The Darkening Dream (51 page)

“A small thing, is it not?” he said. “But lovely in its own way.”

She gasped. “There was no need! It was hidden.”

“They’d have found it,” he said. “The beetle approaches as we speak.”

She was fading.

“I might as well borrow a few of these.” He reached up again and brought forth two orange and red fruits, which he slipped into the pocket of his robe. “You never know when the fruit Eve offered Adam might come in handy.”

Snow whirled about her, and mixed with the blare of the horn she heard high-pitched yelps. She found her vision crowned by an inverted ugly little canine.

“The trap has been set,” the vampire said, “now the vermin will be crushed.”

The little barking dog was held by a man. Sarah struggled to see his upside down face.

Mr. Williams? No, for his hideous voice sliced sharper than a knife.

“Wolf-cub, you’ve done half my work, but still, I thought your heart filled with shafts of ash.”

“The dead do not die so easily, Dung God,” Constantine said. “For over a century I’ve waited for my revenge. Isabella’s gift will be redeemed tonight.”

The thing that looked like Mr. Williams laughed in a way no human could.

“I need not even touch you. I shall name the sun and collect the Horn from your ashes.”

Hail to me! Hail to the Nine Gods with hidden faces who dwell in the Mansion of Khepri,
said a voice to make stones bleed.

Constantine raised the archangel’s Horn to his lips.

Time ceased. The vampire stood there, smile frozen. Not a hair on the mean little dog ruffled in the breeze. The beetle-man didn’t move. Even the snowflakes halted in midair.

But the trumpeting continued, louder and louder, and from behind Sarah a flickering light began to wriggle bright filaments across the vampire’s shadowy form.

The light shifted, and a dazzling figure stepped from nothingness to join the others before her.

Sarah’s mind couldn’t fully comprehend the new arrival. All soft feathery fire, neither masculine nor feminine. Yet so beautiful, the perception of it was ecstasy and agony combined. Their eyes met and she knew.

The Archangel Gabriel.

The awesome face turned to Sarah, a whirlpool of cold red flame surrounding a gaze as old as eternity.

Though you walk through a valley of deepest darkness, would you still serve the Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?

The angel’s voice faded into the dirge-like crescendo of sound. Sarah felt the passage close back in on itself. Tree and garden all collapsed through her, and her consciousness thinned to imperceptibility.

Sixty-Eight:

A Man of Means

Salem, Massachusetts, Friday night, November 21, 1913

A
LEX RACED UP THE BASEMENT
stairs and into the library. Grandfather was gone, and so was Sarah. The clock read past seven. He turned to go then spied the coffer on the floor.

Grandfather kept his most personal things there, and it was usually sealed in the baroque cabinet. Alex had never seen inside. He nudged the top. It was unlocked.

And filled with papers and jewels — rubies, diamonds, emeralds. A golden cross with a sapphire bigger than a robin’s egg held down a single folded sheet of paper, scrawled with his name.

Hands shaking, he opened the note to reveal tight lines of handwritten Greek. Blood from his cut fingers stained the cream-colored paper.

Dear Alexandros,

I know at this moment you will find it impossible to understand what I am and what I have done, but I hope one day you shall find it in your heart to forgive me. Beneath all the layers of half-lies, it remains true that you are all that is left of my blood and our noble line. Out of blood was I born King of the Romans, God's Vicegerent on Earth, and in defense of my faith was I sacrificed, cut apart in the streets of Constantinople. The dark gift of blood restored my will to motion, but sacrificed my faith to darkness. Long have I stood in shadow, hidden from the grace of God. Perhaps now, in the autumn of His need, blood and sacrifice may redeem us all.

Your loving ancestor,

Konstantinos XI Dragases Palaiologos,

Basileus kai autokrator Rhomaion

Alex dropped the letter. He felt hollow. He fumbled through the other papers — vellum sheets covered in archaic Greek, property deeds, bank statements. They had never wanted for money, but the numbers were staggering. Bloody plunder of the long centuries.

From behind the house he heard dogs barking and a horrible chittering shriek. He followed it out to the back porch. Though the night was bitter, he took no jacket. The hunter’s moon was low in the sky, and by its reddish light he saw two figures at the yard’s lone tree. One in purple.

Grandfather.

He leapt down and ran. The vampire raised his arm to his face, a glimmer of gold in his hand.

And there came a sound. Slow and mournful, a titanic horn blast resounding from everywhere and nowhere.

A flaming figure materialized from nowhere. Alex’s feet slowed and came to a stop. Despite his desperation, his legs refused to close the distance to this awesome form.

Grandfather vanished and a silver blur arced down the hill toward the house. A wolf. It stopped when it reached Alex. Ruby eyes met his. The wolf held in his powerful jaws a crescent of bone and gold.

“What have you done with her?” Alex screamed.

The pendant around his neck burned hot.
Flee while you can
, Grandfather’s voice cried in his head.

A smaller creature caught up to the wolf and pounced. A tiny gray dog, all furious teeth that bit and tore at the wolf’s belly, its muzzle dripping blood.

Recently dredged memories churned in Alex’s brain, acquiring details. The wolf howled and thrashed about his parents’ bed, arrows embedded in his breast, his muzzle red with Mother’s warm blood. The pointy-eared dog nipped at Dmitri, the giant stomping and kicking yet getting bit again and again.

And here and now the wolf twisted, trying to evade the dog’s needling nips but hampered by the object in his mouth. Finally he broke free and kicked the dog aside.

Alex watched the thing he’d called Grandfather flee toward the woods to join a hulking figure waiting there. The little dog followed, barks fading into the night.

A renewed bout of shrieking brought Alex’s attention back to the tree. Before the winged brightness stood a man whose head exploded in a gout of red and white.

Alex forced himself up the hill. While the winged form was silent, the headless man remained on his feet, emitting the terrible tweets. From his severed neck, black insect legs poked forth. The base of a giant beetle’s body stayed rooted in the man’s shoulders, the dark and shiny legs waving like snakes on a Gorgon’s head.

At their Mount Athos cottage, with his ball of flame, this same creature had set arrows afire. With a bow of yew, he had launched them into Grandfather’s chest and set the roof of their home ablaze.

Now, using his spindly limbs, the insect-headed man gathered strands of heavy air to bundle into a growing ball of hot yellow fire. The beetle chanted:

Re sits in his Abode of Millions of Years.

The doors of the sky are opened for me,

the doors of the earth are opened for me,

the door-bolts of Geb are opened for me,

the shutters of the sky-windows are thrown open for me.

The bright warmth of daylight spilled across the yard. The beetle-man held a tiny sun in his black claws. Alex’s eyes struggled to adjust as he searched for Sarah. His gaze closed on something white hanging limp against the dark outline of the tree.

The beetle-man shrieked again and hurled his sphere at the seraphim. The angel caught the little sun in its wingtips, where it shrank, diminished, and was gone.

The beetle howled and pulled himself free of the human body, an empty husk, which collapsed to the ground. Expanding to the size of a motor car, he twittered and rushed forward, slammed his carapace into the angel. The pair rolled sideways across the yard.

Crimson flamed wings struggled with obsidian bladed limbs. Hideous chitters played a painful counterpoint to the horn’s distant blare. Throwing the beetle free, the angel spread its wings and launched into the air, exquisite features clenched in fury.

Gossamer extensions levered from the back of the insect, who took chase. The two great forms wrestled as they rose in the sky, throwing peculiar shadows across the yard and its solitary tree. Soon they were high above, as if riding through the heavens on some celestial chariot, the shrieks and trumpets slowly fading.

Alex climbed through the crunchy whiteness toward the tree, barely aware of his feet inside his boots. The ground sloped upward, the moon above him, the leafless tree black against this blood-stained coin.

In the moonlight he recognized the white form bound to the trunk.

Sarah.

A thin layer of windblown snow clung to her body like peach fuzz. Her hair hung down from her lifeless face. Her torso gaped open to the cold.

He sank to his knees. Eyes turned up to the cruel heavens. Like the future he’d imagined they might have, the stars seemed to glimmer, then fade.

Sixty-Nine:

Shroud

Salem, Massachusetts, Sunday, November 23, 1913

S
ARAH STOOD NAKED
in the cool mist, her bare feet half-submerged in the muddy banks of the river. The water was warm, almost hot. Everything was devoid of color. Far across the water, the gate to the celestial kingdom beckoned, its golden doors standing open. On each side stood an angel formed of flame, one blue, one red. They beckoned to her with wings of colored fire.

The river itself ran silent, but she became aware of soft splashes. Out of the mist, a thin figure coalesced. He wore a dark cloak and poled a skiff.

“The ferryman,” a feminine voice said.

Isabella. She wore only a thin white dress, a white and orange doe embroidered on her breast.

“Charon?” Sarah nodded toward the man on the boat. Fear tightened her voice. “I don’t even believe in him.”

Isabella chuckled. “You’re dead, and by the hand of a Greek.”

Was she? Or was this another dream? It seemed different from the others. Sarah looked across at the glowing gate. Perhaps it would be easiest to cross.

“That’s not the way you’re going,” Isabella said.

The ferryman drew closer. His cloak was torn and patchy, his boat just a large slice of raw tree.

Sarah looked at Isabella. She was pretty, her alabaster skin flecked with small freckles, her red hair glorious. She was the only source of color in this place.

“You’ve no coin,” she said, “but Charon might take you anyway.” She gestured at the luminous gateway. “You’ve earned the right, I haven’t.”

“What do you mean?” Sarah said.

“The dark gift will take us back to the world of the living.” She reached out a small hand to Sarah. “Blood is life. Eternal life.”

“As a vampire?”

I save you and you save me.
The dark logic was finally clear. Sarah took Isabella’s hand in her own. It was cool to the touch but soft. So soft.

“We stand between worlds. Dead and undead. The ancient song of the blood gods is strong, but only the dead buried beneath the earth will rise to greet the night.”

Sarah glanced back at the heavenly gates. “It’s my choice?”

Isabella shrugged. “Not usually, but you carry within you God’s Strength.” She looked away into the darkness. “Maybe enough to open a way for us both.”

“If I go with you, will Alex be there?”

“He’s living, is he not?”

Alex was alive, Papa and Mama were alive. Sarah didn’t want to die. After Judah, losing her might destroy them. It seemed so unfair. But to become a vampire? Were they all soulless evil monsters?

Sacrifice is strength, and strength will save our souls
.