by Dan Simmons
Or am I? thought Kate. He’s changed. He’s different around Joshua. Hell, I’ve changed. She looked down at her coffee, watching the cream in it swirl and feeling a similar swirl of emotions.
“Hey,” said Tom, “you don’t have to answer now. It’s probably a dumb idea. I wasn’t talking about reconciliation, just about…” He faltered.
Kate put her hand on his, noticing how small and white hers seemed next to his tanned and massive paw. “Tom,” she said, “I don’t think it’s a good idea…but I’m not sure anymore. I’m just not sure.”
He grinned at her—that boyish, unselfconscious grin that had made her dizzy the first time they met. “Look, Kat,” he said, “let’s just table it for a while. Or better yet, let’s talk about it over a drink. Do you still have that brandy that the Harrisons sent from England last Christmas?”
She nodded. “But it’s a workday tomorrow…”
“And whatshisname, your priest buddy is coming,” finished Tom with a smile. “Right. We’ll just have one snifter full. Maybe two. Then I’ll carefully drive myself down the hill to my efficient little efficiency. Good enough?”
“Good enough,” said Kate, feeling the effects of the wine she had already drunk as she stood up. She steadied herself with a casual grip of the table. “I’m drunk,” she said.
Tom touched her back. “You’re exhausted, Kat, You’ve been putting in eighty-hour weeks since you got back from Romania. I would have dragged you out of there tonight even if I hadn’t had anything to propose.”
She set her hand against his cheek. “You’re sweet,” she said.
“Yup,” said Tom, “that’s probably why you divorced me.” They walked together to his Land Rover.
Kate had given Tom an access card for the development’s security gate and he used it now rather than disturb Julie, who almost certainly was still working on her dissertation. It was only nine P.M., but it was very dark out and the few stars showing through the clouds seemed to gleam with a cold brilliance.
“We missed the Autumn Equinox Celebration this week,” Kate said softly as the Land Rover bounced and jostled down the rutted road. The Equinox Celebration had been one of Tom’s made-up holidays, each of which had started as a joke and become something of a real tradition during their years together.
“Not too late to celebrate it,” Tom said. “We just don’t try to balance any eggs on end…wait a minute.”
He had stopped the Land Rover just as they came around the last bend before the house, and Kate immediately noticed what he had seen: all the lights were out on the house—not just interior lights, but porch light, garage security light, patio light, everything.
“Shit,” whispered Tom.
Kate’s heart seemed to skip a beat. “We’ve had a couple of outages this summer…”
Tom inched the Land Rover forward. “Did you notice if the Bedridges’ was lit up?”
Kate turned in her seat to look across the meadow toward their nearest neighbor a quarter of a mile away. “I don’t think so. But that doesn’t mean much…they’re in Europe.”
The Land Rover’s headlights illuminated the dark garage, breezeway, and a bit of the patio as they turned into the slightly inclined driveway. Tom doused the lights and sat there a minute. “The security gate was working,” he said. “I forget, does it have some sort of backup generator?”
“I don’t know,” said Kate. Julie should have heard us, she was thinking. She should have come to the door. There was no hint of candlelight inside the front or second-story windows on this side of the house. Julie works in the study next to my room—Joshua’s room—until I get home. We wouldn’t see the candlelight from here if she stayed with Joshua.
“Stay here,” Tom said at last.
“The hell with that,” said Kate, opening her car door.
Tom muttered something but tugged the keys out. They were three feet from the front door when Julie’s terrified voice said, “Stay away! I have a gun!”
“Julie!” cried Kate. “It’s us. What’s wrong? Open the door!”
The door opened onto blackness and a flashlight beam flicked on, first in Kate’s face, then in Tom’s. “Quick…get in!” Julie said.
Tom slammed and locked the door behind him. Julie was holding Joshua against her while juggling the flashlight in her left hand and the Browning automatic in her right. Tom took the weapon from her as the young woman whispered excitedly, “About twenty minutes ago… I was working at the computer…all the lights went out… I was looking in the dining room for the flashlight and candles when I saw shadows out on the patio…heard men whispering…”
“How many men?” Tom asked, his voice very soft. Kate had taken the baby, Julie had flicked off the flashlight, and now the three adults huddled together in the darkened hallway.
Julie was just a silhouette as she shook her head. “I dunno…three or four at least. For a minute I thought maybe it was guys from the power company come to fix the electricity…and then they started rattling the patio door.” Her voice was ragged. Kate touched her shoulder as Julie paused to take a few deep breaths. “Anyway, I ran in, got Josh and the pistol, and came back out just as the guys were breaking the glass on the patio door. I yelled at them that I had a gun and then they weren’t there anymore. I ran around the house making sure all the windows were closed and…it’s dead, Tom, I tried it right away.”
He had moved to the hall phone. Now he listened a second, nodded, and set it back.
“Anyway,” said Julie, “it was just a minute or two later that I heard the truck and saw the lights out front. It didn’t sound like the Cherokee and…oh, Jesus, I’m glad to see you guys.”
Holding the pistol at his side and taking the flashlight from Julie, Tom moved from room to room, the two women behind him. He would flash the light for a second, then flick it off. Kate saw the shattered glass on the patio sliding door, but the door was still locked. They moved past the kitchen to the study, beyond the study to the master bedroom.
“Here,” said Tom and handed Kate the Browning. He went into the bedroom closet a minute and came out with the shotgun and the box of shells. Dumping shells into the pocket of his tweed sportscoat, he pumped the shotgun once. “Come on,” he said. “We’re getting out of here.”
There were shrubs and boulders along both sides of the driveway and Kate was sure each of them was moving as she watched Tom spring the ten paces to the Land Rover. She saw that the hood was up slightly the same instant that she heard Tom say, “Goddamn it.” He slid behind the wheel anyway but the starter did not even crank. Nor did the lights come on.
He jogged back to them at the doorway, the shotgun at port arms.
“Wait,” said Kate. “Listen.” There was a sound from beyond the kitchen; something had broken or dropped downstairs, on the lower level where Julie’s room and the other guest suite were.
“Miata,” whispered Tom and led the way down the hall and into the dark kitchen, toward the breezeway to the garage.
The refrigerator clanked on and Kate jumped a foot and swung the Browning toward it before she recognized the sound. Joshua stirred and began to cry softly. “Shhh,” whispered Kate. “Shhh, baby, it’s all right.” They moved down the breezeway in the dim light through the windows along each side, Tom first, then Kate, Julie clinging tightly to Kate’s shirt. There was another sound from the house behind them.
Tom kicked open the garage door and extended the shotgun with the flashlight directly above it. Both swung in fast arcs, the flashlight beam illuminated storage shelves, the closed garage door, the open side door, the Miata with its hood up and wires visibly ripped free.
They moved back into the breezeway and crouched there. Tom doused the light.
“Hey,” whispered Julie, her teeth chattering audibly, “it was only a two-seater anyway.” She grasped Kate’s hand where it held the baby. “Just kidding.”
“Quiet,” whispered Tom. His voice was soft but steady.
They huddled there ne
ar the garage door, below the level of the breezeway windows, staring down the fifteen feet of tiled floor toward the door to the kitchen. They had left the door open a crack. Kate tried to listen but could hear nothing above Joshua’s soft whimpering in her ear. She rocked and patted the baby, still feeling Julie’s hand on her arm.
There was a movement of black against black, Tom switched on the flashlight, and his shotgun roared an instant before Julie screamed and the baby began wailing.
The white face and long fingers had disappeared from the kitchen doorway a second before Tom’s shotgun blast ripped off part of the doorframe. Kate was sure that the face had ducked out of sight in that second. She was also sure that it was the same face she had seen in the baby’s room two months earlier.
Tom flicked off the flashlight, but not before she had caught the look of shock as his gaze met Kate’s. He had also recognized the man.
There was a scrape and sliding from inside the garage.
Trying to hush both the baby and the pounding of her own heart, Kate slid against the wall and slowly raised her eyes to the breezeway window. Two dark forms moved with incredible quickness outside on the small patch of yard between the breezeway and the cliff. Tom had also glimpsed them.
“Fuck this,” he whispered to them. “We need to get outside where we can get into the meadow…head for the road.”
Kate nodded. Anything was better than this claustrophobic corridor where anyone could come at them from any direction. In the dim light from the windows, she looked down at the pistol in her hand. Could I really shoot someone? Another part of her mind answered almost immediately, You’ve already shot someone. And if he comes after you or Joshua, you will shoot him again. She blinked at the clarity of the thought which cut through the swirling mists of conflicting duties, her Hippocratic imperative, and heart-pounding fears like a searchlight through fog: You will do what you have to do. Kate looked at the pistol and noticed with almost clinical detachment that her hand was not shaking.
“Come on,” whispered Tom. He pulled them to their feet. “We’re going out.”
The breezeway had a door that opened onto the walk leading from the garage to the front door, but before Tom could open it everything happened at once.
A shape launched itself through the kitchen door again. Tom whirled, lowered the shotgun to hip height, and fired.
The window behind them exploded into shards as two men in black clothing hurtled through the glass. Kate raised her pistol even as she tried to shelter Joshua from the spray of glass.
Someone came through the breezeway door. Tom pumped the shotgun and turned toward the man.
Julie screamed as dark arms and white hands came out of the garage and seized her by the hair, pulling her into the darkness.
The shotgun roared again. A man screamed something in a foreign language. Kate stumbled backward into the corner, still sheltering Joshua from the melee of dark forms, crunching glass, and a sudden lick of flames visible from the open kitchen door. She leaned into the garage and extended the Browning, trying to separate the dark form of the intruder there from the struggling shadow that had to be Julie.
“Julie!” screamed Kate. “Drop!”
The smaller shadow fell away. A man’s white face was just visible as it turned toward the breezeway. Kate fired three times, feeling the automatic buck higher in her hand each time. Joshua let out a piercing wail in her ear and she hugged him tighter as she said, “Julie?”
The shotgun blasted again behind her and she was suddenly slammed into the breezeway corner as several forms collided with her. Tom’s face loomed for an instant, she saw that at least three black-clad men were wrestling with him and that the shotgun had been wrenched from his hands, and before she could open her mouth to speak or scream or cry, he said, “Run, Kat,” and then the struggling forms swirled away through the open door.
At least three other dark shapes were pulling themselves to their feet in the breezeway, their forms silhouetted by the soft glow of flames from the kitchen. Something moved in the garage but Kate could not tell if it was Julie or not. One of the men in black reached for her pistol.
Kate fired three times, the dark shape fell away and was replaced by another hurtling form. She raised the Browning directly into a white face, made sure it was not Tom, and fired twice more. The face snapped backwards and out of sight as if it had been slapped by an invisible hand.
Two other men rose from the floor. Neither was Tom. A man’s hand slid around the doorframe from the garage. Kate lifted the pistol and fired, heard the hammer click uselessly. A heavy hand fell on her ankle.
“Tom!” she gasped and then, without thinking, curled both arms around Joshua and threw herself through the shattered window. Dark shapes scrambled behind her.
Kate hit hard in the flower garden and felt the wind go out of her. The baby had breath enough to cry. Then she was up and running, loping across the yard, trying to get behind the garage and beyond, into the aspen trees near the access road.
Two men in black stepped out and blocked her way.
Kate skidded to a stop in loose loam and reversed herself, running back toward the balcony and doors to the lower level.
Three men in black stood between her and the house or the breezeway. The windows of what had been the nursery were painted orange with flame from inside the house. There was no sign of Tom or Julie.
“Oh, God, please,” whispered Kate, backing toward the cliff edge. Joshua was crying softly. She set her free hand on the back of his head.
The five forms advanced until they formed a semicircle, forcing her back until her heels were on the exposed granite at the edge of the cliff. In the sudden silence, Kate could hear the crackling of flames and the soft sound of the creek sixty feet below her.
“Tom!” she screamed. There was no answer.
One of the men stepped forward. Kate recognized the pale, cruel face of the intruder. He shook his head almost sadly and reached for Joshua.
Kate whirled and prepared to jump, her only plan to shield Joshua from the fall with her own body and hope that they hit branches. She took a step into space…
…and was pulled back, a gloved hand wrapped in her hair. Kate screamed and clawed with her free hand.
Someone jerked the baby from her grasp.
Kate let out a sound more moan than cry and twisted around to face her attacker. She kicked, clawed, gouged, and tried to bite.
The man in black held her at arm’s length for a second, his face totally impassive. Then he slapped her once, very hard, took a firmer grip on her hair, spun her around, lifted her, and threw her far out over the edge of the cliff.
Kate felt an insane moment of exhilaration as she spun out over treetops illuminated by flame—I can grab a limb!—but the limb was too far, her fall was too fast, and she felt a surge of panic as she tumbled headfirst through branches that tore at her clothes, ripped at her shoulders.
And then she felt a great pain in her arm and side as she hit something much harder than a branch.
And then she felt nothing at all.
Dreams of Blood and Iron
My enemies have always underestimated me. And they have always paid the price.
The light coming through the small windows of my bedroom has an autumnal edge to it now as it moves across the rough white walls, across the broad boards of the floor, and onto the tumbled quilt covering my bed. My prison.
I have been dying here for years, for an eternity. The others whisper to each other, thinking that I cannot hear the urgency in their voices. I know that there is some problem with the Investiture Ceremony. They are afraid to tell me about the problem; afraid that it will upset me and hurry my final dissolution. They are afraid that I will die before the Investiture takes place.
I think not. The habit of life, however painful, is too difficult to break after all these centuries. I can no longer walk, can hardly lift my arm, but this accursed body continues to attempt to repair itself, even though I have n
ot partaken of the Sacrament since my arrival home more than a year and a half ago now.
I may soon ask about these whispers and urgent comings and goings. It may be that my enemies are stirring again. And my enemies have always underestimated me.
I began my reign in August of 1456, staging the anointment ceremony in the cathedral at Tîrgovişte, the city where my father had ruled. I devised my own title: “Prince Vlad, Son of Vlad the Great, Sovereign and Ruler of Ungro-Wallachia and of the Duchies of Amlas and Făgăraş.” After my escape from the Sultan and in recognition of the alliances I had formed with Transylvania’s boyar noblemen, John Hunyadi thought it wise to orchestrate the return of a Dracula to the Dracul throne.
At first my voice was soft, conciliatory. In a letter I wrote to the mayor and councilmen of Braşov a month after my ascension to the throne of Wallachia, I used my best court Latin to address them as honesti viri, fratres, amici et vicini nostri sinceri—or as “honest men, brothers, friends, and sincere neighbors.” Within two years, most of those fat burghers would be writhing on the stakes upon which I had impaled them.
I remember with a joy that not even such oceans of time have been able to dim, that Easter Sunday of 1457. I had invited the boyars—those noble couples who felt that I ruled at their pleasure—to a great feast in Tîrgovişte. After the Easter Mass, the visitors repaired to the banquet hall and open courtyards where long tables of the finest food had been set aside for these gentlemen and their families. I allowed them to finish their feast. Then I appeared, on horseback, in the company of a hundred of my most loyal soldiers. It was a beautiful spring day, warmer than most. The sky was a deep and terrible blue. I remember that the boyars cheered me, their ladies waving lace handkerchiefs in their admiration, their children lifted to shoulders the better to see their benefactor. I doffed my plumed cap in response to their cheers. It was the signal my soldiers were awaiting.
The oldest boyars and their wives I ordered impaled on the stakes I had raised outside the city walls while the unsuspecting fools attended mass. I was not the inventor of impalement as a punishment—my own father had used it occasionally—but after this day, I was known as Vlad Ţepeş—“Vlad the Impaler.” I did not dislike the title.