Stoker's Manuscript (19 page)

“Yes. That is how connection made.”

She sounded like Mara.

“You grieve her loss greatly.”

I nodded. “Mara.”

“You may feel at fault, but God does not.”

I straightened back up. “How did you learn English?”

“My gift . . . my husband take me to America.” She made the sign of the cross in his memory. “To World Exposition. I work.”

“You worked the Expo?”

“Both. Gheorghe an electrician, I was . . . soothsayer?”

I nodded. “Can you see future events?”

“No.” She shook her head.
Of course not.
“I read thoughts and tell them what they concerns.”

“I bet you shocked a lot of people.”

She nodded. “They stop talking and listen. I tell them to work hard, pray hard, and stop doing bad things that invite misfortune.”

“And your husband?”

“He was taken from me there.” Her dark eyes turned from soft to cold. “By them.” She pointed to the woods toward Dreptu.

“Sonia.” I leaned toward her. “What did I witness out there?”

She spoke in a whisper. “They select humans with unique skill.” She paused and pointed to the Bible. “You, for example . . . see the pages, determine age, just like that man.”

The image of the jeweler flashed in my head.

“Yes, him.” She pointed to my crucifix. “He sees the metal,
argint
, at same level you see paper.”

“To the fibers.” That explains why in the shop he told me about the metal’s age with an unaided eye.

“Yes. The way the Regulats see.”

“The Common vampires.”

She nodded. “That is how they . . . respect your crucifix. They see the object and know it is from their master.”

“My protection,” I said.

“Yes and no. You cannot go anywhere and hide so long as you wear it, but you need it for safe passage. Regulats serve the Master and get their nourishment from the slaves.”

“The human slaves?”

“Yes.” She made the sign of the cross. “These . . . slaves work for Master in exchange for wealth and long life.”

“So those were human slaves sacrificed?”

“Yes. Some live this village.”

“But why kill them? It seems so . . . wasteful.”

She shook her head. “They were being retired. Either services no longer needed or reach . . . the age.”

“What age would that be?”

She did not answer outright. I thought of my own situation: services no longer needed.

“Do not worry.” She covered my hands again. “Dalca will make sure you stay alive at least until he is certain he has found what he seeks.”

“I understand the human slaves exchange blood monthly with the Common vampires,” I said.

“Windows left open full moon.”

“Last night was a full moon.”

“Once a year,
iunie
,”
June.
“The thousand-year ritual. The Rose Moon.”

“Birthday parties.”

“Yes. Each group of slaves gets invited every fifty years, starting on their fiftieth birthday. Stay together.”

“So to them it’s a reunion. They don’t know what’s coming.”

Again she nodded. “The
wampyr
s gorge on blood of slaves, let humans think they are at party.”

I was almost too embarrassed to ask, but I knew she’d read me. “They also had . . . animals there.”

“The rats.”

I was too ashamed to look her in the eye, and stared at the wooden plank floor.

“Copilul meu.” My child.
I looked up to see her eyes watering with tears. She continued, “I see him pushing this thing in your face.”

Dalca had tried to force me to eat the rat, and I could not discard the smell, taste, and feel of it. I shuddered.

“I see animal blood on your face.” Sonia brought a tissue up to my face and dabbed as if wiping it clean. “My heart sinks with yours,” she said before making the sign of the cross. “Let us pray.
Gott
ascunde amintirile.
”
May God hide your memories.

A long stretch of silence passed while she allowed me time to speak without choking up or losing my place. I stood and walked to the back of the house and ran water, scooping it to my face and toweling off before returning to the living room. She had left the room, and while awaiting her return, I looked at a couple photos on the wall above her reading chair. One picture was at least a hundred years old, but with the layer of glass between it and me, I couldn’t date it by seeing it. Someone who looked a lot like Sonia stood smiling next to a man with Slavic features, also smiling. I noticed the woman wore the traditional footwear, the
opinci
, same as the ones in the corner on the mat. On closer inspection of the photo, it appeared they had pigskin bottoms, same as Sonia’s. Pig’s hide had gone out of use early in the twentieth century in favor of rubber.

She reentered the room and I pointed to the photo.
“Bunici?” Grandparents?

She did not answer. As I wondered why she refused to answer simple questions, she said, “It is the order of things.”

Several minutes of silence passed. Not an awkward silence at all; Sonia seemed to understand that I had a courage reservoir in need of periodic refilling. She always felt present and supportive, even when refusing to speak. Her responses did not imply that I had asked an out-of-bounds question, but rather that I would learn the answer in due time.

“Sonia,” I asked, “why me? Why was I chosen?”

“You were selected,” she said. “They must have observed you for many years.”

“Dalca’s human slaves?”

She nodded. “The same ones who watched your friend, the woman.”

“But if I succeed and Dalca finds what he’s looking for . . .”

Again she read my thoughts. “Yes, your fate, too, will be like theirs.” She pointed toward Dreptu.

“How did they know me?” I asked. “And how did he know my brother?”

“That image you carry from the graveyard,” she said.

The sight of my mother’s dismembered body became vivid. “My mother . . .” I tried to say
human slave
, but she saved me the embarrassment.

She nodded. “Since before you were born. She had already exchanged blood before she had you, so you and your brother have a portion of
their
blood. You are born of the house of the Master.”

“Then they can smell me, recognize me,” I said.

“And your talent matched what he wants most; that is how you were selected.”

I imagined what my father did and what he must have endured on his way to his decision. Until that moment I had never thought of my father as a hero.

Sonia said, “He was a slayer, a man of courage. Like you.”

So he’d done what he did to protect Berns and me. And others, as well. And just maybe to spite Dalca. He also knew there was no place he could hide. I shook my head. Even as her words confirmed my earlier inference, it was a difficult line of thought to travel.

“Your father did it to end the bloodline.”

I could tell from Sonia’s eyes what she wanted, what would come next: My father’s legacy now fell to me, not just because of my family lineage, but because I answered the call into their world. That was precisely what advantaged me over other humans, for that invitation could get me close enough to Dalca to form an attack. Yet I had no idea how to pull it off.
I am no match for him,
I thought.
For them.

“But will you do it if you get the chance?” She knew I was torn, for I did not have a warrior’s heart.

“At times I’ve felt inserted here,” I told her, “at this moment to defeat him, like it’s my mission, and I intend to fulfill it.” I recalled the conversation at Mara’s, and Alexandru Bena’s insistence that I had before me a great mission. I was beginning to understand. “And other times I feel like finishing this, finding what he wants, and going home.”

“Joseph, you
are
home. You and your brother are sons of the soil.” She spread her hands in welcoming fashion. Her eyes softened. “You are not a coward. Remember, even the greatest among us asked to have the cup passed from him.”

So I was to hunt Dalca. A lunatic thought, it seemed. Be that as it may, however, I resolved to try to think like a hunter, starting with understanding my prey. More specifically, what it was that Dalca wanted.

“Why is Dalca looking for his wife’s remains?”

“She is buried somewhere in Transylvania.”

“And he thought I would find her from what I read in the manuscript.”

“Yes.”
Jyezz.

“What is he going to do when he finds her?”

“He will try to resurrect her and breed again.”

I was bewildered. How could he do
that
?

“Like certain
,” she said. “They go . . . suspended very long time.”

“Hibernation,” I said.

“Yes, in a way.” She thought for a moment. “Dormant, I think is word. The vampire can survive asleep, dormant, for very long time. So long as body is intact.”

It clicked then why killing vampires so often involved dismemberment.

She affirmed my thought. “Yes.”

“How do you know these things?”

“Tell me your intentions first.”

“I want to kill him. I have to kill him. But I don’t know how . . . I mean, I know with a stake or two knives to the heart. But how can I hope to succeed, unless he’s unguarded in his sleep?”

“He will be guarded,” she said. “But if you could lure him somewhere and place the knife in his heart, would you?”

“Yes,” I said without hesitation.

“Then you must, Mr. Joseph. And here is how: You must find his wife and allow them to couple. In that moment he will not move. They will be locked as one.”

“Won’t he be guarded?”

“The Regulats are not allowed to look upon the Master’s nakedness. Nor do they want to hear the sounds.”

I thought it over.

“You will do this?” she asked.

I nodded. “I will try.”

“No. If you only try, then that is all you will
do
,” she said. “But if you
know
you will do it, only then can it happen.”

As I said, she was wise. There was much to admire in her.

Across the river a handheld church bell clamored, a call to services, followed by the distant chant of the
pentru
, the service for the dead, as Christians commemorated loved ones. But I knew such bells would never toll for me. At most there’d be a few silent prayers from my brother, and with his end would go our lineage. That would be good for mankind, considering what I had just learned. Perhaps I would join my mother in the Paddock of the Damned. Then what would God say to me if I somehow managed to kill a creature He chose not to?