Carpathian (19 page)

“Sister is as big a fool as our queen,” the man said as he turned and left the old woman leaning meekly upon her cane.

The Gypsy queen watched her grandson move off into the rocks and the crevices, undoubtedly seeking Stanus. Little could she know that her grandson shed a tear as he walked away from the only woman besides his sister in his life. She did not know that the boy loved her and his sister but would not remain blinded by the old ways.

Somewhere high in the Patinas Pass the first howl of the night was heard. It echoed through the pass and down the mountain making the night animals scurry for the cover of burrow or nest.

*   *   *

The five men stopped and listened.

“Don’t tell me that was a dog, damn it, I know a wolf when I hear one,” one of the men hissed from his position across the hard-packed road.

“Silence!” the Russian hissed as he scanned the area ahead with his night-vision scope mounted on the Springfield. He could see nothing but swaying bushes caused by the wind. It was virtually impossible to see actual movement around them.

The men continued moving slowly up both sides of the road. Every six feet the Russian would hold the scope to his right eye and scan ahead. As he did, movement in the small batch of trees ahead caught his attention. He saw a flash of black on black as something he could not clearly see shot up a large tree and then vanished as if it had never been there. The man’s experience in hunting dangerous prey made his hackles rise as he sensed the danger. As he lowered the rifle and scope he saw that the Romanians were starting to bunch together. He had seen this before not only hunting but also when he was serving in the Soviet army in Afghanistan in the eighties: men tended to bunch together like frightened cattle.

“Two of you into the woods on your side, go on, get over there, and you take this side and you and I will take the middle of the road and cover both sides with the scope.” The man who had been doing the interpreting nodded his head, as he was relieved to be near the man with the night-vision capability.

The men stood their ground only for a moment and then decided it was probably safer to face a maddened sheep dog than the Russian. They did as ordered, only at their own slow speed.

The Russian paused as the men broke into their teams. Finally he raised the rifle and scope to cover the sheer walls of rock rising on both sides of the road. The man he was supposed to meet should have been here. His instructions had been clear—stop and wait before he arrived too close to the highest point—the pass itself. Zallas had warned him that if he went further it was on his own head.

“What is that?” the Romanian asked in a hushed tone.

“Music. Yes, it must be music from above us in the pass. Listen. I even hear a violin, bells, no a tambourine, guitars and … now it’s gone.”

“Are they having a village party up there? How can we hear the approach of anyone with that kind of noise—?”

The Russian felt the hot wetness strike the side of his face and the blast of air as something broke from the tree line and struck. He was knocked off his feet as he tried in vain to bring the muzzle of the Springfield to bear. The Romanian hunter was gone. One of his loosely tied boots was still in the roadway as the Russian fought to regain his feet. He swiped at the wetness that covered the whole of his right side. The blood smelled coppery, enough so that the large man slammed his hand into his pants to swipe the sticky liquid from his skin. He tried to raise the rifle but a loud thump from his left made him turn.

“Oomph,” was the only sound made as a man vanished upside down up a large, thick pine.

The frightened hunter next to him stumbled backward as he aimed quickly and fired his old rifle up the tree. The report was loud in the darkness but not so loud as you could hear the man taken scream in pain as the bullet struck him somewhere in the bowels of the giant tree. Still lying on his back, the hunter fired again into the tree. As he took aim for a third shot a loud thump was heard and he felt the ground move as his companion’s lifeless, headless body slammed the hard-packed ground. As the hunter opened his mouth in a soundless scream he heard the trees around them and the cliffs above them come to life with movement. Dark shapes darted in and out of the rocks and trees. Some of the shadows were the size of a normal man, while the others were far blacker shapes and were even larger.

The two men covering the right side of the road were frozen just a few feet off the hardpan track. Try as they might their eyes could not penetrate the thick woods and rocks. The moon was starting to play tricks on their minds and vision as it started to mix with the trees and the mist that was starting to settle onto the ground from the mountain above them. It was as if God had sent a cloud down to cover the hunters like a death shroud.

“The tales about these mountains are true, I knew it,” one of the men said as he aimed into the night.

“Wait until you see something, you idiot,” the large Russian said as he manhandled the man from the left into the group of two. “And make sure you shoot at an animal and not the man I have come here to see.”

“We are two men down here, I think shooting into the trees right now and running may be the best recourse available to us. Of course we don’t have your experience,” one of the more brave hunters said as his eyes went left, right, and then left again.

“Calm down!” the Russian almost screamed as he himself was losing his confidence about delivering the message in his breast pocket to the man who controls the pass. “We will head back to the vehicles. Zallas can deliver his own messages.”

The other three men didn’t need persuading; they turned as one and started back down the road.

Before ten steps were taken the Golia were seen for the first time. They came from cracks in the stone wall to the right and left of the frightened hunters. They jumped from a hundred feet high in the air from the treetops, bounding from tree to tree only to hit the ground hard and then scramble to their feet. As the Russian raised his rifle to shoot, the animals all vanished. The leader of the remaining men lowered the scoped weapon to get a broader view of the road and the ground mist as it started to cover everything.

“Oh my God,” said one of the men in Romanian.

All four turned and saw the shape rise from the rolling mountain mist. The beast rose until it seemed it was looking down upon them like some vengeful god making ready to vent its wrath. The darkened shape was completely upright and its arms were held at its massively muscled sides. The animal breathed in and out deeply, creating a hollow, boiler sound that made the men’s hearts freeze. Its yellow, inner-glowing eyes found each man in turn. As the muzzle opened and its teeth were bared the men could see steam roll from the open orifice. The beast laid its long ears back and the black shape dipped its knees and then let loose a howl that shook the earth and awakened men five miles away who were asleep soundly in beds.

As the men closed their eyes against the onslaught of noise it ceased as quickly as it had started. The men looked around and saw that the giant of an animal was gone just as if it had never been there. The night around them had become as quiet as any of the men had ever experienced.

The Russian swallowed and then looked down at his American-made rifle and decided that he wasn’t armed very well for this sort of action. As he lowered the powerful weapon he heard the deep voice from the woods and the rocks and it froze his blood. The Romanians heard their language being spoken and the Russian his native tongue. If any of them had figured out that they were each hearing differing languages they would never have stopped believing in the magic that was the Carpathians.

The Russian hastily reached into his fur coat and brought out the item he was given by Zallas. He held it in the air and then tossed it into the middle of the hardpan road.

“I have brought what you requested. It is signed by Mr. Zallas himself. You made your point and he now wants these attacks to stop. The papers for the ownership of these mountains will arrive in the next two days from the capital.”

“Tell the Russian he has been warned one last time. The transaction has to be complete before certain of my family members arrive back into the pass. If not, our deal is off and we will retake what has been given to us by God. Do you understand my words, Slav?”

“Yes … yes … we will give him your message.”

“Not we, Slav, the Walachians will remain here with me. They have crossed into territory forbidden to them and they will not live to tell the tale. Now leave, Slav, deliver unto Pharaoh that warning.”

Without hesitation and very confused over the reference to ancient Egypt, the Russian turned and started running blindly down the mountain. The Romanians saw this and froze as the night around them became a liquid sea of black shapes as they made their way down the craggy sides of the mountain. The hunters turned and started running after their employer.

The night once more turned silent and, far off in the distance, traveling the length of the mountain and filtering through the trees from the Patinas Pass high above, they all heard the sound of violins, tambourines, and guitars. Lost in the mix of sounds old, new, and very ancient, the men that had accompanied the message to the pass began to scream. The Golia did what they have always done—secure the safety of the people and themselves.

The Carpathian Mountains had truly awakened for the first time since ancient Rome ruled the known world.

*   *   *

Miles down the mountain, past the workers installing the last of the supplies for the new Dracula’s Castle, and even further down the mountainside to the resort—the Edge of the World—men and women turned to each other and for no other reason than an ingrained memory caught and expanded in their brains, they knew that something was out in the woods and mountains—things that men were not meant to see and the ancient memory of a time when man was not atop the food chain, things that once ruled the mountains were now loosed upon them once again.

Dmitri Zallas was being shown the interior of the casino and the plush accommodations of the hotel above. All the masonry was done in gothic-style prefabricated stone building materials that made the entire facility look as if it could have stepped from a novel of the dark ages. As Zallas was led on the tour by his junior partner, Janos Vajic, and his operations manager, Gina Louvinski, he was pleased with the staff training classes that were currently under way in the four-star restaurant and the inside the casino. The entire hotel staff was being flown in from Prague where Janos Vajic owned another property. Needless to say staffing a private party for twenty-two hundred guests was costing the partnership close to $18 million just for staff, food, and beverage, and that’s not counting the money the resort would lose in room revenue.

As the trio stopped just short of the waterfall that led into the giant dome and the world’s most expensive garden atrium, Zallas looked around at the private army of botanists and gardeners as they were also into their final preparations for the party two days hence.

“Now, how are we progressing on my pride and joy?” Zallas held up his hand when Vajic started to speak. “The short version, please, my friend.”

“The castle is complete. The food and beverage department delivered the last of their supplies this morning by cable car, whose operation made the final push to completion possible. We were wearing resort vehicles out running up and down that mountain.”

“Good, good. Now, may I see this marvelous cable car system that’s the engineering envy of every designer in the world?”

“Yes, this way to the elevator.”

As Zallas made his way past palms and many more plants that had no right to be in the desolate Carpathian Mountains, he saw the most expensive escalator system ever devised. It was wide at the base and narrow as it climbed the six stories to the top of the dome where the hotel’s guests could see the broad expanse of the atrium and the casino beyond through the eighty-five-foot-high glass partition. As they rode the glass elevator to the top Vajic and Gina could see that they had impressed their Russian gangster. The elevator opened and the trio stepped out onto a broad expanse that resembled something like a subway platform only far more extensively appointed.

“My goodness, brother Vajic, this is impressive.”

Zallas saw the richly decorated forty-five-foot-long car. Everything mechanical on the cable system was hidden with what looked like something out of an Indiana Jones movie. The sheer rock covering the opening to the four cable cars themselves looked as if it were a giant cave opening. Two long, rich mahogany-paneled cars were placed on the downhill side and two more on the opposite uphill side, which could not be seen from where they stood. The cars sat in what looked like one of the naturally formed cave systems the Carpathians are famous for. The caves were engineered to house the cars and give the hotel guests a small taste of Disneyland as they boarded the cars for the three-mile climb to the nightclub.

“You and your lovely assistant have done a splendid job, brother Vajic. I anticipate no problems this weekend; you have set my mind at ease.”

Vajic looked from his partner to Gina and then grimaced as he knew the subject had to be broached before the inspection of the property was complete. As Vajic pointed out the massively thick cable lines that were needed to support such heavy and richly appointed cars, he dared bring up the touchy aspect of opening in two days.

“Dmitri, I hesitate to ask but what of the attacks above the castle?”

“The supposed attacks you mean?” Zallas shot back as he stepped into the nearest cable car and walked over to the bar tucked in the corner and rummaged around and then found what he was looking for. He poured a drink of expensive vodka and then fixed the resort owner with a stare that had frightened many men from St. Petersburg to Chechnya.

“These men you have sent up the mountain, will they solve this problem or are we going to have to bring in added security for the one night the castle is open for your guests?”