The Mammoth Book of Dracula (80 page)

“Professor, please.” She had injected some of the steel she reserved for her editor when he became obstreperous. It worked.

Sour-faced, he beckoned for her to follow. They moved in the opposite direction from the burnished walls and the cool lighting. A lift took them up into a chilly, brilliant white area where insect guards were in abundance, the light so great here that she could almost see a ghostly pallor of skin behind their faceplates.

“We call this The Penthouse,” said Neumann, regaining a little of his pomp. “Our dangerous criminals live here. The lift we came up in is the only access or exit, save a secret tunnel to a helipad on the roof. They have nice views. We treat our Hannibal Lecters with some dignity.”

They walked by a series of thick steel doors with portholes in them. Occasionally, there would be a face pressed against the glass, fogging it so she would only get an impression of mad eyes and rictal mouths. Neumann stopped and pressed a hand against a GeneSync plate by a door. A piece of paper obscured its porthole: a black cross had been elaborately drawn upon it.

“You allow them writing materials?”

“Yes. Charcoal only. You understand.”

He gestured with his hand. Two guards sandwiched them as they entered the cell. Moonlight flooded the air-conditioned room, where it managed to get past the paper crosses on the window. Salavaria was naked, in the corner of the cell, rubbing charcoal into his skin. He had covered himself in black crosses. A novel lay to one side, gutted.

When he saw Neumann he leaped up and ran towards him, arms outstretched. The barrel of the lead guard’s Armalite dimpled his throat. “Professor,” he said, and Niam was grateful to hear the measure in his voice. She found herself staring at his limp cock, which was similarly decorated.

“Professor, you brought me a crucifix?”

“Not this time, Gyorsy.”

“But you said—“

“Ms Foxley is here to see you.”

Neumann withdrew, presumably to his eyrie where he could watch the whole encounter on his vid-screens. The guards stayed close, but she could see Salavaria was in no mood for fighting. She sat by him against the wall, moving some more pages out of the way. A sentence leaped at her from the original text.
Awake or asleep he’d never felt more alive.

“Do you want to get dressed?” she asked.

“Do I upset you like this?”

“No.”

They were quiet. The measured, synthetic breaths of the guards irritated her but now she was here, she did not know how to continue.

“You went,” he said.

“I went.”

“And?”

“And it was not pleasant.”

He closed his eyes. “I know. I’m sorry. I couldn’t warn you. You might not have gone if you knew.”

“Who is D?” she asked. “Who is Draoul?”

His fear, she could see, prevented him from laughter, but some grim humour flirted round his gaunt features, spoiled further by charcoal crosses.

“Not Draoul,” he said. “Not Draoul.”

“Who is he then? Gyorsy? What is
oupiere?”

His head jerked towards her. Tendons stood out on his neck like cables. “Where did you hear such a word?”

“You.” She looked down, shamed. “Professor Neumann lent me some recordings of you in your sleep. You sound so troubled.”

“You would not believe if I told you.”

“Try me.”

“He comes to kill me. I’ll be dead before the century is out.” Tears were reddening his desperate eyes. They looked as if they might flop out on to his cheeks.

“Nobody will harm you here. This is a top security facility. It’s probably easier to get out than it is to get in.”

“He will find me—”

“Who. Gyorsy?
Who?”

“Dracula.” He said the name flatly, without spirit. She imagined a gas-filled corpse might emit a sound like that if its belly were torn.

It took a while to register. She frowned. “What? You mean—”

“He is
oupiere”
he said, barely suppressing a fresh wave of hysteria. He gripped her arm. The guards closed in. “He is
oupiere.
He is
vampire!”

Niam motioned the guards to pull back. “Leave him. He’s okay. He’s okay.”

The guards retreated slightly, but kept their weapons raised. A slew of rain spattered the windows, making her jump. Lightning arced over the grey band of motorway in the distance.

“Do you have a crucifix?” he asked, his eyes ranging around her throat.

“No, but I’ll bring one.”

“They won’t let me wear it. They think I’ll kill myself with it.” He laughed, a sour, hacking noise. “I’m dead already.”

“Gyorsy,” she soothed. “Try to calm down. What’s this business about vampires?”

His words hitched in his throat. He was tight as whipcord. “My ancestors were party to The Count’s capture. They helped find him. He has returned to wipe out the people who might be dangerous to him.”

“The Count?”

“Dracula! Sweet Christ, you know nothing!”

“Gyorsy, you’re babbling.”

“Listen to me. He has returned. He wants to eradicate the bloodlines that are dangerous to him. A pre-emptive strike. A revenge too.”

“But—”

“Tell me what you saw the night you went to Holloway. Everything. Every shred of detail.”

She did so, casting nervous glances at the inscrutable guards. When she mentioned the stranger outside the flat, her voice ran out of steam.

“It’s funny, but I’d forgotten about him until now. How could I just forget? He was horrible, he was eating—”

“Did he say anything to you?”

She put her fingers to her lips. “No. But I dreamed he did, later. Oh God, I forgot...”

“He has strong ways with his mind. He can play with your thoughts. What did he say in your dream?”

She told him. He seemed to slump even further into himself, more than his sagging body could allow. All his defiance was gone.

“Do you believe that we are drawn together by ancient catastrophe, that history has a design for us? Especially the tragedies? Only the tragedies?”

A memory, unbidden, came to her, of a dark figure fucking her from behind while her feverish, blind boyfriend vomited into the corner of a freezing room.

She got to her feet and moved to the door.

“Beware your history,” he said. “Fear the actions of your forebears.”

~ * ~

She was drenched by the time she made it to her car. Black thunderclouds ignited with white fire, lighting up the prison. The air itself felt as though it might combust and suck the air out of her.

Her arms were itching. She looked down to the damp wool of her sweater just as a maggot fell from its cuff. She recoiled and scrabbled around on the seat until she had swept the maggot on to the floor. She ground it into the carpet. Sweating now, through the rain, and taking shallow gasps of air, she delicately peeled the sleeves of her clothing back. Her cuts were puffy and weeping, the skin around them livid. Four or five maggots were burrowing into the sticky, raised flesh. Niam shrieked and struggled out of the car into the maelstrom. She plucked the larvae out, swooning when she felt the wrench of each greasy white body.

God, what if their heads remained inside?

There was little for her to vomit but she retched anyway, wiping a thin gruel of sick from her chin. She ditched her sweater and got back into the car.
Take it easy. Take it easy, girl.

After a few minutes she felt well enough to turn the ignition key and drive the car out of the prison grounds. She drove ten miles with her eyes rooted to the broken line of the road before she realized she was travelling north. She pulled off at the services and wrapped the back seat blanket around her. In the toilets, she bathed her arms thoroughly, wincing at the sting of soap. She did not care who might see her wounds.

A woman at the next sink was washing her hair, eyes tightly closed. It was easy for Niam to pick up her discarded cardigan as she left.

She bought a sandwich and several cans of Coke, some Pro-Plus from the chemist, antiseptic spray and bandage. Behind the wheel, she tended her cuts before slipping her mobile phone out of her handbag. She had to think for a minute or two, but then the number came to her.

Maybe she would be away, celebrating New Millennium Day with her family.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Meg?” Suddenly close to tears.

“Yes. Who is this?”

“Meg? Meg?” She couldn’t go on.

“Oh. Is that... is that you, Niam?”

“Meg. Help me.”

“Where are you, my love?”

“I was on my way there. Can I see you?”

There was the sound of a china cup clinking against a saucer. It was the most beautiful sound Niam had ever heard.

“Of course,” Meg said. “Shall I make you some supper?”

“No. I probably won’t make it there until early morning. Leave a key by the door. I’ll let myself in—don’t wait up for me.”

“Love, what’s wrong?”

“God, Meg, what isn’t?”

~ * ~

The drive became feverish and alien. The roads were empty. Tracts of land muscled up against the motorway and were replaced by grey walls and sodium lights nested in grey concrete towns. When she left the industrial wastes of the Midlands behind, the land seemed to relax into the shadows. Her fatigue took the light and shade and mixed it into a treacly clot that wedged in front of her eyes.

She thought it was rain fluttering against her window until she heard the protesting squeak of her wipers as they drew across dry glass. She opened the window, put on some jazz: Thelonius Monk playing Bolivar Blues. The fluttering continued. Maybe it was something trapped in the wheel of the car. Or birds she could not see in the dark.

Just beyond Kendal, she ran off the road because she was so tired. The raised warning line of the hard shoulder brought her to her senses and she braked hard. She slugged back four caffeine tablets with her Coke and ate half her sandwich. Her phone rang. It was Professor Neumann.

“Niam? Sorry to ring you so late.” He didn’t sound sorry at all. He sounded relieved, grateful to be talking to her. He sounded rattled.

“What is it?”

“It’s Gyorsy. He’s dead.”

She was not shocked. She had almost been expecting it.

“How did it happen?”

There was quiet at the other end of the line, but she thought she could hear Neumann whimper. The line was bad, filled with buzzing. His words were difficult to make out.

“Someone ... broke in. There’s blood all over the wall, Niam. Blood all over. And they took his head!”

“What about the guards?”

“They’re dead too. But there was some shooting. We’ve got half the police in Bedfordshire searching for the bastard. He’ll probably be picked up soon. Our guards are crack shots. Whoever it was must be badly wounded, I would guess.”

I wouldn’t be too sure.

“Professor Neumann, I can’t hear you very well. There’s an awful lot of interference on the line. Can I call you back?”

“Er, Niam, it isn’t interference. It’s flies. We’ve got a room filled with fucking flies here.”

~ * ~

She drove into Oban at quarter past five on the morning of the final day of the second millennium.

London seemed like a different life, way out of alignment with this hushed, almost expectant town. She felt panicky, dislocated for a moment, as though she were a diver suffering the bends. The lack of people on the roads seemed to make true a deep dread she had always carried, that everyone was dead, that the dawning of the next thousand years was in turn the closing chapter of humanity.

And then an old man turned the corner, walking a poodle wearing a tartan bodywarmer.

Niam laughed wildly, exhaustedly.

She remembered the way to Meg’s house easily, once the layout of the roads became obvious. She bypassed the distillery on the hill overlooking the harbour and parked on an incline as close as she could to Meg’s house before the road bottlenecked and became a path. She walked the rest of the way, and was panting by the time she got to the door.

Meg was waiting up for her, as she had expected. They hugged each other on the porch for a long time, Niam losing herself in the simple, homely smells of Meg’s dressing gown, which reminded her so much of David.

She sat in the kitchen while Meg made tea, and tried to eat a piece of paradise cake but it was the wrong hour to eat. She could not work out where Meg’s words ended or began. The lullaby voice in which they were couched dragged her further down.

“I have to sleep,” she mumbled, suddenly sick with need for a pillow. “I’m sorry. I’ll talk to you in the morning, later.”

Meg led her to a small room and said goodnight. Niam fumbled with her jeans, gave up and sprawled across the bed. She heard fluttering outside the window and thought, with a horrible jolt, that she was still driving along the motorway, that this comfortable bed was an evil trick of her mind. Within seconds, she was asleep.