Kardina

by Thomas Emson

  All of it is superstition, thought Lawton as he approached the abandoned church’s entrance.

  He gripped the strap of his backpack. The spear was in there. He’d arm himself if he sensed any danger. And he was very good at picking up on any threats. His military training had honed his instincts. Fighting vampires had sharpened them further.

  At the moment he felt no dread. Only cold. Only wet.

  But once he stepped through the entrance and into the ruin, the atmosphere changed. His skin crawled, and he gasped for breath. He quickly got the spear out, grasping it tightly. A cold sweat broke out on his back. His nerves tightened. His heart pounded. Blood thundered through his veins, and his dead eye pulsed, sending a jolt of pain into his skull. He gritted his teeth. Something was here. Something that had been inside his head over the past few weeks. The thing that had been calling to him in his dreams. The dreams that were impossible a few years ago because he didn’t sleep.

  An image flashed in his head, staggering him.

  It was of a woman in white, her skin pale like the moon, her eyes red like blood, her hair a crow-black waterfall.

  His chest tightened.

  He held the spear in his sweaty palm, fearing he would drop it, fearing he would be vulnerable without a weapon.

  He’d never sensed anything like it.

  He could almost taste the fear, and he tried to lick it off his lips. Lawton scolded himself. Told himself to take control. Tried to master his alarm and his body’s reaction to it. Slowly, he grappled himself out of dread’s tight grip and focused on where he was.

  He looked around. The rain came in because there was no roof. The wind howled through the relic because the windows and most of the walls were gone. The altar had been destroyed. The pews were rotted away. No icons remained, no images of faith. But one thing still stood. Lawton fixed on it. He narrowed his eyes, wondering how it was possible, after all these years, that the structure remained.

  It was the confessional. A wooden cupboard, its door ajar as if inviting someone to step inside and unload their sins.

  Lawton strode towards the confessional. He ignored the rats that spilled through the door. They squealed as if they’d been scared by something. Lawton walked through the vermin, scattering them. Without fear, he ripped open the confessional’s door.

  The smell hit him.

  Death.

  Sweet and rotten.

  He reeled away.

  He coughed.

  He retched.

  Hot water filled his throat.

  He nearly threw up but managed to stop himself.

  He grabbed some water from his backpack and drank. It was tepid, but it washed away the sour taste in his throat.

  He steeled himself and entered the confessional.

  There was a door at the back, hanging off its hinges. Cold air came through it. Lawton nudged the door aside. His sense of smell was adjusting to the rancid odour, and he was getting used to it.

  “Christ,” he said, staring at some stone steps that were covered in moss and damp. The steps spiralled downwards. He felt he had to go down them. He had no choice. Whatever he was looking for, whatever had been calling him, was at the bottom of those steps.

  He shook his head.

  Was he going mad?

  Was he losing his mind?

  Four years ago, he would never have believed dreams were anything more than emissions from the sub-conscious. They had no meaning. They had no message. But things had changed. He now believed in vampires. He now believed the undead lived. He now believed everything, because if you didn’t, you could die.

  Scepticism in this new world could kill you.

  Belief could save your life.

  If you doubted that vampires existed, you’d stroll out after dark without a care in the world. Accept they were real, and you’d stay indoors after sunset – and that, in 21st-century Britain at least, would ensure your survival.

  The steps were narrow and dark. The walls dripped with water. Thick cobwebs draped from the ceiling. Large insects Lawton could not identify scuttled over his shoes as he walked down. It was slippery, and he had to be careful. He used his torch to guide him, but the beam was weak in the deep darkness.

  He kept descending.

  Water dripped. Rats skittered. Lawton braced himself. He was ready for an attack. Human or vampire, he would deal with it. He feared no one. Vampires baulked at the sight of him, armed with the spear, marked by the red skin of the trinity – he was their nemesis. And no human worried Lawton. He had faced the strongest and the deadliest as a soldier, and, during the past three years, as an illegal bareknuckle fighter. He’d retired undefeated. But he’d come out of retirement if anyone fancied their chances. Right now, he was thinking. Right now. Bring it on.

  Down he went, spiralling deeper into the bowels of the ancient church. Finally, he reached the bottom of the stairs. Ahead of him, another door, hanging off its hinges. It led into a dark room. Lawton threw a beam of light into the darkness. Images flashed in the illumination. He saw two rats eating raw flesh. He saw another rat cocooned in cobwebs. He didn’t want to imagine the spider that had trapped the animal in its silk.

  Entering the room, the air grew colder. The sound of water dripping became louder. He scanned the room with the torch.

  Something hissed. Lawton stiffened. It sounded like a voice, a whisper. He shook his head, dismissing his initial judgment.

  It couldn’t have been, he thought.

  He traced the beam around the room. The light fell on a pile of bones. Lawton froze, holding the remains in the torchlight. Even before he started to approach, he knew what animal the bones belonged to.

  They belonged to a human animal.

  He cursed as he surveyed the skeletons. There were dozens. Children among them.

  Something scraped along the wall. Lawton jerked the flashlight towards the noise. He staggered in horror at what the beam showed.

  Pinned to the far wall, there were more skeletons. They had been crucified. Their jaws hung open as if in eternal agony. He moved the torchlight along the remains and counted fifteen before the wall turned a corner. Shining his torch around the bend, he caught glimpses of more human bones, either piled on the floor or nailed to the walls.

  “Jesus,” he said.

  It was a charnel house.

  These people had been murdered.

  They’d been tortured.

  But why?

  “… voivode… ” came a whisper.

  Lawton wheeled. The torchlight sliced the darkness. In its beam, Lawton was sure he saw a figure. But in that split second he decided it was his mind playing tricks. He had to keep calm. He had to stay in control of his body.

  He kneeled, gripping the spear tightly, and raised the torch slowly towards the area where he thought he’d seen the figure. A cell was tucked into the far corner of the cellar. The bars were rusty. They were bent outwards. He lifted the flashlight slowly, and the beam settled on the hem of a white dress.

  Lawton’s bowels turned to ice.

  He stood.

  He aimed the light at the figure in the cell.

  He clenched his teeth, trying not to pass out.

  The woman sat calmly. She had coal-black hair, and her skin was snow-white. Her red eyes burned in the gloom, and the dress she wore seemed to float around her.

  Lawton’s throat locked.

  It was the woman from his dream.

  The one who had been calling him.

  She was incredibly beautiful. He could not take his eyes off her. He was transfixed, and his body suddenly ached for hers. But there was something abominable about her. Something that made him sick. He was desperate to touch her skin, but knew if he did it would be cold and dead.

  Then the woman smiled, revealing her fangs.

  She said, “Am asteptat 500 ani pentru tine, voivode.”

  Lawton tried to say he didn’t understand. The woman rose and floated through the buckled bars of the cell. Lawton tried
to move away. But he was frozen to the spot. He was terrified. He’d never known such terror. His hand tightened on the spear. But he felt weak, his body sapped of energy.

  She came to him, and he smelled her – roses and death.

  With one hand, she held his wrist, preventing him from lifting the spear. He had been right: her touch felt cold and ancient.

  She said, “Vorbi cu mine.”

  “What… what did you say?”

  “Vorbi cu mine.”

  “What are you saying… saying to me?”

  “I say to you, ‘Speak to me,’ and you do, and I have your language. I know it. I have waited 500 years for you, prince.”

  PART THREE. POWER.

  CHAPTER 17. BEAUTIFUL MONSTER

  Poienari Castle, Wallachia, Romania – December 1476

  SIMEON of Tălmaciu nervously opened the door to Vlad’s bedchamber.

  He peeked inside, and what he saw almost made him faint. He had to sit on the trunk he’d only moments before dragged out of the room.

  He had been told to take the trunk to Bucharest, seventy-five miles away, where his Nebuchadnezzar brother, Prince Mehmed, waited for him with the Ottoman army. Mehmed would return the chest’s contents to the East, to Constantinople. The prince was not really an Ottoman. No more than Simeon was truly Christian and European. They were both descended from King Nebuchadnezzar. They both strove to bring Babylon back. Babylon and her vampires. Mehmed had once told him, “We are not Christian, we are not Jews, we are not Mussulmen.”

  They weren’t. They were none of those religions. They were of an older religion. A religion born in the bowels of Babylon thousands of years before Christ. The most powerful faith in history.

  “Go,” Simeon’s mistress had told him. “Go and find Mehmed, and keep the chest safe.”

  And then his mistress had faced Vlad the Impaler, enemy of all vampires, killer of the living and the dead. The voivode had murdered Simeon’s father months earlier. Impaled him as he’d impaled the vampires. Left him alive with a post driven into his bowels. Left him alive to rot and have his eyes plucked out by the crows. It took days for his father to die, and every second was agony. Simeon craved revenge, and his mistress would be his sword.

  His mistress Ereshkigal.

  The ancient witch.

  One of Nimrod’s hundred brides.

  The oldest vampire in the world.

  Five thousand years old.

  A beautiful monster.

  Simeon’s father, whose cover was as priest of Tălmaciu, had been so close to resurrecting the trinity.

  But Vlad, the Wallachian prince, had been at war with the Nebuchadnezzars and their vampires allies for decades. He had harried them and murdered them. He was a dangerous man who showed very little fear and no mercy.

  Forests of stakes had dotted Wallachia.

  Screams filled the mountains.

  Death saturated the air.

  Vlad would impale the vampires, but not through the heart. They would be alive and pinned to the tall, wooden poles through their bellies. They could not escape. They writhed in agony and terror, waiting for dawn to come. Waiting for the sun to fry them alive. The Wallachian mass murderer had done the same to Simeon’s father. Driven a sharpened post up into him. Simeon could still hear his father’s dreadful shriek as the stake pierced him.

  After a moment sitting on the trunk, he now stepped into Vlad’s bedchamber.

  The voivode lay dead, an arrow wound in his chest.

  Ereshkigal’s remains were scattered on the stone floor.

  She was dust.

  Simeon cried out.

  He raced to the window and stared out. Down in the valley near the River Arges, Vlad’s army was camped.

  A man with a longbow strapped across his back trudged down the gorge towards the camp.

  Simeon looked at Vlad’s body.

  The archer walking down to the valley must have fired, aiming to kill Ereshkigal. But he’d also struck his own master.

  Simeon wanted to laugh at the archer, wanted to mock him.

  But he needed to stay alive and not draw attention to himself.

  He needed to gather his mistress’s remains.

  Hurriedly, he found a clay jar. He tossed out the contents. They were trinkets – rings, bracelets, necklaces.

  Simeon carefully swept up Ereshkigal’s ashes. She was dirt now. But he knew she could be resurrected. The trinity had only been fragments. However, the right conditions allowed you to bring such immortals back to life.

  And he would bring Ereshkigal back to life.

  He found a donkey and cart in the stables.

  He loaded up the trunk, which carried the Spear of Abraham, on the cart. He kept the jar containing his mistress’s remains under his cloak.

  Simeon rode out and began the dangerous journey to Bucharest.

  CHAPTER 18. DEATH’S KISS.

  Tălmaciu – March 1497

  SIMEON enjoyed torturing people. He found he was good at it. It made him feel powerful. That was important for such a weak man. He spent half a day on inflicting pain, and that was after telling his victim what his or her fate would be. That always made their suffering much worse. That made his joy greater. It filled him with strength, as if he were feeding off the sufferer’s dread.

  The man suspended above the cellar floor screamed.

  “Please,” he begged. “I have gold – I have silver – I have a daughter – you can have her – she is ten – please don’t do this to me – I shall burn in hell – ”

  Simeon dragged the coffin across the stone floor and placed it directly beneath the man, who screamed and bellowed when he saw its content. The noises he made did not sound human. His struggles increased. Simeon had tied him to a scaffold. Leather straps bound the man’s wrists and ankles. He was stretched in a star fashion, facing down. He was about five feet above the coffin.

  He was shrieking now: “Please – No! – In the name of God – In the name of Jesus and his Holy Mother – ”

  Simeon had found him at the inn down in the village. He was drunk and clearly a sodomite. He made lewd suggestions to Simeon, who had used the man’s lust to tempt him outside.

  Once in the dark street, Simeon had clubbed him across the back of the head. He had hefted the man’s body onto the cart, and hen whipped the donkey along the narrow road that led from town, through the forest, to the ruins of the church where Simeon’s father had been captured and murdered by Vlad Tepes.

  For months, he had lived in the bowels of the church. It had been where his father had tried to resurrect the vampire trinity. It was where he would resurrect Ereshkigal.

  After he left Vlad’s fortress, he had travelled to Bucharest. He made it to Mehmed’s camp and gave him the spear.

  Mehmed had promised to return it to Constantinople. He had offered to take Simeon with him. But he’d declined the offer, saying he had duties in Romania. And when he had told Mehmed what they were, the prince had baulked.

  “Do not bring her back,” he had warned Simeon, his eyes wide with fear. “She is death.”

  “She is beautiful, and she killed The Impaler.”

  “Good,” said Mehmed. “She has been useful. But the brides of Nimrod, like Nimrod himself, cannot be controlled by men. They are not the trinity. Our duties, as Nebuchadnezzars, lie with Kea, Kakash, and Kasdeja. That is our pledge, Brother Simeon. Nimrod and his witch wives are better off dead. They are not beholden to us. Do not give this creature life again.”

  Simeon promised he would heed Mehmed’s warning.

  But he hadn’t. He wanted to see Ereshkigal again. He wanted to worship her. And he wanted, as Vlad had done, to make love to her undead flesh.

  “What is that creature?” cried the man on the scaffold now. “What are you doing to me?”

  Simeon looked into the casket and gazed at what had terrified the fellow.

  Ereshkigal was coming to life.

  She looked haggard and ancient. A cadaver. Her skin was like
leather, wrinkled and thin. Her body was emaciated, her face gaunt. You would not say by looking at her that she was a beauty. But she would be when she had been nourished. And Simeon was sure that the blood of this man would be enough to give her life.

  During the past few weeks, he had brought six victims here and bled them into Ereshkigal’s ashes – and with each sacrifice, she became more formed. Simeon felt like God, making life out of clay.

  He was so excited. He was erect beneath his cowl – erect for her, his dead queen.

  He took the knife, and the man on the scaffold squealed.

  Simeon gutted him.

  The man howled. His innards spooled out of his belly.

  Blood and slime gushed out.

  The gore splashed over Ereshkigal’s remains.

  The opened man bellowed and twitched.

  Simeon then sliced him from throat to sternum, sawing through bone, which splintered and cracked.

  The man jerked.

  Blood rained.

  The man died with a terrible noise coming from his throat.

  Simeon snapped open his ribcage.

  He clawed out the man’s heart and lungs, slopping them into the coffin.

  Ereshkigal’s remains hissed.

  Smoke rose from her cadaver.

  Simeon stepped back.

  The smell was terrible.

  Steam filled the cellar.

  Simeon retched.

  And then he froze.

  She reared up out of the smoke.

  More beautiful than she had ever been.

  She was naked and pale. Her black hair streamed over her shoulders. Her eyes burned red.

  She opened her mouth. Her fangs were sharp.

  Simeon fell to his knees, jabbering.