I pull the card toward me, peering at it as though I were playing blackjack in Vegas, and slowly turn it over. A man dressed in a blue tunic with red tights hangs upside down from a branch with rope wrapped around his ankles. At the bottom of the card, the title has been sketched in ornate calligraphy, written in both German and English—The Hanged Man.
“I’m guessing that’s not good,” I say, but the old woman is silent. It seems a bit of theatrics is part of the show. Jane shrugs.
“Please,” the woman says, tapping the table in front of the first card, taking pains not to touch either the card or the pile of unused cards.
“The order is important?” I ask, but she’s silent.
I turn this card quickly, not wanting to play her stupid game.
The Fool. A young man stands heedless at the edge of a cliff, with a stick resting over his shoulder, and a small bundle of possessions swinging from the far end. He looks jovial. A small dog dances by his feet.
“Well, he seems happy enough,” I say, still feeling a little exposed.
Her hand lingers over the fourth card for what seems like an age before she touches the tablecloth in front of it.
“This one?” I ask, trying to keep things lighthearted.
I turn the card. There’s no mistaking this guy, and no need to read the writing beneath his picture. A satyr sits on a throne—half man, half goat, except that his skin is angry and red. A naked man and woman sit in chains by his feet. The horns on his head, and leather wings on his back, leave no doubt as to his character. The Devil.
“Oh, that’s just great—and this one?” I say, reaching for the last card as the woman yells, “Nein,” wanting to stop me. For her, it seems, this is no game. “No. No.”
I flip the last card against her protests.
A skeleton swings a scythe over a field full of dead bodies. This is no grim reaper, shrouded in a cloak, but rather bare bones, devoid of any life. The skull seems to laugh at me. Death.
The Hanged Man—The Fool—The Devil—Death.
“Hau ab! Gehen!” the woman cries, “Leave.”
Jane laughs. She thinks this is a joke. She pulls stolen money from a wallet that’s clearly not hers, and offers it to the woman, but the woman pushes us both away from the stall. She yells, “Leave. Leave her.” We blend with the crowd as the woman’s voice fades into the noise around us. “She brings only death.”
“Well, that was freaky.”
“I’ll say,” Jane replies. “Hey, look on the bright side—death awaits us all.”
“Well, aren’t you cheerful!”
“I’m pragmatic—and I’m starving. This way.”
Giovanni’s is down a broad alleyway. Patches of graffiti cover the walls, but this is no back alley in New York. There aren’t any dumpsters or homeless people, instead colorful lights have been strung along the brickwork. Sturdy wooden tables line one side of the alley, although the snow has driven most of the patrons inside. We walk into a wave of heat as the automatic door slides open. One of the waiters shows us to a table overlooking the alley.
“Thank you,” Jane says as I seat her. Jane seems so real, but the real Jane died well over a year ago. Her body was possessed by something inexplicable, and she/it fled to Transylvania. Her husband tracked her down in a small village deep in the mountainous regions of Romania, only her husband died as well—caught in a fire. Well, his body died, after coming close enough to touch hers, allowing the creature inhabiting her to switch form and identity with him, and here she is.
I sit opposite her, and the waiter lights a small oil lamp on the table, throwing the restaurant back into the 1800s. He gives us a moment to review the menu, and then returns to take our order.
“I’ll have the lasagna.”
“I’ll have the steak,” Jane says. “Actually, make that two. Two steaks. Big ones. Can you do that?”
“Certainly,” the waiter replies. “How would you like your steak?”
“Rare.”
“Rare?” he asks, surprised to see a petite woman ordering two rare steaks.
Jane seems a little offended at the insinuation that she can’t stomach rare meat. “Kiss it on the lips. Slap it on the ass. Throw it on the plate.” The waiter looks shocked, so she clarifies, saying, “Just a little seared on the edges, nothing more.”
The waiter excuses himself.
I lean across the table and speak in hushed tones. “You know, for a moment there, you sounded just like Alan.”
Jane leans in, as if confiding a secret, saying, “I am.”
“It’s just,” I say. We haven’t spoken about what happened to Alan. “What’s it like?”
“Oh, it’s incredible,” she says. “You wouldn’t believe the power.”
“Power?”
“Ah,” she replies. “You mean, being a woman—not, being a vampire.”
I lean across the table again, speaking under my breath. “You’re a vampire?”
“Not quite,” she says, “but the physiological changes were settled when I took her form.”
“So?”
“So which do you want to know about? Life as a woman? Or life as a vampire?”
“Either,” I say. “Both.”
“Being a woman is—different. I mean, it shouldn’t be that different, but it is, and not for the reasons you’d think. People treat me differently. For the longest time, I thought I couldn’t fool anyone. Men would look at me and their eyes would linger, curious, and I’d think ‘They know.’ Then I realized what they were thinking, seeing me as game—a trophy or something. It took me a while to realize that’s normal. I had to learn to look away, to avert my eyes, or even nonverbal responses were seen as inviting.
“Clothing sucks. Do you know how hard it is to buy a pair of jeans with pockets? Actual real pockets? I mean, not just stitching that’s made to look like a pocket, or some tiny, tight flap of cloth that pretends to be a pocket—something you can actually put stuff in. I never understood why women carried purses until I realized they don’t have pockets for stuff. Crazy.
“Not to mention shoes.” Jane points at me with vehemence. “Don't get me started on shoes. Women’s shoes are designed by sadists. Most shoes are either completely flat, wafer thin, no support, with little to no padding, or they’re raised up like stilettos, sending shockwaves thundering through my legs and spine. The Grand Inquisitor Torquemada himself could not have designed a more effective instrument of torture. Sneakers—sneakers are good. Everything else blows.”
Jane looks up for a second. It’s almost as though she’s working through a mental checklist.
“Everything’s designed for tall people. Did you ever think about that? It’s as though there’s an unwritten assumption that everyone’s six feet tall. I used to be over six foot. Now, I have to stand on a chair to reach the top shelf. Vladimir has a Jeep—a Jeep, right? I used to drive a Jeep back home. Now, though, I have to have the seat all the way forward, and even then I only just reach the pedals. I can barely see the hood over the dashboard. Somedays I feel like installing a baby seat.”
I laugh.
“You laugh. I used to laugh at the way Jane couldn’t see things on top of the fridge, or above the microwave, but not any more.”
“Sorry,” I say.
“No, you’re not,” she replies, grinning. “Economy Class flights, though, aren’t so bad anymore. It’s as if the seats have been widened, and there’s plenty of leg room, no more wedging my knees against the seat in front.”
“What were you before?”
“6’ 3,” she says. “Now I’m 5’ 7.”
The waiter returns, setting the table, and providing Jane with a steak knife. The knife is ornate. The serrated blade has grooves running the length of it, while the handle is wooden, with notches carved at regular intervals. It’s a big knife, and looks even bigger in her petite hand.
“The really cool stuff, though,” she says, gripping the blade of the knife in one hand while drawing it across her
palm with the other, “is this.”
Jane opens her hand. Blood runs from a deep cut through the soft flesh.
“Jane?” I say, trying to hand her a napkin, and looking around to see if anyone’s watching. She ignores my gesture, and to my surprise, leans forward and licks the blood from her palm.
“It’s okay,” she says. “It takes about thirty seconds.”
She holds her hand out, and I watch as the skin closes over the wound, knitting itself back together. Blood drips from her fingers, but the cut is gone. Jane licks her hand like an animal cleaning itself. An elderly lady sitting near us sees her and looks horrified, although from her haughty look, I suspect she’s thinking this is merely a breach of etiquette, and not on par with cannibalism. I doubt she realizes Jane is licking her own blood.
“Okay, that’s freaky.”
“Don’t you get it?” she asks. “This is why vampires can survive being shot. Most bullets pass clear through, and the wound heals in seconds. If a bullet gets lodged in a bone, the healing process will push it out like a splinter. Even if you drive a stake through the heart, the wood has to remain there, blocking the healing process, or they’ll just get up and keep coming after you.”
“Oh, wow,” I say. “So the stories are true?”
“Most of them. These things are damn hard to kill. Sometimes you get lucky with a headshot, but more often than not even a double-tap only slows them down.”
“What about sunlight?”
“I burn easily, in anywhere from seconds, to a minute or two, rather than an hour or so. I need sunblock plus a million, or something. Floppy hats are good. Large floppy hats with wide brims.”
“Does garlic affect you?”
“Only if it’s raw. Garlic smells awful—like an open sewer. Too much of the stuff induces what amounts to an anaphylactic reaction.”
“What about drinking blood?” I ask, although having seen her lick her own blood, I feel as though that question has already been answered.
“Anything raw is good,” she says. “My metabolism is off the charts. At a guess, I’d say I’m eating twenty to thirty thousand calories a day. I should be the size of a house.
“I understand why they’re so ravenous. When you’re burning through that much energy, the need for food becomes insatiable—a lust. As best I understand it, my digestion has changed. I can get more calories from raw food than a regular person can from a cooked meal. Why eat a dozen Big Macs when I can chew on some raw fat?”
“Where does it go?”
“Oh—strength, speed. All my senses are heightened. I’d love to have a crack at a few Olympic records.
“You’ve seen the movies, right? Pull back the curtains and a vampire’s repelled by the sunlight—but it’s not just that my skin is sensitive to UV. My eyes are hypersensitive too. At night, I can see like a cat. The problem is daylight—the sun is blinding.”
“So you’ve got plenty of sunglasses,” I say.
“I think they invented them. Oh, and my hearing, my sense of smell, touch, taste. They’re all amped.”
I turn slightly, gesturing to a couple in the far booth. “So what are they talking about?”
Jane focuses, looking intently at them. “Well, there’s a couple of cockroaches immediately behind them in the wall, and a mouse scurrying around beneath that bench seat, but they don’t know that. They’re too busy talking about taking a vacation they’re going to take in Sweden.”
I laugh softly. “What about crucifixes and holy water?”
“Oh, that’s where it gets interesting,” she says. “They don’t work, of course, but how they arose as folklore is fascinating. They’re part of a campaign of disinformation to discredit the notion of vampires—turning the concept into speculation, superstition.”
“Fake news, huh?”
“Precisely. From what we’ve been able to glean, the vampires themselves spread these rumors to get people second-guessing. If vampires are repelled by the cross, then they can’t be the guys sitting in the pew next to you, right?”
“So they’ve been hiding in plain sight?”
“Yes.”
“Why? What do they want?”
“To survive.”
“Where are they from?”
“That,” Jane says, pointing her knife at me. “That’s the question. That’s what we want to find out.”
Our meals arrive. Jane devours one of her steaks and orders yet another. We talk idly as we eat, but the unspoken subtext is always the existence of vampires.
“Why you?” I ask. “I mean, I know what happened to you guys, but at what point do you cut your losses? You’re a fugitive—on the run—probably for the rest of your life. Why are you doing this? You could end up rotting away in some prison for decades, or worse, die in a strange land.”
“See,” she says, pointing at me with her fork. “That’s exactly what they want—the Nosferatu—to scare us into submission. It’s high stakes poker. Blink and they’ll clean you out.” Rather than cutting at her meat, Jane tears strips off, chewing on large chunks, and talking with her mouth full. “Time—it’s their ally.”
“Time?”
“Sure. They can go to ground for decades—centuries, even. They don’t need to kill us, just to outlast us.”
“So you’re taking the fight to them, trying to flush them out.”
“Yep,” she says as her third steak arrives.
“You’re a vampire hunter.”
“I guess I am,” she says. “Never saw that coming, huh?”
“No. I certainly didn’t.”
It’s late. Most of the patrons are eating dessert or sipping specialty coffees laced with alcohol. A waiter bumps into my chair as he walks past with a broom, on his way to clean up a mess over by the cashier, and I’m left wondering if that’s a subtle hint to move on.
“Time to go,” Jane says as we finish eating. She places her napkin on the table and gets to her feet. I’m a little slower to leave the table, as I’d kill for one of those coffees. Jane puts her gloves on and surreptitiously slips the steak knife into her hand, resting the blade against the inside of her wrist so it’s out of sight. I start to say something, but think better of it. We walk slowly to the cashier. I feel as though everyone’s watching us.
“Was everything to your satisfaction?” the maître d’ asks in a thick Italian accent. I’m expecting him to address me, but he’s talking to Jane even though I’m the one standing in front of the cash register. They know each other.
“Yes, wonderful,” she says, placing the stolen credit card on the polished wooden counter.
“Wonderful,” he says, repeating her word back at her with no depth of meaning. He has the kind of dull insincerity that comes from running a restaurant for decades. The maître d’ reaches for the card. Jane strikes. The sheer ferocity with which she moves is chilling. The knife plunges into his hand, passing through the credit card and the wooden bench until only the wooden handle protrudes above his skin, pinning him to the counter. He screams. Blood pools on the polished wood.
Yelling resounds through the restaurant. Tables turn. Chairs fall. Plates shatter on the tiles. Oil lamps smash, sending flames racing across the floor. The curtains catch fire. In the panic, patrons scramble for the exit. The waiter cleaning up beside us drops his broom and runs for the kitchen.
The maître d’ leaps onto the counter, snarling and crouching like a wolf caught in a bear trap. He tugs at the knife, trying to work it loose. At a guess, the blade has shattered several of the metacarpal bones in the back of his hand. He’s not going anywhere.
Jane grabs the broom and snaps it across his back.
The maître d’ rips his hand free, leaving both the knife and his little finger in place on the counter. Blood sprays through the air. He leaps, moving more like an animal than a man, using all four limbs to launch himself at Jane. She anchors herself, dropping back against the floor and raising the broken broom like a lance. The shattered tip catches him in the chest,
punching between his ribs and puncturing one of his lungs. Jane rocks back, using her legs to catapult him across the restaurant and into an overturned table.
I crouch by the bench, watching as the battle unfolds. Jane screams, charging at the maître d’ with the bloodied flagpole out in front of her. He’s dazed. She catches him in the stomach, lifting him off his feet and skewering him against the wall. Blood runs down his legs, but he fights on with what should be a mortal wound, throwing a burning lamp at her. She ducks and it explodes against the bench beside me, sending flaming shards of glass cascading through the air.
Jane is ruthless. She rips the pole out of his stomach, dragging his entrails onto the floor, and hits him across the side of the face with the bloodied wooden pole. He staggers backwards. With two hands, she thrusts, plunging the pole into his eye socket, driving it through his brain, out the back of his skull, and into the wall behind him, impaling him. The vampire sags. He twitches, fighting for one last scrap of life. Fingers clench around a chair back, desperate for one more act of violence before falling still.
Jane picks up an oil lamp and hurls it with unbelievable ferocity at the wall above him. The glass explodes, spraying him with burning oil.
The restaurant is empty. Flames lick at the ceiling. Several of the windows are broken. Smoke curls out into the alley. Jane tosses the stolen wallet into the fire.
“Come,” she says, offering me her gloved hand as I cower beside the counter. “We need to go. There’s only so long Dimitri can hold off the police.”
Dimitri?
Jane wipes a thin trickle of blood from a split on her lower lip. She looks as though she barely broke her stride during the fight.
Broken glass crunches beneath our shoes.
Outside, the chill of the night is arresting. I didn’t realize how much I was sweating, but now my body cools rapidly, even with Vlad’s coat wrapped around me.
Jane jogs down the alley, so I run after her. Most of the patrons have fled, but there are a few standing at a distance, recording us as we flee. The crowd from the market stands well back, forming an impromptu cordon, watching as flames reach up the side of the aging building.
Van Helsing's Diaries (Books 1-3): Nosferatu Page 17