by ich du
The few references to the vampiric curse he had found revolved around fishwives' gossip and stupid superstitions about garlic and white roses. The only thing of any use was a single line about silver being anathema to the beasts. Other than that there was nothing of substance. One had ideas of how to keep a vampire out of a building, not keep it trapped within one - though for a while he hoped the solution might be one and the same.
'This is out of our province.' he admitted grudgingly, closing the book in a billow of dust. 'Short of sealing Brother Guttman in a silver lined vault, which is both impractical and impossible given the cost of the metal, I have found nothing. I hate to say it, but this is useless. We are wasting our time.'
'No, it has to be in here somewhere.' Meyrink objected, for once their roles of donkey in the argument reversed. Meyrink was being the stubborn ass refusing to see the impossibility of their situation. If Guttman had been infected - and that was how he thought of it, a disease - then the best thing they could do for the old man was drive a stake through his heart, scoop out his brains and bury him upside down in consecrated ground.
If...
'You know it isn't, brother. This is a wild goose chase.'
'What would you have us do? Slay our brother?'
That was a question he wasn't prepared to answer. 'Nothing good comes of death.' he said instead, hoping Meyrink would take it as his final word.
'Yet we cannot stand guard over him night and day, it is impossible. There must be a way.'
A thought occurred to him then: 'Perhaps magic runes...?' They could place runes on the doors and windows to act as locks barring Guttman's ingress and egress, thus confining the vampire to the crypts.
Meyrink spat. 'Would you consort with the servants of Chaos?'
He was right, of course. The practice of magic was outlawed - it would be next to impossible to find anyone to craft such magic, and even if they could, for how long would the magic remain stable? To rely on such a warding was to court disaster, for certain, but Messner knew there was hope in the idea. Could such a series of runes be created to turn the old temple into a sanctuary for Guttman?
'The count would have access...' and then he realised what he was saying. The count.
Von Carstein.
The vampire count.
He made the sign of Sigmar's hammer.
There would be no going to the castle for help.
IV
THE DOORS AND window frames of the temple had been inlaid with fine silver wire; bent into the shape of the runes the mage had sworn would keep the undead at bay. Meyrink had had no choice but to employ the man, despite his deep-seated distrust of magicians.
Meyrink studied the silver swirls.
There was nothing, as far as he could tell, remotely magical about the symbols that had cost the temple an Emperors ransom. The man had assured the priests that the combination of the curious shapes and the precious metal would turn the confines of the temple into a prison for any of the tainted blood. He had sworn an oath, for all the good it did them now.
Like the windows and doors, the entrance to the crypt itself was protected by a serious of intricate metal swirls that had be laid in after Victor Guttman had been led below. Together, the mage had promised, these twists of metal would form an impenetrable barrier for the dead, keeping those without a soul from crossing. Again, Meyrink had no choice but to believe the man, despite the evidence of his own eyes.
Meyrink descended the thirteen steps into the bowels of the temple.
The crypt was dank, lit by seven guttering candles that threw sepulchral shadows over the tombs, the air fetid. Guttman had refused the comforts of a bed and slept curled up on a blanket in a dirty corner, ankles and wrists chained to the wall like some common thief.
It hurt Meyrink to see him like this: living in the dark, hidden away from the world he so loved, shackled.
This was no life at all.
'Morning, brother.' he called, lightly, struggling to keep the grief out of his voice.
'Is it?' answered the old man, looking up. The flickering candlelight did nothing to hide the anguish in his eyes or the slack skin of his face. 'Time has lost all meaning underground. I see nothing of light and day or dark and night, only candles that burn out and are replenished as though by magic when I finally give in to sleep. I had the dream again last night...'
Meyrink nodded. He knew. Two more girls - they were no more than children in truth - had succumbed to the sleeping sickness and died during the night. Two more. They were calling it a plague, though for a plague it was a selective killer, draining the very life out of Drakenhofs young women while the men lived on, seemingly immune, desperate as those they loved fell victim. It was always the same: first they paled, as the sickness took hold then they slipped into a sleep from which they never woke. The transition was shockingly quick. In a matter of three nights vibrant healthy young women aged as much as three decades to look at and succumbed to an eternal sleep. Meyrink knew better: it wasn't a plague, it was a curse.
'Did I...? Did I...?'
He nodded again.
'Two young girls, brother. Sisters. They were to have been fifteen this naming day.'
Guttman let out a strangled sob. He held up his hands, rattling the chains in anger and frustration. 'I saw it... I...' But there was nothing he could say. 'Have you come to kill me?'
'I can't, brother. Not while there is hope.'
'There is no hope. Can't you see that? I am a killer now. There is no peace for me. No rest. And while I live you damn the young women of our flock. Kill me, brother. If not for my own sake, then do it for theirs.' Tears streaked down his grubby face.
'Not while you can still grieve for them, brother. Not while you still have compassion. When you are truly a beast, when the damned sickness owns you, only then. Before that day do not ask for what I cannot do.'
V
'HE HAS TO die!' Messner raged, slamming his clenched fist on the heavy oak of the refectory table. The clay goblets he and Meyrink had been drinking from jumped almost an inch, Meyrink's teetering precariously before it toppled, spilling thick bloody red wine into the oak grain between them.
'Who's the monster here? The old man in the dungeon or the young one baying for his blood?' Meyrink pushed himself to his feet and leaned in menacingly. It was rapidly becoming an old argument but that didn't prevent it from being a passionate one.
'Forty-two girls dead, man! Forty-two! What about the sanctity of life? What is the meaning of life, brother, if you are willing to throw it away so cheaply?'
'We don't know,' Meyrink rasped, his knuckles white on the tabletop. 'We just don't know that it is him. We have no evidence that he gets out. He's chained up in there. There are wards and sigils and glyphs and all sorts of paraphernalia aimed at keeping him locked up down there, helpless... harmless.'
'And yet every morning he feeds you stories of his dreams, talks of the young ones he has seen suffering at the hands of the monstrous beasts. He regales you in glorious detail, brother. The creature is taunting you and you are too stupid to realise it.'
'No. Not too stupid. It is compassion. The old man raised you as he would his own son, from when the temple took you in fifteen years ago. He cared for you. He loved you. He did the same for me in my time. We owe him-'
'We owe him nothing anymore. He isn't Victor Guttman! He's a daemon. Can't you get that into your thick skull, man? He barely touches the food we take down for him for a reason, you know. It doesn't sustain him. Blood does. Blood, Brother. Blood!'
'Would you do it? Would you turn murderer and kill the man who might as well have been your own father, everything he did for you? Would you? Take the knife now, go down into the crypt and do it, cut his heart out. Do it, damn you! If you have so little doubt, do it...'
'No.'
'Well I am not about to.'
'I know men who could,' Messner said softly, wriggling around the impasse with a suggestion neither man really wished to consider. Bri
nging in outsiders. Part of it was fear - what would happen if people realised the priesthood of Sigmar had been infected with the tainted blood of vampires? Another part was self-preservation. The streets had been rife with rumours for days. Two witch hunters were in Drakenhof, though from what little Messner had managed to learn they were not church sanctioned Sigmarite witch hunters, and were barely in the employ of the elector count of Middenheim. Their charge had been issued nearly a decade ago, now their hunt was personal. They had come to town a week ago, looking for a man by the name of Sebastian Aigner, who, if the gossips were to be believed, they had been hunting for seven years. He was the last of a bunch of renegade killers who had slaughtered the men's families, burning them alive. Skellan and Fischer, the witch hunters, had found the others and extracted their blood debt. They had come to Drakenhof looking to lay their daemons to rest, and perhaps, Messner thought, they could purge the temple of its daemon in the process. 'They could tell us for sure. This is what they do.'
Meyrink looked sceptical.
'Forty-two young women, forty-two. Think about it.'
'That is all I have been doing, for weeks. Do you think I don't lie awake at night, imagining him out there, feasting? Do you think I don't sneak down into the crypt at all hours, hoping to catch him gone, so that I know beyond a shadow of doubt that he is the killer my heart tells me he isn't? Always I find him there, chained to the walls, barely conscious, looking like death itself, and it breaks my heart that he is suffering because of me!'
'Forty-two.' Reinhardt Messner said again, shaking his head as though the number itself answered every objection Brother Meyrink voiced. And perhaps it did at that.
'Talk to them if you must, but I want no part of it.' Meyrink said, finally, turning and stalking out of the room.
Alone, Messner righted the spilled goblet and began mopping up the mess. It was, it seemed, his destiny to clean up after Meyrink.
VI
MESSNER GREETED THE younger of the two with a tired smile and held out a hand to be shaken.
Skellan ignored it and didn't return the smile. There was something distinctly cold about the man, but given his line of work it was perhaps unsurprising. The older man, Stefan Fischer, nodded and followed Skellan into the temple. He, at least, had the decency to bow low before the statue of Sigmar Heldenhammer and make the sign of the hammer whereas the other just walked down the aisle, toeing at the seats and tutting at the silver runes worked into the window frames. His footsteps echoed coldly.
Messner watched the man, fascinated by his confidence as he examined every nook and cranny of the old temple. Skellan moved with authority. He lifted a thin glass wedge from the front table, beside the incense burner, and tilted it so that it caught and refracted the light into a rainbow on the wall.
'So tell me.' Skellan said, angling the light up the wall. 'How does this fit with your philosophy? I am curious. The taking of a human life... it seems... alien to my understanding of your faith. Enlighten me.'
Behind Messner, Meyrink coughed.
'Sacrifice for the good of mankind, Herr Skellan. Sacrifice.'
'Murder, you mean.' Skellan said bluntly. 'Dressing the act up in fancy words doesn't change it. You want me to go down into the basement and slay a daemon. I can do this. It is what I do. Unlike you I see no nobility in the act. For me it is a case of survival, plain and simple. The creatures would destroy me and mine, so I destroy theirs. So tell me again, why would you have me drive a stake into the heart of an old man?'
'He isn't an old man anymore. Victor Guttman is long gone. The thing down there is a shell, capable of ruthless cunning and vile acts of degradation and slaughter. It is a beast. Forty-two young women of this parish have suffered at the beast's hands, witch hunter. Forty-two. I would have you root out the canker by killing the beast so that I do not find the words forty-three coming to my lips.'
'Good. Then we understand each other.'
'So we kill to stop more killing?' Brother Meyrink said, unable to hold his silence. 'That makes as much sense as going to war to end a war.'
'We love to hate.' the witch hunter said matter-of-factly. 'We love to defeat and destroy. We love to conquer. We love to kill. That is why we love war so much we revere a killer and make him a god. In violence we find ourselves. Through pain and anger and conflict we find a path that leads us to, well, to what we don't know but we are determined to walk the path. It has forever been so.'
'Sigmar help us all,' Meyrink said softly.
'Indeed, and any other gods who feel benevolent enough to shine their light on us. In the meantime, I tend to help myself. I find it is better than waiting for miracles that will never happen.'
'How do you intend to do it?' Meyrink asked.
Messner paled at the question. Details were not something he wanted.
The witch hunter drew a long bladed knife from his boot. 'Silver-tipped.' he said, drawing blood from the pad of his thumb as he picked himself on the knife's sharpness. 'Surest way to do it. Cut his heart out of his chest, then burn the corpse so there's nothing left.'
Messner shuddered at the thought. It was barbaric. 'Whatever it takes.' he said, unable to look the witch hunter in the eye.
'Stay here, priest. I wouldn't want to offend your delicate sensibilities. Fischer, come on, we've got work to do.'
VII
THEY DESCENDED IN darkness, listening to the chittering of rats and the moans of the old man, faint like the lament of ghosts long since moved on. His cries were pitiful The candles had died but tapers lay beside fresh ones. Skellan lit two. They were enough. Death was a dark business. Too much light sanitised it. His feet scuffed at the silver wrought into the floor on the threshold. It was nothing more than mumbo-jumbo. There was no magic in the design. Some charlatan had taken the temple for all it was worth. It was amazing what price people would pay for peace of mind.
The fretful light revealed little of the dark's secrets.
Carefully Skellan moved through the crypt, Fischer two steps behind him, sword drawn in readiness for ambush. Skellan had no such fear. The only things alive down in the crypt were either too small or too weak to cause any serious harm. There was no sense of evil to the place. No taint. He raised the candle, allowing the soft light to shed more layers of pure black in favour of gentler shadows.
The old priest was huddled in the corner, naked and emaciated, his bones showing stark against the flaked skin. He barely had the strength to lift his head but defiance blazed in his eyes when he did so. Suppurating sores rimmed his mouth. There were dark scars where he had been bitten. Skellan had no doubt about the origin of the wound. It was the cold kiss of death: a vampire's bite. The old man had been fed on, of that there was no doubt. But that didn't mean that he had been sired into the life of a bloodsucking fiend.
Again, there was no residual evil that he could discern, only a frightened old man.
He trod on a plate of food that lay untouched at Guttman's feet, the plate cracked and mouldy cheese smeared beneath his boot. A nearby jug of water was nearly empty.
'Have you come to kill me?' The old man said. It sounded almost like a plea to Skellan's ears. The poor pathetic wretch had obviously tortured himself to the point of madness with the dreams of blood feasts. It was natural, having been fed upon to dream of feeding in the most feverish moments of the night when the kindred vampires were abroad. But dreams were not deeds. A true vampire would feel no remorse. There would be no tortured soul beginning for slaughter. There would be only defiance, arrogance, contempt, as the love of hatred boiled away all other emotions.
'Yes.'
The fear seemed to leech out of Guttman, the puzzle of bones collapsing in on themselves as his body slouched against the cold crypt wall.
'Thank you.'
'It will hurt, and there will be no remains for loved ones to come cry over, you understand? It can be no other way. The curse is in you, whether you killed these women or not.'
'I killed them.' Guttman said forcef
ully.
'I doubt it.' Jon Skellan said, drawing the silver dagger from his boot. 'Does this scare you, priest? Does it make your skin itch and crawl?'
Guttman stared at the blade as it shone in the candlelight. He nodded.
'Make your peace with Sigmar.' Stefan Fischer said from behind Skellan. He turned his back on the murder.
A litany of prayers for forgiveness and for the safe passage of his soul tripped over Victor Guttman's lips, not stopping even for a moment as Skellan rammed the silver knife home, between third and forth rib, into the old man's heart. His eyes flared open, the truth suddenly blazing in his mind. His screams were pitiful as he succumbed to death's embrace. He bled, pure dark blood that seeped out of the gaping wound in his chest and pooled on the floor around him.
Skellan stayed with the old priest as he died, a pitiful old man in chains.
He hung there, limbs slack, body slumped awkwardly, head lolling down over his cadaverous ribs, where the knife protruded from his chest cavity.
'It's over.' Fischer said, laying a hand on his friend's shoulder. 'Come, let's leave this place. Bringing death to a temple leaves me cold.'
'In a moment my friend. Go to the priests, tell them the deed is done, and fetch the paraffin oil from the cart. This place needs cleansing of the stench.'
'But-'
'No buts, old friend. The place must be purged. The priests can find more walls to praise their god. But not here. Now leave me for a moment with the dead, would you? I need to pay my respects to a brave old fool.'
He sat alone for an unknowable time, the candle burning low in his hand, unmoving, waiting, alone with the dead priest.
The pungent reek of paraffin drifted down from above. It was a sickening, stifling smell. Disembodied voices argued, Fischer's the loudest as he continued to douse the temple in oil. The place would burn.
Victor Guttman's eyes flared open in the dying light and his hand flew to the silver blade still embedded in his heart. He screamed as he yanked it out and sent the knife skittering across the crypt floor. The flesh around the wound was seared black.