by Baker, Scott
If there were no vampires to force the transformation on her she would be safe, but it would be fatal to try to save her by killing the vampires who threaten her. A vampire whose body has been destroyed by fire, or who has had a stake driven through his heart is nether dead nor free, but only forced to reincarnate in a new body. By destroying the bodies of your undead ancestors you would not save Dara, but only succeed in thrusting your enemies beyond your reach and hiding them where you could never find them to defeat them. While the reincarnated vampires' new bodies lived, they would be plague vectors, spreading disease and pestilence; when they died, they would again become vampires.
Vampires can be neither killed nor destroyed, but they can be made to change so that they are no longer vampires. If your undead ancestors can be made to understand that they have been duped by Satan, that the pact that they have made with Him, in which He promised them the means of satisfying their hungers in return for their submission to Him, is void because their hungers are incapable of satisfaction, then they can be freed from their condition. And once they have been freed, you and Dara will be free as well.
The first thing that you must do if they are to be freed is to perform a certain act of sex magic with Dara which will give you control over me and through me over the rest of your ancestors. The rite is necessary because Michael, not you, was my designated heir and he has knowledge and skills which you lack.
The rite must be performed in daylight, in a place of power above ground, preferably somewhere other than here at the family estate, where Michael's knowledge of the power flows could prove dangerous to you.
For four days before the rite is to take place you must abstain from all contact with each other. You must neither see, hear, nor touch each other. During this time you must wear only new clothing, which must be either entirely black or entirely white, and you must change your clothing completely every day. You must bathe seven times a day, the first, third, and fifth times in water to which an ounce or more of salt has been added. On the fourth day you must abstain from all food; on the day of the rite you must abstain from both food and water.
The day before the rite is to be performed one of you should go to the place selected and place a saucer of nitric acid on the ground, where it will begin to evaporate. You should then take a cord eighteen to twenty feet in length and soaked in a mixture containing two parts potassium perchlorate, one part bone charcoal, and two parts oil of garlic, and lay it on the ground in as near a perfect circle as you can obtain with a single attempt. You should start in the east and continue around clockwise until you are again facing east. Then the ends of the string should be tied together.
On the morning of the rite you should both rise well before dawn and bathe in fresh water, then put on fresh clothing and go to the site you have prepared. You, David, should approach the circle from the west; Dora should approach it from the east. You must not speak to each other. When you reach the circle remove your clothes and stand facing each other.
When the first rays of the sun touch the circle you should ignite it and step inside it before the fire dies. When the cord has stopped smoking you should begin having sex with each other, lying face to face with your heads to the north.
As the power builds in you visualize me in my coffin. Gradually you will become aware of my thoughts. You must reach out to them and with the aid of the power create, as it were, a vacuum in yourself into which they will be drawn. Once you have my thoughts in your own mind you will feel the urges and cravings that I will be feeling. They will be yours as much as mine. You must master them. I cannot tell you how to master them; for each of us it is a different process. But once you have mastered my cravings in yourself you will have obtained dominion over me and you will then command all the Bathory vampires.
Having gained mastery of me you will seal me in my coffin for the seven-year period. The coffin must be placed in a silver box filled with garlic and wild roses and hidden in a place where there is neither too much power nor any great danger of my discovery by the ignorant.
I will fight you with all my strength; I am no Naga to willingly accept such a fate. I will try to summon our ancestors against you whenever you relax your control over me or become distracted, and you will have to overcome me again and again. Your brother will try to steal mastery of me from you and use me against you: you must keep him from doing so.
As soon as you have my coffin safely sealed in its silver box there is a further rite which must be performed. The preparations and initial stages of this second rite are the same as those of the first, but as soon as you find yourself becoming aware of my thoughts you must visualize me collapsing in on myself until I am a small white ball clinging to the wall of Dara's womb. The ball will wait quiescent until nine months before I am to be freed from my coffin (and remember, I must emerge onto the soil of a foreign country where a foreign language is spoken), then begin to develop into a child. The child will be born at the same instant that I am reborn into the world of men.
The child and I will share one mind, though not one soul. If I am unable to complete my work before my five-year span is over, the child can carry on for me. Unlike me he will never have been defiled by direct contact with Satan, yet he will have all my knowledge of such contact. Even if I fail he will succeed.
But to be able to perform the rites in safety you must be able to protect yourself against the other members of the family. Your brother is a traditional Bathory and your enemy. My brother Peter is not a bad man, but he is weak: he should have been the reigning dhampire of my generation but he abdicated the position to me. He will be of little use to you. Stephen is another traditional Bathory. You may be able to turn his hatred of Michael to your own use but you will never be able to trust him.
Saraparajni cannot leave the Naga realm. Your maternal grandparents are Nagas and share the indifference of Shesha to the fates and desires of individuals: though their help would be invaluable, you cannot count on them for aid. You and Dara are half Naga, as is Michael, but I cannot tell you what, if any, value your mixed heritage will be to you.
Beneath this house lies the cavern in which your undead ancestors sleep by day. The entrance is through the fireplace in the library. A ball of fire is always burning in the fireplace but there must be a wood fire in the grate as well before entry is possible.
Inscribe the sigil on the palm of your left hand, and on the palm of your right hand, the sigil. Stand before the fireplace with your right hand clenched and your left hand open, palm facing the fireplace. Visualize a unicorn and say, "In the name of Amduscias, Duke of Hell, I command you to let me pass." The door to the passageway will open.
Then you must clench your left hand and show the sigil on your right palm to the flames. Visualize a leopard. Say, "Under the protection of Flauros, Duke of Hell, I pass these flames unharmed." You will feel great pain as you pass through the flames but you will not be harmed in any way.
There are skulls set in niches in the walls of the stairway leading down to the caverns. Each skull is a guardian and to each you must show the sigil on your right hand and say, "In the name of Flauros, Duke of Hell, I command you to take no notice of my passage." Otherwise they will destroy you.
Please show this letter to Dara as soon as possible. When she has read it the rest of the memories I arranged to have taken from her will return, and she will be able to confirm everything I have told you.
Then carry out my instructions immediately, without delay: the two rites must be performed as soon as possible. I ask you this not for my sake, but for your own, and for the sake of all those whom your actions can free.
Gregory Mihnea Bathory
* * *
Chapter Twenty-one
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It was just before seven. Soon my ancestors would be rising to greet the night but I didn't dare wait until they were back in their coffins to try to get Dara out of the cavern. I had to act now, while Michael was still convinced that I was too ignorant to be d
angerous.
I couldn't trust everything in my father's letter—the way he'd written around his responsibility for Alexandra's death while at the same time trying to justify it proved that he'd been only telling me those things it was in his interest to have me know—but he'd given me what looked like my first real chance to get Dara away from Michael, and if I let the chance slip I might never get another one.
I drew the two sigils on the palms of my hands with a black ball-point pen. Amduscias's sigil was relatively easy to draw but the best I could do at drawing Flauros's sigil with the pen held in my left hand was a crude approximation. I could only hope it was good enough.
I went over the formulas again, then folded the letter and put it in my shirt pocket.
Sometime in my attempts to get through the fireplace I'd lost the clove of garlic I'd had hanging from my neck, but there were more cloves in the room and I had plenty of twine. Still, a garlic necklace seemed little enough protection against the fifty or more vampires whose coffins ringed the lake, and I wasn't sure just how effective my brother's promised protection would be if he wasn't there to enforce it.
There were crucifixes and Communion wafers on the stone tables in the forest at the foot of the stairs. But could I use them effectively? After all, I was no Christian—and I had no proof that what my father had told me about the relationship between Christianity and Satanism was anything but more of his special pleading.
There had been something in the preface of my aunt's second book on the Church's persecution of witches… I had it. She'd been talking about the Waldensians or Albigensians, sects against which the Catholic Church had first levied the charges that they'd later used against those they'd accused of being witches and sorcerers: the slaughter of infants, mass orgies, and the like. But the Waldensians (or Albigensians) had believed that the Church's sacraments were useless unless administered by a priest who was himself in a state of grace, to which the Church had responded with the dogma that the sacraments were holy in themselves, not by virtue of the men administering them. So, if I accepted the Church's authority on the matter, crucifixes and wafers should serve me as well as they'd serve a Christian, or a priest.
I put the garlic around my neck, went out to the truck and hid the letter under the rock in the baby cobra's cage, then went back in, and into the library.
The two fires were burning; the librarian was somewhere out of the room, perhaps working in the annex. I stood in front of the fireplace with my right hand clenched to hide its sigil and showed my left palm to the flames.
When I tried to visualize a unicorn I got an unusually vivid picture of a slate-gray beast with white disease splotches, like patches of slime mold, distributed unevenly over its skin. The horn on its forehead had been broken off a few inches from the base.
Speaking slowly and carefully I said, "In the name of Amduscias, Duke of Hell, I command you to let me pass."
I could sense something dry and spiteful, like a malevolent old woman, protesting my command. I repeated the words. A slab of marble behind the flames swung back and away, revealing the passageway beyond.
I clenched the hand with Amduscias's sigil on it and all sense of the spirit's presence vanished. Showing my right palm to the fire I visualized a leopard.
The leopard's image was somehow wrong, disturbing in a way I could not quite put a name to. I said, "Under the protection of Flauros, Duke of Hell, I pass these flames unharmed."
The fire in the grate flared up and I had an impression of childish laughter. I walked slowly forward, feeling the unnatural heat increase with every step. By the time I was standing on the hearth it was almost unbearable, more like what I would imagine the heat of blast furnace to be than like the heat of a wood fire.
The letter had said that the flames would be agonizingly painful but would not harm me in any way. But if the sigil I'd drawn was too imperfect to make the charm work?
There was only one way I could think of to find out. I thrust my right hand, the one with Flauros's sigil on it, into the flames.
It caught fire. My skin shriveled, went black, split open to reveal the muscles, ligaments, nerves burning like gasoline-soaked rags, beginning to fall from the blackening bone even before I could stop the forward motion of my arm.
I yanked it from the flames and the pain stopped and the charred stump was my hand again, whole and unharmed.
Without letting myself think about what I was doing I showed my open palm to the flames again, then repeated the formula and ran forward.
I slipped on a shifting log and fell sprawling. My flesh ignited, my eyeballs caught fire and burned, were gone, and I knew with a certainty that was worse than the pain that it was hopeless, pointless, to even try to escape, that I would spend the rest of eternity there, burning. But while I was surrendering to the pain my body's reflex action was bringing me blindly to my feet, carrying me staggering out of the flames and through the door at the back of the fireplace. I heard the laughter in my head again as the stone slab swung shut behind me.
I leaned against the cool stone a moment, forced myself on. The steps were slippery, uneven; the air was heavy and hard to breathe, as though it had had to pass through the diseased lungs of some huge animal to get to me. There were long stretches of darkness between the areas lit by the torches burning in their iron holders but the stone pulsed with power and I could see without difficulty.
At intervals skulls with eye sockets glowing the dull red of an almost extinguished fire were set in niches in the walls: seven on the left, six on the right. When I saw the eye sockets of a skull glowing red ahead of me I'd stop, pause a moment to make sure I had the formula right, then show the skull the palm on my right hand and visualize the leopard while repeating, "In the name of Flauros, Duke of Hell, I command you to take no notice of my passage." The fires would die away until after I was past, then flare up again, momentarily bright enough to turn the dark stone of the opposite wall a flickering orange-red.
I had no way of estimating how long it took me to reach the balcony overlooking the cavern. The pillar of flame leaping from the central lake was still red, but everything else below me was a burning silver, the images from my powersight so overwhelming my normal vision that the forest at the base of the stairs looked like nothing so much as a forest of gleaming aluminum Christmas trees.
There were only two other spots of color in the dazzling landscape. The statue of Satan glowed a dark red; the statue of Shiva a soft blue.
I turned to continue my descent, found my way blocked by a seventeen-headed golden king cobra with ruby red eyes. A Naga. About it a blue aura hung. Though it was coiled, long habit in appraising snakes made me estimate its length as between twenty and twenty-five feet.
I held my left arm out to it, showing it the golden Naga on my wrist, but it just hissed at me, its seventeen hoods flaring.
"Let me pass," I told it.
"No," it said. "You may not pass." It's voice was a sibilant whisper, the sounds of the different vowels and consonants coming out of separate mouths before being somehow orchestrated into coherent speech.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because the task your father set for you is impossible and would end in your destruction. Your father could never escape his hunger for personal immortality and his needs contaminated his knowledge."
"Who are you? Are you one of my grandparents?"
"I speak for them."
"Then will you help me?"
"No. I have done what I can by telling you to return to the surface."
I made a move forward but the cobra's hoods flared. "Be warned," it hissed at me. "I will kill you before I let you pass. Return to the surface."
I started to turn away, then turned back and asked, "My ability to make myself unnoticeable. Is that because I'm a dhampire or because I'm half Naga?"
The Naga tasted the air with its forked tongues, remained silent.
I climbed the stairs past the thirteen guardians and came at last to the door at t
he back of the fireplace. It opened at my command and I was again faced by the roaring flames.
I showed Flauros's sigil and repeated the formula, then retreated, repeated the formula again, and ran forward and leaped through the ball of powerflame onto the burning logs. I had only to step off of them onto the hearth. This time there was no malicious laughter as the door swung shut behind me.
The librarian was oiling his books, though it was long after dark. He hadn't even looked up from his work when I'd come hurtling out of the fireplace.
I used my power to direct his attention to make him believe me when I told him I hadn't been there and he hadn't seen me, but I had no way of eradicating his actual memories and no guarantee that Michael couldn't direct his attention back to what he'd seen as easily as I'd been able to direct it away.
I found Nicolae in the hallway and asked him who was still staying at the house.
"No one, sir. Your brother will be back very late the day after tomorrow, after midnight, I believe he said, and your Uncle Stephen will be back the next morning. But you're the only one here at the moment."
"You're sure?"
"Positive, sir."
I searched the house, found no one. If Michael didn't already know that I'd find a way through the fireplace he'd probably know soon after he got back. My only hope against him was Uncle Stephen.
But I wasn't ready to deal with Uncle Stephen yet. I was still too ignorant, too easily lied to. I needed more information.
Perhaps I could get it from Uncle Peter.
I got directions to Uncle Peter's forest retreat from Nicolae. It seemed that despite my uncle's reluctance to tell me where he lived, everyone in the house knew how to get there. Nicolae even showed me the best route on a road map.