by David Wood
Wagner spread the blanket over his wife, and he saw that her eyes were already closed.
Anneli Wagner awoke, and her eyes flittered a few times in the dimly lit room, before she understood where she was. The horror of the previous night came slamming home to her brain, and she sat upright.
Fritz slumbered awkwardly in the chair, and the corpse of her friend was unmoving on the floor next to her.
All of the previous night’s events had truly occurred.
Anneli felt her anger flare once again. Her eyes shifted to the door to the room. Andreas was seated on the floor, facing the door. Next to him were several long wooden rods. It took her a moment to understand what they were. She glanced up at the space above her, where the poles and the canopy of Gretchen’s four-poster bed should have been. Instead she was seeing the ceiling of the room, far above the bed. The slim glow from the room’s sole candle made the ceiling appear further above her than she knew it to be. She glanced over to its light and saw several fresh candles on the table, next to the candelabrum. Andreas must have found more in the wardrobe, she thought.
She looked back to her husband and understood that he had carefully taken the canopy down, unscrewing the long wooden poles, with their intricate carving work. They would be heavy, but she could see how they would make useful weapons.
She climbed out of the bed and slowly approached Andreas, not sure if he would be awake or not. She need not have worried that he would have fallen asleep on the job.
“Dawn is still an hour away,” he told her quietly, and without turning to regard her.
She stepped over to him and gently draped the blanket she had brought from the bed around his shoulders. She put her arms around him then and laid her head on his shoulder. He still did not turn.
“You were supposed to wake me,” she said softly.
“I never felt tired.”
“I know,” she said, rubbing his back. “I know. But take some rest now, while you still can. I will wake you at dawn. Give me your pocketwatch.”
He stood and stretched his neck, then gave her the watch and nodded. When he went to the bed and laid down, she knew he should have woken her at least an hour earlier. She hoped the scant amount of time would be enough for him. Then she turned to the hastily improvised armory of weapons. She could see that the eight-foot long poles had been cleverly assembled with a large screw that held them together at the midpoint—they were actually eight lengths of wood that had attached to the head and foot boards of the bed frame. She sat on the floor in the place where her husband had held vigil. She hefted one of the wooden segments, and swung it out in front of her. It was weighty, but she could manage it.
These will do.
When a hand roused him from his sleep, Andreas Wagner came grudgingly. As his mind cleared the cobwebs of the deep, dreamless sleep he’d been in, he recalled his surroundings and the dire circumstances. He was surprised to see that Fritz had wakened him and not Anneli, but a quick glance to the door showed she was standing and holding one of the posts from the bed. She was patting the improvised baton as if she meant to do some damage with it.
Fritz was looking better rested, despite his awkward bed for the night, and he had changed his own bandage, and done a better job of it than Wagner had. He had also used a sheet and more of Gretchen’s scarves to create a holster on his back that held two of the bed’s post segments crossed in an X, with the end of each just over his shoulders.
“What is the time?” Wagner asked.
“Just after dawn. We’ll go as soon as you feel awake and ready.” Fritz told him.
Wagner stood and reached to the floor to pick up one of the wooden segments. He shook his head, making the last of his sleep fade from his mind, and flexed his arms with the wooden bludgeon.
“I am ready.”
He walked across the room to the door and produced the key. He glanced quickly at his wife and his friend to ensure they were prepared for what might await them. Both returned grim looks of determination.
Then he opened the door.
Chapter 25
The corridor was dark, but they each held a candlestick in one hand and a segment of the bed in another. The light from their candles made the shadows retreat. Wagner stepped into the corridor, with Anneli close behind him, and Fritz bringing up the rear. Fritz’s candelabrum was the largest that had been in the room, and with five lit candles on it, he cast the entire corridor, end to end, into light.
The vampires were not to be seen. Not Dracula, not the female fiends. Petran was also absent. Wagner knew the man would be about, and he quickly tried to calculate where the best chokepoint in the castle might be for Petran to ambush them. There were too many ways into and out of the castle for the gangly servant to guard them all. And surely one of the keys that were yet unmarked on Wagner’s ring in his trouser pocket would match up to those other exterior doorways. So Petran had to have a plan.
Where will he be? Wagner thought.
He stood motionless outside the door to Gretchen’s room while the others waited wordlessly for him to decide. He strained his hearing, listening for the slightest sound. He didn’t hear anything, but his senses told him something was amiss. Was he strung too tightly after the events of the previous night? They should be running for one of the doors, but his skin was crawling, and he knew running would be the wrong move. Somehow, somewhere, a trap awaited them. He would not rush into it blindly.
Wagner took a step further into the hallway and the others followed, with Fritz reaching back to slowly pull the door to Gretchen’s room closed behind them. Wagner took one more step and paused, his sense of alarm jarring now.
Then he heard the shuffling noise. Just a slight scuff, like fabric whispering across stone. The sound had not come from either end of the hall. Dread washed over Wagner like a North Sea wave smacking the shore.
Then he looked up.
The ceiling to the corridor was a full twenty feet high. Along the walls, many tapestries—some faded to the point that their artwork could no longer be discerned—hung draped from near the ceiling all the way to the floor. Just above the door to Gretchen’s room, right up at the ceiling, and splayed across it like spiders waiting patiently for their flies, Dracula and the two women clutched the ceiling with their long claws. All three of them bared their fangs and dropped.
It was a trap. And they had stepped right into it.
The three vampires—the two women in their torn and sheer gowns, and Dracula in his customary black suit—landed in crouches on the floor, like cats. Wagner was startled when Anneli made the first move, thrusting her wooden bed segment like a jousting lance into the chest of the nearest female, the waitress. The woman was rammed back against the wall. Fritz swung his own bed segment like a club at the other female, but she leapt back out of reach and stuck to the wall behind her, again reminding Wagner of a spider. Dracula was closest to Wagner. The Count’s fangs now clearly visible in the light, Wagner wondered how he ever could have missed them before. He had spoken to the man a few times. But always in low light, he realized.
Dracula merely walked toward him, confident and full of menace. Wagner decided not to wait and rushed the man, his bedpost leading. When he closed the distance, Dracula swept one arm out and batted Wagner across the hall where he crashed against the wall and slumped to the floor. The Count’s strength was amazing. He appeared to be a slim man, but the power behind the strike was more than Wagner would have expected from a mountain of a man. He quickly understood this would be a fight they would lose.
Anneli struck her foe repeatedly, pinning the vampire waitress against the wall. The tapestry behind her tore loose, and fell down over the two women, but Wagner’s wife did not let up on her assault. Fritz and the other female were circling each other, with Fritz alternately waving the candelabrum and the bedpost.
Wagner tried to stand and found Dracula instantly in front of him again. The creature rammed Wagner against the wall a second time, and he slid to the f
loor. Before Wagner could realize it, the Count had moved away.
“Stop!” The Count’s robust voice echoed loudly through the hallway.
Wagner looked up and saw that Dracula had extricated Anneli from her fight with the waitress. He now stood behind her, his hand clutching her throat, one long sharp fingernail pointed at the pulsing vein on the side of her neck. Fritz also saw that she was captured. He stopped moving.
“Place your weapons on the ground,” Dracula commanded Fritz.
Fritz looked furious. Wagner knew the man’s frustration. They had not even made it steps outside the door before losing this brief skirmish. And they would all surely die. Then Wagner saw the look in Fritz’s eye. His friend knew they would die, too.
The big man slowly knelt and placed the candle tree on the floor. When he stood, the bedpost was still in his large hand.
Dracula took a step toward Fritz, pushing Anneli before him as he went. Wagner took the moment to stand, his own bedpost still in his hand. He wanted so badly to strike Dracula from behind, and free his wife from the creature’s grasp.
“Drop the weapon, or she will die,” the Count took another shuffling step toward Fritz, the man he perceived to be the greater fighter of the group. He was ignoring Wagner completely.
Fritz’s eye darted quickly to Wagner then back to the Count. His look seemed to droop, and he stretched out his arm and dropped the bedpost on the floor. Wagner took in the whole scene, but he knew Fritz was acting. He knew the man had something else planned. Wagner cocked his bedpost back behind his shoulder, preparing to swing it as hard as he could at the back of Dracula’s head.
The female vampire Fritz had been battling stepped toward him. Wagner thought she was going to collect the dropped weapon.
She never got the chance.
As soon as she was in range, Fritz’s hands went up to his shoulders and the waiting handles of the bedposts he wore on his back in a crossed X. Like a gunfighter in America, Fritz drew the weapons in a smooth and blisteringly fast arc, swinging them wide and in, until the tips of both weapons crashed into either side of the female vampire’s head. The sound was the deep bass drum of a marching band, and the top of the woman’s skull popped up like a cork shot out of a champagne bottle. A spout of blood followed it, and Wagner saw that the blood was darker than any he had ever seen.
“Nooooooooo!” Dracula’s scream was so loud it hurt Wagner’s ears in the confined space. The bedpost began its swing, and Wagner stepped forward to ensure the weapon hit its target. But Dracula was gone.
Wagner saw the movement, but although his mind slowed the scene down, he understood that everything was happening as quickly as lightning. Dracula had dropped Anneli and was racing toward Fritz. Anneli was ducking down to grasp her lost bedpost. The female vampire with the shattered cranium was beginning to collapse to the ground. Fritz was kicking out with his foot, the candelabrum was suddenly skittering across the floor toward the tapestry. Wagner’s swing with the makeshift bludgeon was reaching the place where Dracula had just been, but the wood hit only air. Dracula had moved from the place with lightning speed.
The swing continued, having not met its expected resistance. Wagner spun around in a complete circle, the momentum from his strike with the weapon pulling his body around, against his will. He saw that the waitress vampire had somehow gotten behind him during the fight, and she was coming for him. But the momentum of the post swung him back to the rest of the hallway again. Anneli was down on the floor grabbing for her post. The candles touched the tapestry, and it lit into a roaring flame that cast the corridor into intense brightness.
Dracula had flown across the space of the hall and grabbed Fritz by the man’s head. The two of them continued down to the end of the hall in a blur. The female vampire Fritz had killed was still falling to the floor when Dracula rammed Fritz’s head against the far wall at the end of the corridor. Fritz’s head burst like a balloon on the first impact, but Dracula continued to smash it against the wall over and over, shrieking in anguish all the while.
The fire roared up the wall and across the carpet on the floor to ignite the fallen body of the female vampire Fritz had killed. Her gauzy gown lit instantly, and she was suddenly a wall of fire between Wagner and the Count. The thought that his friend was dead had barely had time to enter his consciousness, but the instinct to escape was alive in his brain. He lurched forward, but before he could reach Anneli to help her up from the floor, something hard struck him from behind.
Suddenly the brilliance of the fire dimmed to a dark gray.
Then to blackness.
Chapter 26
When a dim light bled into Wagner’s eyes, the first thing his mind could comprehend was that he could not move his arms and legs. His chest felt compressed, and it was difficult to breathe. There was a coppery taste in his mouth that was as thick as paste.
His eyes flickered open and closed. He tried to understand where he was. He was looking at a damp stone wall, a few inches from his eyes. The light was filtering in from above him.
He moved his head upward and saw a tube of rock stretching above him to a dark metal grate almost ten feet higher. No. Not a grate. Bars. He was imprisoned in a narrow tube of stone with bars at the top. He had seen this sort of thing before in other castles. An oubliette. A dungeon cell so narrow, the victim would barely be able to move in it. They normally tapered down, and some of them filled with water. An oubliette was a place to put someone you wanted to forget about. Permanently.
But he was in it incorrectly.
The victim would normally be placed feet first and vertically into the pit until wedged at the bottom. Wagner was crunched up into a ball instead, his legs bent and up by his chest. He must have simply been dropped into the hole, and his unconscious body tangled on the way down. He felt a surge of panic and fought to crush it down. That would not be the way to get out of the hole. If he jammed himself in tighter he would die here. As simple as that.
He strained his ears for sound, but only heard a faint dripping noise. It didn’t sound like he was being guarded. He cautiously wiggled just his right arm, which was under him. He could move it. The arm wasn’t wedged—it was just numb from having been in the same position below him for so long. He pulled his arm up to his chest and wiggled the fingers, waiting for the inevitable sensation of seamstress needles stabbing into his fingertips as the blood began to flow again.
As soon as the arm began to tingle, he pumped it up and down above his chest a few times, and in a moment, it felt relatively normal. Then he started on the other arm. He wiggled his toes in their shoes and found they had not gone to sleep as his arms had.
His shins were wedged against the wall in front of him, and his back was crushed against the curve of the wall behind him. He dared not attempt to move his legs for fear he might slide deeper into the hole before his arms were ready to take the strain of his body’s weight. When his left arm was fully awake, he stretched out his arms and braced his upper chest. With a grunt of effort, he lifted, and the strain on his legs came off slightly. He slid one leg down just a bit and pressed his foot firmly against the wall, bracing again between back and leg—only this time, he was using his foot and not his shin. Then he moved the other leg, and soon it was free in the chimney of stone.
He slid his left foot up just higher than the right and took the strain with his arms again, shimmying his back up before again pressing outward with his feet. The curved stone wall was slick, wet, and cold. He found that his hands were not as good for pressing outward as his forearms were, so he used his arms and his back. As he moved higher, he found it easier to breathe, because his knees were no longer lodged into his chest.
After another shuffling upward motion, he heard approaching footsteps above him. The simple tack tack of leather dress shoes on stone. He stopped where he was and moved his arms to make it look like he was unintentionally wedged in. Hopefully he wouldn’t appear to be much higher than he had before. The thought briefly occurred to
him to try to jam his shins against the wall instead of using his feet—that was how he had been positioned when he woke—but he could possibly get stuck, and he wasn’t sure in the dim light it would make much difference.
He looked up and through the dark crossed bars at the top of the oubliette. Dracula stepped to the edge and into view.
The man wore a new, clean suit, but it was as black as those Wagner had seen before. He held a large crystal goblet in his hand and sipped from it. Then he looked down the hole, and stared in Wagner’s eyes.
“You can struggle all you like; you won’t escape from there,” the Count said. He did not sound angry. He spoke as if he were bored. “I won’t feed on you, Wagner. I have something special for you.”
“Where is my wife, you bastard!”
“She is safe. I won’t be harming her. Just the opposite. I find her incredibly beautiful. After all, your…friend…killed one of my concubines. I’ll need a replacement, won’t I? But don’t fret. In exchange for becoming one of my wives, she will become like me…a being capable of living forever, with the minor inconvenience of needing to drink human blood. I thought I’d let her start with yours.”
Wagner stared in mute fury at the thought of Anneli being turned into a vampire and becoming the property of this thing that pretended to be a man. He said nothing.
“Yes, the need to drink blood is the worst part of my existence. But every once in a while, I get to sample a variety that is particularly delicious.” He whirled the dark liquid in his goblet and stared down at Wagner. “You were too clever, Wagner. If you had just come and done your stone work, things might have been alright. But Petran tells me your were sniffing in the cellar. He never trusted you. I whipped him within an inch of his life when he dropped the stone on you from the tower. He thought I would never find out. And then you brought that man to my home.” Dracula’s face turned to a sneer. Wagner suddenly understood that it was Dracula that had been behind the incident on the bridge where Fritz had fallen.