“Where would we find someone to make wooden bullets for pistols such as ours?” asked Joseph.
The five men sitting at the table looked toward the doctor and the two cowboys. All five were dressed in the remnants of uniforms belonging to the War. The one addressed as Hermann still wore the Knight’s Cross on the faded splendor of his dress jacket.
“Martin,” said Hermann. “Do you know where we can get wooden bullets?”
“I’m sure we could find someone to make them for the automatics,” he answered. “Ernst, go to Wartman’s, see about them.”
Ernst stood, then slapped the table. “Every time I hear the word vampire, I reach for my Browning!” he said.
They all laughed. Martin, Hermann, Joseph, Ernst most of all. Even Adolf laughed a little.
Soon after dark, someone ran into the place, white of face. “The vampire!” he yelled, pointing vaguely toward the street, and fell out.
Broncho Billy and William S. jumped up. Helioglabulus stopped them. “I’m too old, and will only hold you up,” he said. “I shall try to catch up later. Remember . . . the crosses. The bullets in the heart!”
As they rushed out past the other table, Ernst, who had left an hour earlier, returned with two boxes.
“Quick, Joseph!” he said as the two cowboys went through the door. “Follow them! We’ll be right behind. Your pistol!”
Joseph turned, threw a Browning automatic pistol back to Hermann, then went out the doors as hoofbeats clattered in the street.
The other four began to load their pistols from the boxes of cartridges.
The two cowboys rode toward the commotion.
“Yee-haw!” yelled Broncho Billy. They galloped down the well-paved streets, their horses’ hooves striking sparks from the cobbles.
They passed the police and others running towards the sounds of screams and dying. Members of the Free Corps, ex-soldiers and students, swarmed the streets in their uniforms. Torches burned against the flickering black night skies.
The city was trying to overcome the nosferatu by force.
Broncho Billy and William S. charged toward the fighting. In the center of a square stood a coach, all covered in black crepe. The driver, a plump, cadaverous man, held the reins to four black horses. The four were rearing high in their traces, their hooves menacing the crowd.
But it was not the horses which kept the mob back.
Crawling out of a second story hotel window was a vision from a nightmare. Bald, with pointed ears, teeth like a rat, beady eyes bright in the flickering night, the vampire climbed from a bedroom to the balcony. The front of his frock coat was covered with blood, its face and arms were smeared. A man’s hand stuck halfway out the window, and the curtains were spattered black.
The nosferatu jumped to the ground, and the crowd parted as he leaped from the hotel steps to the waiting carriage. Then the driver cracked his whip over the horses – there was no sound – and the team charged, tumbling people like leaves before the night wind.
The carriage seemed to float to the two cowboys who rode after it. There was no sound of hoofbeats ahead, no noise from the harness, no creak of axles. It was as if they followed the wind itself through the night-time streets of Bremen.
They sped down the flickering main roads. Once, when Broncho Billy glanced behind him, he thought he saw motorcycle headlights following. But he devoted most of his attention to the fleeing coach.
William S. rode beside him. They gained on the closed carriage.
Broncho Billy drew his left-handed pistol (he was ambidexterous) and fired at the broad back of the driver. He heard the splintery clatter of the wooden bullet as it ricocheted off the coach. Then the carriage turned ahead of them.
He was almost smashed against a garden wall by the headlong plunge of his mount, then he recovered, leaning far over in the saddle, as if his horse were a sailboat and he a sailor heeling against the wind.
Then he and William S. were closing with the hearse on a long broad stretch of the avenue. They pulled even with the driver.
And for the first time, the hackles rose on Broncho Billy’s neck as he rode beside the black-crepe coach. There was no sound but him, his horse, their gallop. He saw the black-garbed driver crack the long whip, heard no snap, heard no horses, heard no wheels.
His heart in his throat, he watched William S. pull even on the other side. The driver turned that way, snapped his whip toward the taller cowboy. Broncho Billy saw his friend’s hat fly away, cut in two.
Billy took careful aim and shot the lead horse in the head, twice. It dropped like a ton of cement, and the air was filled with a vicious, soundless image: four horses, the driver, the carriage, he, his mount and William S. all flying through the air in a tangle. Then the side of the coach caught him and the incessant flickering went out.
He must have awakened a few seconds later. His horse was atop him, but he didn’t think anything was broken. He pushed himself out from under it.
The driver was staggering up from the flinders of the coach – strange, thought Broncho Billy, now I hear the sounds of the wheels turning, the screams of the dying horses. The driver pulled a knife. He started toward the cowboy.
Broncho Billy found his right-hand pistol, still in its holster. He pulled it, fired directly into the heart of the fat man. The driver folded from the recoil, then stood again.
Billy pulled the trigger.
The driver dropped as the wooden bullet turned his heart to giblets.
Broncho Billy took all the regular ammo out of his pistol and began to cram the wooden ones in.
As he did, motorcycles came screaming to a stop beside him, and the five men from the tavern climbed from them or their sidecars.
He looked around for William S. but could not see him. Then he heard the shooting from the rooftop above the street – twelve shots, quick as summer thunder.
One of William S.’s revolvers dropped four stories and hit the ground beside him.
The Germans were already up the stairs ahead of Broncho Billy as he ran.
When the carriage had crashed into them, William S. had been thrown clear. He jumped up in time to see the vampire run into the doorway of the residential block across the way. He tore after while the driver pulled himself from the wreckage and Broncho Billy was crawling from under his horse.
Up the stairs he ran. He could now hear the pounding feet of the living dead man ahead, unlike the silence before the wreck. A flickering murky hallway was before him, and he saw the door at the far end close.
William S. smashed into it, rolled. He heard the scrape of teeth behind him, and saw the rat-like face snap shut inches away. He came up, his pistols leveled at the vampire.
The bald-headed thing grabbed the open door, pulled it before him.
William S. stood, feet braced, a foot from the door and began to fire into it. His Colt .36s inches in front of his face, he fired again and again into the wooden door, watching chunks and splinters shear away. He heard the vampire squeal, like a rat trapped behind a trash can, but still he fired until both pistols clicked dry.
The door swung slowly awry, pieces of it hanging.
The nosferatu grinned, and carefully pushed the door closed. It hissed and crouched.
William S. reached up for his hat.
And remembered that the driver had knocked it off his head before the collision.
The thing leaped.
One of his pistols was knocked over the parapet.
Then he was fighting for his life.
The five Germans, yelling to each other, slammed into the doorway at the end of the hall. From beyond, they heard the sounds of scuffling, labored breathing, the rip and tear of cloth.
Broncho Billy charged up behind them.
“The door! It’s jammed,” said one.
“His hat!” yelled Broncho Billy. “He lost his hat!”
“Hat?” asked the one called Joseph in English. “Why his hat?” The others shouldered against the gapped door. Thro
ugh it, they saw flashes of movement and the flickering night sky.
“Crosses!” yelled Broncho Billy. “Like this!” He pointed to his hatband.
“Ah!” said Joseph. “Crosses.”
He pulled something from the one called Adolf, who hung back a little, threw it through the hole in the door.
“Cruzen!” yelled Joseph.
“The cross!” screamed Broncho Billy. “William S.! The cross!”
The sound of scuffling stopped.
Joseph tossed his pistol through the opening.
They continued to bang on the door.
The thing had its talons on his throat when the yelling began. The vampire was strangling him. Little circles were swimming in his sight. He was down beneath the monster. It smelled of old dirt, raw meat, of death. Its rat-eyes were bright with hate.
Then he heard the yell “A cross!” and something fluttered at the edge of his vision. He let go one hand from the vampire and grabbed it up.
It felt like cloth. He shoved it at the thing’s face.
Hands let go.
William S. held the cloth before him as his breath came back in a rush. He staggered up, and the nosferatu put its hands over its face. He pushed toward it.
Then the Browning Automatic pistol landed beside his foot, and he heard noises at the door behind him.
Holding the cloth, he picked up the pistol.
The vampire hissed like a radiator.
William S. aimed and fired. The pistol was fully automatic.
The wooden bullets opened the vampire like a zipper coming off.
The door crashed outward, the five Germans and Broncho Billy rushed through.
William S. held to the doorframe and caught his breath. A crowd was gathering below, at the site of the wrecked hearse and the dead horses. Torchlights wobbled their reflections on the houses across the road. It looked like something from Dante.
Helioglabulus came onto the roof, took one look at the vampire and ran his alpenstock, handle first, into its ruined chest.
“Just to make sure,” he said.
Broncho Billy was clapping him on the back. “Shore thought you’d gone to the last roundup,” he said.
The five Germans were busy with the vampire’s corpse.
William S. looked at the piece of cloth still clenched tightly in his own hand. He opened it. It was an armband.
On its red cloth was a white circle with a twisted black cross.
Like the decorations the Indians used on their blankets, only in reverse.
He looked at the Germans. Four of them wore the armbands; the fifth, wearing an old corporal’s uniform, had a torn sleeve.
They were slipping a yellow armband over the arm of the vampire’s coat. When they finished, they picked the thing up and carried it to the roof edge. It looked like a spitted pig.
The yellow armband had two interlocking triangles, like the device on the chest of the costumes William S. had worn when he played Ben-Hur on Broadway. The Star of David.
The crowd below screamed as the corpse fell toward them.
There were shouts, then.
The unemployed, the war-wounded, the young, the bitter, the disillusioned. Then the shouting stopped . . . and they began to chant.
The five Germans stood on the parapet, looking down at the milling people. They talked among themselves.
Broncho Billy held William S. until he caught his breath.
They heard the crowds disperse, fill in again, break, drift off, reform, reassemble, grow larger.
“Well, pard,” said Broncho Billy. “Let’s mosey over to a hotel and get some shut-eye.”
“That would be nice,” said William S.
Helioglabulus joined them.
“We should go by the back way,” he said.
“I don’t like the way this crowd is actin’,” said Broncho Billy.
William S. walked to the parapet, looked out over the city.
Under the dark flickering sky, there were other lights. Here and there, synagogues began to flicker.
And then to burn.
TANITH LEE
Red as Blood
TANITH LEE BEGAN WRITING at the age of nine and became a full-time writer in 1975, when DAW Books published her novel The Birthgrave.
Since then she has written and published around sixty novels, nine collections and over 200 short stories. She also had four radio plays broadcast during the late 1970s and early 1980s, and scripted two episodes of the cult BBC-TV series Blake’s 7. She has twice won the World Fantasy Award for short fiction and was awarded the British Fantasy Society’s August Derleth Award in 1980 for her novel Death’s Master. In 1998 she was shortlisted for the Guardian Award for Children’s Fiction for her novel Law of the Wolf Tower, the first volume in the “Claidi Journal” series.
Tor Books has published White as Snow, the author’s retelling of the Snow White story, while Overlook Press has issued A Bed of Earth and Venus Preserved, the third and fourth volumes, respectively, in the “Secret Books of Paradys” series. More recent titles include Cast a Bright Shadow and Here in Cold Hell, the first two books in the “Lionwolf Trilogy”, and Piratica is a novel for older children about the exploits of a female pirate. She has also written a sequel to her novel The Silver Metal Lover for Bantam Books, and rights to the 1981 original have been sold to Miramax Film Corp.
As the writer points out about the dark fairy tale that follows: “There is a strong influence of the wonderful Oscar Wilde – especially his stories – and the Wildean elements also led me to assay a serious spiritual liberty in the last quarter.
“Meanwhile, I’d suspected that the character was a vampire for years. As was her mother – who didn’t ask, we recall, for a pink-cheeked blonde daughter, with lips like roses or wine – but a snow-skinned, ebony-haired child, with a mouth red as fresh blood . . .”
THE BEAUTIFUL WITCH QUEEN flung open the ivory case of the magic mirror. Of dark gold the mirror was, dark gold like the hair of the Witch Queen that poured down her back. Dark gold the mirror was, and ancient as the seven stunted black trees growing beyond the pale blue glass of the window.
“Speculum, speculum,” said the Witch Queen to the magic mirror. “Dei gratia.”
“Volente Deo. Audio.”
“Mirror,” said the Witch Queen. “Whom do you see?”
“I see you, mistress,” replied the mirror. “And all in the land. But one.”
“Mirror, mirror, who is it you do not see?”
“I do not see Bianca.”
The Witch Queen crossed herself. She shut the case of the mirror and, walking slowly to the window, looked out at the old trees through the panes of pale blue glass.
Fourteen years ago, another woman had stood at this window, but she was not like the Witch Queen. The woman had black hair that fell to her ankles; she had a crimson gown, the girdle worn high beneath her breasts, for she was far gone with child. And this woman had thrust open the glass casement on the winter garden, where the old trees crouched in the snow. Then, taking a sharp bone needle, she had thrust it into her finger and shaken three bright drops on the ground. “Let my daughter have,” said the woman, “hair as black as mine, black as the wood of these warped and arcane trees. Let her have skin like mine, white as this snow. And let her have my mouth, red as my blood.” And the woman had smiled and licked at her finger. She had a crown on her head; it shone in the dusk like a star. She never came to the window before dusk: she did not like the day. She was the first Queen, and she did not possess a mirror.
The second Queen, the Witch Queen, knew all this. She knew how, in giving birth, the first Queen had died. Her coffin had been carried into the cathedral and masses had been said. There was an ugly rumour – that a splash of holy water had fallen on the corpse and the dead flesh had smoked. But the first Queen had been reckoned unlucky for the kingdom. There had been a plague in the land since she came there, a wasting disease for which there was no cure.
Seven years went b
y. The King married the second Queen, as unlike the first as frankincense to myrrh.
“And this is my daughter,” said the King to his second Queen.
There stood a little girl child, nearly seven years of age. Her black hair hung to her ankles, her skin was white as snow. Her mouth was red as blood, and she smiled with it.
“Bianca,” said the King, “you must love your new mother.”
Bianca smiled radiantly. Her teeth were bright as sharp bone needles.
“Come,” said the Witch Queen, “come, Bianca. I will show you my magic mirror.”
“Please, Mamma,” said Bianca softly. “I do not like mirrors.”
“She is modest,” said the King. “And delicate. She never goes out by day. The sun distresses her.”
That night, the Witch Queen opened the case of her mirror.
“Mirror. Whom do you see?”
“I see you, mistress. And all in the land. But one.”
“Mirror, mirror, who is it you do not see?”
“I do not see Bianca.”
The second Queen gave Bianca a tiny crucifix of golden filigree. Bianca would not accept it. She ran to her father and whispered, “I am afraid. I do not like to think of Our Lord dying in agony on His cross. She means to frighten me. Tell her to take it away.”
The second Queen grew wild white roses in her garden and invited Bianca to walk there after sundown. But Bianca shrank away. She whispered to her father, “The thorns will tear me. She means me to be hurt.”
When Bianca was twelve years old, the Witch Queen said to the King, “Bianca should be confirmed so that she may take Communion with us.”
“This may not be,” said the King. “I will tell you, she has not been Christened, for the dying word of my first wife was against it. She begged me, for her religion was different from ours. The wishes of the dying must be respected.”
“Should you not like to be blessed by the Church?” said the Witch Queen to Bianca. “To kneel at the golden rail before the marble altar? To sing to God, to taste the ritual Bread and sip the ritual Wine?”
“She means me to betray my true mother,” said Bianca to the King. “When will she cease tormenting me?”
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