by Ted Dekker
He withdrew a key. Placing the journal under his arm, he unlocked the cell. I rushed out and whirled both ways to be sure we were alone. We were.
“Take this book. It will help you. After you read it, and only then, can you dare go up that mountain.” He pressed the book into my hands and I took it carefully.
He started to turn. “I have to get back.”
But I stopped him with a hand to his arm. “Why? How did this happen?”
The old man shrugged. “It happened. They became flesh. Evil walks among you now. That’s all you need to know. There’s a horse by the back gate. Run quickly, Toma.”
Then he left me standing with the book in my hands and hurried down that dungeon passage. He was already at the top of the steps when I began to run. Down the tunnel, up the stairs, out the doors, and into the failing light. A monk with a bucket of potatoes saw me and stared as if he were looking upon a ghost. I nodded my respect and ran past him, straight to the back gate, which was open.
The horse was my own stallion, and I gratefully leaped onto his back.
Voices shouted behind. A bell clanged. Yet now I was free and my horse was fast, and I galloped away from the bishop’s dungeons of hell.
I headed into the night, toward the north and the west where the Carpathian Mountains rose like tombs against the sky. Toward another hell that would surely burn my flesh and leave me dead.
TWENTY-EIGHT
It’s yours, my love. All of it.” Vlad turned around, spreading one arm out to the vast library with its towering bookcases and gold-appointed candlesticks. The crystal chandelier shone like the stars. Or were they diamonds? She would put nothing beyond him now, no amount of wealth or power. Vlad could hardly surprise her any longer; he was limitless.
And her soft smile must have told him of her wonder, because he brushed her hair off her face and touched his lips to hers again.
The pain of her turning had eased as the night came. After the show of honor and dancing in the great hall with the entire coven, the council had retired to Vlad’s wing and feasted at the familiar long table, only tonight the scents and the tastes had changed completely. It was boar, she was told, and each bite tasted like the first delectable morsel after a week of starvation. Her hunger could hardly be satisfied—she’d never eaten so much meat and gravy, so many beets or so much sweet corn in one sitting or ten sittings.
When she made a comment, they all laughed with delight. She was turned, they said. She had found a new life. Nothing would ever taste so bland or smell so mundane again.
Their laughter sounded like music, and it was then that Lucine began to smile.
“Now you know why I could not stay away, Lucine,” Natasha cried.
“Yes,” Lucine said. “I can see that.”
Even so, she knew that something was wrong. A glance at Sofia told her the same. The woman laughed with the rest, ate like the rest, joined in revelry with the rest, but when their eyes met, Lucine was sure she saw a haunting remorse.
For a brief few moments, concern of death would ride her, but then the beauty of her turning swallowed her, and she would forget why she’d been concerned at all. She saw those demons screaming only one other time, at that very table. One moment they were aristocrats lounging at a magnificent spread; the next they were six creatures dining in hell.
She gasped, silencing the table.
“What is it, dear?” Vlad asked.
The vision vanished.
“I . . .” She touched her throat and took a sip of wine. “I just had a strange sensation. Better now.”
He took her hand. “The sensations of the gods often feel strange at first. You will gasp a hundred times over the next week, I will make sure of it.” He lowered his ruby lips to her white knuckles.
He’s a true gentleman, she thought. I love this man. And he has made me his queen!
“I hope so,” she said.
He lifted his eyes and seemed to take up residence in her own. “So do I,” he said after a pause. Then to the others, his dark stare still feasting on her, “Please leave us, all of you.”
They were gone when she looked over a moment or two later. His command over them was entrancing.
Left alone, Vlad stood and walked behind her. He slid her chair out, took her elbow, and eased her to her feet, remaining behind all the while. Drawing her hair aside, he leaned over her back and breathed on her neck.
“I understand why some feed on the neck,” he murmured. “The scent of blood can be overwhelming.”
He eased her around, drew her close, and kissed her lower lip, biting deep into the softness of her mouth without any hesitation.
Lucine gasped, expecting the same pain she’d felt the last time he bit her. But now a pleasant and numbing warmth flooded her chin, her throat, down over her breasts. She shuddered as his blood spread through her body.
She wanted to drink that blood. She longed for the taste in her mouth, its heat in her throat. But she knew she couldn’t until he offered it to her himself. No one had told her this; his blood seemed to carry the knowledge with it.
Her world swam and Vlad moaned. Then, after they’d settled, he insisted he show her more of the castle. The ballroom, the sweeping stairs, the balcony, a dozen rooms winding up through the higher floors, used for lounging or storage of his collections. The collections consisted of books and paintings and relics from more countries and eras than she imagined one man could possibly amass.
But Vlad wasn’t simply one man, or any man. He was more than and less than at once, the most powerful being that walked this earth. And she was his queen.
They explored the lower floor’s main halls, overflowing with more paintings and chests that were filled with golden coins, rubies, emeralds, sapphires, and more black onyx than she knew could be pulled from the earth. The relics could not be numbered—candlesticks, swords, knives, and instruments of science with sharp edges made to slice easily through human flesh.
There was a round room at the back of the castle that she found most interesting. Above, open to a starry sky. Around the walls, limestone carvings of lions’ heads and goats’ heads from which water once spouted. At the center, a large round table with a huge limestone cross on it, dirtied with dried moss and fungus. And around the base of the table, an empty pool perhaps twice the width of the table.
“A bathhouse,” she said. “But no water?”
“No. Water and crosses aren’t my favorite.” He held one hand behind his back and motioned to the crucifix that stood taller than he. “As a common ornament, it’s fine enough. I keep it around to remind me how powerless it is by itself. But water, blessed by even this harmless symbol, makes me rather sick.”
Oddly enough, she understood. There was something offensive about water, which gave life in the midst of death.
“The cross was a fountain, but it doesn’t work. Perhaps we’ll fill it with water and prove our fears misguided one day, just for fun.”
She returned his show of bravery. “For fun.”
The entire castle was filled with wonder and beauty, though she was quite certain that part of her appreciation was the result of her new vision. But none of it quite affected her like the tunnels below the castle. The dank, torch-lit halls with their caged rooms were all rather unnerving at first glance but only mysterious at second.
They stood now in the grand library off the main tunnel, and Vlad seemed very impressed with it. “We pride ourselves in knowledge,” he said, bowing his head and spreading his arms before a portrait called Alucard. He retained his reverential posture for a few moments and then straightened. The fanged, red-eyed wolf-bat would have sent a chill down Lucine’s back only yesterday. Now a profound awe mixed with her fear and respect for this creature.
“He’s your earliest ancestor, also called Shataiki or Nephilim by some,” Vlad said. “As written in the oldest book in the Pentateuch, when the sons of God united with the daughters of men.”
“Is he . . .” She wanted to ask
if he was dead.
“He lives still.”
He must have made Vlad? And what did that make her?
“I am second generation,” Vlad said. “One generation from my father.”
“And what about the rest of this coven?”
“The rest? Most are made, like Natasha, with only a hint of Nephilim blood in their veins. Even the older ones are less than a tenth.”
“And . . .”
“And you?” He lifted her hand and kissed the back of it. “My bride, you will become half of what I am. The strongest and the most gifted of all of God’s sons. There are only a few like you alive today. Does this please you?”
“I . . . But am I really alive?”
He hesitated. “Do you feel alive?”
“I don’t know what I feel.”
“Do you like it?”
“I think so. Yes. More as I get used to it.”
But there was also a pain raging just below the surface, she thought. Something that had to do with this beast who looked like death in one moment and life in the next.
“I’m eight hundred years old. Alucard made his first human when he bit a pregnant woman two thousand years ago. The offspring became my father, so to speak, though we don’t bear offspring as such. I was made by another who was made by my grandfather. I am the last.”
“So then I could be seen as your daughter,” she said.
“No. You are my bride. And as my bride you will live a very long time.”
“And then?”
Vlad turned from the portrait. “And then you will die and take your rightful place in hell.”
His voice was unapologetic. Bitter. His face had darkened; his eyes had gone like coal.
“I don’t want—”
Vlad’s hand slammed into her cheek with such force that she spun and smashed into one of the bookcases before dropping to her knees on the cold stone floor. Pain sliced down her neck, and for a moment she was sure her jaw had been shattered.
She grunted and reached for her face. Blood flowed from a cut on her upper lip. Her mind filled with a raw hatred for this half-breed who had just savaged her, and for a moment she wanted to throw herself at him and claw his eyes out. She was reliving her past!
“Never speak of it again,” he said.
Then Vlad was picking her up. Kissing her wound. Tasting her blood. And when she tasted his, her pain faded and she realized that she had deserved to be hit.
They fed on each other for a few long dizzying minutes, and Lucine knew that she would both love and hate Vlad forever.
TWENTY-NINE
Saint Thomas, the beast hunter—that’s how I began to call the old man who delivered me from the church’s dungeon. But I will confess that I couldn’t be sure he was a man at all, any more than Vlad van Valerik was really a man. If so, then surely not a man in the same way I was a man.
There was more to both of them.
I needed a place to hole up and read the journal, and I knew of no better place than my own room in the Cantemir estate’s west tower. I knew the grounds well, knew the layout of the security, the guards’ schedule, the maids’ comings and goings, and the surrounding countryside.
More importantly, I was certain that the church would mount a search for me, spreading tales of my witchcraft as they went, but I doubted they would look for me so close to where they’d taken me.
I rode north of the estate and tied my horse in thick grass near a brook, where he could manage for a day, even two if necessary, before I returned. Then I walked straight to the house and slipped into my bedroom using a window I’d left unlocked in the event I needed a quick exit under attack. A matter of habit.
I stood in the darkness for a long while, listening for any sound beyond my own breathing. The house was as quiet as an abandoned mine. Satisfied, I locked the door, pulled the curtain tight, and lit a single candle, no more.
There by the soft yellow glow, I pulled out the book the old man had given me and set it before me on the desk.
A single leather thong bound the frayed brown covers. The lower right-hand corner curled up, worn to a lighter shade from handling. Either a thousand hands had opened the book, or one, a thousand times. It was less than an inch thick. The name of that book was etched into the leather above the twine.
Blood Book:
Tales, Confessions, and Rumors
of Another World
I took the end of the thong between my thumb and forefinger and gently released the looped knot, then lifted the cover and looked at the first page. The writing was in script, written in black ink with a sharp quill. A letter to the reader.
To you who are Chosen—
I, Thomas, have written and compiled this Blood Book so that those with eyes to see will understand the makings of both worlds, the seen and the unseen. The secrets written between these covers will lead you to death if you fail to understand, or to life if you open your eyes and see.
I have seen what so few have seen. And I can assure you that evil has made itself known in the flesh. A door was opened for one of those beasts to enter this world and spread the disease in bodily form, as was done at the dawn of time. As with the sons of God, the Nephilim beast, who slept with women and bore half-breeds as told in the Holy Scriptures themselves, entered your world 1700 years ago and passed his seed to a woman who bore that first monster.
The line of those who came from that Nephilim beast must be stopped before their seed spreads further! If they can be redeemed, it must be through love and blood, not sword and hammer.
Where all was once unseen, now it is seen. What was done in spirit will be done in the flesh, so all men will know that evil walks and speaks and that the Maker’s great romance is a kiss of love, an offering of blood.
If you read now, you are chosen. All you need is here. Find the heart of Solomon’s Song for that beloved. Slay the beast who would win her.
Be the hand of your Maker, in the flesh, for all to see.
Be his twin. I beg you.
— Thomas
I reread the letter three times, mesmerized by the suggestions contained within. Flipping through carefully, I saw that the front of the journal was filled with drawings and notes, some faded to light tracings on the grainy paper, all in very sharp letters and square lines.
The next section was written by another party in yet a different hand. And a third section was in the same hand as the letter I’d read. So this Blood Book was a compilation of three journals written by three people?
I flipped back to the beginning and scanned the opening pages. Pictures of winged wolf creatures, very similar to the images I’d seen in the Castle Castile. This was them! Here, the ancestors of Vlad van Valerik and his coven of devil worshippers.
The inscription under one such sketch of a creature that had been cut in half: Dissected Nephilim. It was a ghastly picture describing various body parts.
There was more, much more, in this first section, details written by someone called Baal about a reality that I could hardly believe existed. I peered at those pages with barely a thread of reason to hold my mind together. Surely it was all the figment of some madman’s imagination!
I had always considered religion to be the device of the powerful to wrest control from the weak, an instrument of fear and political power. But here on these pages, the rift between the known and unknown was woven together in such plain detail. Either the writers were truly insane or they had seen what I had not.
And yet I had seen! There in the Castle Castile I had seen things that could not be explained by anything other than what I was reading on those pages. Perhaps all those fables contained in the Holy Scripture had some basis in reality after all.
The candle burned. My breathing was steady and heavy. Not a sound but the soft crackle of ancient pages turning and the sizzle of the flaming wick. I was transported into a new world of understanding that shook me to my bones.
The writings of Thomas, who I agreed must be an angel from God hims
elf, brought the rest into focus. His journal began with a simple disclaimer that he would write only what could be grasped by a mortal who had never crossed the realities as he had. I tell you my fingers trembled over the page as I read his interpretation of this struggle between good and evil made flesh so that some may see. In his words:
It is no different than what has been known by some already, that angels and demons have walked this earth in human form, that beasts have been known to speak and whales to swallow men. That dragons will come from the sky to consume, and the Christ will come on a white horse to slay them.
It is written in the Holy Scripture that fallen angels, the sons of God, mated with the daughters of men who bore them monsters called Nephilim.
It has been written that a ram from the thicket saved Isaac. That Jacob wrestled with an angel. That the devil possessed swine. But what few know is that Alucard, the servant of that devil, crossed over to this earth in the days of Noah and is followed by his offspring, some knowing, others unknowing. Their lust to win the love of mortals away from God knows no bounds.
I stopped there, knowing I had met the offspring of this Alucard the first time I laid eyes on Vlad van Valerik. My doubts were washed away and I began to read with even more intensity, searching for the way that I might contend with this unholy thing.
I cannot say all that I read that night, because much of it was too otherworldly for me to grasp in its entirety, and that Blood Book was soon lost, never to be recovered. But the crux of it all was seared into my mind as if by a branding iron, and here it is:
There is indeed good and there is indeed evil, and both walk the earth. But good has little to do with the forms of religion, and evil has as little to do with so much behavior condemned by religion. Both good and evil vie for the passions of the heart. For love! For Solomon’s Song of romance and desire. Love is God’s gift to his creation. And evil contests this same love with bitter rage, to be loved as God is surely loved.
This was evil’s seduction, and it had manifested itself there in bodily form in the shadows of the Carpathian Mountains, a manifestation of the same battle that rages in every human heart.