Blood Rhapsody

by Nancy Morse

  “When the prince’s son, Vlad Tepes, came to the throne, he gave a feast for his boyars and their families to celebrate Easter. He was well aware that many of those same nobles had been part of the conspiracy that led to his father’s assassination and the burying alive of his elder brother. My grandfather was a member of the Order of the Dragon. He trained Prince Vlad in the skills of knighthood when the prince was a boy. But on that day the prince had scores to settle. The boyars were executed for their conspiracy, my grandfather for his loyalty to the Hungarian king. Shall I tell you how?”

  The bitterness built in his voice as the dreadful memories emerged like demons from the shadowed past. “A sharpened stake was gradually forced into his body through his groin until it emerged from his mouth. Death by impalement is slow and painful and was Prince Vlad’s preferred method of execution. Victims can linger for hours. In my grandfather’s case, it was days. I was but six years old, but I was brought by the prince to view my grandfather’s body as it decayed on a stake along the roadway. You could smell the rotting corpse from half a kilometer away. It was picked apart by crows and his bones scattered on the wind until all that remained was the memory of a proud and robust man and the chilling example of the fate that awaited traitors.”

  The flames from the fire had all but died out. He stopped again and turned toward her. Her face was as pale as moonlight through the shadows.

  “We did not hear from the prince for twenty years. He was busy waging his war against the Turks. But he never forgot us. I was twenty-six that year of fourteen-seventy-six, about to marry a girl from the village, the granddaughter of one of the boyars who had been executed on Easter Sunday. One night, as my family was seated for dinner, there came a rapping at our door. My mother sensed danger and cautioned my father not to answer, but Gizella, whose pure heart would not allow even a mongrel to remain outside on such a cold night, invited the caller inside. It was to be our undoing.”

  There was a wild look in his eyes as the memory of that night returned like a festering wound, infecting his being with a sickness for which there was no cure. He shut his eyes tight, but he could not block out the sight that was forever imprinted on his clouded vision. It all came rushing back to him—the moonlit snow, the crackling fire, the table set with a platter of seasoned sausages, his sisters’ laughter—gone, all gone in one maddening swoop.

  CHAPTER 10

  It had snowed heavily all day, the pewter clouds dropping a new layer over the heavily whitened landscape. As dusk fell, the snow-covered foothills took on an opalescent glow in the moonlight. Behind them rose the Carpathians, their passes and broad valleys laden with freshly fallen snow. All was silent amidst the moonlit snowfields.

  A warm yellow light shone through the windows of the ochre-colored house in the Citadel Square, near the Clock Tower. Surrounded by the houses of Saxon and Magyar merchants and the townhouses of the nobility, it was an unassuming house with storks dwelling on the chimney top and nothing noble about it to suggest that it was the residence of a prince.

  As the sun was setting a horse cart rumbled down the pitted road and stopped before the house. Two figures alighted, slung fresh pelts over their shoulders and went on inside.

  “Gabriel, Ambrus, look at the mess you have brought into the house with your wet boots.”

  Gabriel Tedescu gave his son a sardonic look, and said, “When you marry that girl of yours, if she speaks to you like that, you must beat her soundly.”

  Ambrus laughed and shook the snow from his dark hair. “I’ll take the pelts to the cellar, mother. After we eat I’ll dress them and bring them to the furrier in the morning. He should get some dolmans and a winter coat out of them.”

  “And we should get a few leus for our pocket,” said Marta, “so I can go to the market.”

  “Oh, Mama, can we buy some gogosi?” ten year old Gizella pleaded. “My mouth waters for sweet fry bread filled with apples.”

  “No, some placintas, please,” implored Izabella who, at fifteen, fancied herself quite the connoisseur of the tortes.

  “Izabella, pour your father and brother some tuica to warm them.”

  Ambrus downed the plum brandy in two strong gulps and headed toward the steps that led to the cellar, the wolf pelts over his shoulder leaving droplets of blood on the slate floor, drawing the wary attention of the family dog.

  “I don’t think anyone will be going anywhere tomorrow,” said Gabriel as he shrugged out of his sheepskin coat. “There’s more snow on the wind.”

  “Only November and already it’s so bad,” Marta complained. “There’s enough firewood in the basement to last at least through January, but our stores of beef are almost gone. Ah, well, then its cabbage and potatoes tomorrow night.”

  “Not again,” Gizella moaned.

  “With your father and brother gone for three days hunting wolves, I have not had a chance to get to the market. You’ll eat what I put on the table.”

  Ambrus stomped back upstairs in his heavy leather boots. “I don’t care what you put on the table. I’m as hungry as a wolf myself.”

  He was a handsome young man, with dark brown hair that sparkled like gold in the firelight, fine, strong features, a tall, thin frame, and his mother’s green eyes. In his white shirt and black woolen pants, with a wide leather belt worn over the shirt and a vest of leather embroidered with traditional motifs of their region, he was a striking specimen.

  Marta wiped her hands on her embroidered apron, and said, “Is that all you can think about? Come everyone and sit down. Gizella, leave that stupid dog alone and come to dinner, or I’ll throw him outside.”

  The smell of vegetable soup and seasoned sausages filled the room.

  “Tell us about your hunt, Papa,” Izabella said. “Are the pelts you brought back from the wolves that were preying on the livestock?”

  “I can’t be sure,” Gabriel replied. “But they were fat enough for this time of year, so it’s possible.”

  “We saw tracks of lupari,” Ambrus said as he stuffed a piece of sausage into his mouth.

  “The wolvers take too many,” Gabriel grunted. “They are more interested in the bounty offered for each wolf than in protecting their own livestock.”

  To his father, Ambrus said, “Tell them about the wolf we saw.”

  Gabriel spooned his soup and did not answer, but something in his expression caused his wife to look at him closely. “Gabriel?”

  “He was big,” he said, and then fell uncharacteristically silent.

  “That’s it? He was big?” Izabella questioned.

  “Bigger than any wolf I’ve ever seen,” Ambrus said. “And unafraid. He watched us from the frozen underbrush and did not run as we approached. His eyes were large and yellow and…” He paused to ponder the bit of sausage on his fork. “There seemed to be an almost human intelligence about him. I can’t explain it. I didn’t think it was possible to be any colder than I already was, but when that wolf looked at me, it felt like hands of ice touching my spine. It was as if he could read the thoughts inside my mind and knew that I was afraid.”

  “You?” Gizella said with a laugh. “Afraid? You’re so big and strong, I didn’t think you were afraid of anything. Except maybe your bride-to-be.”

  Gizella and Izabella dissolved into silly laughter at their brother’s expense.

  “You would have been afraid, too, little sister,” he said.

  “So, what did you do?” Izabella asked. “Is that one of the pelts you brought home?”

  Ambrus glanced at his father, but Gabriel was staring down into his bowl of soup without saying a word or offering his son any support in this.

  “No, we didn’t catch him. When we went to the place where we had seen him, he was gone.”

  “And the big wolf hunter didn’t follow his tracks?” his little sister scoffed.

  “That’s just it. There were no tracks. Not of a wolf, anyway. The only tracks we saw were—”

  “Enough!” Gabriel said. “How ma
ny times have I told you not to scare your sisters?” He exchanged a tense look with his son, bringing an abrupt end to the subject.

  Ambrus looked down at his plate and continued eating in silence. His father was right. What was the sense in scaring the girls with the truth of what they’d seen? Yet in his mind he carried a vivid picture of the hard-crusted snow marred by prints, not of a wolf, but of a man. Lupari, he told himself then and now. The wolf hunters. But try as he might, he could not make himself believe it. “I’ll go dress those pelts.” He got up and disappeared down the stairs.

  The girls fell into chatting about boys and the dresses they would wear to their brother’s wedding while Marta tried to ignore the veil of tension that had settled over her husband.

  Soon there came a rapping at the door. Marta cast a fearful look at her husband. “Do not answer.”

  “Gabriel Tedescu,” called a voice from beyond the door. “May I enter?”

  The spoon fell from Gabriel’s hand, clattering into his bowl. “Who calls at my door?”

  “Gabriel Tedescu,” the hoarse voice called again. “May I enter?”

  A question twice asked.

  Under her breath Marta whispered, “It is not wise to answer until someone has called your name three times. A question twice asked can only mean—”

  “Oh, Mama, it’s so cold out tonight,” Gizella said as she jumped from her chair and rushed to the door. “We would not deny shelter to a shivering dog, would we? It can only be a traveling merchant.”

  “Gizella! No!” The words exploded from Marta’s lips. “Don’t invite him in!”

  It was too late. The door was opened.

  He stood there in the cold, misty wind, the snow swirling in wild gusts all around him. He was not a very tall man, but stocky and strong, with a cruel and terrible appearance, distended nostrils, wide green eyes framed by bushy black eyebrows, a thin reddish face shaven except for a moustache. Swollen temples increased the bulk of his head. A bull’s neck supported his head from which black curly locks fell to his wide shoulders.

  He had come, the dark, ancient threat, the evil that the pious priests tried to exorcise, the demon that even the sorcerers dared not evoke, the curse that haunted the imagination and blighted the sleep. He had come, this woe to mankind, shouting his name without even speaking. I am the one—I am he—I am shouting my name—yes, you hear me. Over and over he repeated it in the minds of his terrified hosts. I am strigoii. I am moroii. Dead. Alive. I am everything you fear and more.

  He came forward as if on a dark wind, his boots scarcely brushing the slate floor, wielding his horrible power over them and paralyzing them with unspeakable fear. Before their transfixed eyes his visage transformed from that of a man to something grotesque. With taloned hands he reached for the nearest figure.

  Gizella’s unearthly scream pierced the night when those fingers wrapped around her neck and pulled her close. In a movement that was too quick to subvert he threw her up against the wall with a force so shocking and great that her neck snapped like a dried twig and she crumbled to the floor, silent and broken.

  Gabriel grabbed a knife from the table and lunged. The creature lifted the able-bodied man high into the air by the throat in one gruesomely strong hand and held him there kicking and writhing until all that emerged was an awful little gurgle and one last spasm as the life was choked out of him.

  Izabella’s back was pinned to the wall in abject horror, her voice choked into silence. Those eyes turned toward her, riveting and glowing like red-hot coals. In the next instant the flesh of her neck was ripped away as if by a rabid wolf.

  Marta flew at him in a frenzied rage. At the sight of the crucifix suspended from a leather thong about her neck he hissed, drawing back his lips to reveal the razor-sharp, blood-smeared fangs of an animal. In seconds she was torn apart with the power of a hundred strong men.

  The carnage was complete in mere moments. The figure turned half around and spotted the dog cowering in the corner. It took a step toward it, and stopped.

  There, in the doorway to the cellar stood Ambrus, his green eyes widened with shock at the death and destruction scattered about the room. No. No. It could not be. This was not happening. This was a dream. Wake up!

  A movement from the corners of his eyes caught his attention and he turned numbly toward it.

  He stood frozen to his spot as the man came toward him and he recognized him. It was the same vengeful face that had brought him to see his impaled grandfather twenty years earlier, but this face bore no sign of aging. It was as youthful and as hateful as it had been that terrible day. How could this be? Oh God, how could this be?

  The man approached him, so close he could smell his breath. He turned his face away, nearly choking on the hideous odor which brought to mind the charnel house, the only place they’d been permitted to commit his grandfather’s rotting body after his father had climbed up to remove it from the stake. With its absence of Christian symbols, the foul-smelling, filthy breeding ground for disease had been his family’s final degradation. Until now, when past sins, real or imagined, against the prince, were to be reckoned for.

  A preternatural fire burned in the eyes that scrutinized him. Somewhere in the distant hills he heard a wolf howling. His heart pounded wildly in his chest. What a pitiful sight he was, a full-grown man cringing like a babe. He expected to meet a fate no less gruesome as that which had befallen his family. But the rending of his limbs did not come.

  “What is your name?” the man…the thing…demanded in a voice that did not rise above a whisper and yet resounded in the blood-soaked air.

  From somewhere he found the strength to reply. “Ambrus.”

  Laughter, the sound of devilish delight. “Ah yes, I remember it now. Young Ambrus, how you have grown.”

  “Wh…what…happened here?” He was crying.

  “Unfinished business,” came the chilling reply.

  “My sisters…”His voice choked. “My sisters were innocents.”

  Nits turn into lice.” This spoken with a negligent, uncaring shrug.

  Ambrus felt his will to live leaking from his being. “Kill me, too.” Challenge. Plea. Resignation. All resonated in his voice.

  “Oh no, not you,” the monster hissed. “You are destined for a different fate, one befitting your name.” The face drew closer, pale lids closing over bloodless eyes as the mouth opened.

  Frightful-looking teeth, projecting like those of a wild animal, hideously, glaringly white and fang-like, sank into his neck.

  Unbearable pain. Exquisite pain. The world receded into mist and muck, swallowing him up like a bog that consumes the unwary creatures of the night. Sucking him down further into its murky depths. Sucking. Harder. Stronger. Sucking from him all life. Draining from him all hope. Banishing him into the darkness where nothing existed, not God’s glorious light nor the world created by God. He crumbled to the ground. And then he felt…nothing.

  He awoke with a start to an incredible thirst. For a long time he lay there unable to move, or think, or feel. Gradually, his thoughts returned. His head pounded and his whole body ached. The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes and turned his head was the dog. Still lying on his back, he stretched out his hand, but the dog drew back, bearing its teeth as it backed away. Somehow, he found the strength to push himself up onto his elbows. The room was dark and still. His nose wrinkled at a pungent odor in the air. With difficulty he got to his feet and stood swaying while he gathered himself.

  He found one of his mother’s candles and touched the wick to the fire’s last ember just as it burnt itself out.

  In the flickering candlelight a grisly sight greeted him. The bodies of his mother, his father and his two sisters were sprawled in disarray across the floor, like earthenware that had been hurled against the wall by a savage hand, broken into a thousand pieces that could never be put back together again. A horrific sickness welled up from his stomach and lurched into his mouth, spilling from his lips in a viole
nt upheaval. He staggered across the room toward the open door and stumbled out into the snow, retching and crying, the bile stinging his mouth, the tears burning his eyes. Oblivious to the cold that swirled all around him, he collapsed in a heap on the frozen ground.

  He had no idea how long he laid there, his mind numbed by all he had seen, all he had lost. His cheek lay against the wet snow. His shirt and pants were soaked through, yet he felt no cold other than that which came from within. He tried to shut out the sound of the wind that whirled down from the mountains and the sickening reality it brought with it.

  Hoisting himself up from the wetness, he turned back toward the house. For several long, agonizing moments he stood staring listlessly at the darkened bulk of the house where so much joy and promise had once dwelled and where now only death and unspeakable emptiness remained. He shivered uncontrollably, not from the cold but from the awful finality of it all. Chewing his knuckles, breathing deeply, he entered the house.

  The smell hit him the instant he went inside. It was thick and putrid and at the same time sweet and pungent. Something stirred inside of him. His throat was dry. What was this thirst that had suddenly taken hold of him, not for water or tuica, but for…what? Oh God! But suddenly, even the silent entreaty seemed meaningless, hopeless. God had forsaken him, slipped from his consciousness, vanished from his being as if He’d never been there at all. In His place was a new god, a new religion shrouded in darkness and evil. And in his throat a new thirst.

  And then he saw it, the dark liquid pooling on the slates, the slick splatters on the walls, the table, and the chairs. It was everywhere he looked, glistening in the misty moonlight that slanted in through the window. It filled his being with a hunger unlike any he’d ever known. An abrupt realization sank into him, staggering him, and in that moment he knew what the smell was and what it was he thirsted for.

  Blood.

  CHAPTER 11

  When he looked at her, she was huddled against the back of the settee, her head bowed, not looking at him. Oh God, he thought wretchedly, she despises me. What have I done? Must I now kill her?