Come Hell or High Water: The Complete Trilogy

by Stephen Morris

  Alessandro thought briefly. “No, not that I can recall.” He shook his head. “At the time, we made jokes about powerful, indestructible women. She emphasized that the Dearg-due is not like Romanian vampires at all,” he said to Wilcox. “Crosses and holy water and sunlight have no effect on her. Neither does garlic. She can be forced back into her grave—did she say that? I don’t remember—but not destroyed. That was certainly the point she got across.” He slouched in his seat and shook his head again.

  “Naturally, she would,” Sean snorted. “Especially if she was talking about herself. Stress her indestructibility and her avenger status as a protector of abused women. Self-righteous bitch.”

  “Sean. Please.” Sophia reached to Sean’s hands wrapped around his pint. Alessandro wondered if she often played the role of mediator as a priest’s wife.

  Sean looked at her and then at Alessandro and paused, as if reconsidering what he was about to say. He sipped at his ale and the food they had ordered began arriving, a welcome distraction. They each paid their portion of the bill after the food was set down so they would not have to wait to catch the waiter’s attention again later.

  After all the food had arrived and been paid for, there was an interval of slurping and cutting and chewing as they began to ingest their lunch. Then Sean spoke to Alessandro again, chewing his food as he did.

  “The Dearg-due is unique,” he agreed. “Truly one-of-a-kind. According to the story, she came from a poor family and loved a local boy but her father insisted she marry the local landowner. A wealthy man. A good match, at least from the father’s perspective. But the landowner was abusive, as we would now call it, and beat the girl to death. She would not stay dead, however, and rose from her grave and killed first the husband who had murdered her and then the father who had arranged the marriage over her protests. That much of what she told you was true.”

  “True?” interjected Wilcox. He sounded dubious.

  “Hush,” Sophia interjected. “Let the man talk.”

  “True,” Sean repeated. “Well, at least that part of her story agrees with the usual stories told about her in Ireland. The part she lied about, or distorted, is that in Ireland she has never been associated with later saving women from husbands or boyfriends who beat or abused them. She is said to be a succubus, a demon who rises from her grave to seduce and entrap men whom she then kills.”

  “That’s the vampire part?” asked Fr. Dmitri. He thought about everything he had read about Eastern European vampires. “She bites them and drinks their blood during the sex?”

  “It’s more like she mauls and rips her victims to pieces,” Sean explained, apparently happy to serve as the authority on the subject. “She survives by lapping up the spilled blood, yes, but she also eats their organs or handfuls of the flesh she tears from their bones.”

  Alessandro shivered at Sean’s description. He put down his utensils, unable to continue eating as he listened.

  “She also seems to ingest some part of her victim’s life-energy, their ‘soul,’ as it were,” he went on, continuing to eat as he spoke. “But in any case, it is not necessarily an abusive husband or boyfriend that she seduces. It is a man—always a man—whom she chooses to attack, for no apparent rhyme or reason other than that he is a man.”

  “Perhaps someone who looks like her husband or father?” asked Theo.

  Sean shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe. Who knows? The folktales don’t make that part of it so clear.”

  Sophia asked quietly, “How often does she attack? When does she rise from her grave? Why would she be here as part of all this business in Prague?”

  “More to the point, how do we drive her back to her grave?” Theo asked.

  “Or at least back to Ireland?” Wilcox amended. There was a light ripple of laughter along the table. Alessandro picked up his utensils again.

  Sean took another drink of his ale, finishing the pint, and waved for the waiter to refill it. “Why would she be here?” He paused as if considering. Then he nodded, continuing as the new pint of ale promptly arrived. “Well, we know that the Celts were the first to settle this valley, right, Theo?” Theo nodded his agreement. “That makes the local magical customs an amalgam of Celtic and Slavic practices, with an overlay from the Germans and other Europeans who settled here and imported their own magical traditions. But as a Celtic female figure who is bent on vengeance, it would be hard to find a better suited one. It makes a lot of sense, actually. If they each see themselves as the innocent victim of murderous men, they would feel a kinship of victimhood, of sorts. The witch who was burned could do worse than have the Dearg-due on her side, to avenge her against the city of Prague.”

  “All right. They are kindred spirits, both murdered women out for vengeance,” Theo agreed, but with an obvious touch of impatience. “What about driving her away from here, back to Ireland?”

  Sean drank from his glass again. “Well, that actually is related to how she escapes from her grave and might be fairly difficult to achieve, which is no doubt part of the reason why she was called here by the witch.”

  “Oh?” Sophia asked. “Why is that?”

  Sean continued as if she had not spoken. Alessandro could see that he relished being the center of the group’s attention and that parts of his response sounded like a lecture he might have given to students in an introductory class in Irish folklore. “The Dearg-due is driven from her grave—so the legends say—by her hunger, her insatiable hunger for blood and the flesh of her male oppressors. But although that hunger is never ending and unrelenting, she can only slip out from under the earth when the cairn of stones that holds her there is disturbed. The cairn is what pins her in the earth and it is the reconstruction of that cairn that pulls her back into her grave and holds her there until someone disturbs it again. Then she escapes, and the whole cycle begins again. Once the cairn is disturbed, it can be quite some time before anyone realizes what is going on and how to remedy the situation. She might be allowed to wander free for years before anyone thinks to rebuild the cairn.”

  “Cairn? What is that?” Sophia turned to her husband for an explanation. Fr. Dmitri shook his head.

  Theo stared down at the table. “A cairn is a pile of stones,” he muttered. “Not necessarily a large pile of stones, but a pile of rocks and pebbles and stones.”

  “Some cairns are quite large, and of very elegant construction,” added Wilcox.

  “But they needn’t be,” Theo reiterated. “They can be, but they don’t have to be.”

  Alessandro asked Sean, “Is the rebuilding of a cairn of stones on her grave the only way to get rid of her?”

  Theo added, “How are we supposed to be able to do that? Does anyone even know where her grave is? How do you propose that one of us get to Ireland to put a pile of rocks on it, in any case?” He slumped down in his chair, shaking his head with dismay.

  Magdalena sat with George and Elizabeth in a small pub around the corner from the conference site. Several other tables were filled with conference participants and the chatter that filled the room was loud enough to cover anything that the three had to discuss. The waiter brought the bowls of stew and pints of beer they had ordered and George began the discussion in earnest.

  “Your chalice was stolen last night,” George announced bluntly. “Taken. It is clear that some people stand in the way of…” He paused, searching for the right words. “… Fen’ka’s vindication.”

  Magdalena shifted uneasily in her seat. “Professor Thomlinson? That seems so unlikely,” she protested. “Why would he want to stand in the way of clearing Fen’ka’s name?”

  “Who is to say?” Elizabeth spoke up. “Men. They hate to have their power and authority threatened. All men.” George coughed politely and it was Elizabeth’s turn to shift in her seat. “Well, almost all men.”

  “The point is,” George continued, “Peter knew and took the chalice. The point is also that he seems to have given the chalice to someone else. Someone else who is
interested in standing in the way and… obstructing justice.”

  “How—how do you know that?” stuttered Magdalena.

  “Because Elizabeth searched his room this morning,” George explained. “The chalice was not there. He clearly gave it to someone else to avoid our reclaiming it.”

  Magdalena stared at him in shock, and then at Elizabeth. “You broke into his room?” she finally whispered hoarsely.

  “The door was open,” Elizabeth said with a shrug. “I did not break in. I simply examined his room. But the chalice was not there. I checked at the front desk, to see if he had left it there, but the clerk refused to say. He might have left it there in the safe, intending to come back for it later, but I think he probably just handed it off to someone else before he… before he disappeared.”

  “Disappeared?” Magdalena nearly choked on the word.

  “Yes. Disappeared. Ran off. Went into hiding,” George elaborated. “No doubt realizing we—you, Magdalena—would want the chalice back and he wanted to avoid facing you after such a brazen theft.”

  Magdalena swallowed, trying to picture both Professor Thomlinson as a thief and herself confronting him. Which, of course, she would have done this morning if she had seen him. But he hadn’t come to the session he was scheduled to speak at. She shook her head. “What happens next? What is the next step in clearing Fen’ka’s name or in stopping anyone that would prevent that? Why would modern academics from outside Prague care?”

  “Why would they care?” George repeated her question. “Those who would oppose clearing Fen’ka are not simply misogynists eager to preserve the status quo and their own elite status.” He glanced at Elizabeth and then returned his gaze to Magdalena. “They intend to subjugate anyone who dares to think for themselves or question the superiority of the established intellectual elite. They want to dictate what the world thinks and dictate policy as a result. They cannot allow Fen’ka to be declared innocent because that would be the first step in overthrowing their stranglehold on political and philosophical thought. By controlling politics and philosophy, they control economic policy as well. In short, they want to hide in the shadows but rule those who rule the world. If Fen’ka is cleared, their plots will begin to be exposed and if exposed, unravel.”

  Magdalena was dumbfounded. “I had no idea…” She stammered as the enormity of the academic conspiracy against truth and free thinking dawned on her.

  “Their conspiracy against free will and self-determination is an old one,” George went on. “Why don’t you properly introduce yourself, Elizabeth?” George suggested.

  “Certainly.” Elizabeth took Magdalena’s hand. “I suspect that you were told to call me because I, like Fen’ka, know what it is to have suffered injustice and have no one to turn to for aid. I, like Fen’ka, know what it means to have those you trust turn on you, betray you. I know what it means to be killed.”

  “Killed?” Magdalena stammered. “You were killed? You are dead?” Even after her experience with Fen’ka under the bridge and Madame de Thebes in Golden Lane and outside the Gestapo office, she could not believe her eyes. A dead woman was sitting on the bench with her? A dead woman who was beautiful, no less.

  “Yes, I was killed,” Elizabeth answered. “But I am not dead. Are you familiar with the term ‘undead?’ I am one of those often identified as the undead.”

  Magdalena shook her head. She had never heard that term.

  George chuckled. “Dracula is perhaps the most famous of the undead, Magdalena.”

  Magdalena gasped. “You are an upír, a vampire?”

  “That is perhaps the sort of creature that you are most familiar with that describes what I am,” Elizabeth conceded. “I slay and then ingest the blood of my victims. But in order to survive, I only kill those who have destroyed the life of another.”

  Magdalena shuddered in spite of herself. She turned to George. “Are you also one of these… these undead?”

  George brushed away a strand of hair that had fallen across her brow. “No, child,” he reassured her. “I am not. I am flesh and bone, as you are, mortal and living. I have yet to face my death.”

  Magdalena turned back to Elizabeth.

  “You wonder perhaps why you should be the ally of such a creature?” Elizabeth asked her. “I do not blame you for such thoughts. I am not as heartless as I may sound. You should know that my victims are not random innocents. They are all men, men who have attacked and often killed an innocent woman themselves.” Magdalena nodded, her eyes wide.

  “I was betrothed by my father to a man against my will,” Elizabeth continued to explain. “We were a farming family and my father thought to improve his lot in life, as well as my own, by accepting the proposal of a well-to-do gentleman farmer who lived not far from us. But my father’s choice was a heartless man, a cruel and cold taskmaster who wanted not a wife to love but another servant in his household, a servant whom he could call ‘wife’ but treat little better than a trained animal.”

  “What did he do? Did he make you what you are?” Magdalena interrupted.

  “He beat me for bringing him a cup of tea that was not as hot as he would have liked. He beat me for allowing the cook to serve a stew that was not to his liking. He whipped me for hesitating to give my body to him whenever he wished it,” Elizabeth continued. “He beat and flogged and whipped me for no reason at all some days. And, yes, the day came when he beat me until I was glad to collapse into the embrace of Death.” Elizabeth paused. Magdalena could sense the sorrow and fury that washed over Elizabeth as she recounted the story of her life.

  “But it was not my lot to remain forever in the cold, sweet embrace of forgetfulness and peace,” she continued. “Not even my father wept or mourned or thought to avenge himself against the man who had stolen me, his daughter, from him. I realized that my father had killed me, just as surely as if he had dealt the final blow, by trading my happiness for wealth.” The Irish woman sneered.

  “I could not remain resting in the churchyard where I had been laid. My thirst for revenge against the men who had taken my life, stolen my love and happiness from me, drove me from my grave. I found my false husband one night and avenged myself, and I discovered the delight of seeing the fear and terror on his face as I took from him what he had taken from me. I found my father another night, and took from him the life he had deprived me of.” Magdalena saw a strange light in Elizabeth’s eyes and realized that the beautiful woman was seeing her father cower before her, just as Magdalena recalled seeing him cower before his daughter in her vision that night last spring in her back garden.

  “I discovered both the sweetness of justice and the delight of revenge on those nights,” Elizabeth admitted. “I found strength and joy in their blood and in their fear and in their souls as they passed through my hands to face everlasting judgment. I found myself unable to rest. The women slain by those who pretended to love them called out to me and I could not turn a deaf ear to their pleas. I rose to seek justice for them, again and again and again. And in winning them justice and avenging them, I found the solace and the strength to continue in my loneliness. Rest escaped me. Love escaped me. But I could avenge those who suffered as I had suffered.”

  “And you still rise to avenge these girls?” Magdalena was fascinated.

  “Yes. But I have never had an opportunity to do so beyond the shores of Ireland before. In the more than two hundred and fifty years since I was first unable to remain in my grave, I have never heard the call of a woman who needed me so far from my mortal homeland.”

  “In the meantime, we wait,” George explained. “When we conjured the other night—you and I, Magdalena—we conjured Svetovit, the god that was worshipped here in the valley before the coming of Christianity. Svetovit was the one Fen’ka called on to defend her when she was burned, remember? But the traditional way of calling Svetovit, sacrificing a black rooster on the hilltop where the cathedral stands, would have been much more efficient. What we did at your apartment and in
the street will summon him, but it will take time to wake him. We must wait in the meantime.”

  “But how much longer will it be?” Magdalena wanted to know. “Is there something we should be doing in the meantime? Is there anything that Professor Thomlinson and whoever he gave the chalice to might use my chalice for to stop Svetovit from waking?”

  George considered her question and answered slowly, “I think not, Magdalena. They will try, no doubt, but I seriously doubt they are skilled enough to know how to use the chalice properly or disrupt the process we began with it.”

  Magdalena felt relief wash over her.

  “But,” George continued, “they may attempt to collect other, more powerful tools that, even used clumsily, might interfere with Svetovit’s waking. We will need to collect those tools ourselves, in order to prevent them from gathering them.”

  “What tools? From where?” Magdalena wanted to know.

  “There are two we should be most concerned about,” George said. “One is the great sword of Bruncvík, buried in the foundations of the bridge.”

  “Bruncvík’s sword?” exclaimed Magdalena. “That’s impossible—no one can get that out. Is it even really there?!”

  “Oh, it’s there,” George told her. “It’s there and there might be ways to extract it. Remember when I told you that the bridge was built by the very people Fen’ka cursed in order to protect themselves from her vengeance? We must neutralize the magic of the bridge if we are to clear her name. Removing the sword from its foundations would be a necessary step in that process in any case.”

  “Really?” Magdalena was shocked. She had never thought the stories her grandmother told of Bruncvík and his mighty sword anything more than tales spun to entertain children. “How?”

  “I am still researching that part,” George said. “That it is in the foundation, near the statue of Bruncvík on the Little Town side of the bridge, I am fairly certain. But I must calculate its exact location as near as possible and then devise a way to remove it. This is something that fills my time while we wait for Svetovit to wake. Indeed, it is partly the magic of the sword in the bridge that delays his waking.”