Part 38 (2/2)
”I need not explain my actions to you,” he said to the man. ”Your soul is mine to crush whenever I wish. Now tell me your news!”
”The sultan's army has arrived. It appears to be but a small vanguard attacking under cover of darkness, but the remaining Turks will be here by tomorrow. We can stand strong against this vanguard-many of them have already fled upon seeing their comrades impaled on this hillside, my Lord Prince. They will report back. It will enrage the sultan's army.”
Vlad Dracula pinched his full lips between his fingers. He looked at Lugosi, who stood watching and waiting. The messenger seemed confused at what the Impaler thought he saw.
”Or it will strike fear into the sultan's army. We can use this. Go out to the victims on the stakes. Cut off the heads of those dead or mortally wounded-and be quick about it!-and catapult the heads into the Turkish vanguard. They will see the faces of their comrades and know that this will happen to them if they fight me. Find those whose injuries may still allow them to live and set them free of the stakes. Send them back to the sultan to tell how monstrous I am. Then he will think twice about his aggression against me and against my land.”
The retainer blinked in astonishment, still trembling from having his life returned to him, curious about these new tactics Vlad Dracula was attempting. ”Yes, my Lord Prince!” He scrambled backward and ran to the stone steps.
Lugosi felt the walls around him growing softer, s.h.i.+mmering. His knees felt watery. His body felt empty. The morphine was wearing off.
Dracula tugged at his dark mustache. ”This is interesting. The sultan will think it just as horrible, but G.o.d will know how merciful I have been. Perhaps next time I smoke the opium pipe, He will send me a true angel.”
Lugosi stumbled, feeling sick and dizzy. Warm flecks of light roared through his head. Dracula seemed to loom larger and stronger.
”I cannot see you as clearly, my friend. You grow dim, and I can barely feel the effects of the opium pipe. Our time together is at an end. Now that we have learned what we have learned, it would be best for you to return to your own country.
”But I must dress for battle! If we are to fight the sultan's vanguard, I want them to see exactly who has brought them such fear! Farewell, Bela of Lugos. I will try to do as you suggest.”
Lugosi tried to shake the thickening cobwebs from his eyes. ”Farewell, Vlad Dracula,” he said, raising his hand. It pa.s.sed through the solid stone of the balcony wall....
The lights flickered around his makeup mirror, dazzling his eyes. Lugosi drew in a deep breath and stared around his tiny dressing room. A s.h.i.+ver ran through him, and he pulled the black cape close around him, seeking some warmth.
Outside, Dwight Frye attempted his long Renfield laugh one more time, but sneezed at the end. Frye's dressing room door opened, and Lugosi heard him walking away across the set.
On the small table in front of him, Lugosi saw the empty hypodermic needle and the remaining vial of morphine. Fear. The silver point looked like a tiny stake to impale himself on. Morphine had always given him solace, a warm and comfortable feeling that made him forget pain, forget trouble, forget his fears.
But he had used it too much. Now it transported him to a place where he could see only the thousands of bloodied stakes and moaning victims, vultures circling, ravens pecking at living flesh. And the mad, tormented eyes of Vlad the Impaler.
He did not want to think where the morphine might take him next-the night in the Carpathians during the Great War? Or his secret flight across the Hungarian border after the overthrow of Bela Kun, knowing that his life was forfeit if he stopped? Or just the pain of learning that Ilona had abandoned him while he worked in Berlin? The possibilities filled him with fear-not the fear without consequences that sent s.h.i.+vers through his audiences, but a real fear that would put his sanity at risk. He had brought the fear upon himself, cultivated it by his own actions.
Bela Lugosi dropped the syringe and the small vial of morphine onto the hard floor of his dressing room. Slowly, with great care, he ground them both to shards under the heel of his Count Dracula shoes.
His legs ached again from the old injury, but it made him feel solid and alive. The pain wasn't so bad that he needed to hide from it. What he found in his drug-induced hiding place might be worse than the pain itself.
Lugosi opened his dressing room and saw Dwight Frye just leaving through the large doors. He called out for the other actor to wait, remembering to use English again, though the foreign tongue seemed c.u.mbersome to him.
”Mr. Frye, would you care to join me for a bit of dinner? I know it is late, but I would enjoy your company.”
Frye stopped, and his eyes widened to show how startled he was. For a moment he looked like the madman Renfield again, but when he chuckled the laugh carried delight, not feigned insanity.
”Yes, I would sure like that, Mr. Lugosi. It's good to see you're not going to keep to yourself again. The rest of us don't bite, you know. Nothing to be afraid of.”
Lugosi smiled sardonically and stepped toward him. The pain in his legs faded into the background. ”You're right, Mr. Frye. There is nothing to fear.”
House of the Rising Sun.
by Elizabeth Bear.
Elizabeth Bear's recent books include All the Windwracked Stars and Seven for a Secret. A new novel, By the Mountain Bound, is due out this fall. Other novels include Carnival, which was a finalist for the Philip K. d.i.c.k Award, Undertow, and the Jenny Casey trilogy-Hammered, Scardown, and Worldwired-which won the Locus Award for best first novel. She is a prolific short story writer as well, much of which has been collected in The Chains That You Refuse. Additionally, she is one of the creative minds behind Shadow Unit (e to life.
The dead quickly grow thin.
She licked her lips with a long pale tongue and even the semblance of amus.e.m.e.nt fell away. ”You're pale, Tribute. No coup tonight?”
”Nothing appealed.” Tribute wasn't my real name any more than Sycorax was hers.
She leaned into me, pressed a hand to my throat. Her flesh lay like ice against the chill of my skin. ”I told you to hunt.”
”I hunted.” Backing away, red nails trailing down my chest. I hunted. Hunted and returned empty-handed. It's as much how you hear the orders as how they're given.
She followed close on my steps, driving me before her. Ragged black chiffon clung and drifted around her calves; she reached up to lace china fingers in the fine hairs at the nape of my neck. Her face against my throat was waxen: too long unfed. ”You weaken me on purpose, Tribute. Give me what you have.”
She needed me, needed me to feed. Old as she was, she had to have the blood more often and she couldn't take it straight from a human anymore. She needed someone like me to purge the little taints and poisons from it first-and even then, I had to be careful what I brought home. So sensitive, the old.
She caught at my collar, pulled it open with fumbling hands. I leaned down to her-chattel, blood of her blood, no more able to resist her will than her own right hand, commanded to protect and feed her. At least this time, I knew what sort of predator I served, although I had less choice about it.
I figured things out too late, again.
Sycorax curled cold lips back from fangs like a row of perfect icicles, sank her teeth into my flaccid vein and tried to drink. All that pain and desire spiked through me-every time like the first time-and on its heels a hollowness. Sycorax hissed, drew back. She turned her head and spat transparent fluid on the cobbles. I smiled as she turned on me, spreading my hands like Jesus on a hilltop, still backing slowly away. I had made very sure that I had nothing to feed her on.
Petty, I know. And she'd make me pay for it before dawn.
Down the narrow lane, a club's red door swung open and I turned with a predator's eye, attracted to the movement. Spill of light cut like a slice of cake, booted feet crunching on glittering gla.s.s. Girls. Laughing, young, drunk. I remembered what that felt like.
I raked a hand through my forelock and looked away, making the mistake of catching Sycorax's china-blue eye.
”Those,” she said, jerking her chin.
I shook my head. ”Too easy, baby. Let me get you something more challenging.” I used to have an accent-down-home Mississippi. Faded by the years, just like everything else. I suspected I sounded pan-European now, like Sycorax; I've put some effort into changing my speech patterns. Her lips, painted pale to match china-white skin, curled into a sulk.
”Tribute. After a quarter of a century, you ought to know I mean what I say.”
I tugged my collar, glancing down.
”Them.” Sycorax twisted a stiletto-heeled boot, crus.h.i.+ng the litter of cracked gla.s.s against the bricks.
She enjoyed the hunt a little too much. But who but a madwoman would have drained my living body and made me hers? Just fetching my corpse from the grave would have taken insane effort.
”I'm hungry,” she complained while I sharpened my teeth on my lip to stop a malicious smile.
If I could buy a little time, the girls might make it to the street and I could lose them in the crowds and tangled shadows of the gaslamp district. Footsteps receded down the alley; I spread my hands in protest, c.o.c.king my head to one side and giving her the little half-smile that used to work so well on my wife. ”Something with a little more fight in it, sweetie.”
<script>