by Syrie James
He whirled me about the floor. Although the space was far more confined than the pavilion where we had last waltzed together, it was such a pleasure to dance with him that I found myself laughing with delight. All at once, to my intense amazement, the walls of the room seemed to move outward. The room grew in size until it became a magnificent, brilliantly lit dance hall, in which we were the only dancers. Was I imagining it? Was I dreaming? No…I knew it was Dracula’s magic, a trick of the mind…and I loved every minute of it. My senses reeled. For a time, I quite forgot where I was. There was nothing but the music and the man and his eyes holding mine, and the sublime sensation of waltzing in his arms.
When the song ended, I caught my breath, smiling up at him. “Thank you for making that recording. It was wonderful. I could dance with you for ever, and be very happy.”
He beamed. It was the most brilliant, purely happy smile I had ever seen cross his face. “I will hold you to that,” he said, as he kissed me.
LATER, AS WE SAT ON THE SOFA BEFORE THE HEARTH (THE ROOM had returned to its normal size), my thoughts returned to the situation at hand. The festive mood fled, replaced by a wave of despondency. “Nicolae: I did as you requested,” I said with a sigh. “I let the professor hypnotise me, and I tried to call the men off. But I am afraid I have failed you.”
“You performed brilliantly, my love. It is I who have failed. I underestimated my enemy. My plan was faulty. But it is no matter. This has bought us a little time. The hunting party does not intend to leave the country just yet, am I right?”
The term hunting party made me cringe. “Not for a week or two. They said it will take three weeks at least for the Czarina Catherine to reach Varna. The four of them mean to take the speedier route overland, which they said should only take five or six days.”
“Four of them?”
“The professor insists that Jonathan stay here to watch over me—an idea which seems to torment Jonathan. He wishes to protect me, but he is equally eager to seek his own revenge.”
“I do not blame him—given his feelings for you and what he perceives me to be.” We sat looking at each other for a long moment in the glow of the fire-light; then he said: “You asked me a question earlier: you wanted to know who I was, and how I became a vampire.”
“Yes.”
“I said I would answer. It is not a pretty story, I am afraid—and it was so long ago, it seems almost meaningless to me now. Are you certain you wish to hear it?”
“I do. You said you were not Vlad Tepes, or Vlad the Impaler, as many called him.”
“That is true.” He paused, then looked at me. “Vlad was my brother.”
“Your brother?” I said, astonished.
“Other than Vlad, I can look back on my family heritage with pride. I am descended from a long line of kings. Our father was the ruler of Wallachia.”
“Then you are a prince?”
“I am—or was. In 1859, Wallachia united with Moldavia to form the state of Romania. In the era when my father was king, our homeland lay directly between the two powerful forces of Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. The rulers of Wallachia were forced to appease both empires to ensure their survival, forging alliances with whichever one served their best interest at the time. I was the youngest of seven children—I had three older brothers and three sisters—and I came late in my mother’s life, born just a few months after my father and my oldest brother Mircea were assassinated.”
“Oh!”
“So you see, I never knew my father—just as you never knew yours. My brothers and sisters were all so much older than I, it was as if I were an only child. I was sixteen years younger than Vlad, and when I was born, he and my brother Radu were both still being held hostage in Adrianople, where my father had sent them to appease the Turkish sultan.”
“Your father sent your brothers away as hostages?” I was appalled.
“He did. Radu remained there for years. Vlad was released, but I rarely saw him. I spent the better part of my childhood alone, educated by my mother, an intelligent and good-hearted Transylvanian noblewoman. In 1453, when I was six years old, the Christian world was shocked by the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans. The entire region was at war. In the midst of this chaos, Vlad seized the Wallachian throne and began his reign of terror.”
“Is it true that he murdered tens of thousands of people?”
“Perhaps more than a hundred thousand before he was through,” Nicolae said bitterly. “Vlad enjoyed recounting the stories of his inhuman cruelty in every gory detail. One morning, when I was still a boy, he awakened me early and made me ride with him for hours, so that I might witness his latest victory. I fell asleep during the ride; and when I awoke, to my horrified eyes, I saw before me an entire city of residents impaled on stakes on the outskirts of a town—thousands and thousands of them.”
“Dear God,” I cried, horrified.
“Impalement was not my brother’s only method of torture, although it was his favourite. From burning and burying alive to strangulation and every kind of mutilation—suffice it to say that the list of tortures he employed was like an inventory of the tools of Hell. He claimed to be wreaking vengeance for the deaths of my father and brother, but the majority of his victims included our own people—women, children, peasants, and great lords alike—any one whose behaviour did not fit within his own rigid moral code, or whom he saw as a threat to the throne.”
I felt sickened. Nicolae glanced at me in hesitation. “I warned you that it was not a pretty story. Do you wish me to go on?”
“Yes.”
He stood and paced as he resumed: “I hated my brother more and more with each passing day; but I was young, and my mother and sisters and I were all under his protection and his power. In time, he insisted that I be trained in the manner of a son of European nobility—which meant working with a tutor to learn all the skills of war that were deemed necessary for a Christian knight. It was against my nature to kill. Whenever Vlad stopped by to watch, he made fun of me, taunting me to strike back with the sword, calling me weak: the useless Dracula who would never amount to anything. I applied myself to my training with one aim in mind: that one day, I would be able to fight my brother and kill him.
“Then chance intervened. The Turks invaded Wallachia. I was fifteen years old at the time. Vlad abandoned us and fled to Transylvania, where he was arrested and imprisoned. Rather than surrender to the Turks, I helped my mother and sisters to escape. I got them safely across the mountains into Transylvania, to the duchies formerly governed by our father, and appealed to the king for aid. My mother and sisters found a haven there, and I went off to war. For fourteen years I struggled against the Turks on one bloody battle-field after another, fighting for the freedom of our homeland.
“One day I heard that my brother had been released from prison and had regained his throne. His reign of terror began all over again. When I was twenty-nine, Vlad led an army against the Turks near Bucharest, and called for me to join him. I went with murder in my heart; but it seemed that someone else had killed him before I got there. Some reports claimed he was assassinated by disloyal Wallachians just as he was about to sweep the Turks from the field. Other accounts have him falling in defeat, surrounded by the ranks of his loyal Moldavian body-guard. I even heard that the Turks sent his head to Constantinople, where the sultan had it displayed on a stake to prove that the evil Impaler at last was dead. But my brother did not die on that battlefield at all—although it was several years before I discovered the truth.”
“What truth?”
“He faked his death, to escape the many assassins intent on killing him after he regained his throne.”
“Where did he go?”
“I am getting to that.” There was a fevered look on Nicolae’s face. Red flames smoldered behind the blue of his eyes, and his voice was so filled with bitterness that it made me cringe. “We lost that battle and retreated. I had had enough of war. Believing my brother to be dead, I hung up my s
word and returned to Transylvania, determined never to fight again. My mother had died, but my sisters were now living in the castle of a Transylvanian boyar—a member of the privileged class—two of them married to the boyar’s sons. The nobleman—a count—had two lovely daughters, identical twins named Celestina and Sabina. I fell in love with Sabina, and we were married.”
“Married?”
He nodded, and went on in a wistful tone: “We soon welcomed our first child: a boy we called Matthias, after her father. Sabina’s sister also married and had a child. The two women were radiant in motherhood. We were all very close, and for five years we were very happy. But then our fortunes turned. One day, Celestina’s daughter disappeared from the yard where she was playing—stolen, we thought, by gipsies. Shortly thereafter, a strange man appeared in the village.”
“A strange man?” A sense of dark foreboding overcame me.
“I never saw him, but heard reports of him. Suddenly, people in the village and outlying farms were dying. They were always found pale and lifeless, as if all the blood had been drained from their bodies, and there were angry red marks on their necks where they had been bitten.”
“Oh!” I cried, understanding precisely where he was heading.
“One night, my brother Vlad appeared to me. I was in shock. I had long thought him dead and buried. When I recovered my wits, I asked him where he had been for the past five years. With a chilling laugh, he said that he had been travelling. When he was in prison years earlier, he had learned from an old monk that there existed a secret school called the Scholomance, high in the mountains of Transylvania, where the Devil taught his evil arts in person to a select few. After Vlad feigned his death, he followed the old monk’s clues and searched for the Scholomance. At last he found it. However, it was not run by the Devil at all, but by a very old, wise, and skilled vampire—whose name was Solomon.”
“Solomon? Like in the Bible?”
“I believe he was the very same man.”
I stared at him. “You are saying that King Solomon was a vampire?”
“He became one.”
I knew the story of Solomon. He was the wisest king of his time—but he had dark, perverse, insatiable appetites. Against God’s orders, he collected enormous amounts of gold from his people, built up his army of horses and chariots, practiced idolatry, married foreign women, and kept a thousand wives and concubines. “God turned his back on Solomon for his sins and tore his kingdom in two.”
“Yes. So Solomon looked to other means for his eternal salvation. He had been given a magic ring from heaven, which gave him power over the good genii as well as demons. He now used that ring to help him practice the art of sorcery, determined to find a way to make himself immortal. And he succeeded—but his experiment went wrong. He gave himself eternal life, but at a very high price.”
“Was he the first vampire, then?”
“Perhaps; it is hard to say. All I know is, he adapted to his new form and travelled the globe for more than a thousand years, giving rise to legends everywhere of a strange creature who slept in the cold loam of the earth and fed off the blood of the living. He learned all the secrets of nature and the weather, the language of animals, and every imaginable magic spell, finally settling on a mountain-top in Transylvania, where he has been teaching his secrets ever since to a few scholars at a time—men who become wandering vampire wizards called Solomonarii, or sons of Solomon.”
“I have read about the Solomonarii! I thought they were a myth, a product of Romanian folklore.”
“They are very real.”
“Did Solomon take your brother as a student?”
“No. He saw that Vlad was truly evil, and would only use any skills he learned for wickedness. But Vlad was determined to become immortal. Vlad killed one of the young Solomonarii, drank all of his blood, and became a vampire himself. As a vampire, his innate blood-lust only continued. In time, he decided to come home.”
“So it was your own brother who changed you and your sisters?” I said, horrified.
“Yes. They were lovely young women before Vlad got his hands on them—two were mothers with young children. One night I walked into a room to find my brother’s teeth clamped upon my sister Luiza’s throat. She was pale and lifeless, his eyes were blazing red, and both of their mouths dripped with blood. I sprang at Vlad, trying to save her, but it was too late. He dropped her, and with a roar, he sank his teeth into my own throat. He was as strong as twenty men; I never had a chance. I felt the life being drained from me. When I was on the brink of death, Vlad toyed with me. He asked me if I wished to join him in Un-Death. I could become immortal, he said. It was that, or die. I had no idea what kind of choice I was making. I only knew that I did not want to leave this earth, or leave my wife and child. With the last breath in my body, I said: Yes. Please. Save me. Do not let me die.”
“Oh!” I cried in anguish.
Nicolae’s eyes flashed, alternating between blue and red, and his entire posture seemed to vibrate with barely contained hatred as he continued: “My brother slashed his own wrist and made me drink his blood. Then he finished the job he had started: he drained me until I could breathe no longer. Two days later, I awoke to find myself in the family tomb…with the bodies of my sisters beside me. I rose, confused. What had I become? I felt different: a strange anger welled within me.
“I left the tomb and returned to the castle to find my wife. I passed a servant who recoiled with dread. I could smell his blood. I craved it. I looked in a mirror and saw that I had no reflection! I went mad with fear and horror. I was transforming into something hideous and evil, but it was a self I could not see. I found Sabina. She screamed in terror at the sight of me, cradling our shrieking son to her breast.”
Suddenly, to my horror, Nicolae transformed before me into the pale, monstrous, red-eyed creature I had seen a few nights before in my chamber, as he said in a ghastly tone: “She called me a ghost, a demon, a monster!”
I screamed, leapt to my feet, and recoiled. Nicolae glanced at me, as if surprised to find me there. There was a dreadful pause. I remembered what he had said: that in times of great anger, an evil side of him emerged. With what looked to be a Herculean effort, he mastered that anger and reverted to himself, to the form that I knew and loved, except that his blue eyes were still cold and hard. He made no comment about this extraordinary transformation, only went on, in a voice that was deadly calm:
“And so I killed them.”
I stared at him in disbelief. “You…killed your wife and child?”
He nodded. “I went mad. I not only killed them, but I slaughtered every other living thing in the castle, from the children and the servants to the elders and the live-stock, until there was nothing left but a river of blood in every passage and stairwell—and myself and my sisters—who I soon discovered had been changed, exactly as I was.”
I was speechless. Dracula paced before me, scowling.
“When I came back to myself, when I saw what I had done, I was overcome with revulsion, regret, and horror. Vlad found me and laughed. Laughed! Then he welcomed me to the fold, and said: ‘You have outdone yourself, brother. At last, you understand the thrill of taking life, the passion that has driven me for so long.’ I looked at him. My sword was still in my hand. I believe it was not until that moment that Vlad realised what a terrible blunder he had made: for I had become just as powerful as he. Vlad was a superlative swordsman, but I was a newly made vampire filled with hate and rage. And so…I went at him, and sent him to Hell where he belonged. I later discovered that the streets of the village were littered with the dead—my brother’s final murdering spree. All the deaths there and at the castle were attributed to a plague.”
A shudder ran through me, and I swallowed hard. I was so shocked and repelled, I could think of no words to say. At length, I murmured quietly: “I am so very, very sorry.”
“So am I.” Nicolae looked at me now, his eyes and face haunted by deep, piercing remorse. “
I have spent four centuries attempting to atone for my crimes that night. But I can never forgive myself. The pain, the guilt…it never goes away.”
“Oh, Nicolae.”
He met my gaze, open, wounded, vulnerable. “Do you hate me now?”
The look on his countenance wrenched my soul. I fought back my fear and horror, telling myself that the evil being he had been that night was gone forevermore. It was an aberration, the product of his brother’s blood, four hundred years past. Trembling, I went to where he stood by the hearth and took him in my arms. “I could never hate you.”
He sighed with intense relief and held me tightly, as if drawing comfort from our embrace. We stood thus in silence for some moments. Then he murmured against my hair:
“I fell into a state of great self-pity and despair after that. I missed my wife and son with an ache that would not mend. I despised myself for what I had done. I was horrified by my insatiable appetite for blood. My sisters were carrying on in the most wanton manner—but I vowed that I would never kill again. I wanted to end my life, but I did not know how. I finally realised that there was only one place in the world where I could find out what had really happened to me, and learn how to live with it. I went in search of the Scholomance myself.”
“Did you find it?” I asked, breathless.
He took a few steps away and said: “I did. It was a magical, healing place. I remained there for fifty years.”
“Fifty years!”
“Solomon could not make me mortal again, but he was—and still is, I can only assume—a great teacher. It was an education I needed if I was to live for ever.”
“So it is true, then…not all vampires have the same powers as you?”
“No. Although I have not met many others; just a handful of Solomonarii, and—during my travels—a few dozen or so of the vampires they had apparently made.”
“What was Solomon like?”
“He was a fascinating, wise, complicated old man—a wizard with uncanny abilities and a good heart. I mended under his tutelage and followed his advice, determined to use the eternity before me to better myself.”