Elixir of Flesh

by Joseph Kranak

  * * *

  Earlier that night, Anton’s first night hunting, Vasile led him deep into the forest, to a thick stretch of trees nestled at the bottom of a gentle slope where a small creek drained downhill. Vasile had been most successful finding vampire prey in this region and came here often, though he frequently changed his location so that the vampires didn’t know where to find him.

  He walked up to a tall sturdy oak, which looked like a good holding point, and explained to Anton, “We’re going to climb this tree and wait up there.”

  Vasile hopped up and grabbed a branch, easily raising himself up and subsequently pulling himself between the branches. Though Vasile was several decades older than Anton, he seemed to have the sprightliness of a teenager. He was strong, quick and agile, and he was already a few body-lengths up the tree before Anton tried to follow behind, with considerably more struggle.

  When the two of them settled into a pair of branches, Vasile explained, in a whisper, “We must do this so that no vampires are able to get the jump on us. Though I’d get more kills if I could be mobile, the vampires are much better at tracking me than I am at tracking them. They can hear me when I walk and could be at my throat before I’d have a chance to react. We have to wait somewhere hidden for them to come to us, to avoid becoming prey. Caution, my boy. Caution is the reason I’ve survived so long. We’re engaging in something very dangerous, and caution is what keeps us from becoming the victims of our peril.”

  Anton asked Vasile how he’d started as a vampire hunter. Vasile shook his head when Anton asked that. “It’s better we keep quiet,” Vasile said. He preferred to sit in silence, since he could hear more acutely. Anton pressed, and he eventually conceded.

  “I was young when it happened,” Vasile whispered, “I grew up with my mother, living in the woods. My father wasn’t there. He was some highwayman who’d gone away or been hanged or something. She wasn’t clear on the details. My mom would poach game and gather fruit and roots for us at day. At night, we lived in a tiny room made out of the hollow of a tree. We had to keep it well camouflaged, since the vampires were out at night. They weren’t then like they are now. They would be out every night, prowling in packs. And they have powerful noses. We’d have to spread over the entrance of our little hollow whatever pungent flowers and plants we could find to mask our smell.

  “But it wasn’t the vampires that got us. It was actually one of the knights in Gabor’s father Sigismund’s house who killed her. He caught her in the woods poaching one day. The aristocrats give us unlimited license to hunt vampires, but not so with most game. The knight was on a horse in his armor with several of his companions when he saw her with a bag full of birds, one of which was a spotted eagle. Eagles are particularly taboo. When he saw that bird, he just pulled out his sword and stabbed her through the stomach. I was with her, and she told me to run home. I ran to the hollow and waited all night, expecting them to find me and kill me too. They didn’t. But I was entirely alone from then on, without my mother or anyone.

  “My mother hadn’t taught me to do anything but hunt. Afraid of being killed for poaching as she had, I became a vampire hunter. I just wanted to earn money and survive. At the time there were many vampire hunters, all young. Some of them deserters from one of the armies, some of them bandits and highwaymen, some farmers’ kids. They were a reckless and cavalier bunch: they didn’t care if they lived or died. And they took in huge hauls of dead vampires. I was consistently the least successful because I was the most cautious, took the fewest risks. But that kept me alive. As they all got killed off, one by one, I survived. At the time, we could either take our kills to Andrei or to Dragomir. He was an apothecary that also made vampire wares, but the vampires eventually succeeded in breaking into his home, destroying the place and dragging him off for food. Now it’s just Andrei and me.”

  After he finished, Vasile commenced the silence, and Anton was unable to persuade him to talk about anything else. Vasile’s eyes surveyed the forest in all directions while the hours passed. Vasile said almost nothing to Anton.

  When Anton got bored and tried to relax, Vasile would nudge him and say, “You cannot relax. Always alert. A vampire-hunter needs only two things: patience and deadly aim. Especially since we’ll not see as many vampires as we used to. I used to see them every night and would have my choice of prey. Now I wait days before I see even one. We may have to wait a very long time.”

  Immediately after he said this, he suddenly stopped and froze. A faint sound of movement was audible in the distance. Anton heard the sound too, the sound of quickly moving footsteps, and he grew nervous and excited. In the distance, they saw two shapes running. The two shapes were Fane and Vad, returning at a leisurely pace from their recent rendezvous. The vampires usually darted across the forest at night in blazing sprints, but these two moved at a moderate jog, clearly neither in a hurry nor afraid.

  Anton immediately reached for his crossbow and raised it, but Andrei stopped him and indicated for him to be silent. Anton silently mouthed, “We can’t take two of them at once. Especially such old ones. Be Silent. Let them pass.”

  Anton stopped and slowed his breath, but when the wind blew through the trees, he was temporarily jolted and had to grab hold of the tree’s trunk. In this hasty motion, his foot scraped against a branch and his crossbow bumped against the tree. Neither sound was particularly loud, but they caused the two vampires to suddenly break off their run.

  Vad gestured to Fane and nodded in the general direction of Anton and Vasile. Vad and Fane both raised their noses to sniff the air. Vad silently questioned Fane whether he smelled anything, and Fane shrugged his shoulders. Nonetheless, they decided to cautiously approach the direction from which they heard the sound.

  Vasile slowly pulled an arrow from his quiver and strung it on his longbow. He silently mouthed, “Arm yourself. Don’t shoot until I do. Aim for the neck.”

  Anton picked up the crossbow and began to aim it. He lowered it, and looking at Vasile, he silently mouthed, “Let me have the longbow,” miming with his hands at the same time.

  Vasile took a deep breath, looked at the longbow contemplatively, and relaxed it and handed it to Anton, raising one of his crossbows instead.

  Fane and Vad continued to move in the same direction, slowly while they sniffed the air. Anton leaned over to point his weapon directly at them, his bow taught, eager to fire. Vasile cautioned, silently, “Patience!”

  Anton’s heart started pounding in anticipation, and as his body warmed up, sweat started to leak from his pores, releasing his human odor into the air.

  Vasile knew from experience that it would be difficult to kill both vampires, especially since the two appeared to be fairly old, both some sixty to eighty years old, he guessed. A sixty-year-old vampire would prove much harder to kill than the youngster he’d just killed a few days ago, and the two of them together would be well nigh impossible. A single, well-aimed shot could kill a vampire, even an old one, but he didn’t want to risk it from this distance unless necessary, especially since he didn’t know how precisely Anton could fire.

  Fane and Vad continued walking aimlessly, sniffing the air as if they had caught to scent of something important but couldn’t place its location.

  Fane finally threw up his hands in frustration and said to Vad: “What are we after?”

  Vad hastily gestured for him to be silent, still hoping they might be able to catch by surprise whoever it was they’d heard.

  “We are chasing hares,” Fane said, using an expression axiomatic among the vampires for going after something too trivial to be worth the effort.

  “Obedience, underling!” Vad snapped at Fane.

  “The night retreats,” Fane complained.

  Vad hissed in aggravation at Fane’s complaints, but he couldn’t argue with the apparent truth of what Fane said. He screeched with condescension, “You will follow my lead, underling.” Then he led Fane at a rapid sprint in the direction
they had been originally heading.

  Once they left, Vasile lowered his weapon and followed them with his eyes. As they receded into the distance, he squinted as much as possible, hoping that perhaps this time he might finally see them disappearing into their hole. In some thirty years of hunting, he had never found the entrance to whatever cave or hole they slept within, but he nonetheless always believed that the discovery of it would be just around the corner.

  Divining Vasile’s thoughts, Anton asked, “Have you ever tried to track them to their cave? I’m a great tracker. The best around. I’m sure I could follow their footprints right to their doorstep.”

  “Tried but never succeeded,” Vasile said, “We could try again. Not now. Still too dangerous. But at morning, perhaps.”

  Just the mention of morning made Anton expel a vigorous yawn and reminded him how long he had gone without sleeping. His father and he had arisen the last morning, as usual, before daybreak, meaning he had gone for nearly twenty-four hours without sleep.

  “Or I can track them alone while you sleep,” Vasile said, noticing Anton’s fatigue.

  “I will join you,” Anton said sleepily, “I don’t need sleep. Sleep is for the weak.”

  “No you won’t,” Vasile said, “At sunrise, I’ll lead you back. And you’ll sleep while I track. We can practice with weapons in the evening after we’ve both slept.”

  They did as Vasile said, Anton being led back to Andrei’s where Vasile left him. Ileana let him in through the back door and asked him, “Are you hungry? Do you want some food?” but Anton shook his sagging head. She understood and led Anton to a guest bedroom, where she presented him with a bed.

  Anton’s eyes opened wide with amazement as he saw how beautiful the room was. The one thing he noticed above all was how abnormally clean it was: the floor swept, the sheets clean and the wallpapered walls free of dirt. It also lacked that conspicuous smell he’d grown so used to from his usual sleeping place, that admixture of human and animal stench that seemed to permeate every corner. Though he didn’t have time to appreciate it, since sleep beckoned him, he thought to himself that he’d like to bring his sister Constanta here and share it with her.

  He undressed and dropped onto the bed. It was infinitely more comfortable than the bed he was used to, and sinking into it felt like sinking into a warm bog. Though he was so tired that he could’ve probably fallen asleep on a nest of pinecones, this bed was exceptionally inviting, and he fell asleep almost right away.