Vamparazzi (25 page)

“Ah. Right. Driven by instinct. Not self-aware.” How
did
such creatures morph into the objects of erotic desire in popular culture?

“Mind you, it's not as if a victim's corpse is left intact even if the vampire does not consume parts of the body. Indeed, the undead are such messy eaters, it can often be difficult to ascertain what, if anything, is missing from the victim's remains.”

I felt my gorge rise and recalled that Lopez had said the exsanguination wasn't done tidily. I swallowed, took a steadying breath, and said, “Obviously, we're not talking about a couple of delicate fang holes in the neck.”

“Indeed, no. Vampires don't have fangs.” He paused and added, “Well, rarely. Apart from being in some stage of decomposition and decay, their outward physical features usually don't change a great deal in undeath. So they primarily rely on strength and viciousness to access a victim's blood. The results are . . .” Max cleared his throat. “. . . something no one should ever have to see.”

I decided to move quickly past that point. “What about the trope that drinking a vampire's blood turns a person into one?”

“Ah! That actually happens to be true. But it's rarely advisable.”

“Based on your description of the undead, I doubt that people are often tempted,” I said. “What happens to victims who get attacked but not killed?”

“Vampirism seldom affects an individual who lives through the attack—though not many people
do
survive. Interestingly, vampirism is also less likely to infect a victim who is killed during a full moon.”

“Really?” I said in surprise. “I would have thought it was the other way around.”

“It does seem peculiarly counterintuitive, doesn't it?” Max said. “And, of course, when in doubt, there are thaumaturigical measures one can take to prevent the deceased from rising again.”

“W
hat
-ical measures?”

“Thaumaturgy,” Max said. “Magic.”

“Ah. Such as . . .”

“Oh, placing garlic in the mouth and around the head of the deceased, for example. Along with the proper incantations, of course.”

“Hey, garlic! That really works?” I was glad that
something
I knew about vampires was applicable.

“Only sometimes,” Max said with regret. “All magic is notoriously unpredictable, after all.”

“As I have had occasion to notice.”

“Thrusting a stake through the heart of the deceased is only an effective measure if it really secures the individual to its grave. If the vampire which subsequently tries to rise is particularly strong, or if it's capable of problem solving, or if the soil is sandy, or if the grave is too shallow . . .” He shook his head. “Well, so many things can go wrong, staking the corpse is almost not worth bothering to do. Especially given what an exceedingly unpleasant task it is, as well as how much it upsets the loved ones of the deceased.”

“But wouldn't driving a wooden stake through its heart solve the problem once and for all? I mean, doesn't that kill—I mean, dispatch—a vampire?”

“Alas, no,” Max said. “And this common misconception is a particularly persuasive example of why misleading people about vampires is so dangerous. Thrusting a wooden stake into the heart of an undead attacker, aside from requiring more physical strength than most people possess, would accomplish nothing more fruitful than bringing you into close contact with a diabolically strong monster that wants to drain your blood and eat your intestines.”

“That is a warning,” I said, “that I definitely won't forget.”

“A misinformed person would almost certainly wind up as a vampire victim by attempting to eliminate the undead in combat by that method. Though it was, I suppose, a convenient way for Stoker to dispatch the villain of his novel,” Max added judiciously. “One must remember, in all fairness, that he was a sensitive person who abhorred violence, and he would probably not have been comfortable writing about vampire slaying with more veracity.”

I thought of
myself
as a sensitive person who abhorred violence; but apparently this wasn't a unanimous view of my character.

Max continued, “After all, Stoker had no way of knowing that his wholly ineffectual method of dispatching a vampire would be taken as gospel for more than a century after his novel was published.”

“No, I think Bram Stoker really couldn't have foreseen
anything
that's happened as a result of
Dracula
.” Though, now that I knew the truth, I was rather tempted to blame the Irish novelist for Daemon Ravel. “But if a wooden stake doesn't work, then what does?
Something
must, or I guess you wouldn't have survived the, uh, Serbian vampire epidemic.”

“Yes, fortunately, several methods are effective for slaying vampires. As well as for disabling them.”

I blinked. “How do you disable a vampire?”

“Ah. The undead vampire is a mystical creature of dark forces, but it is not regenerative. It can be neutralized by dismemberment.”

“That sounds even more unpleasant than staking corpses to their graves.”

“It's also much more difficult, since vampires don't hold still for the process.”

“No, I suppose not.”

“And they are dauntingly fierce combatants. Although neutralizing a vampire may be a pragmatic solution to dealing with multiple attackers, it's a fatal mistake to assume that a vampire has ceased to be dangerous before it's terminated.” His expression seemed haunted by memories as he continued, “I learned this through bitter experience. Which is also how I learned to dispatch them. I had never seen a vampire before I arrived in Serbia in 1730, and I knew very little about them. We
all
knew very little. Learning how to combat them was a trial and error process. One which, to my great sorrow, few of my fellow vampire hunters survived. It was a very dark time in my life, Esther.”

I asked, “Were the other vampire hunters friends of yours? Or colleagues from the Magnum Collegium?”

“Yes. Like me, two other members of the Collegium were on that mission at the request of His Majesty's government.”

“His Majesty?”

“Charles VI, the Habsburg ruler of the Austrian Empire. He also sent soldiers with us, to assist in our investigations. Fine young men who had no idea what they were getting into. Too many of them fell bravely in combat, never to rise again. As did one of my colleagues. The other . . .” As Max remembered his other colleague, his blue eyes clouded with a mist of tears, even after such a long passage of time. “He became one of the undead, and I had to dispatch him myself.”

“Oh, Max,” I said sympathetically.

“I carried out my duty by reminding myself that, had he known the fate that awaited him, he would have instructed me to do so.”

“Of course.” Imagining the horror of it, I said, “The creature who took his place was not your friend and not what he wanted to become. You did what must be done.”

He cleared his throat and retreated safely into a more academic tone. “Decapitation and fire are the effective means we had by then discovered for slaying the undead. Fire, however, was often impractical. It is, as you know, my weakest element as a mage—and was even more so, all those years ago. I was particularly ineffectual at generating fire of any kind when I was under stress or frightened, as I usually was when confronting vampires. And in the 1730s, the mundane means of generating an impromptu fire were very limited and unreliable. Nor did we have always have fuel to maintain one. Conditions were often marginal.”

I tried to picture Max as he must have been in those days. Already well into his seventies in 1730, his unusually slow aging process would have ensured that he still looked like a relatively young man. In that long ago era, he was still within the range of a biologically normal lifespan, and the world in which he was living then was not yet very different from the one in which he had been born and raised.

“So you mostly defeated vampires by decapitating them,” I surmised.

“Yes. Decapitating the animated undead in combat is a bit more difficult than it might sound—”

“Oh, it sounds pretty difficult.”

“—but it was the only reliable method of dispatch I found until . . .”

“Until?”

“Until the Lithuanians came,” he said.

“Max!” I almost leaped out of my chair. “
Lithuanians?
”

He nodded.

I gaped at him.

He sighed and his gaze grew distant and distracted, as if remembering the encounter vividly now, across the span of centuries.

After a long moment, I said, “Well, you can't stop
there,
Max.”

He looked startled, as if having momentarily forgotten where he was. “Ah. Yes . . . They came to Serbia because of the vampire epidemic. Because of our failure to contain it and end the outbreak.” He added heavily, “Because of
my
failures.”

“Oh, Max.”

“There were three of them,” he said.

“Only three?” For some reason, I had pictured an invading army. Or at least a large wagon train.

“More arrived later. But the three of them were a very effective force,” Max said. “They were led by an elder named Jurgis Radvila, who was one of the most remarkable individuals I have ever known.”

“Go on,” I prodded.

“With Radvila and his comrades came the first ray of hope I had glimpsed during my terrible sojourn in Serbia,” he said. “To understand why I made the choice I did, you must understand what that terrible vampire epidemic was like. And you must also learn, as I had to, that—”

“Yes, Max?”

“That vampirism is a good deal more complicated than I had realized when dealing only with the undead.”

A
s his weary horse plodded into yet another humble Serbian village to which the vampire epidemic had recently spread, Max immediately recognized the apotropaics he saw—the methods by which the locals were attempting to shield themselves from Evil.

Bulbs of garlic hung in doorways and windows of homes throughout Medvegia. Crucifixes were prominently displayed on doors, and protective symbols were drawn over thresholds and on rooftops in white chalk. Some homes had a profusion of iron nails pounded into the outer walls around every window or entrance; this was a serious expense for such poor families, but less costly than losing a life to a vampire intruder. Directly outside of one cottage, a very large, ornate cross stood upright on its own, pounded into the ground.

Max heard two of the soldiers in his small escort exchange a few quiet words, speculating that the cross had been stolen from the local Orthodox church. It was clear from their tone that they were merely observing, not criticizing. These two young men had been serving in the region for six months; they had seen far too much to be shocked by something as mundane as stealing sacred ornaments from a church. They had also seen enough by now to realize why a God-fearing family had done such a thing, and why the other villagers evidently accepted it.

His back ached, his eyes felt gritty with fatigue, and his stomach rumbled irritably with the nervous digestive disorder he had developed in recent months. He knew he still seemed like a young man to others, with a smooth face, thick brown hair, and a trim, upright figure; but for the first time since his aging process had mysteriously slowed decades ago, he was feeling the true weight of his seventy-five years. Vampire hunting aged a man.

Lieutenant Hoffman, a young officer who had arrived in the region only recently, was riding on Max's left. A courteous, slightly shy fellow, he had been silent so far. Now he pointed to a tumbledown home as they passed it and asked, “What is that, Dr. Zadok?”

Max's gaze followed the direction of Hoffman's gesture. He saw thick, wide streaks of brownish-red all around the cottage's doorway and its two windows. The same rusty color was splattered on the ground in front of the door

“It's the blood of a recent victim,” Max explained. “Someone who was a member of that household, or at least a frequent visitor there. The family collected the blood from the remains they found after the person was killed.”

“Mein Gott!”
Hoffman exclaimed. “Is that some ghastly mourning ritual?”

“No. The people inside that house think that warding their home this way will prevent the victim from returning there as a vampire.” He paused. “They are mistaken. The odor of blood will
attract
vampires—including the one which they specifically fear.”

“Should we not warn them?” the lieutenant asked.

“Yes,” Max said. “We will do so.”

But he knew from experience that the locals probably wouldn't heed his advice. Unable to defeat their ghoulish adversaries, the people of this region clung fervently to their beliefs in various ineffectual wards and remedies. And Max increasingly accepted this. If he couldn't eliminate the threat or protect these people, then what right did he have to take away their false sense of comfort in empty measures?

There were too many vampires in the region, and their numbers were increasing too rapidly. Locating them or devising protections against them took too long and was too often ineffectual. Fighting them led to too many human casualties while diminishing the vampire population only slightly.

Max felt increasingly helpless—even useless. And he hated the feeling.

Meanwhile, almost as if life were still perfectly normal in this vampire-infested village, local people began emerging and appearing, as if from nowhere, drawn by curiosity to this small group of foreign soldiers and one modestly dressed civilian riding slowly toward the main square. Strangers were uncommon in rural areas, and usually a welcome diversion if they came in peace—though strangers often did
not
come in peace here. This region had been repeatedly sacked and pillaged by conquerors from the East
and
from the West for centuries. Yet despite that, Max saw some hesitantly welcoming smiles among the villagers whom he nodded to and greeted now.