by G. P. Taylor
Herr Gisler shook uncontrollably. He tried to push the blade from within him and reached around to his back to take hold of the handle.
‘Is that true?’ Jago asked as Lana woke from her sleep and rubbed her face.
‘It was my job. I am a doctor. Is that a crime? How many people do you kill in your quest for life?’ Gisler laughed as he spoke. It was as if he no longer cared what happened to him. ‘I am proud of what I have done and long would it have continued.’
Jago rushed towards him and, grabbing the man by the shoulders, pushed him to the wall. The blade pressed through his chest. Gisler hung against the wall like a discarded puppet. Blood seeped from his mouth as he coughed and choked and then slumped to the floor.
‘You are a fool, Madame. You complain of him taking life and yet you gave Lana to him,’ Jago said as he held the knife towards her.
Lana looked around her. ‘Jago?’ she said, not knowing how she had got there.
‘It was Gisler. He drugged the champagne and wanted to kill us,’ Jago answered.
‘He has a companion, in the barn,’ Madame Camargue said. ‘He is a driver who was with Herr Gisler during the war. That man has the keys to the Rolls-Royce.’
‘What?’ Lana asked.
‘We have to get away from here, Lana. It is not safe,’ Jago said.
‘Gisler wanted your venom. He worked for a man with a child who is a Vampyre,’ Madame Camargue said apologetically.
‘You told him about me,’ Lana replied as she stared at the woman. ‘That was why he was here. When I called you from London you must have told him.’
‘It was blackmail …’
‘And ten thousand dollars for your trouble,’ Jago added as the woman tried to vindicate herself.
‘Go to the barn and tell the man to come here. If you warn him, I will kill you,’ Lana said to the Madame as she sat up on the bed and tried to shake the drowsiness from her. ‘Tell him that Gisler has something for him.’
The woman left the room. Jago dragged the body of Gisler into the bathroom. Then he lifted the doorframe and slid it back into the wall. It looked loose and broken. Lana laughed at him.
‘I thought he was going to kill you,’ Jago said, trying to explain why the door was that way. ‘I just kicked it and the door fell down.’
She touched his hand. ‘I am so thankful for you. You had a chance to leave but –’
‘It crossed my mind. I thought of it, but didn’t want to leave you here – no matter what is to come,’ Jago answered. ‘What will we do with the man when he comes?’
‘You will do nothing. Just stay in the bathroom and close the door,’ Lana said.
It was not long before footsteps came along the landing. Jago had left the door open. Lana lay on the bed. The voice of the man carried along the passageway with his footsteps.
‘Gisler,’ he said in German, his accent strong and from the suburbs of Berlin. ‘Why do you wake me at this time of night?’ The man pushed the open door further and the wooden frame moved. He looked at Lana. ‘Where is Gisler?’
‘I am here for you instead. He left me as a present – he is with Madame Camargue.’
The man stood in the doorway and looked at Lana. He smiled to himself.
‘I remember this place during the war. It was even better than it is now. Are you German?’ he asked her.
‘I am Flemish, but I know Berlin very well,’ she said as she smiled and rolled her lipstick across her lips.
‘Why waste it – when I will smudge it from your face?’ the man said. ‘I will never know Berlin again. There are too many Russians in the place. But Flemish women are another thing.’
The man stepped forward. Lana slipped her legs to the floor and stood before him. He reached out with a hand and placed it on her shoulder.
‘You have a strong hand,’ she said as she smoothed her fingers over his arm.
‘Gisler brought me here for that reason. He was obsessed with Vampyres. Quite mad. He thought about them all the time. He said that they were everywhere in France and that he would find a cure for their poison,’ the man answered as he touched her face and pushed her back towards the bed.
Jago listened from behind the bathroom door. He looked around at Gisler slumped in the bath with a towel over his head so that Jago could not see his dead, staring eyes. In the room, Lana pulled the man closer to her. He was tall and stocky, with a day’s growth of beard and the smell of French beer. The veins in his neck stood out from his skin. She counted the beats and could see his heart pulse faster. His thoughts were garbled, beer-soaked and concerned for only one thing. He held her tighter and tighter, as if he would never let go. Lana could feel herself being lifted from the floor. She kissed his neck, nuzzling the skin. The man smiled and sighed at the same time.
It was then that she bit him. At first he felt nothing. Then as she bit deeper he began to jerk. The venom seared instantly into his blood as if his veins were filled with acid. He began to scream and with all of his strength pushed Lana to the bed as the blood pumped from the wound. He stepped back and grabbed the table lamp.
‘Where is Gisler?’ he demanded.
‘He is dead,’ she answered.
‘You are a –’ he tried to say as he felt his legs fade beneath him.
‘A Vampyre?’ she asked, tormenting him as she got to her feet.
The man dropped the lamp. The bulb smashed and the room darkened, lit only by the crack of light that surrounded the bathroom door. He tried to turn and walk from the room. Lana stepped to him and, taking hold of his shirt collar, pulled him back into the room.
‘Where are you going?’ she asked as he staggered away from her again like a cat playing with a dying mouse. ‘Jago, come and see …’
The bathroom door opened. The man caught a glimpse of Gisler, his arm hanging out over the bath. Then Jago stepped into the room.
‘They would have killed us, Jago,’ Lana said as if to justify what she was about to do.
‘Please, no … you don’t understand – I never …’ the man said as he started to cry.
Jago pushed the man out of the way as he walked from the room. His stomach turned at the smell of the blood. He heard the body of the man slump to the floor as the lamp was smashed. There were footsteps and a sound like a cat lapping milk. He sat on the floor with his head in his hands and tried to get the image of Gisler out of his mind.
Madame Camargue was climbing the stairs.
‘Back to the room. Get back there now,’ she said. She was pointing an old Luger pistol with a long silencer at Jago. ‘I want my money. I want all of it for me.’
Jago got to his feet and did what she had asked. She pushed the gun into his back and walked him to the door.
Entering the room, he saw Lana over the body of the man. She was wiping the blood from her face with the towel that had covered Gisler.
‘Madame Camargue wants her money,’ Jago said as he stepped inside.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked the woman.
‘I telephoned the man in Zurich. He said if Gisler was dead I could have all the money for your venom. All I have to do is kill you and he has a chemist who can do what is needed. He is sending a butcher from Valence to take it from you.’
‘How much did he promise to give you?’ Lana asked as she got to her feet and stepped over the body, watching the Madame closely.
‘Thirty thousand dollars.’
‘I will give you sixty. Did you think we would ever give up on you? It was our money that built this house. Your family have always been our companions. I have stayed here many times and remember the day you were born.’
Madame Camargue hesitated. The gun trembled.
‘Sixty thousand? I remember you when I was a child, you always brought me things from Paris,’ she whispered as if speaking to herself.
‘We are old friends. Just give me the pistol and I will make it safe. I have nearly that amount in my bag. We can go to Valence and get more in the morning,’ Lana answer
ed.
‘But what about the butcher?’ Madame Camargue asked, her mind changed.
‘You can tell him we escaped. I will give you money to make him sweet.’
‘And the man in Zurich?’ she asked.
‘Give me his name and telephone number and I will speak to him. I will help him with his own son.’
Madame Camargue reached into the pocket of her dress and handed a small gold card to Jago.
‘That is the man,’ she said. It was as if she could no longer think.
‘And the gun?’ Lana asked softly, her voice warm and as rich as her lipstick.
The Madame turned the pistol and handed it to Lana and stepped back.
‘I am sorry, Miss Karlstein. It was the war. The things that happened have changed me so much,’ she said, and she put her hands to her face as if they would catch her tears of regret.
The bullet crashed into the wall as Madame Camargue fell to her knees. She grabbed Jago’s hand as if he could stop her death. He jumped back, seeing the puncture wound in her chest as she fell to the floor.
Madame Camargue was dead.
[ 18 ]
Five Gold Rings
THE STEAM TRAIN pulled into King’s Cross Station, filling the cavernous building with white smoke. It reflected off the gas lamps and the opening doors of the carriages as Walpurgis stepped from the train and followed the line of bedraggled night-time travellers. As he looked up through the swirling smoke, the illuminated clock above Platform 9 crept towards the third hour of the morning.
He had slept on the train. His compartment had been empty since Doncaster. All he could dream of was Mina Karlstein. Again and again he re-lived her falling from the cliff, dropping like a stone and vanishing in the sea. Walpurgis had stayed for an hour above the water and waited to see if anything of her remained. Among the waves that ebbed back and forth and beat against the cliffs there had been no trace of her. He had gone back to Hawks Moor and searched the house, but like the sea it offered nothing.
There was no evidence, no sign of where he should go next, nothing concerning Ezra Morgan. Even the papers in the manuscript room had been searched through. It was as if any memory of Ezra Morgan had been erased from life. The only thing he had found, hidden in an envelope and wrapped in fine tissue paper, were five gold rings. They were identical in every way and the size of a ring finger of a man. The writing on the envelope gave the date as 29 December 1709. The envelope had been sealed with wax and signed by Morgan. On each ring, Walpurgis had found a word written in symbols he could not understand. Now, as he walked along the platform to the rank of black taxi cabs, he thought of where he might have seen the writing before.
In his travels, Walpurgis had heard that Vampyres had created their own language and disguised their writings in a coded text. But having never seen any of this writing, he could not be sure.
Leaving the station, he opened a cab door and sat in the back. The taxi driver threw the remnants of tea from his tin cup out of the window and looked in the rear-view mirror.
‘Where to, mister?’ he asked in a thick Bow accent.
Walpurgis thought. He didn’t know where he was going.
‘Two Bridges,’ he said after a while and a raised eyebrow from the driver. ‘Two Bridges, just by the Strand.’ He had not been there for many years, but knew the bar would be open. It was discreet and hidden away from London life in a quiet side street. Walpurgis knew that it would be full at this time of the morning. Actors, dancers and radio announcers would be crowding the tables and fill the air with loud conversation.
When the taxi pulled up outside, Walpurgis looked at the door. ‘I have changed my mind,’ he said to the man’s annoyance. ‘Take me to Ludgate Hill.’
‘And that will be the last place?’ the driver asked.
‘Unless I change my mind again,’ Walpurgis said as he closed his eyes and settled back in the leather seat.
Stopping again on the corner of Old Bailey, the driver looked in his mirror.
‘This good enough?’ he asked expectantly, an unsmoked cigarette hanging from his lip. ‘Would you like to go anywhere else?’
Walpurgis looked out of the window. The street was empty. ‘This will be fine,’ he said. He paid the man and opened the door.
He watched as the red tail-light of the taxi vanished in the London smog. Crossing the road to the small door, he checked the contents of his bag. Then, checking that the street was empty, he kicked the door of the Banco Perazzi as hard as he could. It smashed open. The locks splintered the wood and fell to the tiled floor of the entrance.
‘Heston Walpurgis,’ Lucca said as he came forward. ‘Most people knock when they want to come in.’
‘The last time I was here you tried to kill me,’ Walpurgis answered.
‘The last time you were here, you wanted to see the contents of every deposit box,’ Lucca said.
‘I was looking for something valuable,’ Walpurgis replied as he looked suspiciously around the room. ‘Where are your companions?’
‘Sadly, I only have Carlo. His brother was murdered,’ Lucca answered.
‘Murdered? Here in the Banco Perazzi?’ Walpurgis asked mordantly.
‘By Jago Harker. He stabbed him with a silver knife. Just like he did to you,’ Lucca said, pointing to Walpurgis with a long, bony finger.
Walpurgis laughed. ‘What trouble the lad causes us all. I was talking to Ozymandias about him. It seems everyone wants him dead.’
‘Even you … Harker told me of the debt and the money you want. He came here and asked me to pay him the money. I told Harker that unless Hugh Morgan gave his consent then I could not release any money,’ Lucca said as he crossed the lobby and closed the door to keep out the smog that hung about Walpurgis as if it oozed from within him.
‘Where is he now?’ Walpurgis asked as he picked up the shackle of a broken lock and held it in his hand.
‘Gone. Taken far away to another land,’ Lucca said. ‘I don’t know where, only that it will be for a long time.’
‘Who by?’
Lucca’s brow wrinkled, and a small lined creased at the side of his mouth. He looked at the ceiling and then to Walpurgis. He knew he couldn’t lie. The man would just kill him.
‘I want you to leave and when you leave I would like to still be alive,’ he said, his voice taut. ‘For that I will help you as much as you want.’ Lucca cupped his hands together and tried to look Walpurgis in the face.
There was the snap of a hand. Walpurgis grabbed him by the lapel of his cashmere suit and pulled him from his feet. ‘I don’t make any deals,’ he said as he dragged Lucca across the room and threw the man across a table. Then, taking the knife from his bag, he held it to his throat. ‘Who took him and where did they go?’
Without warning, a small door opened just below the ceiling. It smashed to the floor below as Carlo leapt from the dark void into the room. Instantly the monkey was on Walpurgis. It held fast, biting into his shoulder as hard as it could. Walpurgis lurched back and staggered across the room. He twisted and turned as the monkey bit harder.
Lucca feverishly searched the desk drawer. Walpurgis fell back against the wall. The monkey screamed and dropped to the floor. Walpurgis kicked the creature as it grabbed his leg and held tight.
‘Leave, or Carlo will kill you,’ Lucca shouted, his voice in a panic.
‘Get it from me,’ Walpurgis answered as the claws of the beast dug into the sword wound in his leg.
Lucca pulled out a small Derringer pistol from the desk drawer and pointed it at Walpurgis.
‘Leave now, or I will shoot you,’ he shouted, his hand trembling as he pulled back the firing hammer. His face looked like that of a bearded Pierrot clown. A fearful tear trickled down his cheek. Fingers of thick smog crept into the room from under the door.
‘Get the monkey off my back,’ Walpurgis insisted.
‘Carlo, leave,’ Lucca shouted.
The monkey jumped to the floor. In two long strides it leapt acro
ss the lobby and onto the table. It sat by Lucca, bloodied mouth open, staring at Walpurgis.
‘All I want to know is how to find Jago Harker. Tell me and I will leave you alone,’ Walpurgis insisted as the monkey continued to snarl at him. ‘And I have these five gold rings. They each have a word written on the outside in a language I do not know.’
‘Rings? Five rings?’ Lucca asked. ‘Where did you get them from?’
‘Hawks Moor, in an envelope signed by Morgan. It is dated 29 December 1709 and sealed with wax. Look.’
Walpurgis reached into his pocket and threw the envelope onto the table. Lucca put down the pistol and looked inside. Taking a magnifying glass from his coat, he held each ring up to the light from the chandelier.
‘Varzik,’ he said. ‘An old dialect, but I am sure of it.’
‘Beyond Constantinople?’ Walpurgis asked. He had heard of a village of this name, far away from any other town or city in a desolate land.
‘Beyond Babylon and the Garden of Eden. Varzik is a legend. A place where the history of the Vampyres started.’ Lucca placed each ring back in the envelope and pushed it reluctantly across the table to Walpurgis.
‘What does it say on each ring?’ he asked.
‘They are just names. Worthless names, of no consequence. It will do you no good to know of them.’ Lucca hesitated, as if his mind suddenly thought of something. ‘You say that you found them at Hawks Moor?’
‘They were in a drawer in an old room where Morgan kept his papers,’ Walpurgis said as he stepped closer to the table, keeping an eye on Carlo.
‘And Mina Karlstein let you take them?’ he asked.
‘How did you know she was there?’ Walpurgis replied.
‘There are so few of us left, we all tend to know each other’s business.’
‘Mina Karlstein is dead.’ Walpurgis put his hand on the table. ‘Look at the rings again. Please, tell me what you know.’
‘Dead?’ Lucca asked, not distracted by Walpurgis. ‘How did she die?’
‘An accident. She was running on the cliffs and fell into the sea,’ Walpurgis said, allowing the picture of her falling to flood his mind.