Return of the Wolf Man (18 page)

“As I said, medicine has come a very long way since then,” Caroline told him. “There are new tests, new drugs, new ways of treating all kinds of maladies. I’m sure others have told you this, but there are a number of possible explanations for your condition. Congenital hairy nevus, for one.”

“Which is?”

“A form of cancer that causes hair to grow all over the body.”

“Cancer,” Talbot said. “Then—there’s no hope.”

“To the contrary,” Caroline said. “Fighting cancer is one of the areas where we’ve made considerable progress. We can control congenital hairy nevus, for example, by surgically implanting sacs filled with a saline solution. It causes the cancerous skin to die and new, healthy skin to grow in its place. Back in school one of my professors was also conducting research into congenital generalized hypertrichosis. That’s an extremely rare genetic trait transmitted, it’s thought, through the X chromosome. People who have this disorder experience an out-of-control growth of bodily hair, especially on the face and chest. In the past, these people usually landed in carnival sideshows as ape-boys and that sort of thing. My professor believed that the trait was an important part of our proto-human past, one that was vestigial in most modern-day humans. He found a way to trigger an ‘off-switch’ and shut down the condition.”

“None of my family suffered from these things,” Talbot said.

“Perhaps they did and didn’t know they had it,” Caroline replied. “Or maybe you just didn’t know it. Decades ago, those kinds of afflictions were kept secret, especially among the gentry.”

“But I didn’t have this condition all my life,” Talbot said. “It happened after Bela bit me.”

“Maybe the condition was latent,” Caroline suggested. “It could have been a proclivity toward CGH which was triggered by suggestion, by the belief that Bela was a werewolf, or by the presence of wolfbane.”

“And the moon?” he asked. “It causes the change. That’s not something I imagine.”

“The moon could have a gravitational impact on the fluid of the inner ear,” Caroline said. “The moon does that with certain forms of lunacy. This miniature tidal effect, combined with luminosity, might even have had a subtle hypnotic impact. I’m curious. Was there any kind of folklore attached to the moon and your condition?”

“Yes,” Talbot said. “In fact, I was surprised that everyone in Llanwelly Village knew the verse.”

“Providing more subconscious reinforcement of your condition,” she said. “What was the saying?”

Talbot turned his face to the sky. Like a man reciting his own execution order, he said, “ ‘Even a man who’s pure at heart and says his prayers by night, may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright.’ ”

“I see,” Caroline said. “But it’s summer.”

“I know,” Talbot replied. “There are inconsistencies.”

“What other ones?” Caroline asked.

“For one thing,” Talbot said, “Bela became a four-legged wolf, not a two-legged one. And from what his mother, Maleva, told me, the moon had to be entirely full to affect him. I change the day before fullness as well as the day after.”

“You feel equally driven and ferocious then?”

Talbot nodded.

“So there
are
customized aspects of your condition,” she said. “It’s not a viral disease like measles or chicken pox where the symptoms and manifestations are more or less constant.”

“No,” Talbot admitted. “But what does all that mean? The condition isn’t in my head. You saw.”

“Oh, it’s very real,” Caroline said. “But in connection with a genetic proclivity, the transformation may be triggered by your deep belief in it, by anticipation. A sort of self-fulfilling prophecy.”

Talbot regarded Caroline a moment longer. Then he looked past her. He still seemed to be unaware of the warm sun, of the fresh spray of sea air. He seemed oblivious to any mortal pleasure.

“Suppose you’re correct,” he said, “and the condition is partly physical and partly psychological. What can you do today? Tonight? I don’t want to go through the transformation again. I don’t want to kill.”

“If this lawyer they’ve gotten for us is any good,” Caroline said, “maybe he’ll let me prescribe something for you. A strong sedative to put you out. We’ll incarcerate you as well, just in case. In the morning I’ll see if we can get you into the LaMirada Clinic. When I first started thinking about moving my practice down here, I checked up on it. It’s a top-of-the-line facility for the treatment of substance abuse.”

“Substance abuse?”

“Drugs and alcohol,” she said. “Problems that still plague us in the so-called enlightened and health-conscious nineteen nineties. They have state-of-the-art equipment at the clinic, including rooms that are a whole lot stronger than my great-aunt’s basement. They take emergency cases, and certainly you would qualify. Starting tomorrow, we can extract DNA from your blood and begin doing linkage analysis. Find a means of suppressing your physical reactions.”

Talbot shook his head. “You make it sound so easy.”

“Not easy,” she said. “But do-able. You’ve got to believe that.”

“I want to,” Talbot said, “but I’ve been disappointed so often.”

“I understand,” Caroline said. “But Dr. Cooke is on the case and I promise you, she can be very, very tenacious.”

Talbot smiled warmly as the boat neared the shore. A few minutes later they were climbing into Trooper Willis’s car.

As they pulled away from the wharf, Caroline glanced back at the island. She watched as dark smoke churned from the windows of the Tombs, blighting the perfect blue sky. Her confidence in being able to treat Talbot was tempered by what had happened at the castle the night before, by the very vivid memory of the thing that Talbot had become. Despite the sophistication of medical science, she was keenly aware of fact that there were always unknowns. Surprises. And though she had given Talbot hope, there was still one thing that bothered her:

What if she was wrong about his condition?

What if Lawrence Talbot was exactly what he said he was?

NINE

T
he gentle tingling of the ring startled him.

On nights like this, when the moon was full but his blighted soul was empty, he sat on his torchlit veranda. There, surrounded by quiet and serenity, he was brushed by warm breezes and warmer thoughts of a time when existence had a purpose. His memories drifted back more than five hundred years, when he had raised a blood-smeared smallsword and led his people, the Szecklers of Wallachia, to victory against overwhelming armies from the north and south.

After his father was murdered early in the war, young Vlad realized that he could not afford to show his enemies charity or mercy. Certainly they would not show mercy to him if he were taken prisoner. Thus, like his ancestor, the Hun Attila, the teenage warrior would capture pockets of conscripts and burn them alive at the stake. Then he would leave their bodies where other conscripts were certain to find them. But this tactic was only moderately effective. Death by fire took just fifteen minutes—less if the victims had been able to secure gunpowder. Tucked in packets and hidden upon their bodies—within the armpits was a favored spot, for it was close to the heart and lungs—the powder ignited and killed prisoners quickly. There wasn’t enough time for their screams to reach the ears of their comrades. Not enough horror for those soldiers to gaze on when they arrived. Vlad decided then that the stakes could be used more effectively not to burn the enemies of his people but to impale them. Stripped naked and forced to sit on a sharpened, greased pike until it penetrated the breastbone, death came slower to the individual. Their shrieks lasted longer. It was far more daunting for someone to find a corpse still red with blood, perhaps even still alive, than to find a blackened mound of bones and sinew. However foul the smell of the charred flesh.

Because of the stakes, he—Prince Vlad—came to be known as Vlad Tepes. Vlad the Impaler. His reputation for sadism spread faster than the blood he spilled, though his guiding principle was not cruelty. It was leadership. If his enemies had not been afraid of him, the Szecklers would have been destroyed long before he was forced to forsake them. And if the Szecklers had not feared his wrath more than they feared the enemy, many would not have stood fast against superior forces. A warrior who was not motivated by courage had to be motivated by fear. Fear of punishment, which was greater than the fear of death or battlefield wounds.

In the end, Vlad’s so-called Reign of Blood secured peace for his people. Yet there was no peace for the prince. Vlad worried what would happen if he were ever succeeded by one who lacked his resolve. So he journeyed to Scholomance, a small, hidden university of the dark arts, to learn if there were some way to forestall death. He studied necromancy and the language of animals. He learned alchemy and the black arts. His diligence was such that he came to the attention of the mysterious headmaster, a cloaked figure who moved about only at night. Though the eerie pedant spoke all languages, he said little.

Then, one night, when Vlad was alone in the dark library of the school, the shadowy headmaster approached. In a deep, whispered voice he offered the Wallachian what he desired: immortality.

Vlad was amazed but not surprised.
What must I do for this?
he asked.

He was informed, still in a whisper, that all he needed to do was accept it.

Five centuries later he could still hear himself reply,
If that is all, master, then I accept. What fool would not?

The headmaster replied,
What fool would not.

He gave Vlad a ring made of black ivory and bade him put it on and kiss it. Vlad obeyed. Then the headmaster lifted his head and Vlad could see his chiseled beard and thin smile. And the Devil himself said quietly, sibilantly,
Tonight you have made a pact with me, Vlad Tepes. When you leave this chamber, it will be as one of the fanged predators of the earth.

Headmaster, I don’t understand,
the young student replied—so very young and so very naïve.

The Devil’s smile deepened.
I remain immortal by consuming the souls of the damned. You will survive by drinking the blood of innocents. They will become the damned. They will become mine.

No—
Vlad had protested. He rose from his seat and held out his hands, imploring.
Please, no!

Henceforth,
said the immutable fiend,
you will shun the sun and the symbols of my enemies. Your familiars will be those predators of earth and the mists of my own abode. If you fail to obey, your own soul will serve me in the pits of Hell.
The Devil laughed then.
That, Vlad Tepes, is a fate you will find more disagreeable than undeath . . . as a vampire.

Vlad looked with disbelief from the Devil to the ring. With mounting horror, which he could still feel to this day, he tugged the ring off. Carved on the inside of the band were the words of indenture the Devil had uttered. On the front was a design, which Vlad also examined for the first time. It was a crest, one which thenceforth would be his. A shield with a
D
in the center and two crowns on either side. Above it was a larger crown beneath which was a bat with its wings outstretched. It was the crest of the Devil’s Son. It was the seal of Dracula.

Seeing the crest and realizing what he had done, Vlad Tepes screamed. It was the last mortal sound he would ever make. For even as he cried out, his tongue became parched and his teeth began to throb against his gums. He grew sickly cold all over, save for the heat in his throat and the longing in his mouth. Thirsty beyond anything he had experienced before, he ran from the library and claimed his first victim, a milkmaid who had been unable to sleep and had gone for a walk.

Her last walk.

Count Dracula’s dark brow knitted now as he looked at the ring. It was one of two things he owned from those long-ago days. The other was the smallsword with which he’d fought the enemies of his people. He’d stolen it from the Visaroff Museum in Transylvania after recognizing it during a recent visit there. Upon returning to his estate, he had entrusted the blade to his devoted manservant, Andre. The
sarpe
carried it to protect his master and also as a symbol of the authority he wielded over his own kind.

A sword is my salvation, a ring my damnation,
he thought ironically as he regarded the ring. The infernal crest was flat black, a sinister contrast to the vampire’s black dinner jacket and trousers, which gleamed in the moonlight. His mind left the past, which could not be changed, and moved to the future, which could. There was only one reason the ivory would tingle. Over a half century before, Count Dracula had used the ring to pass some of his own life force to the ailing body of the Frankenstein Monster. The arc between donor and recipient could only be broken by the death of the latter. Since Count Dracula had never felt any further drain on the ring, he’d assumed the Monster had somehow perished that night at Mornay Castle. He thought that perhaps the too-clever Professor Stevens had used the journal of Dr. Frankenstein to dissect the brute. Apparently he had not. The tingling indicated that the Monster had survived somehow and was seeking strength. And the laboratory Dracula had built here, in hopeful expectation of this day, would not go to waste.