "You look
absolutely ravishing!"

The restatement was so obviously honest that
Petra
flushed slightly and lowered her eyes. "Herr Colonel, please! You will turn my head!"

Schlacht began to say that such a movement would afford him the pleasure of watching her from behind when he saw Vogel waving at him and pointing out into the hallway. "I
believe that the
Reichsführer
has arrived, Fräulein. Shall
we go and greet him?" He extended his arm to her.