by Kim Newman
Few of them went after children, though.
With Caralin gone, Falke applied himself to the vampire hunt.
On Van Helsing’s recommendation, he read Dom Augustin Calmet’s two-volume Traité sur les apparitions des Esprits, et sur les vampires ou les revenants de Hongrie, de Moravie Etc. (1746). Picking through lore and legend, Falke tried to find hard facts. He sharpened stakes and contrived spring-loading mechanisms for firing them across rooms and through inch-thick boards. He designed a metal collar, with inset silver crosses, as a defence against vampire attack.
Even the others thought he was taking it too seriously.
‘It’s just some new pox,’ Raoul said. ‘And de Rosillon’s footpad fillies.’
Falke was convinced. There was a vampire in Paris.
‘It’s Caralin, isn’t it?’ Raoul said. ‘When she’s not here, you go mad… not as mad as when she is here, but mad all the same.’
Falke denied it.
* * *
Caralin came back, healthy again. She would answer no questions.
Van Helsing said the vampire was still at large.
He believed he had found the monster’s address on the map. In the centre of a cluster of red crosses marking attacks was the Hôtel d’Autriche, an abandoned palace. Once the Paris residence of Maria Theresa of Austria, mother of the late queen Marie Antoinette – though it was likely the Hapsburg Empress never set foot in the place. It gained a reputation as uncanny in the rational days of the Revolution. Sans-culotte mobs who set up households in former palaces shunned the HÔtel d’Autriche, supposedly frightened off by the headless ghost of the guillotined queen.
Van Helsing prepared for an expedition to the mansion, to find the grave of the vampire and bar her from it. Before facing the monster, he must fast and pray… though Le Gang suspected he also needed to wait for his shrew of a wife to leave the city so he could face evil behind her back.
Raoul proposed they venture to the HÔtel d’Autriche without the Professor.
They would wear Falke’s anti-vampire collars. The sly creature they were after preyed only on the weak, the young. She was not expecting men who knew her for what she was.
Caralin was against the proposal. She said abandoned palaces were places to avoid. She coughed a little, stressing the unhealthy air that could be expected.
All other votes went against her.
Even Falke disagreed. Since Caralin’s return, he was more convinced than ever that she was deceiving him.
He was sure one – or all! – of the others knew where she had been.
Getting them all to a haunted mansion might help solve the mystery of Caralin. Then, he would take steps.
He must have her free and clear.
At the risk of losing all else.
* * *
The Hôtel d’Autriche was in Le Marais, surrounded by high walls and gloomy, marshy gardens. It must have an evil reputation not to be occupied. The district was popular with the landed and wealthy. De Rosillon’s people had a hôtel particulier around here.
As befit the respectable people who lived in the fine homes, the streets were well-swept and deadly dull. Anyone who passed on foot or – more likely – in a carriage was quiet. They were eerily like ghosts after the raucous, earthy folk Falke knocked about with in the student quarter.
It struck him that, after graduation, they were expected by their families to live in places like this, go to church on Sundays and marry girls who wouldn’t rob them honestly like the flower girls and the tarts of the Quartier Latin did. At once, he saw the future as living death.
When he was a lawyer, would there be vampire hunts? Would there be Caralin?
‘Spooked, yet?’ asked Raoul, heartily.
‘Just the night chill,’ said Falke.
Raoul handed him a flask of something they probably used at the flower factory to wash off the arsenic.
The spirits burned his throat going down and made his eyes water.
Anatole and Gio found a way in by hefting a rusty gate off its hinges.
Caralin hung back, but Falke put an arm round her.
‘He’ll protect you from the monster,’ said Raoul.
‘But who’ll protect you from him?’ said de Rosillon. The young Count laughed like a devil. He’d been drinking all day.
‘Remember, this thing is dangerous,’ said Anatole. ‘Professor Van Helsing has made that plain.’
‘We’re Le Gang de Schubert,’ sang Gio. ‘Fearless and bold…’
‘There’s a difference?’ asked Raoul.
Anatole was first into the mansion, climbing through a broken ground-floor window. He waved a lantern around. Falke saw decaying plaster and cracked floor-boards.
They all followed.
* * *
De Rosillon proposed they split into three teams to search the upper storeys, the extensive ground floor and the basements.
Somehow, Falke was paired with Raoul to search above.
Gio and Anatole were together on this level, and Caralin wound up consigned below with de Rosillon.
Falke saw de Rosillon was delighted at the outcome, which he had contrived.
Was Caralin in it with him?
The fire burned in his stomach. He took another drink.
The expedition upstairs was thwarted. The main staircase had collapsed. Much of the first-floor landing had fallen into the hallway. Looking up, Falke saw stars and felt spots of rain on his face – so the roof was gone too.
Raoul prised a jagged length of wood from a fallen bannister.
‘A natural vampire-impaling device,’ he said, handing it to Falke.
Falke wondered if he could thrust it through his friend’s ribs. His heart wasn’t protected by an iron-and-silver collar.
They waited a few minutes. The mansion was quiet.
‘Funny,’ said Raoul.
‘What is?’
‘I can’t hear Gio clumping around. Usually, you can tell him a mile off. With all these creaky, rotten boards, I’m surprised he’s not crashed through to the cellars.’
Both stood still and listened.
Falke had to agree. It was odd.
‘Let’s find them and pack it in,’ said Raoul. ‘This was one of de Rosillon’s foolish notions. We should have learned not to listen to him long ago.’
The notion was not so foolish if de Rosillon’s desire wasn’t to skewer a vampire but be alone with Caralin…
They looked in every room on the ground floor. In what must have been the ballroom, a rigged-up shack suggested gypsies or tramps had tried to squat here. The camp was cobwebbed and abandoned.
Gio and Anatole weren’t to be found.
‘They must have gone below,’ said Falke.
‘What ever for?’
‘Perhaps they heard something.’
Raoul looked sober and serious.
‘Let’s find them all and get back to the Saint-Flour Musette for supper. I don’t like this place. Not because it’s haunted by vampires, but because it’s obviously a death trap. Agree you?’
‘Agree I,’ said Falke.
* * *
The cellar door was open, but they heard nothing from beneath them.
Falke called out. No answer.
‘There’s light,’ said Raoul.
Carefully going down uneven stone steps, they found a lantern propped up on the last stair. Falke thought it was Gio’s.
The basements were a vaulted space. They smelled of earth and vile things.
Falke noticed Raoul had produced a primed pistol.
‘You keep the stake,’ he said. ‘I’ll trust a lead ball.’
‘You didn’t bring silver.’
‘Waste of money, my friend.’
‘I hope you won’t regret the economy.’
They zigzagged between columns. The basements of the Hôtel d’Autriche extended under the whole house and beyond. Beneath the gardens was a labyrinth or catacomb which had mostly fallen in and was partly flooded.
> ‘Caralin,’ called out Falke.
The name came back at him.
‘Anyone?’ called Raoul.
The same.
Falke was now seriously jittery.
‘The vampire can’t have got them all,’ he said. ‘Not with the collars.’
‘Vampires worry me less than other creatures of the night,’ said Raoul, striding off with lantern in one hand and pistol in the other. ‘This is just the sort of lair the Black Coats like. A hand over the mouth and a dagger in the ribs are as deadly as a vampire’s kisses – more so, since I’m sure they’re real while I have doubts about Van Helsing’s sanity.’
Falke gripped the spar of wood.
‘What…’ said Raoul.
The lantern was dropped and the pistol discharged.
A pool of burning oil spread and Falke was blinded for a moment.
Where was Raoul?
Someone lay on the uneven ground beyond the fire.
Falke went to help him. It wasn’t Raoul but de Rosillon, with his collar torn off. He had red scratches in his neck.
Falke’s heart clutched with terror.
* * *
‘Michel… Michel…’
He heard his name called.
‘Caralin,’ he cried. ‘Caralin.’
He walked away from de Rosillon towards the voice, only he wasn’t sure where the voice was coming from and got turned around.
He wasn’t even sure it was her.
He tripped over an iron grille and felt cold air coming up from it.
A strangulated sound rose too.
Fire from the dropped lamp lit up the basement. Falke saw through the grille.
A fat white face, glistening with drops of blood, was pressed close to the bars. Gio Jones, with a great chunk bitten out of his neck, shaking with pain. His fingers wrapped around the grille like white worms.
‘Her,’ he said, ‘her…’
Then his fingers relaxed and, with a sigh as if all the air in him were escaping at once, he fell down into a deeper darkness. Falke heard a thump as he landed on stone.
He found Anatole a few moments later, sat in a lopsided chair, throat slit like a pig’s, a pool of blood in his lap. His eyes were rolled up, showing only the whites. His coat had been ripped off and his shirt torn away, exposing his shoulder and chest. His skin was covered with little rat-like bites that bubbled blood.
He heard a musical laugh behind him… and was struck a blow on the head.
* * *
He was woken up by water on his face.
It was raining on him.
Dawnlight was in the catacombs too. He must have been out for hours.
He felt his throat. The collar was gone. He could find no wounds.
Had he been spared?
He got to his feet, unsteady. He found Raoul’s improvised stake and used it as a walking stick.
‘Michel,’ shouted someone.
A man’s voice. He was relieved.
‘Raoul? Where are you?’
‘In the shadows,’ he replied. ‘I can’t come into the light.’
‘What? Why?’
‘Come here, Michel… here…’
His head throbbed, from the blow and after-effects of drink.
What had happened? De Rosillon, Gio and Anatole were dead. Only he and Raoul had lived through the night.
And Caralin.
Where was she? Where had she been all this time?
‘I’ve found her,’ said Raoul, as if reading his mind. ‘Down here, where the dark is deepest.’
Falke went to his friend. He saw an outline in the murk. Raoul’s face, eyes bright.
A lucifer flared and Raoul lit a candle. He was standing by an open trapdoor.
He indicated that they should go down a level.
Falke followed the candle as it descended. They went down a narrow, sloping passage walled with wet stone blocks. Iron rings were set into the stone at intervals.
The passage fed into a crypt.
All around were coffins in niches or open tombs. Only a few scraps of bone remained inside.
‘What happened?’ asked Falke.
‘She killed them,’ said Raoul. ‘Killed them and drank their blood.’
‘Caralin?’
‘Who else?’ said Raoul, bitterly. ‘Admit it, you knew all along… When she was away, the vampire was active. Her strange pallor, that thing with her voice, the way she gets in your head and turns you around. The place she comes from! Styria – well-known as the hunting ground of Mircalla Karnstein. Her very name…’
‘I don’t believe it,’ said Falke.
Raoul stood over a tomb, holding up a candle.
‘You don’t,’ said Raoul. ‘Then look…’
Caralin lay in the tomb, hands folded on her chest, blood on her mouth.
Falke felt fire in his head.
‘She killed our friends,’ said Raoul, ‘but what she did to us is worse… she’s changed us.’
Candle flames danced in Raoul’s eyes. He opened his mouth to show new fangs.
* * *
Only one thing was to be done.
Falke speared Caralin through the chest.
She groaned and her eyes popped open… She coughed and a bloody rag came out of her mouth.
As he worked the spar through her, he saw her hands and feet were bound with stout string.
Her eyes were angry, then empty.
Raoul swore, and spat out his fangs.
‘Why didn’t you stop him, you fool?’ shouted de Rosillon, stepping out from behind a screen.
‘He was too quick,’ said Raoul, aghast.
Anatole dashed in and tried to pull out the stake, which was stuck too tight.
‘That’s hardly any use,’ said de Rosillon.
‘What’s happened?’ said Gio.
Falke saw red paint on his friends’ necks, wounds made of flaps of fabric gummed on.
‘Michel’s killed a vampire,’ said de Rosillon.
‘Caralin?’ said Gio.
‘Yes, her. Who else?’
* * *
He could not get what Raoul had told him out of his head.
She had changed them, he said. Caralin had made vampires of them.
That – like everything else – was supposed to be a joke, a prank on him. But it felt true. In the catacombs under the Hôtel d’Autriche, he became a monster.
Raoul’s fangs were from the joke shop, but the chill in Falke’s heart was profound. He could feel his bones rearranging.
Nothing for it but to put her into the Seine, de Rosillon said. No one else knew her in Paris. She never mentioned any family. She’d be just another unknown woman.
She was smiling as she slipped under the waters.
‘I suggest we all leave town for a while,’ said Raoul. ‘Let things simmer down. It was a ghastly mistake, and we’ll have to live with the consequences…’
‘I shall sing a mass for poor Caralin,’ said Gio. ‘Several.’
‘This can’t come out,’ said Anatole. ‘We’d be ruined. Michel would have it the worst. Disgrace, prison, the guillotine. We have to help him. It’s for his sake.’
‘I agree,’ said de Rosillon. ‘We must help Michel.’
‘In time, we can come back,’ said Raoul. ‘And put this unfortunate incident behind us. A student prank that turned out to be not so funny, eh? It’s the time of our lives when such things are de rigueur.’
Garron, the best actor and most honest man in Le Gang, was sent to tell Van Helsing they had destroyed the vampire. Cringing with shame, he reported that the Professor believed him. He was not sure about Madame Van Helsing, but she would keep quiet to preserve her husband’s reputation. It was in nobody’s interests that this story got out.
So, the vampire was done away with… and Le Gang de Schubert was dissolved.
It would be twenty-five years before Falke came back to Paris… as the monster they had made of him. To avenge Caralin, he would revive the fear of the vampire in th
e city that ignored her in life but made her a totem – and an icon – in death.
XVI
DR FALKE WAS so terrified by the apparition that Unorna could feel the psychic backwash from outside the room. She went cold with someone else’s fright.
This house was permeated with fear and rage, and shame and cruelty. It had shouted at her in the courtyard, before La Marmoset picked the front door lock. It was worse inside. How could others not feel it? Most people didn’t, she knew… it was as if they were deaf or blind from birth and never understood the sense they were missing.
For all its horrors, the house in Rue des Martyrs had no ghost.
Not until now…
La Marmoset, the dead-alive image of L’Inconnue de la Seine, came as a shock to the man they knew to be the vampire murderer… but Falke had expected her for years. He had even been piqued that the dead woman cared little enough to haunt him. Along with terror was strange joy, a hope of some outcome beyond imagining.
Falke had confessed to killing Caralin Trelmanski. He wouldn’t be the first murderer to stay in love with his victim. Did he see this revenant – La Marmoset wearing that sad smiling face – as a chance to take back what he had done?
No, it was stranger than that. Falke’s story was more of a tangle.
From what Madame Van Helsing said and the scraps of clues La Marmoset put together, Unorna had an idea of what had happened twenty-five years ago to drive the man mad.
Even now, with a corpse in the bathtub and a good friend barely saved from a hideous death, she felt sorry for Falke. He wasn’t a true vampire, just a tinkerer with an inescapable mania for revenge. Against his friends, whom he held responsible, but against himself too – for willingly believing what he was led to believe, for acting out of a deep-seated urge to kill the woman he loved. Unorna understood that the black seed was in him all the time. That he thought Caralin a vampire was an excuse, not a motive. The impulse to hurt or kill was there already.
Michel Falke sat on his piano stool, just staring.
La Marmoset glided across the floor – taking tiny steps under her long dress – and reached out. He gripped her wrist and pressed his cheek against her hand.
Unorna stepped into the room.
Sophy was wrapping a torn strip of cloth around her scratched hand. She was otherwise unharmed.
The corpse in the bathtub was Inspecteur d’Aubert.