Every MIT physics student knew the rumors and fanciful tales about Dean Arghezi, and the drama surrounding his last day was no exception. He was mysterious and weird and the students loved him, but the faculty had long balked at his eccentric behavior, and they had finally confronted him about an especially odd demand that they wear silver crucifixes at all times. Right in the middle of the fall term, he had stormed into the University president’s office, yelling that he’d had it, he quit. He’s rather return to Romania to hunt vampires than spend another moment in that abominable university. Since then, no administrator’s portrait was safe from being disfigured with capes, stakes, and fangs.
“But that was a joke, right?” Caleb persisted. “Dr. Arghezi didn’t actually move to Romania, did he?”
“Indeed he did,” Hermann replied, sounding pleased. “To do precisely as he promised. And now it is time for me to do him another favor.”
“The favor you did him involved a vampire?” Caleb had to swallow a snort of derisive laughter.
“Unlike most people,” Hermann continued placidly, “you might not be surprised to learn that there are and always have been vampires in academia. It’s the late hours and the exposure to an ever-changing stream of the young and naïve that attracts them, I suppose. This particular vampire caused some problems in the upper administration when he began to, er, recruit, if you know what I mean.”
“Is that what you wanted me for?” Caleb realized, sarcasm creeping into his voice. “Caleb O’Connor, vampire killer?”
Hermann was unfazed. “Did you know that the blood of a werewolf is toxic to vampires? Drives them mad, in fact.”
“I’ve never even seen—I mean I wouldn’t even recognize—” Caleb stopped, aware of the magnitude of the lie he was about to tell. How many hours had he and his friends spent talking about hunting vampires in Maine? It had been a way to occupy rainy afternoons—but except for Toby, none of them had actually done it.
Caleb stalked away from the old man, suddenly unable to look him in the face. The tormenting thoughts returned: If only he’d made Toby see sense, if only he’d been there with him, instead of holed up in his poky basement apartment in Cambridge, doing calculus problems, if only….
Caleb pivoted to face Jonathan Hermann. “Why would I want anything to do with vampires? One of my best friends died, and another took the blame for maybe letting out a vampire. It was never proved, but he was executed by a gang of fake wizards because of it.”
“Ah, so that’s what happened? Now I understand, I think. Those wizards believed they were protecting their Community.” Professor Hermann sighed and stood, gripping his walking stick for balance. “Protecting all of us against an abomination, a soulless evil that fled these very mountains to seek its fortune in the New World.”
Caleb shivered, hoping the old man was telling him a tall tale. “And I suppose you hunted down this…thing?”
“Not I,” Hermann said mildly. “I heard about the vampire after it had been sealed up—for good, they thought at the time. But I’ve hunted a few in my younger days.”
Caleb couldn’t suppress a guffaw. “And that’s why MIT hired you to be a monster hunter?”
“Every school should have one.” With a wry smile, Hermann reached into his cloak and pulled out a handwritten note. “Read this.”
Caleb unfolded the letter, then read quickly as the paper began to dissolve in the rain.
Caleb thrust the note back at Hermann as though it were a hot poker. “You’re not thinking that I could—what do you know about my `skills’?”
“I have taught many scientists and I have trained many wizards,” Hermann replied mildly, allowing the paper to fall apart in his hands and scatter to the wind. “In either case, many of them were more foolish than you appear to be.”
4. Interview with a Vampire-Hunter
Castle Arghezi appeared at first sight to be just another outcropping of the mountains, made of blocks of the same gray stone and draped in wisps of last winter’s snowdrifts. Yet as it came into view, there was a regularity, a purposefulness, that marked it as a work of humans. A single tower rose above the two-story wall surrounding the castle, like an arm raised up to puncture the heavens. They could see no more than that until they passed through the massive iron gates.
Before they could call out or ring a bell, a dour man opened the gates for them. Although Professor Hermann called him by name and addressed him in Romanian, Michael said little as he led them across a muddy yard to the main building. The building also had two stories, although the windows of the upper floor were dark. A vaulted roof still flecked with snow, suggested a large hall in the center of the building,
Michael employed a series of gestures incomprehensible to Caleb to open a massive oak door and usher them into a cold stone hall. A few smoky torches lit the way to a broad stone staircase curving up into darkness. Michael took their packs, but advised them tersely to leave their coats on until they reached the Great Hall. They followed him there, accompanied only by the clipped sounds of their boots on the hard stone.
After the dimly lit corridors, the Great Hall was an explosion of color and warmth. Caleb blinked, stopping to let his eyes adjust and to cope with the rush of smells assaulting his half-frozen nose. The hall had a high vaulted ceiling crisscrossed with massive beams, which cast twisted shadows upward. Rugs in maroon and white lay scattered on the stone floor. Tapestries covered the walls with swirls of greens, browns, and reds, giving relief from the endless gray stone. There was little furniture in evidence—an enormous wooden table, half a dozen chairs of different sizes and shapes, a couple of smaller low tables. The decorations were dwarfed by the high ceiling suspended above the uncertain and unquantifiable darkness.
Judging from the odors, this room served as a kitchen for the castle. Caleb’s eyes (and nose) were drawn to a huge stone fireplace at the far end of the hall. The tall man standing before it when they entered swiftly turned and strode the length of room, a smile of greeting on his long, angular face. He wore a cloak of deep red that swirled about his heels as he walked.
“Jonathan!” he cried out in English, seizing his friend’s hands and then embracing him warmly. “You decided to pay me a visit. Excellent! I apologize for my lack of response to your letters. We have had certain meteorological conditions that impeded all of our usual mechanisms of communication, ordinary and magical alike. But I am pleased that you came. Things will be easier to explain in person. … Oh, Jonathan! It is good to be home. One can’t go back entirely… but I had missed this place, and it is my home once again.” His English was dramatic but flawless.
Alexandru Arghezi stood a head taller than Caleb, made even taller by his thick black hair, graying at the sides. His face was hard, although it softened when he smiled, as he did now. Dark glittering eyes took in Hermann and his young companion as he helped them off with their coats, hats, and gloves. Michael appeared as if from thin air to help take off their muddy boots, and then disappeared with the whole sodden lot as silently as he’d appeared.
Arghezi fixed his gaze on Caleb, staring at him intently for a moment, which prompted Jonathan to say, “Alec, may I present—” he stopped and began again, this time in Romanian. “This is Caleb O’Connor.”
“For thirty years you’ve been telling me that you would learn my language, Jonathan. I see that it took extreme measures to make that happen.” Alexandru laughed and patted his old friend on the shoulder. The smile stayed on his lips as he turned to Caleb and shook his hand, but the dark eyes were calculating and mirthless. “You must be a scholar, if my friend Professor Hermann recommends you.”
Caleb stood awkwardly, embarrassed by the description, since he fervently wanted to leave behind scholarship and all it represented. Not wanting to reveal his discomfort, he met the man’s probing gaze and answered in Romanian, “School is over for me. I am…looking for another line of work.”
Alexandru barked a sharp laugh and dropped Caleb’s hand. Clapping both gues
ts on the back, he said, “Come, enjoy the fire. I know you must be chilled.”
All three sat at the massive wooden table, bathed in firelight. As Mihail (as he was called in Romanian) served dinner, the two old friends talked of people and events unfamiliar to Caleb. Alexandru explained that Mihail had been a devoted Arghezi servant for decades, and he had even accompanied Alexandru to America to look after him. Now Mihail cooked for him and tended to the sheep, goats, and chickens they kept in the spacious stable all winter long.
Mihail was an excellent cook, and Caleb was ravenous. He wolfed down second and third helpings of mutton stew while the two old men chattered. As he listened to Alexandru’s stories, Caleb gazed around the enormous room. The castle was almost four hundred years old, occupied by the Arghezi family for over three hundred of those years. The murky recesses of the rafters reminded Caleb of the great dome at MIT. He wasn’t sure why, since the ceiling of the grand entrance to campus was nothing like the vault above him. Perhaps it was the feeling of being dwarfed by the high, curved ceiling that had been built, brick by brick, by the hands of men, and yet was grander and more permanent than the life of any one individual.
During the meal, Professor Hermann grew less animated. The days of trudging in the chill air had caught up with him, and he sneezed and coughed violently while trying to hold up his end of the conversation with his old friend. After dinner, the two travelers sank into high-backed chairs pulled around the fire in a semicircle. The stone mantelpiece loomed in front of them, taller even than Alexandru, who stood next to it as he poured them each a glass of wine.
“The wine cellars here were untouched during my absence.” He held the decanter up, and firelight streamed through the blood-red wine. “Although many creatures inhabited the castle, none had the slightest taste for wine. I am quite grateful for that. This 1927 Cockburn would be worth at least five hundred dollars in Boston.”
Caleb, who avoided drinking parties and knew nothing of wine, examined the ruby depths of his glass. He couldn’t conceive of paying as much money for the contents of a bottle as he had for his car, but he knew that the wine was fragrant and musty at the same time. To his left, Hermann had barely touched his glass; he had fallen asleep in the lumpy leather armchair, the firelight giving his face a fevered look.
“You are—or were—a student in astrophysics, Caleb,” Alexandru remarked.
“What?” Caleb had drifted off, entranced by the firelight and unaware of the strength of the wine and the depth of his own exhaustion. “Yes, that’s right. Jonathan must have told you,” he finished uncertainly.
Alexandru dismissed this with an elegant wave of his hand. “Clovis told me of your plans to go to MIT before I left the States.”
“My guardian? You know him?”
How could he have been so naïve as to think that Alexandru wouldn’t have known Clovis Fintonclyde? The man had entertained visitors from all over the world when Caleb was a boy: Native American shamans, priestesses of voodoo from the Caribbean, mystics who’d arrive heavily cloaked, speaking languages that Caleb couldn’t identify.
“Oh, I know him very well indeed. We have…collaborated…It is astrophysics that protects this castle, you know. The power of Jupiter, Saturn, and the moon combine to create wards against monsters, humans, even animals. The cow barn is constructed entirely from a moonward.” Alexandru paused, as if ready to say more, and then shook his head. Instead of continuing, he leaned over and poured more wine into Caleb’s glass, then set the decanter down. He took a seat next to the fire in a tall wooden chair with ornately carved back and arms.
“I wonder,” Alexandru pondered, “why an adoptee of Fintonclyde’s, who I assume has some of the old wizard’s talents and inclinations, decides to depart suddenly with no notice to the Community. And now you are here to seek, as you say, another line of work…” In the light of the fire his eyes gleamed as he regarded his guest.
Caleb wondered whether Alexandru had any inkling of what he had brought into the castle that night. The heady wine seemed to have stolen away his normal inhibitions, or perhaps saying it in a foreign language blunted the impact. Either way, he explained, “I wished to leave school, America, everything because Fintonclyde and his cronies blamed my best friend for something he didn’t do. I was not even allowed to testify at the trial because I am a werewolf.”
Alexandru Arghezi said nothing; only a faint narrowing of his eyes betrayed any emotion in his otherwise unreadable face. From behind Caleb, came a muffled cry and the sound of glass shattering.
Mihail, who had been clearing the table, had dropped a wineglass on the stone floor. In confusion, Caleb turned to see a look of terror and revulsion on the servant’s face, a look he knew well and often saw in his troubled dreams.
“That will do, Mihail,” Arghezi commanded sharply. With evident concern, he softened his tone and said, “I will clean up the rest. Please take Mr. Hermann to his bed.”
The servant approached cautiously, eyeing Caleb as if he might leap up and bite at any moment. Mihail’s face was now an emotionless mask, the trepidation pushed beneath the surface like fish under the ice of a winter pond. Keeping as far from Caleb as could, he gently helped Hermann to his feet and supported the stumbling old man out of the hall. Only when the footsteps were completely gone did Alexandru speak again.
“You must forgive Mihail. Werewolves killed both his parents when he was six years old. He has been with our family ever since.” His tone was concerned, but otherwise casual, which both surprised and confused Caleb. “Returning here was not pleasant for him.”
Caleb realized he was gripping his fragile wineglass tightly, and hastily set it down. He did not know what to say. He felt at once the bitter anger of Mihail’s rejection alongside his own memories of being bitten as a small child. The event stood out clearly in his mind, though he had trouble recalling the terror he must have felt.
“Near Amherst, yes?” Alexandru asked thoughtfully, fingertips together at his chin.
Stammering slightly, Caleb told him the name of the little town where he and his parents had lived. “It was over thirteen years ago, when…I was only four. I remember very little.”
“Werewolves are not common in New England, not at all. Thirteen years ago…let me think. Ah, Crispin Whitehead, that was the name.”
No words could express the confusion Caleb felt at that moment. What was Alexandru saying? He knew the werewolf responsible? Blindly he closed his hand around the glass next to his chair and brought it to his lips, choking on the strong, sweet wine.
“How? You knew—?” he croaked finally.
“We had a federally funded program to track many creatures, including werewolves,” came the matter-of-fact reply. “Your government at work, eh? Of course, the general public knew nothing about the program…or the creatures we were tracking. There were never that many on the East Coast, and they tended to be rather territorial. Whitehead was a difficult case. Hmmm. Emigrated from Britain—kicked out is more like it. He was well spoken, a good chess player, but quite without remorse. He was warned, but…”
“And what happened to him?” asked Caleb timidly, simultaneously fearing and hoping that he already knew the answer. Although the wolf had changed his life so profoundly, he remembered him with something akin to sympathy, somewhere in that corner of his mind where emotions and smells blended. A male, middle-aged… in some ways his father.
Alexandru sighed, releasing his hands in a gesture of futility. “I caught him, caught him in the act. He killed a family of three in the Berkshires. He had been warned, after all.”
There was silence, punctuated only by the crackle of the fire. Caleb did not have to ask for further details.
“Clovis Fintonclyde took you in a couple of years later,” continued Alexandru. “Quite extraordinary.”
“As far as I know, I am the only—the only one of us that he…” Caleb astonished himself by being able to speak at all.
Alexandru rose and paced in front o
f the fire with his hands clasped behind his back. Caleb had quite given up trying to understand his host. “Not the first that he took in, but certainly the first he attempted to civilize. I was opposed to his little experiment at first, so much so that Clovis and I did not speak for almost ten years. And yet it could prove useful…” He seemed to be speaking to himself more than having a conversation. Abruptly he turned to face Caleb, still clenching his wineglass.
“You are not afraid of other werewolves, I take it?”
“I have never met another one since I was bitten,” Caleb confessed, “but I don’t suppose I would be afraid.”
“And vampires? I doubt you’ve met any of those,” Alexandru stated harshly.
“Some people say that a vampire caused my two best friends’ deaths—” Caleb began, but was cut short by a glare from Alexandru telling him to get to the point. “But no. I was not there.”
The fire filled in the silence that lengthened between them with a soft hissing. When Caleb did not elaborate, Arghezi raised an elegant eyebrow and continued. “In the West, they talk about vampires and Transylvania and it’s a joke. I heard it so often from bureaucrats and even wizards who should know better. But here it is nothing to laugh about. The Undead call to us…and their song is hard to resist.” He sank back into his chair and propped his chin on one hand, staring fixedly at Caleb. “Vampires drove my family out of this castle fifty years ago. They occupied it for many years, according to people in the village…no one knows how long. By the time I returned last year, they were gone…they’d been gone for fifteen or twenty years.” He did not sound pleased to have missed them, either. “But I will find them.”
Caleb began to rouse himself from the torpor of the wine. “Your letter said that you needed help. Is this what you meant, driving vampires from the castle?”
“The castle is quite secure,” rumbled Alexandru proudly. “Apart from the planetary wards, traps are set here and there, as well. No—vampires cannot return to this castle, not while I am master of it. But, outside the castle, things are still very bad. For three hundred years, my family has been responsible for keeping this area of the mountains safe. The people in the village below live in fear and that is not right. I have a responsibility to them as well as to myself.” He sighed deeply and continued, “But I am not a young man any more, Caleb. I cannot do this alone.”
Only the Moon Howls Page 3