The Darkening Dream (36 page)

Forty:

Scruples

Salem, Massachusetts, Sunday night, November 16, 1913

A
S PLANNED, THE
W
ILLIAMSES
stayed the night for fear of the vampire. Alex situated them in a pair of rooms on the second floor.

“Thank you,” Sam said when he and Alex were alone.

“For what? Things didn’t exactly go well.”

“But you stood up to Sarah to protect Emily. That had to be hard.”

“The field is certainly level now.”

“Friends.” Sam punched Alex in the arm. “Truth is, I’ve had bossy girls in my face since nine months before I was born. As much as I love Sarah and Anne, someday I want to be the man of the house.”

Alex climbed the stairs to confront Grandfather. He found Dmitri wheeling the old man into his sitting room.

“You knew that spell was going to kill her, didn’t you?”

Constantine turned to face him. “One can never predict the future, but certainly such procedures are dangerous.”

The old man could be so infuriatingly… ambiguous. The last hour kept replaying itself in Alex’s mind. He was angry at Sarah, angry with himself, and really angry with Grandfather.

“Don’t shovel me that load of fetid goat-shit, you
poutanas yie
!”

“Bigger things are at stake.” The old man shrugged. “If it makes you feel any better, I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” Alex said. “Sarah hates me and Emily could have died!” On top of it all, the throbbing in his head was back.

“I intended none of that. The warlock’s spell stands in powerful defiance of nature. If the anchor here had been broken, he’d likely have been killed or crippled by the backlash.”

There it was. The naked truth of the man’s cold practicality.

“And this would make Emily’s death acceptable how?” Alex asked.

Grandfather shrugged. “Al-Nasir needs this oath breaker. He would never include another in his schemes unless it was critical, the talent substantial. The monster didn’t come west for his health.”

“But—”

“Tonight’s ritual might have worked!” The old voice was full of energy now. “Your Sarah, she’s a surprisingly competent practitioner with a razor sharp intellect. I sensed she had talent but I didn’t anticipate this preparedness, this degree of control or strength from an untrained girl-child—”

“What do you know about her?”

Grandfather pointed a finger at him. “Where’s my full account on al-Nasir and the warlock?”

Alex’s temper reared again. “Give me an answer first!”

The old man looked at him for a long moment, then sighed.

“Remember our conversation returning from the Engelmanns? Well, the day of that fire in 1895, Mr. Engelmann and I weren’t the only ones in Vienna. An associate of al-Nasir’s, an Egyptian — someone you and I both have great reason to despise — had been there. He was searching for something but he left disappointed.”

“Sarah told me her father fled Vienna because he found something,” Alex said.

Grandfather was all grins. “I thought so.”

“What is it? Do you think he still has it?”

The man shook his head. “If it were nearby, I’d know it.”

“But what is it?”

“I can’t say, but it doesn’t belong to any mortal man.”

“Can’t or won’t?” Alex said.

“They are the same. Not to worry, I promise to do my best to keep the Caliph and his ilk away from your Sarah.”

The old man glanced at Dmitri, who nodded. Alex couldn’t decide if this was a good thing or not.

“This other man in Vienna,” he said, “was he perhaps like a beetle or a ram?”

Grandfather rewarded him with a rare expression of surprise.

“Twice in one day he rears his ugly black-shelled head. I shall drive the beetle back into the filth from which he came.”

He tapped his chest to drive the point home, and Alex felt each touch pummel his own skull. He saw fleeting images of the wolf, bloody sheets, and an arrow slicked with red.

“I don’t understand, Grandfather. What’d he do?”

“He left me with nothing.”

Which was exactly how that statement made Alex feel. His head continued to pound. He remembered a creature of nightmare, black bladed claws gripping a ball of fire. Had he met one of these monsters before?

“What do these Egyptians have to do with the vampire?”

Grandfather settled back into his chair. “For at least several centuries the Caliph has lent his aid to their cabal, served their same dark ends.”

“Can you vague that up for me?” Alex said. “Come on, Grandfather, you always say evil is selfish. What do they
want
?”

“They serve the old gods. Fallen and forgotten. They wish to tear down the very heavens and rebuild them as they were.”

“That sounds rather apocalyptic,” Alex said.

“Exactly.”

Forty-One:

Tipping Point

Salem, Massachusetts, Monday afternoon, November 17, 1913

T
HE PHONE RANG AND
S
ARAH
picked it up.

“This is Mr. Weiss from the Levine Chapel in Brookline,” the voice on the other end said. “Is Mr. Engelmann home?”

As it happened, Papa had just returned from work. She traded the phone for his coat and hat. When she returned from the closet Papa still held the receiver, but his face had turned the color of ash.

Sarah waited, chewing on her tongue. The Levine Chapel was the cemetery near Boston where Judah was buried. They went there a couple of times a year to put stones on his grave.

“Thank you,” Papa said, and returned the earpiece to the base.

“What’s wrong?”

“Last night, someone apparently exhumed Judah’s body.” Sarah backed into the green armchair and sat. “The warlock,” Papa said. “It has to be. I think he’s trying to find a new way into the house.”

“Why would they need Judah?” Her voice shook.

“They didn’t take your brother,” he said. “Only the clay God loaned him for a time. Still, the warlock may have unholy uses even for that.”

“How do we stop him?” Her emotions felt near the breaking point. Preying on the living was one thing, but—

“Perhaps a trap can be set.” Papa drummed his fingers on the wood and brass telephone casing. “I need to think on it.”

He pulled her from the chair into his arms. She leaned into his tobacco-scented bulk.

Eventually, he hugged her, extracted himself, and drifted from the room.

At school today, Sarah had barely spoken to any of her friends, and not at all to Alex. She was still coming to terms with the fallout from last night’s failed ritual. Endlessly she tore apart the evening in her head, performing an aggressive series of autopsies on the corpse of her budding romance.

She was still mad at Alex. Not the furious kind of mad that had overcome her last night — God only knew where that had come from — but more a vexed anger, like a throbbing gum that made you want to press on the tooth. His improper thoughts about Emily were disquieting, but they weren’t really the source of her anger. Mostly it revolved around the spell. Was she mad at him because he’d stopped her? Or because he’d been right, while she blindly charged ahead, putting Emily in peril?

Perhaps. But there was more to it than that.

She’d never felt so alive or so powerful as during the ritual. The strength of four people had flowed through her, everything enlarged and magnified. Having the circle broken had tossed her back into her own little one-person self.

Was that the reason she was still angry?

Meanwhile, the vampire and the pastor were still out there, and Emily — not that Sarah had dared ask — was probably even worse.

Sarah lifted the phone and asked the operator to connect her.

“Alex, I’m sorry I was so mad at you last night.”

“You are?” The phone made his voice seem distant. “I’m sorry, too. Does this mean—”

“Don’t be rash, cowboy.”

“I was worried about you. I admitted as much to Grandfather — I think he might’ve asked Dmitri to follow you.”

She sighed. “I think there’s enough lurking in the shadows.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

This wasn’t helping her hold onto her anger.

“Let’s meet tomorrow evening at the Williamses,” she said. “I’ll call them. Make sure to arrive before sundown. Don’t take any chances.”

“I’ll be there. Let me know for sure tomorrow in school.”

“Okay,” she said.

“And Sarah?”

“What?”

“I don’t know if what I did was right,” he said, “but I care about you and I tried my best.”

“I know,” she said. Still, things were different than they had been. Not just between them, but with her.

Forty-Two:

Memorials

Salem, Massachusetts, Monday night, November 17, 1913

A
L-
N
ASIR DREAMED OF TILED
courtyards ringed with bubbling fountains whose agitated waters ran red with blood. A few minutes before sunset he woke and gnashed his teeth in anticipation of the night. But until then, there was little to do but rub his naked body into the sandy soil that lined his grave.

Life — or unlife — was a game won by the longest survivor. Centuries ago, al-Nasir had concluded that sunlight, simple as it would seem to avoid, was the leading cause of vampire destruction. Fire was a close second, large conflagrations being fairly common in cities. An unexpected blaze, particularly during daytime, could easily be fatal. In fact, it was his long-held opinion that accident, ennui, and carelessness were significantly more dangerous to the vampire than assault by hostile mortals, the reversal of the predator/prey relationship being rare. Having no intention of meeting such an end, he hid his resting places carefully, and could count on his long pale fingers and toes the days he’d slept in some makeshift grave.

He felt the last sliver of sun slip below the horizon. Fouad and Tarik were waiting when he pushed open his sarcophagus.

“
Salam alechem
, most powerful, glorious, and illustrious Master.” Of all his recent servants, Tarik was the most obsequious, especially when seeking forgiveness.