An Old Friend Of The Family (Saberhagen's Dracula Book 3)

by Fred Saberhagen

  This was not true death before him.

  Oh, the girl was cold and unbreathing certainly, her heart as quiet as her hands; medical student and expert pathologist alike would certify her dead. But the old man was able to perceive the energies of altered life that still charged all this pretty body’s cells. Again he drew a minimal breath, and uttered that faint, almost reptilian sound, expressing to himself his own surprise. Had she enemies so bitter that they meant her to be autopsied alive?

  Or…

  He paused his flat, extended hand once close above the girl’s face, forehead to chin. Then he made the same motion in reverse. He needed only the one pass to make Kate’s eyes open for him. They were unseeing as yet, but a lovely milk-blue, glass-blue, in the night.

  It was important to know whether there had been any attempt at autopsy as yet, and impersonally he drew the sheet down farther. The virginally flat belly was marked by no incision. Good.

  With doctorly gentleness he drew the sheet up to just below Kate’s chin. Then he pressed with two fingers on her cheek to turn her head. As he did so he murmured tremendously old words, in a language that could find keys of understanding within the inner levels of almost every human mind. The rigor of Kate’s muscles eased somewhat. Her head turned, her eyelids drooped again, and simultaneously she smiled. What did you tell me, old man? Something nice.

  He smiled too, for a moment, seeing a trace of Mina’s lineage before him in the smooth generous forehead and lips. Oh, this was Judy’s sister, though older, blonder and blander, and by his own standards not so beautiful.

  The expert pathologist would almost certainly never have thought of looking for the marks which the old man, knowing just where to look, could now observe upon the throat. A pair of less-than-pinprick wounds, now almost closed. By their spacing he knew that a wide human jaw had bitten there.

  Next, with one finger the old man parted Kate’s cold lips and explored her teeth. The four cuspids all responded somewhat like erectile tissue to his touch; what had once been inert enamel sharpening visibly.

  He pressed her hand. “Look at me, Kate!” No more than a whisper was in his voice, and yet a fierce command. And when her milk-blue, innocent eyes turned toward him he bent a little, whispering more intently still: “Who is your secret lover?”

  Kate’s smile failed, and a tremor ran through her upper body. To give the required answer meant drawing breath for speech, and breath to her was no more an automatic reflex. After a moment of awkward agony her lungs worked once, and she got out one word: “No—”

  No secret vampire lover, it would seem, had left her in this state. Some vampire rapist, then. The old man’s whisper lost its gentle undertone, came out between thin lips as though from a machine: “Who forced himself upon you, then?”

  A difficult gasping. “Enoch…Winter…”

  The name meant nothing to the old man. “How long have you known him?”

  “Just…met…”

  “He bit at your throat; I can see that for myself. Forced you to taste his blood as well, perhaps?” Otherwise it was unlikely that a single mating would have brought about her transformation.

  Ugly remembrance dawned in Kate’s dull eyes; she answered with a soundless yes. Her rib cage labored, but pumped little air. It was not surprising that her strength was low; the newborn vampire could be as weak, though hardly as fragile, as the infant newborn in the breathing phase of life. The visitor squeezed Kate’s hand as he had squeezed Clarissa’s, and made himself smile reassuringly. “I am an old friend of your grandmother’s, Kate. Only one more question now, and you may sleep again. Where is John?”

  “John…”

  Now even the old man needed his best efforts to hear her. “Your brother. Is he with Enoch Winter?”

  A faint line of puzzlement creased Kate’s otherwise flawless forehead. He got the impression that she knew nothing of her brother’s fate.

  “All will be well now, Kate. Rest, sleep, until I come for you. Answer no call but mine. No call but mine. We will have much to talk of, later. But for now, rest.”

  And yet her lungs continued laboring to breathe, to get out one more word. He bent lower, intent on hearing.

  “—Joe—”

  * * * * * * *

  For six minutes Joe Keogh had been back in the driver’s seat, with engine and heater running, keeping a sharp eye out for the old man and wondering when he should really begin to be alarmed. Now Joe started, with almost the sensation of electric shock repeated. His companion was standing once more beside the car, where he seemed to have reappeared while in the very act of reaching for the door handle. What good would you be in a stakeout? a part of Joe’s mind demanded angrily of himself. And another part answered: I was watching. He just—just—

  “I told you you wouldn’t be able to get in,” he said aloud, with irritation, meanwhile reaching across the front seat to flip the doorlatch up.

  “You were quite right,” replied Corday in a soothing, almost contrite voice, as he slid in and closed the door. “The attendants were not at all inclined to be helpful. One of them was sleeping at the desk. A most ill-run establishment. Were I in charge, things would be different there.”

  Joe sighed, trying to remember if you could see anyone’s desk from outside the front door of the morgue. “I’ll take you back to your motel.”

  “If that is out of your way I can easily take a cab.”

  Joe shifted into drive and moved out, north on State, then swinging east to get back to the Outer Drive. “No problem, I’m headed back to the north side anyway.” He hadn’t really been headed that far north, but what the hell. Anyway there was something about the old man, in spite of all his oddities—or maybe because of them—that made Joe reluctant to let go of him. An air of hope; maybe that was it. A feeling of purpose, which was more than Joe had been able to get from anyone else around him since Kate’s death. Looking at the ugly situation logically, of course, there wasn’t much to be hopeful or purposeful about—except the chance of recovering Johnny still alive, and to Joe that chance looked smaller and smaller as the hours passed.

  His companion’s voice, breaking in upon his thoughts, was welcome. “Tell me one more thing, Joe, if you know it. What are the plans for Kate’s burial?”

  “As far as I know, no time’s been set. Waiting on the autopsy, which is supposed to be tomorrow. I’m sure she’ll be buried up in Lockwood Cemetery, in the family mausoleum. It’s one of those the really wealthy Chicago families liked to put up around the turn of the century: all marble and as big as a middle-sized house. One of those famous architects designed it, I forget his name.”

  “Thank you, Joe. You have been very helpful to me tonight.” It was said so sincerely that it sounded a little odd.

  Joe glanced at the once-more shadowed face. “You’ll be coming to the funeral, then.”

  “At my age,” the old man said calmly, “it is difficult to know which funerals one will be able to attend.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  When the closet door was closed Johnny never tried to open it, not after that first time, even though sometimes the house grew so silent that he could imagine himself alone in it.

  On his first night in the closet all had been silent, for what seemed like an endless time, and at last he had eased the door open with his good hand, thinking maybe they had somehow left him unguarded. The huge man had been right there in the dark empty bedroom, standing right there as if he had been waiting hours for Johnny to do just that. That was when the huge man, without saying a word, had torn off the little finger on Johnny’s right hand.

  The little finger on his left hand had gone even sooner, while he was still in the kidnap-car and trying to struggle. He had fainted, and when he came out of the faint—he couldn’t tell how much later—he found himself already here, shut up naked in the closet.

  In the car, the huge man had ridden in the back seat, and the black-bearded man had done the driving. Black-beard was the one who had first be
ckoned Johnny over to the car as if to ask directions of him. When you were the fourth best high school wrestler in the state at a hundred and sixty pounds, you didn’t fear any more that some maniac could just grab you like a baby and throw you into the back seat of a car.

  It had turned out, though, that someone could.

  Then there was the man with the thick glasses, a short and muscular and sometimes nervous young man. He had not been in the car at all, but he stayed with Johnny in the house, escorted him from closet to bathroom and back again, and put food and water in the dishes on the closet floor.

  Also there was the woman. Johnny was not quite sure, in his state of pain, fever, shock, fear, and confusion, whether he was dreaming her or not. He heard her sometimes; he never saw her clearly. She had not been in the car either. Once she came to the closet door and opened it, in darkness so thick that even his now fully adjusted eyes could see nothing but the vague outline of her body. Then she had bent forward to touch him, with a finger or perhaps a toe, as he lay on the floor. And she had laughed, musically, and had spoken to someone who was over near the door that must lead from the bedroom to a hall. Her language sounded a little like Latin, but mostly like soothing that Johnny had ever heard before. Then she had gone away again.

  It was not easy to keep track of time. In the bedroom outside the closet, a modern but abandoned-looking room with no furniture that he traversed on his escorted trips to the bathroom, the drapes were always closed. Still he could just tell whether it was daylight outside or not. The trouble was in sorting out the periods of day and night and keeping track of how many of them had passed. And there was more trouble in trying to believe there was a reason why he should bother to keep track at all.

  Thick-glasses sometimes left him plain bread in the aluminum pie plate placed on the luxuriously carpeted floor. Once there was cheese with the bread, and once it had turned into a peanut butter sandwich. Johnny didn’t eat much, whatever it was. He did drink a lot of water, though, out of the other dish. Lapping it up was the best way, because then he didn’t have to use his hands at all. They both hurt so much he wasn’t going to try to use them except to save his life. Maybe not even then.

  It might have been his second night in the closet when he heard the car pull up outside. Immediately Thick-glasses went into a flurry of activity, entering the bedroom from somewhere, momentarily pulling aside the drapes to look out, then opening the closet door to growl: “Make any noise and it’ll be you left nut that comes off next.” Then he closed the door and went trotting off somewhere, closing the bedroom door too behind him.

  Johnny could hear nothing more for several minutes. Then two sets of footsteps entered the bedroom, its ceiling light was switched on, the closet door was opened. Even with his eyes dazzled, Johnny could recognize Black-beard from the kidnap car.

  The two men stood there looking at him on the floor. Black-beard was wearing some kind of fancy winter jacket with snow on the collar. Thick-glasses wore his usual khakis, almost a uniform.

  “If the plan’s going on,” said Black-beard, “we don’t want him to die yet; we’ll want to send some more parcels. He’s shivering, better get him a blanket.”

  “Oh, the plan’s going on,” Thick-glasses said.

  Black-beard: “I’d like to get it straight about this house, who owns it, how secure it really is.”

  “She’s taking care of all that.”

  They closed the closet door. Their voices stayed in the lighted bedroom, though.

  “Look, man.” It was Black-beard talking again. “You’ve really known her longer than I have, right? Her and her big friend. It was really you who arranged for her to meet me, huh?”

  The other was quiet for a few moments. “Yeah.” As if he didn’t want to talk about that.

  “I’m going to have to talk to her, get a few things straight. Like who really decides things. Meanwhile I want you to understand that I’m the one who does.”

  “Sure.”

  “I’m not gonna hang around here. Do either of them ever come out here?”

  “They haven’t yet.”

  “What’d you do with his clothes?”

  “I got’em stashed away. This way he’s not gonna go running out. Also I don’t have to do his zipper for him.”

  Black-beard chuckled. “Makes something else a little handier for you too, hey?”

  “Hey, you know I don’t like to touch no one who’s unhealthy.” Thick-glasses sounded genuinely hurt. “He’s all blood and shit—yuck.”

  “You could give him a bath.”

  “Come on, get off me, Boss.”

  “All right, all right.” Black-beard quenched his amusement. “Look, Gruner, you’re doing a fine job here, a helluva job. I’ll get word back to you on what to do next. You sure the phone here’s not connected?”

  “Sure.”

  Their voices moved away.

  Later that same night—though Johnny could not be quiet sure it really was the same night—he swam up out of sleep or stupor to hear that a party was in progress. Not in the bedroom; some where farther off. Voices again speaking that language that was almost Latin—this time maybe half a dozen people, having what sounded like a quite good time. Eventually he could pick out the voices of the woman who had looked in on him the night before. He didn’t hear Black-beard’s, though, or Thick-glasses’ either.

  Some strange man’s voice said, impatiently: “Oh, speak English here, why don’t you?” impatience was smeared over with good-humor, to make it sound polite.

  And then the lovely voice of the woman who had looked in on Johnny, answering in English: “I have lived on this side for the ocean for two years now. I know the custom. I choose to disregard it, usually. But if the mother tongue is hard for you, I will use English, as a favor.”

  Another woman said: “If you’re doing favors, I take it that you want something; you’ve called us together to ask our help. You have brought your feuds here from across the sea. That boy in the closet is connected with it somehow, I’m sure.”

  Several voices murmured agreement. The anonymous woman went on: “Well, we want nothing to do with any of that. Here there is no real knowledge of us among the breathers. No persecution ever, nothing but jokes. We wish things to remain as they are on this side of the water.”

  “Au contraire,” replied the woman with the lovely voice, now more silken than ever. “I only offer you my friendship. I do not ask your help. What lies between the old one and myself is our own affair, not yours at all.”

  “That’s fine with us,” a second man put in.

  “I have claimed no titles or honors here among you, have I?”

  “Nor has he—you say he is here now, too.”

  “He is here. And you may be sure that he will claim honors—and obedience—if he wins. But all I ask is that you leave it to ourselves to settle.” The fine voice paused. “No, let me be plainer than that. I insist that you give him no help, and above all no place of sanctuary. Any of you who dare to do so will feel our wrath in days to come. His time is past, and none should look to him for leadership.”

  “I hope that all of you are listening,” said the huge man’s voice, rough and elemental, like something from a thundercloud. And Johnny felt the world slip from him into darkness.

  CHAPTER NINE

  More often than not, Judy slept with the drapes of her bedroom window drawn open, and so it was tonight. Starlight and moonlight from the high sky above the lake were welcome, and dawn too, on the rare occasions that it roused her. There was no reasonable way that any human being could look in, on the second story. So when she awoke, near midnight, she wondered for a moment if it could be some trick of starlight from the new-cleared sky that made it appear that the old man, yesterday’s brief visitor, was sitting in her dressing-table chair.

  “Have I frightened you, Judy?” The voice of the apparition was quite matter-of-fact.

  “No, I don’t scare easily.” Actually she was beginning to wonder if she w
as dreaming. Judy turned to face her visitor more directly as she sat up in her bed. Automatically her hands pulled sheet and blanket up close beneath her chin, and she felt her fingers touch her nightgown’s throat, to make sure that it was buttoned. “But how did you get in?”

  “I was invited, yesterday, into this house. And in my case one invitation is enough, you see. It has a permanent effect.”

  “I don’t think I do see.” But truly she was not afraid of him. She wondered a little, now, and later was to wonder more, about this lack of fear.

  “Of course I have not been invited into your room. Shall I apologize for being here?”

  “No, I don’t mind. That is, I suppose you must have some good reason.”

  The old man made a little hissing sound not quite a sigh, and shifted in his chair. “I need a little help. I thought of waking Clarissa—but when I remembered your delightful lack of fear yesterday afternoon I came to you instead.”

  “A good thing you did. Gran’s had angina. But what was there yesterday afternoon to be afraid of?”

  This time the little hiss was almost a chuckle. “People can be very timid. Sometimes they are even afraid of me. Believe it or not.”

  “Why?”

  “And one might think that these monstrous attacks upon your family would frighten you. Your mother and grandmother are both terrified, and your unhappy father is at the end of his wits, as the saying goes.”

  “Oh, it’s not really that I’m so brave. It’s…” Judy had to pause. She had never really tried before to put into words the way she dealt with fear. “It’s just that when you’re really scared, the only thing to do is try to go beyond the fear somehow. Accept it, maybe that’s what I mean. And then go on your own way regardless.” Now that she had found words, they did seem right, or almost right, to her. She would not have expected someone else to understand them, though.

  But the old man was leaning forward in his chair, nodding. “’Go on our own way, regardless.’ I think it wonderful that you, at our age, already understand that. It does not, of course, imply freedom from moral responsibility.”