“Can’t you wizards,” a sarcastic smile appeared on Grigore’s lips, “just float away home? I’d like to see that.” His thin frame shook with laughter.
“Thanks very much for the blanket and…everything,” said Caleb. He knew he sounded like a snob at a prep school for the snotty elite, but there was nothing he could do.
“Keep it, you dog.” Grigore watched Caleb, unable to take his eyes off him as the American werewolf got to his feet, clutching the ratty blanket. “You know, I can ask Vlad if he’ll let you run with us, if you want.”
“Yes, sure,” Caleb replied earnestly, though the last thing on earth he wanted was to lay eyes on Vlad Alpha. The thought of the luxury he was returning to made him feel guilty. “I should be getting back now…”
Once outside, Caleb contemplated his footprints in the muddy track. Ten miles to the west, in the mountains that were now gleaming in the morning sun, was the partially destroyed castle where he stayed with the old monster-hunter Arghezi. Not what most people would call home, but a lot better than Grigore’s bare cottage. He pulled the blanket closer around his shoulders.
Grigore had followed him outside the cottage. “Well, I guess you’re one of us and a wizard, too,” he said, “but if I hadn’t seen you with my own eyes…” He started laughing again.
Caleb opened his mouth to protest that he wasn’t much of a wizard, but instead of making a polite and self-deprecating reply, he said something else entirely. The human part of Caleb did not yet have an inkling of what it was to be an Alpha, but the wolf inside him knew that he shouldn’t, couldn’t, tuck his tail between his legs and limp home in front of a Beta who had the nerve to laugh at him.
“Yeah, that’s right, dog,” Caleb half-growled. “This is how wizards do it.” He raised one hand dramatically—the other was needed to keep his blanket from slipping down in an undignified way—and concentrated on calling forth Wind. Maybe because the bone-tired weariness prevented his addled brain from objecting that he couldn’t do it, or maybe because the wolf within him knew that he had to succeed—whatever the reason, everything worked. He realized that summoning Wind didn’t require complicated gestures or arcane invocations, just a certain way of sensing and focusing and commanding.
Grigore backed away open-mouthed as a breeze, then a gust, rushed past him and swirled around Caleb. Caleb was equally surprised as the air around him seemed to solidify. Was he really pulling this off or was this a hallucination brought about by hypothermia? He waved to Grigore as he rose up into the air and felt giddy as the ground fell away from him.
“Stay away from the Sevens, dog!” Grigore called after him. “They’re bad news!”
Five hundred yards later, Caleb’s spell failed and he dropped, tumbling onto the soft grass. He first checked that Grigore was nowhere around, and then he burst into laughter, recalling all of yesterday’s animal sounds and smells in peals of pure delight. It had been the most glorious full moon of his life.
In his joy, Caleb never suspected that Castle Arghezi and the wild forest surrounding it would be his home for the next six years.
Book II
6. The Apprentice
Summer crept slowly into the mountains of Transylvania, particularly to the high, rocky promontory on which the castle perched. Tiny piles of snow still lingered in the nooks of the castle’s inner courtyard, which never saw the sun. Only the glass greenhouse held the promise of warmth.
Caleb sat drinking in the June sunlight, its heat collected and magnified by the panes of glass curving overhead to meet the gray stone blocks of the castle wall. Last night had been his first full moon since coming to these mountains, and that meant that he was still weak, not to mention bruised from showing off and from his long walk home. The little greenhouse, which was stuck on the back of the castle next to the library, made a good refuge as the moon began to wane, warming him and revitalizing his weakened body.
The sun was out this afternoon, dancing above the clouds that clung to the lower reaches of the mountains. He sat in a chair—a blanket on his lap, his eyes closed—and smelled the richness of dirt mingled with the scent of daffodils. He had brought a book from the castle library, Romanian Revenants, but cared more about the feeling of sun on his skin than about the local Undead.
A door opened with a sharp click, followed by a creaking groan. Caleb opened his eyes enough to see Alexandru step into the greenhouse. The old wizard stood for a moment taking in the smells and humidity, then wound his way through the tables and hanging plants to the corner where Caleb basked.
“How are you feeling, my boy?” he asked. Wood scraped on stone as he drew up a chair and sat down. Alexandru seemed fascinated by the details of Caleb’s transformation. After hunting werewolves for so long, his having one as a houseguest was apparently a good opportunity to learn more. (Mihail, on the other hand, had hardly spoken three words to Caleb and avoided him whenever possible).
“The sun feels good,” Caleb replied, opening his eyes and smiling at his host. “We never got this much sun on Fintonclyde’s little island in Maine.”
“Sometimes it is an advantage to be on the top of a mountain, when the clouds go elsewhere. That is why our little greenhouse prospers so.” Alexandru waved a hand at the explosion of plants spilling over wooden trays on the tables and hanging down from above. “In only a year, we have brought this back to life, although not like when I was a boy. Then we had old trees and vines hanging down…”
He stopped and shook his head. Remembering was bittersweet to Alexandru; everything associated with his early life at the castle was tinged with both happiness and horror. Caleb had to be content with scraps, snatches of stories from which he tried to understand the puzzle of the Arghezi family and of the castle.
He didn’t press Alexandru for more, relieved that the old wizard in turn did not ask Caleb to relive what had happened only a few weeks before on a remote Maine island.
“I see you have begun your reading on our local vampires,” he rumbled, gesturing to the book in Caleb’s lap. “That is well, for soon we shall give you some practical experience.”
Caleb had agreed to accompany Alexandru on a hunt through the local caves. He’d tried to sound casual as he accepted the challenge, as if any American tourist visiting a half-ruined castle in Romania would want to hunt vampires, but the truth was that the memory of his friends’ demise haunted him. He blamed the vampires as much as he blamed Fintonclyde.
Alexandru jerked him out of his daydreams with a stern lecture. “In these mountains, vampires are inactive in the winter,” he began. “When spring comes, they wake.”
“Because they haven’t had a…meal all winter?”
“Correct. Vampires do not cease to exist if they cannot get blood. They enter a state of hibernation, sometimes for years, waiting for the opportunity to feed.”
How long could a vampire stay dormant? Caleb wondered. It had been more than forty years since that old house in Maine was closed and warded.
“Around here,” Alexandru continued, “the vampires begin to stir in May, feeding upon whatever they find—often sheep or shepherds. They are not too choosy when they first wake. If we are lucky, we can catch them before they are fully awake.”
“Sheep or shepherds, eh?”
“Vampires have their preferences about blood. In a pinch, any mammal will do, but human blood—with the exception of your own, my dear boy—is preferred. Human blood produces in vampires a state of ecstasy, I suppose one would call it, not attainable any other way, at least so I am told.” It occurred to Caleb that Alexandru had personal knowledge about this point, but he seemed reluctant to admit it.
“And so,” Alexandru continued, “we shall hunt them. Tell me how we kill them.”
“A wooden stake through the heart,” began Caleb, feeling a bit like he was back at MIT and cramming for a final exam. The difference was that there would be a field trip associated with this class. “Hawthorn or maple. A single, clean stroke.”
“And then?”
“The head must be cut off and the body burned,” Caleb recited from some musty book of childhood.
“How long?”
“The stake, you mean?” Caleb asked, feeling fuzzy-headed. He’d never done well in school, either, the day after the full moon. To add to his confusion, Alexandru pulled a wooden stake from his pocket and handed it to Caleb. He ran his finger along the smooth, pale wood from the flat end to the tip. It was about eight inches long and very sharp.
“These are made for me in the States,” the old vampire-hunter said casually, “by an Indian shaman in New York. Maple works the best, I have found.”
Caleb wondered if Toby had been prepared to meet a vampire on that night. Did he know enough to bring a stake? Of course not. Fintonclyde had never mentioned vampires to them. But had his old teacher ever killed a vampire? The wizard now facing him in the greenhouse had killed at least one.
“How long,” Alexandru repeated patiently, “before the body must be burned?”
“Before the next sunset.” It was hard not to laugh, to speak with that tone of scorn the skeptics all cultivated. “Otherwise the vampire will…come back to life.”
“Excellent,” said the old wizard, leaning back in his chair with a pleased expression on his face. “Many have made the mistake of thinking that a simple stake through the heart will suffice—with disastrous consequences.”
As Alexandru continued with his questions, assuring himself that the young wizard understood the finer points of vampire lore, Caleb turned the stake over in his hands. Vampires weren’t alive anymore. Didn’t they deserve to be stopped from draining the living? Wouldn’t they welcome death, Nature’s final rest for every creature?
Caleb had known since he was very small that other people considered him a monster deserving of death. Not to mention the creatures on Fintonclyde’s Reserve, creatures that he grew to consider his friends and family, although to everyone else they were horrors to be (at best) contained, isolated, and gawked at from afar. He knew he couldn’t rely on the law to tell him what constituted murder, and pondered obsessively the ethical issues involved with killing anything. In his efforts to construct a consistent philosophy of his own, he usually erred on the side of caution. His human incarnation had never harmed a living creature. He was also quite sure his wolf hadn’t eaten anything larger than a mouse, though he often wondered how well his memories of events at the full moon could be trusted.
He dug the sharp point of the stake into his palm. Even if he had killed a person while transformed, even if he were a predator, he was alive, and he killed to feed a mortal body. Vampires were death preying on life, walking corpses, reeking of decay. Life had to be protected, he finally concluded, as he accidentally drew blood from his own hand. It still sounded like a hollow justification—especially knowing that he wished ill on people in the Community—but then, he had yet to encounter the Undead. Without experience it was impossible to say whether he could bear the role of monster killer.
7. The Sleep of the Undead
Vampire hunting turned out to be a cold, uncomfortable, and messy business. Jonathan Hermann declared himself too old and arthritic to hunt again, then without delay returned to the States. At first, Caleb and Alexandru spent days climbing through caves of various shapes and sizes without seeing more than clouds of bats (and a lot of bat droppings). The Romanian didn’t seem bothered. In fact, he insisted they bring home several sacks of guano on their first day out, because it made such good fertilizer for the plants in the greenhouse.
Caleb was wedged in a crack between two rough, slimy faces of rock, waiting for the older wizard to catch up with him. This cave, the fourth in as many days, had a narrow and tortuous beginning, although Alexandru assured him that it opened up further on. Caleb’s small hand-fire threw a weak, red glow that illuminated the passage only to the next twist.
When he heard Alexandru approach, Caleb continued wriggling through the rocky passage, wondering yet again why he was in Romania, more particularly in a bat-infested cave in Romania. Part of the answer, he knew, had to do with his adventures under the June full moon. Unlike the full moons in Maine, the adventure under the Romanian full moon left him with a keen longing to run wild with others of his kind.
Something more than the wolf’s urges kept him here, though. What he had learned from his new teacher was compelling; certainly no school in the world could teach him some of the things he was absorbing. More than that, he began to feel that Alexandru respected him, although the teacher could be harsh when he felt Caleb had made a mistake. That was understandable; mistakes in this desperate land didn’t just mean bad marks on an exam, but the difference between life and death.
Caleb felt a sudden surprised vertigo as he stepped into a larger chamber. He stopped and pulsed the hand-fire into the yellow, as a sign to Alexandru that they had reached the cave they sought. He turned slowly and cautiously around, inspecting the rocky roof and walls. The roughly oval chamber measured about twenty feet at its longest. It seemed drier than the passage they had just come through. With a thrill, Caleb saw bits of straw lying on the floor of the chamber. The ubiquitous bats clinging to the ceiling would not bring straw to their lairs, but sometimes vampires did, to make a dry bed for themselves.
When Alexandru emerged from the small opening, Caleb silently gestured to the floor. The pale yellow straw glinted from his magical light. The older wizard nodded curtly, his hungry eyes giving the only indication of excitement. The trail of straw led to one end of the oval, which seemed from a distance to be a dead end. Up close, they saw a jog in the rocky wall, leading to another chamber.
Caleb extinguished his own hand-fire and drew from an inner pocket a lumpy, fist-sized stone. He closed his hand around it as he followed the vampire-hunter around the corner. The little alcove they entered had a thick layer of straw on the floor. Alexandru stepped into the middle of the small space, while his companion hung back near the entrance.
In the light of Alexandru’s hand-fire, Caleb saw first folds of cloth and then the pale skin of someone lying on the straw, a boy by his appearance. The young, almost beautiful face moved slightly as the old wizard clenched his hand and caused a brighter light to issue forth. Caleb could have believed that a young shepherd had wandered into this cave for a nap, until the thing opened its eyes.
Dark, empty eyes fixed on them as the creature slowly sat up. Its appearance was nothing like Caleb expected. He had seen ogres, trolls and what he thought was a hydra once, but none of these prepared him for the horror that dwelled in the vampire’s black eyes. The eyes lacked any sign of humanity; there was not even a glimmer that would indicate the animal nature that humans shared with monsters. All of a sudden, Caleb felt lost, sucked into the alien vacuum behind those eyes.
“Who disturbs my rest?” asked the vampire softly, as he rose and glared at the grim wizard standing before him. Still Alexandru did not give Caleb the signal, so he watched and waited.
“Many years have passed, Turzii,” stated Alexandru flatly. “I thought you were gone.”
“And I thought you were dead, Arghezi,” came the reply in a cold, hard voice. “You were foolish to come back. She’s gone, you know. Fed up with the lot of us.”
The old wizard tensed slightly, but his face remained an emotionless mask. “And Cuza?”
The vampire took a step toward Alexandru, who stood his ground. “I haven’t seen him in years, but I’ll tell him you’re looking for him, if I run across him.” The creature stepped closer. Alexandru gave a swift glance at Caleb, as the vampire continued, “I know he will want to find you, after what you—”
The vampire launched himself at the old wizard at the same time that Caleb cried, “Helios!” and held up the lump of stone in his hand. A blindingly bright light filled the alcove, banishing all shadows and washing color even from the stone walls. The creature had aimed his hands for Alexandru’s throat, but at the coming of the light fell to his feet screaming. The sunstone
that Caleb held produced a light that, although not sunlight, was sufficiently painful to vampires that it slowed them down. He had not quite believed that this lump of rock, enchanted though it was, could produce such an effect until he saw the writhing form on floor.
Calmly, Alexandru got down on his knees. He knelt on the vampire’s chest as if it were a rug, forcing the creature’s shoulders to the floor with one hand while extracting a stake from his pocket. As the feeble screams continued, the vampire-hunter plunged the polished wood into the Undead chest so that all but the very end vanished.
The cave grew quiet. Caleb heard only Alexandru’s labored breathing and the rustle of bats from the other chamber. Perhaps he would have stood there for a long time, the forgotten sunstone still blazing in his hand, staring at the bloodless face contorted in its final scream. But Alexandru rose abruptly, brushing straw from his clothes, and looked at him.
“So, you see how it is done,” he said grimly, while still retaining the air of a professor giving a lecture. He gestured for Caleb to extinguish the sunstone, which he did, plunging them briefly into painful darkness. The silent screams of horror and triumph filled Caleb’s brain, and bizarre after-images danced before his aching eyes, monsters more fantastic than any he had ever seen or imagined.
Caleb fell to his knees and curled into a fetal position when he realized who the worst monster was, sitting at his desk with the window open on the first warm night of May, speaking on the phone.
“Hello? Toby?”
“Hey, Dog Boy, what took you so long to answer the phone?”
“I’m studying. I have finals coming up, just after…you know.”
Only the Moon Howls Page 5