Vampires Don't Cry: The Collection

by Ian Hall

  “Burn in Hell, devil!” she screeched and let the stone she clutched fly.

  The mob followed suit, pelting my body, and chanting in chorus: “Die, demon, die!” But my eyes never left Nicolette’s wild face.

  I felt the feeble crate kicked from under my feet. In one swift second the sun went black and the choir silenced. When my eyes opened again, the field had been vacated and the moon risen.

  The knots were good, the work of an experienced executioner. I gnawed through the ties at my wrist and freed my neck from the noose, further completing my drop to the hard ground below. Every joint in my body felt the jolt but I recovered quickly and successfully liberated myself from the remaining bonds.

  It proved a painstaking labor to return to the Keep, my abused muscles protesting in agony with each slow step. I soon discovered little reward for such great effort as I stumbled into my parlor to find six of my lynch mob helping themselves to my private stock and to my maid.

  Not that the whore seemed to mind; Nicolette, drunk with both brandy wine and bloodlust seemed all-too eager to offer her body as payment for my assignation. No doubt it had been she who advised them I would be weakest during the day, helpless when exposed to the sun. A pair of them used her in tandem and she encouraged the abuse like a pig grunting over slop.

  “Do not use her up, gentlemen; I have plans of my own for her once all of you are dead.”

  Before the first could reconcile with himself the sight of the dead man looming at the doorway, I had his throat in my teeth. I gorged, sucking the blood rapidly from his artery.

  Dropping the husk, I turned to the next. His first bullet met my chest square, the second grazed my neck. As the room erupted in fire from all directions, I stood against the fray. Their metal pellets broke through skin and tore through muscle but, like the slung stones, could not bring me down.

  I advanced on the next until the barrel of his flintlock pressed against my tattered shirt. It broke easily in my fist. His neck snapped with even less effort.

  The remaining four converged on me. As one, they seized my limbs just as they’d done earlier and dragged me to the floor. Naked, Nicolette rushed to the fray, drawing a sword from its fallen scabbard and plunging it through my abdomen. With a savage smile, she thrust the blade upward, splitting me open as fluid from my entrails seeped and mingled with the smell of blood.

  The men parted as my body went limp under their grips. Nicolette, however, did not cower from the gruesome sight of my splayed body. She reached into the cavity and I felt the chill of her cold fingers groping for my heart.

  With the last vestiges of my diminishing strength, I pulled the sword from my gut and slid its edge across her delicate throat. She fell dead at my side before blackness took me.

  There seemed little I could do. I stood by a high window and watched the crowd take its revenge on the last of the Romanian Cossacks. To my permanent shame, Samara knelt to the cold stone floor in front of me, and below the window’s ledge, she administered to me with her mouth as Tomas dangled to his death.

  I cried silently in pain and pleasure as his swinging body slowly came to rest. I did consider an attempt at rescue, but to be honest, Tomas’s own recent attitude belayed me. As darkness descended on the small cobbled square below, I considered that perhaps his eldest brother would have been the one to save from the blood disease. It mattered not at this late hour, but I mused over the idea.

  Wallowing in my new passion, I retired to my bed, pulling a very willing Samara with me. “We will wait ‘til the very early hours of the morning. When the town sleeps, we will cut him down and leave this place.”

  “He will live again?”

  “It is but a temporary death.”

  But my plan would never even begin. Late that night, soldiers broke into our room.

  “Rise, rise!” they roared, and I stared at their bright braziers wide-eyed. “The Hetman demands you now!”

  I slipped a heavy robe over my head, and pulled it tight to my waist. Arms grabbed me before I could find footwear, and dragged me from the room.

  Familiar corridors alerted me that I was being taken to the main stateroom.

  The three Cossack leaders stood in feverish argument when I entered, their courtiers milling around at a safe distance.

  “Vizier Vyhovsky!” Boran cried, his face was distorted in fear. “The Lucescu snake still lives!”

  He moved to one side, and I saw Tomas, sprawled half-naked against the wall, his lifeless head at a fierce angle. Two physicians knelt at either side of his bare, white chest. They nodded to each other, and stood up together.

  “He heals, sire.”

  Boran whirled on them, striking one to the floor with a huge swipe of his hand. The other cringed back in fear. “How can he heal?”

  “Hi, hi, his cuts heal, sire,” the standing one said nervously. “His skin repairs itself as we watch. The demon within will not let him die.”

  Just to prove their point, Tomas stirred, his body twitching. A soft moan passed from his bruised and swollen lips.

  Boran drew his broad scimitar. “I will cut him limb from limb!”

  “NO!” The word sped out of my mouth before I could stop it.

  Every head in the room spun to me. Decapitation would indeed kill my ward. I scrambled mentally for an avenue of escape. I approached the group with far more confidence than I felt. “He is Vampir,” I said, pushing the physician aside. “You would know of his kind as Strogoi. He has been such for many years.”

  Gasps hissed around the high vaulted room.

  “Dismembering him would only grow him new again,” I said, kneeling by his body. Tomas’s chest rose rhythmically under my hand. I stood and turned to my audience, my lies coming easily to my tongue. “Each part would grow a new Tomas. We would be dealing with an invincible army. A force of immortals.”

  I watched as the fear spread around the room.

  “Burn him.” Yermak Ifkoshev, the leader of the Lugar men, strode to Tomas’s side. A confident grin effused his old, weathered features.

  I shook my head. “Every ember of his ash would rise again. It would be worse than before. You would face a million of him.”

  I grew in confidence, sure of the audience, certain in my lies. For the first time since discovering the insurgence, I considered the possibility of saving the boy.

  “You seem to know quite a bit about him,” Boran approached. He nervously rubbed his chin with his fingers. “Perhaps you are also Strogoi?”

  I laughed.

  Suddenly Tomas stirred. “What?” he mouthed awkwardly. I grinned, so glad of the diversion from Boran’s charge.

  “What do we do?” the Igmar asked, suddenly standing back.

  “Give me your sword,” I said, holding out my hand.

  The shiny blade crossed the room in an easy thrown arc. I took it comfortably, and to Tomas’s horror, I turned and plunged it directly into his heart. I looked intently into his eyes, and mouthed ‘sorry’ as they clouded and fluttered closed.

  With a gasp and sigh, he slipped back to the floor.

  “This will give us more time.” I turned back to Boran, who looked upon me like he’d seen a demon. “We have plans to make.”

  It would be my last memory of the outside world for over three hundred years: the sight of Ivan over me, the sword spearing my heart. Even now I shut my eyes and still see his face.

  While I lay dying, my tissues already stitching themselves back together, the merciless mob hog-tied my legs and arms at the back. They stuffed dirty sackcloth into my mouth, and bound it tight, then placed a rough satchel over my head as a shroud.

  I heard the voice of Boran Pugachev, then my neck was almost hewn through, the jarring shock sent me reeling towards death again, but somehow the bone remained intact, and I thank the old man’s inattention to detail for saving my life.

  Then I woke again.

  Though utterly blinded, I knew the smells of my father’s secret room and the stacks of rotting c
orpses I myself had stashed therein. Their rank suffused the air and I would swear I could hear their taunting laughter.

  There I lay – perhaps for years – working the binding loose. My mind gave way long before the expert knots. All that remained intact of Tomas Lucescu was the unrelenting starvation. Were it not for that, I dare say I would not have existed at all.

  When the ropes crumbled due to great age, and my limbs finally straightened again, I pulled away the burlap shroud and the dank, musty air infiltrated my nostrils, infusing my deprived senses. Lastly, the gag I ripped from my mouth and fully appreciated the dryness of my swollen tongue. With no way to alleviate my thirst, I crawled hand and knee to the remains of my victims and took nourishment from their decaying bones. I twisted them open, but the calcified marrow did little to sate the raging desire to feed.

  Groping through the narrow passages, blind and stumbling, I made my way to the parlor door. Each cold stone brought me one inch closer to life. My nails were filed to nubs as I scratched to drag myself along.

  I inched along winding passages, my mind knowing my path to liberty. At last I extended one, searching hand forward, feeling for the welcoming wooden door that opened to freedom. But to my dismay, the warm wood had been replaced. As I leant against what had once been a doorway, I touched the bottom of the black abyss, finding only more cold, unyielding stone.

  Slipping to the ground, the sound of my own scream resonated back to me off the prison walls. It brought me back to myself; a bright flame in the midst of so much darkness. My first cogent thought in all the passing centuries terrified me; better it would have been to continue my slip into madness than to have been thrust back into the most horrible of realities.

  I would never leave here. Nor would I die here. Forever I would be buried alive.

  “So where did you inter the body?” I asked the seated form of Boran Pugachev. My hands were tied firmly behind my back.

  “Oh we did more than intern him.” Boran smiled at his own joke. “I took your advice, and gave him a friend to talk to.”

  The man almost burst with mirth. “You said his body parts would grow anew?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, I beheaded him before walling him up.” He grinned again. “He’ll wake to be his own tormentor. They’ll drive each other to madness.”

  I sighed inside. So my attempt to save the boy had failed. The Strogoi would have already perished by Boran’s decapitation. I tried not to show my sadness; I had been so hopeful. I thought of the decaying corpse, walled up inside the castle. “So what do you want from me?”

  “A Romanian?” Boran sneered. “We have no use for either your kind or your skills. You are redundant, Ivan Vyhovski, but I have no axe to grind. You did your job for your charges, and failed.”

  I awaited further elucidation, but he bent over a ledger and fell silent.

  “So my future?” I prompted.

  “Ha!” He rose, swiftly sweeping his knife from its short scabbard. He walked behind me, and I felt him nick my thumb as he cut my bonds. “You are free to leave, Vizier, but you only take what you can carry. One horse.”

  “My companion?” I felt surprised how much Samara meant to me already, almost as if she had become my charge, now that Tomas had gone.

  “Fair enough; two horses. Take them from the Lucescu stables, they were an inferior breed anyhow. Go! You have two days to get beyond the reaches of the Hetmantate. I will order your death if you are caught by Cossacks.”

  My robes flowed behind me as I retraced my steps to my quarters. I would be an exile; a Vlach, a Romanian in limbo. It took less than an hour to gather my belongings and choose my horses. I chose the black assassin garb for anonymity, and grabbed my leathers to wear outside the uniform. I had small gold pieces stored in secret compartments in my cross-belts, and a member of the Order does not stay poor for any considerable time. We were the quickest thieves in the land; we would survive well enough.

  To her eternal credit, Samara said little as we prepared to leave the Keep. She followed my instructions flawlessly.

  As we rode under the lofty portcullis, I felt a wave of relief rise from my shoulders. A new adventure lay ahead, uncluttered with Tomas and his ingrained sensibilities. I shed no tear for the man, but as the wind caught my hair, dragging it from the folds of my scarf, I laughed out loud at the release I felt.

  For the first time in forty years, I stood free of the Lucescu family, and released from any ties to the Order in Cossack lands. After a lifetime of subservience, I answered to no one, responsible for none, save Samara and myself.

  The world lay before me, my oyster, and I intended to find every pearl in it.

  I don’t know how long I remained there, lying on the cold floor of the passage. Time seemed an irrelevance; I existed in a state of nonexistence, somewhere in between hopelessness and madness.

  When the first muffled voices wafted through the thick, impenetrable walls, a cold shiver ran through the length of my body. Like disembodied spirits, the words had no form. I stilled my breathing and listened. One tenor voice boomed above the rest, loud and commanding. I might have taken it for the voice of my own father, though the dialect sounded obscure. The thought amused me that I may have forgotten how to speak my native language. An obscene laugh escaped my throat and it sounded chilling even to myself.

  “Boris!” the voice bellowed. “The chisel!”

  Behind me, so violent I could feel the impact in my skull, a new sound broke through my silent prison. Distinctly – metal hitting stone. It repeated in regular rhythm until the pitchy clank became as steady as a beating heart. I timed each breath accordingly.

  A fine mortar dust coated my face, crusting at the nostrils and further drying my mouth. I thought my tongue might crack but still I listened to the clink-clank, clink-clank until a blinding shard of light parted the tightly-packed stones.

  As the first stone got pulled away, a wave of new air rushed the tunnel; with it, the smell of living flesh and human blood. My heart quickened, my hunger amplified. And still I listened. Clink-clank. Soon, a second and a third stone removed.

  “Boris! Flashlight!” The voice sounded far stronger now; nearly at my ear. Romanian, perhaps.

  The thin, concentrated ray of light became a luminous glow that flooded the front of the passage. I shut my eyes as it washed over me.

  “I think I see him!” the voice exclaimed, “Keep digging, men! We’ve found him – the legendary Tomas Lucescu!”

  The steady chipping redoubled at a feverish tempo. Intermittently, the odd, glowing light beamed into my tomb. For my part, I remained still as death until the first of them belly-crawled their way to my side.

  Again the light shone over me, the face of my would-be rescuer looming dangerously close to my own. I could feel his moist breath on my face. Still, I kept up my ruse.

  “Holy mother of God! I’ve never seen a corpse so immaculately preserved.”

  The second man slithered through the small opening, “How can you be so sure it’s him?”

  “Who else could it be, Boris? All the legends tell of the sinister, demon Cossack, Tomas Lucescu, buried here within these walls.”

  “Yes, Professor Carmitru…”

  “True – there are no portraits of the youngest of the Lucescu sons to refer to, but legends have told of his strange appearance; white skin, bald plate,” the professor peeled one lid from my eye, “nearly colorless…this is him, Boris – Tomas Lucescu!”

  “Yes, Professor Carmitru…”

  “Carefully now – we must prepare the corpse to be transferred back to University, then we’ll explore the remainder of the passages.”

  I felt my body being rolled to my side and a slab of something hard and rigid placed under me. The men pushed me forward to the lighted opening where more hands carefully pulled me through. I felt like a newborn babe, passing through its mother’s birth canal and into life.

  There were two of them. Even in my diminished state, I crushed thei
r skulls between my hands and fed upon their blood. What seemed hours later, a much younger man – this Boris, no wonder – shimmied through the hole and met a similar fate.

  The last of them, I took in hand, lifting against the wall. “Professor Carmitru,” I welcomed him with a broad smile, “today you come face to face with the legendary Tomas Lucescu.”

  “Not…possible…” he gasped through my strangle hold.

  “Oh yes, Professor; in every legend lies an element of truth.” I lowered the panting man to his feet but did not release him from my clutches. “Now, what does legend report on the fate of Ivan Vyhovsky?”

  Vampires Don’t Cry

  The story of Donny Kelp

  By Ian Hall and April L. Miller

  Pennsylvania, December 1958

  Seems that being a vampire, and keeping up the appearance of normality were one and the same thing.

  SLAP.

  Another clatter across the forehead, this time nearer to my temples.

  “I thought you were smart!” Her voice hurt more than her open hand.

  SLAP.

  It wasn’t as though I could put up any resistance. My arms were twisted behind me by two of the college football team, and since Valerie went on and on at me about the restraints ‘we vampires’ had to live under, I’m guessing that the football lunks were also turned.

  Two days. I’m two days a vampire, turned against my will by the delectable slapping Valerie, and I’m already being reprimanded for making ‘rookie mistakes.’

  “How was I meant to know?” I pleaded between slaps.

  Yup.

  SLAP.

  “You’re meant to have some kind of idea!” she spat at me. I couldn’t help but see the sexy side of the whole punishment. The more I sagged in the footballers’ arms, the lower she leaned over, and the more cleavage I saw down the front of the cheerleader uniform. Not that I hadn’t seen it before; two nights ago, in fact. We were doing it, fully naked, when just at my moment – my moment – she bit my neck hard. It didn’t actually spoil my enjoyment that much, just made it different.