The Delicate Dependency: A Novel of the Vampire Life

by Talbot, Michael

  “Very well, suit yourself.”

  White hands clamped down on either side of the cage concealing us.

  At the same moment there was the sound of voices from the next car. The chef de train was coming. From the seriousness of the disturbance there was no doubt he would be armed and accompanied by numerous men. The figure reaching for the cage concealing us hesitated.

  “The door!” shrilled our adversary.

  From the sound of his footsteps it was apparent that the third vampire raced toward the sliding door dividing us from our rescuers and braced himself against it. The door rattled as those beyond tried to force it, but the strength of the single vampire was more than equal match. There was shouting and suddenly the splintering of wood as a crowbar began to smash through the barrier.

  The white hands gripping the cage concealing us faltered.

  The door gave way and the three vampire were forced to flee. Amid the barking of the greyhounds and the whistling of the wind and snow coming through the broken door was the sound of a group of men charging by in pursuit. And then the voices faded in the distance and we were left alone.

  About half an hour later we heard the sounds of the men coming back through. From their conversation it was apparent the vampire had eluded them. They, too, were hiding somewhere on the train. No doubt they had employed their superior strength and agility to slither through some crevice or even creep like lemurs along the very side of the speeding train. We dared not move for fear of running into them. Because of the dangers we were certain they would remain hidden until the train reached the next stop. We traveled the remainder of our journey cowering in the luggage car, accompanied only by the cold and the sporadic howling of the hounds.

  The temperature rose rapidly as we descended the mountains. It was still dark when we reached Florence. We knew that the vampire would be crawling over the Stazione Termini, watching every disembarking passenger, and so we had one choice. As the train slowed down to a crawl and pulled into the station we leaped to the platform on the opposite side.

  Had the società answered our plea? Was someone waiting for us inside the station? Regardless of the hazards, we had to go in. Again we traveled with a wide distance between us. We went into the station and I kept watch on the crowd while Dr. von Neefe went to the Information desk. From the rapid gesturing of her hands it was apparent there were no wires waiting for us from either Dr. Weber or the società. Why? Had something happened?

  She glanced at me briefly, worriedly, as she left the Information desk and strolled toward the entrance. We had instructed the società to look for a woman standing by the entrance and stroking her earlobe. She remained there for several minutes performing the movement. No one came.

  We searched the crowd nervously.

  I had no idea what to think. Had the società simply disregarded our message? How could they? The seriousness of our cry for help could not have been misread. Or could it? Had the società, viewed as fanatical by the entire network of vampire hunters, in turn seen our telegrams as crank? Had they thought we were joking, making a mockery of their way of thinking?

  Finally a man with grizzled black hair and beard, and wearing a disheveled raincoat, approached Dr. von Neefe. He glanced around tensely. It was obvious he was frightened. In accordance with our wire he murmured the secret password to her and in a flash they were both out the door.

  I was about to follow when I noticed a man moving through the crowd with a Russian sable coat draped over his arm. I stepped back behind one of the pillars of the station. Within moments another man joined him and said something. Then the other man went back toward the train. I was certain it was they. I waited until the man with the sable coat was looking in the opposite direction, and then swiftly made my way toward the exit.

  Under other circumstances I might have been enraptured by the dark streets of Florence. Memories came flooding back. So this was where it all began, where a frail and gentle youth first gazed into a pair of Hashing eyes. Where Leonardo struggled with his passions and where Lorenzo, Il Magnifico, flourished his cape. At another time I might have imagined hoofbeats echoing in these streets, beneath the red-tiled domes and towers of the palazzos, hoofbeats and laughter. But now the dark streets of Florence seemed only threatening to me. At the height of a Medici carnival the vampire had walked these streets, and somewhere in the darkness they still walked.

  I discovered Dr. von Neefe and the disheveled and bearded man standing beneath the arches of an ancient building down the street. The man’s face moved into the moonlight as I approached. He was pale and frightened. His eyes were red. Dr. von Neefe nodded to let him know I was to be trusted.

  “Do you speak Italian?” she asked.

  I shook my head.

  “I speak very little.” She turned to him and muttered something. He shook his head sadly. They talked back and forth in a tense and fragmentary manner. The emissary from the infamous società was not what I had expected. He had the kind of mournful eyes one expected from the deeply religious. He might have been a scholar. But he seemed most like an inmate from a mental asylum.

  During the course of their exchange Dr. von Neefe looked more and more alarmed. She clawed tightly at his arm. The conversation continued for a few more minutes and then finally she turned to me.

  “He says the day is at hand,” she said solemnly, almost as if she were under the influence of some drug. “The società has been disbanded by the vampire. I can’t quite make out what means they used. He says that its members have been separated and all are in hiding. What has been feared for so long is coming to pass. The vampire are ready to act. The day is at hand.”

  I considered her words for several moments, unable to say anything.

  She continued her discussion. In her hesitant dialogue I heard her mention the name of Dr. Weber. The disheveled man shook his head sadly. He spoke several words hesitantly and somberly. Dr. von Neefe’s eyes widened in disbelief. She grasped his arm again. Then she repeated the words, drew her head back, and uttered a heartrending cry. She collapsed and I caught her in my arms.

  “What is it?” I demanded.

  Her lips trembled. “Leberecht The vampire have murdered him. The police say he was pushed in front of a train by a madman, but it was the vampire.”

  I could not believe it. “What of Ursula? Does he know anything about Ursula?”

  Dr. von Neefe used every ounce of her will to compose herself. She struggled to stand, but as she turned toward the man we saw that his eyes were on the station in the distance. I too looked and saw that the vampire carrying the Russian sable coat had come out of the Terminus and was speaking to someone in an antique black calèche.

  “Dios me libre,” gasped the disheveled man and instantly the vampire’s eyes sliced through the night. He had spotted us.

  We broke into a run.

  A cab pulled out of the darkness ahead of us and I hailed it. There was the sound of footsteps on the cobbles behind us. When we reached the cab I flung open the door but the very moment I had stepped inside I saw that it was already occupied by a young woman. She gazed at me with wide, dark eyes. She was very beautiful and very frail. She wore a graceful hat of osprey feathers, and her collar and cuffs were frilled and tight around her delicate ivory hands. She leaned forward as if to inquire what was going on when suddenly one of her hands sprang forward and clamped around my wrist like a steel vise.

  I screamed and tried to pull away, but the cold white hand held me with a preternatural strength. The woman gazed at me with the fascination of a serpent who was about to encoil her prey. Her eyes were obsidian, hypnotizing. She opened her delicate mouth and brandished her fangs. From nowhere the man from the società brought a piece of wood crashing down upon the small wrist. The fingers released me immediately as she let out a bloodcurdling scream of pain.

  The horses of the carriage reared as we stumbled back and made our way around them. The vampire with the Russian sable coat was almost upon us. In the distan
ce we spotted another cab. I prayed that this one was empty. Dr. von Neefe reached it first and opened the door fearfully. There was no one inside. She jumped in and offered her hand to me.

  “Fretta!” cried the man from the società to the driver, hastening him on. He looked confusedly at the scene before him. “Fretta!” the man screamed again.

  The cab started up.

  I jumped in, making sure the virus was still securely within my coat, and then turned around to offer my hand to the stranger who had just saved my life. It was too late. The vampire with the Russian sable coat had reached him. He grabbed ahold of his shoulders and snapped him back as if he were a rag doll. As we swiftly drew away I saw his face, his red, frightened eyes as he screamed and flailed and they drew him into the carriage.

  The carriage remained behind, but the driver of the antique black calèche with its unseen occupants cracked his whip at the horses. We tore through the dark streets of Florence, the calèche with its two large wheels keeping up with our every maneuver. We passed the moonlit Boboli Gardens and raced southwest through the outskirts of the city. We were headed toward Massa Marittima.

  For forty minutes we rolled through the dark Italian countryside. We managed to stay ahead of the black calèche, but it was a losing battle. Our horses were pulling much more weight and they began to tire more quickly. In a bewildered panic our driver informed us that he could not keep our lead much longer. I looked out the window of the carriage and saw that the calèche was only a few hundred feet behind us. We had no weapons. We were powerless against their infinitely superior metabolisms. There was nothing we could do.

  I was about to turn to Dr. von Neefe and make my last amends when she cried exultantly, and gestured toward the window. I looked out and saw that, impossibly, the black calèche was slowing. It paused in the middle of the road as if watching us for the last time and then turned around. I frantically withdrew my pocket watch and saw that it was just a little before dawn. They had to turn back. Soon the sky would be light, and the sun would begin to shine.

  The sun! First god of the ancients. I had never greeted that magnificent and glowing orb with so much rapture and adoration before. Ours was a strange thankfulness, for the world had never looked bleaker. Dr. Weber was dead, and the fates of my two daughters were unknown. The società had been destroyed. The image of that flailing man, the horror in his eyes, was still burning in my mind. Our every source of hope had been torn savagely from our arms. We had been reduced totally and utterly. We were so exhausted with shock we could scarcely think or speak, and perhaps that was why the one pitiful flicker of spirit left in us luxuriated so desperately in the sun.

  I paid the driver a hundred pounds to continue on to Massa Marittima and he happily obliged. We reached the little village by late afternoon. The sun was intense. The little walled town was lost in time. On the outskirts of the sleepy settlement several glass blowers tended their glowing kilns. Grass grew among the cobbles of the matchbox-sized piazza, and in the shade of a plane tree a bartender had brought a chair to the door to escape from the suffocating heat.

  We sat down at a table in one of the little outdoor cafés, just to sit, not to think. Just to sit. Where was Ursula? I could barely allow the question to pass through my mind, for the pain that accompanied it was extreme. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a tousled man rise rheumatically, discussing something in a slow, impenetrable dialect with the woman seated across from him. Dr. von Neefe gazed numbly into space, her nails tapping distractedly against her glass.

  I gaped lifelessly at the crowd. I felt like a bird or quail who had momentarily outwitted the hunter, only instead of among shadows, it was in the sunlight that I hid. There were half a dozen people sitting in the café and fanning themselves against the heat. Beneath the arches of the portico sat two men, one of them a worker, the other a man in a pea-green waistcoat with a very wide-brimmed straw hat. His back was to us.

  I became aware of the sounds of the August afternoon, the hissing of the insects, the rattling of the glasses. I became aware of something else.

  “Wait,” I told Dr. von Neefe, beckoning her to stop the drumbeat of her fingers against her glass. Even through the fabric of her gloves her nails clicked loudly. She paused and listened. Behind us there was a shifting of chairs, and I turned to see that the man in the pea-green waistcoat had stood and was turning toward us. There was no mistaking the graceful and extraordinary way he moved, the face’. He smiled as he approached. The broad straw hat cast a shadow over his eyes, but we knew the eyes all too well. They were blue, icy blue. He carried himself and his finery with the same enviable panache. The sun shone brightly on the green of his waistcoat.

  The sun.

  “Bonjour, monsieur et madame,” came the voice of the gentleman monk. “You look surprised to see me.”

  “How can it be?” I asked.

  He balanced dapperly upon his cane. An opal ring glinted. “Because nothing is as it seems, monsieur. Everything is an illusion.”

  “And the sun?”

  He squinted in the brightness, adjusting the tilt of his hat. “Oh, yes, the myth that the vampire is a completely nocturnal creature. Ah, Monsieur le Docteur, how many times have I asked you to consider logic? It is true that our eyes are more sensitive to the day than mortal eyes. But as you see, we do not wither. Centuries do not suddenly flake and powder in our faces. As for the myth, it was started by the vampire themselves very long ago. As I say, think about it. What better protection could we provide for ourselves, non? Our enemies are so eager to believe and accept. Imagine their surprise when they steal into our dwellings in the full of the day, feeling completely confident that they are going to drive a stake through our hearts, only to hear the door shut behind them and find us sitting, smiling in our chairs. Yes, that rumor, carefully spread and nurtured, has proven to be one of our simplest and greatest protections.”

  Monsieur des Esseintes clicked his thumbnail in a subtle and rapid succession and I realized that was what I had heard. Against the background of the summer sounds that remarkable mode of vampire communication had provided a macabre counterpoint. Even more disarming, commingling with the sibilance of the insects and the clinking of the cups against the tables there was the sound of a distinct reply.

  I turned to see Dr. von Neefe rapping her nails in a purposeful and alien rhythm against her glass.

  How many times had I suspected she was a vampire, but dismissed the thought when I saw her standing in the sun? Had I ever seen her eat? Here and there a pretended bite, but during most of the meals we had shared we had been conveniently divided by the walls of our cells. What other clues had I been given? I had often brushed against her and been comforted by the warmth of her flesh, but hadn’t it been revealed to me through the story of the troubadour that the vampire possessed the yogic ability to control their pulse and body temperature? Had she not displayed incredible strength when she had artfully lifted the sewer cover above her head during our escape in Paris? And what of our escape out the window of the train? I had attributed her strength and dexterity to the adrenaline of fear, but what normal woman would have behaved as she did?

  I had been accompanied by the vampire all along. They had coaxed me here, tricked me here to this isolated little village. I had fallen neatly and simply into their trap. Her lip curled up in a snarl to reveal her fangs. Her hand reached out. I pulled the virus back.

  In a sudden show of rage her gloved hands gripped the sides of the table and flung it upward with such inhuman strength for a moment it seemed to be tumbling toward the sky before it fell and crashed in the roof of a building across the piazza. Screams rose from the crowd as I gripped the satchel containing the virus and broke into a run. I ran as I Have never run before, pulling tables and street carts in my wake.

  I was only dimly aware of the sounds of the crowd and the excited shouting. I prayed that the milling people might somehow slow down my pursuer. I knew of only one place that suited my purposes. I reached the out
skirts of the village and the glowing kilns of the glass blowers. In the tiny courtyard behind the shop were racks upon racks of shimmering vases and decanters of aquamarine glass. There were two or three workmen wandering about and they looked up when I entered their vicinity. In the back against the stucco wall of the adjacent building stood the immense tiled kiln, its maw gaping like the inferno itself.

  “Che cosa desidera?” prattled a plump little man in white overalls as he ambled toward me through the racks.

  I approached the furnace. “Che cos’e,” he said, smiling and trying to understand. “Mi displace, ma non capisco.” I looked at the satchel. The heat was intense upon our faces. He knitted his brow. It was at that moment that the woman who had deceived me reached the hill and looked down toward the courtyard containing the kiln. Des Esseintes was close behind. They stopped in mute horror as I dangled the satchel before the blazing furnace. They dared not advance.

  They had me, but they would not get the virus. I moved closer to the conflagration. My hand was just inches away from the opening of the kiln. I realized that for the sake of human life, for the sake of the world I had to destroy the virus, and yet, out of the haze of my bewilderment, spun a host of uncertainties. If she had wanted the virus so desperately, why hadn’t she just taken it? She had had numerous opportunities. If the vampire could move about in the sunlight, why had the black calèche turned back before dawn? Why? Nothing made any sense. It was all insane.

  Out of nowhere came a voice. “Father!”

  I turned to see that Ursula had appeared on the hill and was standing about thirty feet from them. She was safe! The sight of her gave me new strength. I looked at Dr. von Neefe. I could not believe it. I had respected her. I had felt for her as I had not felt for any other woman for quite some time. I might have even loved her, but now all that was meaningless. Her ability to communicate through the clicking of her nails indicated that she had been a vampire for quite some time, long before she had introduced herself to me as Lady Hespeth Dunaway. But if she had been a vampire all along, what of Dr. Weber? The società? Had they all been lies? And if I had been accompanied by a vampire from the very beginning, what purpose had there been to the terrifying chase, the alleged war between mortal and vampire? Was it possible it was all a deception, an elaborate and stupendous hoax? Why? To achieve what ends? Niccolo’s words came rolling back to me: Never trust the vampire, for everything they say and do is for some other purpose. They will play a cruel and enigmatic “game of the mind” with you and it will be up to you to solve the puzzle, unravel the Gordian knot. I looked at the devouring flame and in one prodigious flash of understanding I realized. What had they driven Chiswick to do, but to destroy his work? Hadn’t they done the same to the engineer at Oxford? What was Hatim’s senseless harassment of the woman in the garden if it was not a tactic to fill her with unreasoning fear? What had they nearly accomplished with Cletus, and they were now carrying to completion with me? In a blaze of crystalline awareness I comprehended the fateful emptiness I had experienced in the street outside of Dr. Hardwicke’s, and again after Dr. von Neefe had begged me to sacrifice my work and I had refused. When Cletus had failed they had switched the focus of their game to me. They had never wanted the virus. They had only wanted me to destroy it.