“You worry too much.”
“I worry to survive.”
Julia looked at Marieko thoughtfully. “I’ve been noticing, you really are a lot like Victor.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
She looked down at the corpse of the boy in his bloodstained fancy dress. To simply leave him there went against the grain of all her training and upbringing, not to mention her innate orderly neatness, but she knew she had no choice. “I’ll go to my room and get my things. We should leave as soon as we can.”
Outside in the corridor she decided, before getting the bag out of her room, she should first check on Columbine. She rapped on the door of her room. After a few moments the door opened, and Columbine, still in her bloody lingerie, stood in the doorway, leaning heavily on the frame, a half-burned cigarette in her left hand. One look told Marieko something was very amiss. “You look sick.”
Columbine nodded. “Don’t say anything to the others—I think there’s something wrong with me.”
“Was the boy’s blood tainted?”
Columbine shook her head. “It’s as though all the energy is somehow being drained out of me.”
“But you just fed.”
“I know, and it doesn’t seem to have made any difference.”
“The chained were the lucky ones.”
“How so?”
“The chained knew to the second when their existence would end. The ones who were simply turned loose and locked out prolonged their own agony. They squirmed, they tried to hide, they cowered in the very last patch of shadow as their flesh singed and smoked. Of course, there were others who simply jumped.”
Fenrior had led Renquist up innumerable flights of spiraling stone stairs until they came out of a section of flat roof between two much taller towers, and the roof turned out to be a place of execution. A charred and rusting cage of upright iron bars, steel bands, and chains, all bolted down to a solid block of granite, stood in the middle of the otherwise open area, clearly designed to hold a kneeling nosferatu. “You chained the condemned out here to wait for the coming of the sun?”
“Every community needs its supreme sanction. Even among the Children of the Mist, there have been those who became dangerous and unmanageable. Don’t tell me you haven’t done the same.”
“Most times it was in single combat. I never held organized executions.”
“In a clan of this size, I could spend all my time in single combat if that were the only way to maintain order. Fenrior grew large enough to require its own code of enforcement.”
Renquist walked to the edge of the roof. The drop to the rocks beneath, at the edge of the lake, was at least 150 feet. “The fall might not be enough to destroy a strong nosferatu.”
“No, but it broke their bones and made it hard for them to move. And even if they should land in shadow and recover the strength to run, where would they go with the sun all round them?”
“Into the waters of the lake?”
“The waters of the lake are relatively shallow around the island. The sun would penetrate, and the condemned would slowly cook. That’s why I say the chained were the lucky ones. They did not have to meet their end pursuing pointless choices that only delayed the inevitable.”
As he looked into the abyss, Renquist wasn’t sure why Fenrior had felt the need to show him his personal Tyburne. Was it to counter his warning of what might happen if Lupo came, or was it a simple reminder of the lord’s authority? Either way, he really didn’t need to have bothered. Enough of an abyss was already yawning in front of Renquist. When Fenrior had announced he had been monitoring the sleeping Merlin for more than a century, a whole new depth to the situation had opened up. “What I don’t understand is, when you knew the Urshu slept beneath Morton Downs, why didn’t you tell anyone?”
“Aside from the natural undead inclination to cling to secrets?”
“Aside from that.”
“I suppose I could have told others of our community, but to what end? While the Urshu slept, there was nothing to be done, and if others knew, inevitably curiosity would get the better of one faction or another, and a move would be made to dig the thing up. I knew, in its own good time, it would eventually waken. That seemed to be the time to contact someone like yourself. Unfortunately the process of waking turned out to be much faster that I ever anticipated. I believe the humans disturbed it. I had no warning that damned Campion and his people would start digging into the mound.”
“But you’d been regularly observing it.”
“We had made a tradition of it. On the eve of every quarter day, either Gallowglass or I would formally use our vision to make sure it was still sleeping. We also paid very special attention when anything unusual happened
near Morton Downs. I was especially concerned when Dashwood moved into Ravenkeep, first with her human husband, and then with her companions. At first I was convinced she knew something and had plans for the burial site, but nothing happened. It was only later I discovered that Columbine wasn’t capable of anything as coherent as plans, and was too self-absorbed to notice a sleeping Urshu only a few miles from her.”
“And all that time, the Urshu slept unchanging?”
“I thought I detected a slight change when de Richleau was conducting his experiments during the War against the Nazis, but it passed quickly and then returned to normal, so I was never sure.” Fenrior smiled. “And I also observed you, Renquist, skulking in the bushes, watching de Richleau for the Undead Cartel.”
Fenrior was very well informed, but Renquist refused to be awed by what the lord was telling him. Instead he focused on what he was not being told. “You still haven’t explained why you think it necessary to kill the Merlin.”
Fenrior paused before answering. He began ushering Renquist away from the execution site and back inside the castle. “It’s hard to explain an instinct.”
Renquist was as gentle as he could be with the lord. His hesitation told of a deep-seated fear. “Perhaps not to me. I don’t demand a rational reason for everything.”
Fenrior indicated they should continue to climb. “There is a high turret where sometimes I go to watch the approach of the dawn, just to see how long I can stand it.
Was that what had happened to Fenrior’s eyes? Had he stood it for too long? Renquist had heard of other nosferatu who had developed a fixation about trying to see the sun—and finished up blinding themselves. Fenrior could obviously still see, but had he so damaged his eyes he felt the need to hide them? For a while they climbed in silence before Fenrior finally spoke again. “On one level, it’s simply self-preservation. We live well
here, Victor Renquist. For how long I don’t know. The modern world encroaches, although we pretend it doesn’t.”
They reached the top of the last flight of spiral steps and came out onto the flat roof of a circular tower. Fenrior gestured to the moonlit lake and the majesty of the surrounding mountains. “Would you want to give all this up?”
“Of course not.”
“Sooner or later it will end, but I would rather it were later than sooner. I am convinced Taliesin is a threat. Any disturbance is a threat, and I believe he will be a major rupture in the world in which we both dwell. Certain texts in history bear me out. All my reading would seem to indicate conflict has always broken out between Urshu and nosferatu wherever they have been in contact with each other.”
Renquist nodded. “The obvious example is the confrontation between Tezcatilpoca and Quetzalcoatl when Quetzalcoatl was driven out of Mexico. There’s little doubt Quetzalcoatl was Urshu and Tezcatilpoca one of our kind. Tezcatilpoca quite literally means the ‘smoking mirror,’ and has always been portrayed in human accounts as a malevolent god who demanded blood sacrifice.”
“He has certainly always sounded like one of ours.”
“In the Chinese writings of the Hung League we also find the
kiang-shi
, fully identified as nosfertatu constantly at war with Urshu-like beings who stand as the protectors of humanity.”
“The Urshu have always taken the part of the humans, usually to our cost, and I mean to see it doesn’t happen here.”
“But you will observe him first.”
“Of course.”
“There’s something I think I’m obliged to tell you.”
“What’s that?”
“I believe an unfortunate link may exist between Columbine Dashwood and the Merlin.”
Fenrior had apparently been there already. “We detected the establishment of such a link soon after Campion began his delving. We’ve been monitoring it ever since. It would seem to have grown progressively stronger. You have a theory?”
“Miss Dashwood believes she has been selected as his consort for this period of his waking. She sees herself as his modern Morgan le Fey.”
Again Fenrior’s glasses glittered. “And do you agree with this hypothesis?”
“Not in the least. For an Urshu to select Columbine as a consort would reflect very poorly on the taste, intelligence, and perception of the Urshu in question, and Taliesin is not remembered in legend for his stupidity. I believe, as the waking process began, he unconsciously cast around for something genetically familiar, something from his heritage, something other than human, a trace, no matter how diluted, of a Nephilim legacy.”
“And she was the first he found as he extended the radius of his search?”
“Exactly.”
“So what would be the purpose of such a linkage?”
Renquist shook his head. “It’s obvious an exchange of energy of some kind, but beyond that, I don’t have a clue. My feeling is, however, that she is somehow intimately connected with Taliesin’s waking.”
Fenrior smiled. “Then maybe it’s just as well she appears to be on her way here?”
Renquist wasn’t surprised. He’d had a feeling Columbine might follow him to Scotland. “Right now?”
“Gallowglass is observing her progress. She is traveling by road with three companions, three nosferatu.”
Now Renquist was surprised and also puzzled. Three companions? Who was the fourth? He could hardly believe Lupo would chose to throw in his lot with Columbine’s troika. Indeed, it was so out of character, it
scarcely seemed possible. Had someone else come from California? Julia? Renquist shuddered to think what havoc Julia might contribute to this already complicated cat’s cradle of tensions. He was about to question Fenrior about this extra nosferatu when, with Shakespearean timing, a messenger called from below. “M’ lord! Word is come from Gallowglass. Something is happening to the Merlin.”
R
enquist didn’t know if he was amazed, aghast, or wanted to laugh out loud. After following Fenrior down endless steps and through a network of tunnels—in which each turn and intersection was crowded with an increasing security presence of armed Highlanders—he found himself in what resembled a perfect amalgam of the laboratories of all the Hollywood mad scientists of the previous eighty years. If Fu Manchu, Frankenstein, Auric Goldfinger, and Fester Addams had conspired to design the playroom of their dreams, inside a set supplied by Rotwang from Fritz Lang’s
Metropolis
, they might have come up with something very close to the complex Fenrior had devised to accommodate the waking of Merlin. As Fenrior and Renquist entered, followed by the messenger and a number of Highlanders, the lord gestured with hasty pride to the intricate systems of electrical circuitry, oiled machinery, dancing needles on VU meters, and at least three generations of computers.
“You can doubtless see I have applied myself to this problem for some time.”
The dungeon he had entered was, as far as Renquist could tell, deep beneath the castle, and the massive pillars that made the spacious interior resemble a stone forest seemed to support the weight of the entire building. Renquist decided the most diplomatic reaction was to act as if awed while quietly attempting to discover if all around him made any sense, or was just the product of an advanced undead madness. Fenrior had obviously had a very long time to think about this moment, and Renquist knew he had to take care not to confuse an understandable obsession with out-and-out insanity. The laboratory was nothing if not impressive. Great induction coils ran from floor to ceiling. Purple arcs of static electricity crackled between the poles of massive circuit breakers. Tall vacuum tubes, the size of wine casks, glowed in the confusion, and lights flashed on control panels dating back to the 1940s and the Manhattan Project. Overhead, cables drooped from ceramic insulators, looping between the stumpy stalactites created by centuries of moisture seeping down through the stonework, while more thick powerfeeds, with heavy-duty rubber sheathing, snaked across the floor. Cranks turned and gears engaged, and two thralls worked behind a concrete and cinder-block radiation screen, powering up an elderly X-ray machine. With the kind of incongruity typical of all of the Castle Fenrior, the scene was lit not only by electric bulbs and neon tubes, but also burning torches set in cressets in wall and pillar, which lent a certain flavor of an alchemist’s lair from the fifteenth century.
Despite his obvious pride in his accomplishments, Fenrior allowed Renquist no time to linger or observe. He hurried to the epicenter of all the towering hardware, where, in the blaze of banked floodlights, the Urshu cocoon reposed on a raised rectangle of flat steel, which could have been an operating table or an advanced instrument
of torture. Gallowglass stood looking down at the cocoon, as did two other undead with the distinctive Fenrior red hair, but dressed in contemporary clothing and white lab coats, who flanked a small, completely bald nosferatu with poached egg eyes and an Austrian accent. Fenrior didn’t have to ask the nature of the problem. It was immediately obvious. The hairline cracks on the cocoon that Marieko had originally noticed inside the tomb were now gaping fissures, and viscous colorless liquid was oozing from them. Fenrior looked first to Renquist. “What do you make of this? Is this part of the process, or do we have a problem?”
Renquist was at a loss. “I’d hesitate to guess. If the cocoon was simply fragmenting, like a breaking egg, I’d say Taliesin was well on the way to some kind of consciousness, but this glop would suggest that it was trying to reseal itself. We have to face the possibility that it was damaged in transit, or even when Duncanon and his lads broke the spikes off so they could get it down the tunnel at Morton Downs.”
Fenrior’s aura flashed angrily. “Are you telling me I was wrong to move it.”
Renquist shrugged. “I didn’t have to make that judgment call. Ideally it should have been left where it was, but that would have meant leaving it to the humans, and they would definitely have moved it. On the other hand, it could merely be some kind of amnionic fluid, and the waking is proceeding quite normally. What do either of us know, after all, about the finer metamorphic details of the Urshu? I fear all we can do is once again wait.”
“I’ve waited a long time for the Merlin to wake.”
Renquist looked round at the strangely assorted technology. “How long has this place been under construction?”
“I first discussed the possibility of the wakening of an Urshu with Nikola Tesla in the early 1920s. He was still depressed at the time. His deathray experiment had blown up the Tunguska region in Siberia, the U.S. Navy
had refused to believe in his robot submarine, and the electricity cartels had crushed his plans for free broadcast power. He was, however, able to design a device to draw off any surplus psychic energy.”
Fenrior gestured to a tall, cylindrical, stainless-steel column topped by a perfect sphere of the same material. Renquist moved a little nearer to better see the thing and noticed small sparks of static running up and down its smooth milled surface. Fenrior spoke warningly. “Don’t touch that. It carries a massive positive charge.”
“You explained everything you were doing to Tesla?”
“He could hardly apply himself to the problem without knowing the facts.”
“I’m surprised you confided in a human.”
Fenrior laughed. “What makes you think Tesla was human?”
Renquist smiled wryly. “I often wondered.”
“Of course, Wilhelm Reich was human, and he was also extremely helpful. All the work he did for me, though, was totally based on his theory of orgone energy, which I thought put too much stress on a single and not totally proven idea. I also corresponded with Fermi, but it came to nothing. Among the humans, Einstein was the biggest disappointment. He refused even to respond to my letters. I think he still felt burned in the matter of the Philadelphia Navy Yard Experiment. I would also have gone to Oppenheimer, but the FBI was so busy trying to prove him a Communist, and it seemed wise to keep away.”
Fenrior led Renquist to a part of the complex where the equipment was more contemporary. “I recently had a number of lasers installed, so if the thing turns out to be uncontrollably monstrous, it can rapidly be cut to pieces.”
As Fenrior continued to give Renquist the VIP tour, he began to see the undead laird in a somewhat different light. Although continuously surrounded by his Highlanders, advisers, and retainers, Fenrior was peculiarly
isolated. From what Renquist had seen, few in the castle could match his education or intellect. Gallowglass was far from stupid, but academically lacking, and Renquist could hardly see the two of them talking philosophy far into the morning. Perhaps Gethsemany and others of the Seven Stars, and maybe the small Austrian filled these needs, but he still appeared gratified to have another there with whom he could discourse as an equal and demonstrate all his wonderful toys.
Renquist didn’t care to guess how long the discourse and demonstration might have gone on had events not suddenly violently caught up with them. A loud crack was followed by the sound of a small moist explosion, and a piece of the cocoon’s shell, about the size of a dinner plate, flew up into the air and about ten feet across the room. The first reaction by both Renquist and Fenrior was to duck for cover. Both had, in their time, been the potential targets of assassins. Half crouched, they found themselves facing each other. Renquist’s mouth twisted into a rueful smile. “I think, my lord, the fireworks have commenced.”
Julia drove, and Destry sat beside her. Marieko and Columbine were in the back, leaning away from each other, and with their heads resting against the interior fabric. After the feeding, everyone was naturally quiet, so it took Marieko some time to realize Columbine’s eyes had, at some point, fallen shut, and she scarcely seemed conscious. Remembering her promise to Columbine not to say anything, and also not wanting to unduly alarm the two in the front, Marieko placed a soft hand on Columbine’s leg. Normally a move like this would have produced an immediate reaction. Nosferatu were a cold breed who did not like to be touched without a definite purpose to the contact. To her dismay, Columbine only let out a soft, whispered whimper and failed to so much as open her eyes. Marieko shook her a little harder. This time the effect was more dramatic. Columbine groaned,
opened her eyes, and suddenly sat bolt upright.
“Where the hell am I?”
Without waiting for an answer, she groaned again, and then collapsed forward with her head all but between her knees. Marieko put a hand on her shoulder, but Columbine shrugged it off as though the touch caused her pain. “Just leave me the fuck alone.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Something’s happening to me.”
“What kind of something?”
Destry glanced back. “What’s going on?”
“Columbine seems to have a problem.”
“Again?”
“I think this is real and serious.”
Julia kept her hands on the wheel. “Shall I pull over?”
Marieko shook her head. “No, keep on driving. Stopping won’t help.”
“I think I’ve been dreaming.”
“Dreaming about what?”
“I don’t know. Darkness, pain, a feeling like being crushed, or drifting deep underwater.”
“Do you think this is coming from the Merlin?”
“I don’t know. I told you already. I don’t know.” She suddenly gasped. “Oh shit—”
“What?”
“This pain. It hurts—”
Destry turned in her seat. “Columbine, if this is a game, I swear I’ll push you out the car.”
“This game … as you call it … is fucking tearing me apart.”
Marieko was as gentle as she could be. “You have to tell us what’s happening to you so we can try to work out what to do.”
“I don’t know—that’s what scares me.”
Destry decided to play bad cop, even though Marieko tried to wave her off. “If you don’t tell us what’s wrong, we’re going to look inside your mind.”
The Dashwood belligerence resurfaced for a moment.
“Try that, and you won’t have enough brains left to regret it.”
Although Marieko disapproved of Destry’s approach, she knew the fastest way to find out what ailed Columbine was to penetrate her thoughts and see for herself. “Destry’s right. This all too weird. Your aura is unraveling. One of us has at least to see the surface levels.”
Columbine’s hand suddenly and completely unexpectedly flashed out like a talon and gripped Marieko’s. “You want to see it, do you, my dear? Then taken a good look. How much of this do you think you could stand without a little unraveling?”
Marieko showed no reaction for almost a full minute; then her jaw dropped, her eyes widened, and she tried to pull away from Columbine. “Oh, no … no … no … let go of me … I can’t …”
Columbine was weakly triumphant. “You can’t? Look at it from my side. I can’t, but I have to. He’s only leaving me one way out of this.”
She let go of Marieko’s hand, and the two of them fell back into the car seat. Marieko’s aura registered extreme, undisguised shock.
A second and third fragment of the cocoon had blown off with a noisy crack, and more of the clear slimy liquid was seeping from the holes. The underground laboratory was now at full function, reminding Renquist of a submarine going to action stations. Only a honking Klaxon was missing. The hairless Austrian looked urgently at Fenrior. “The readings on the orgone accumulator are right off the board, my lord.”
“I suppose that rather negates Reich’s theory.”
“Unless, my lord, the cocoon is giving off massive waves of energy that are invisible even to us.”
“Is that possible?”
“We are entering the realm where all things are possible.”
Fenrior glanced at Renquist. “Dr. Morbius was the
companion of the notorious Ruthven. He managed to escape when, during their final and fatal escapades in Greece, the Orthodox Church declared poor Ruthven a
vrykolakas
and burned him in the sun.”
Renquist nodded. “I knew Ruthven.”
“I thought you did.”
“I seem to recall he had a alienist with him who claimed to be seeking a ‘cure’ for vampirism.”
Morbius seemed to think he could speak for himself. “I was that alienist, Herr Renquist.”
Fenrior laughed. “Dr. Morbius abandoned that project many years ago. When he underwent the Change, he came to realize the last thing a vampire needed was a cure.”
Gallowglass picked up an antique black rotary phone, listened for a moment, and then called to Fenrior. “Th’ lads on th’ hill are seein’ bands o’ radiation comin’ fra’ th’ castle, pale blue fire in’ big concentric rings.”
Renquist wondered if Gallowglass was able to predict incoming phone calls. He had seen other nosferatu do it in moments of high stress. Fenrior, however, was more interested in his opinion of the concentric rings. Renquist considered them, but he was starting to think the lord credited him with knowing more than he did. “I still sense he’s looking for something.”