Tales of the Shadowmen 4: Lords of Terror

by Jean-Marc Lofficier

  “Well, then, of course I will be there,” Schmidt replied. “Seeing you perform tonight would be my greatest pleasure.”

  “I’m sure it will be–in more ways than one, my handsome curator,” Irma commented with a devilish grin. “If you are fortunate.” She playfully ran the tip of her tongue along the edge of her upper teeth.

  She turned on her heel and exited the hall, her footfalls drowned out by the sound of the curator’s sputtering cough as the breath caught in his throat. By the time she emerged from the museum, a new plan was already forming in her mind. There were a few preparations she needed to make before darkness fell, if she were to guarantee that Herr Schmidt experienced the memorable evening she had promised.

  Yes, Irma thought hungrily, what easy prey was man. So easily baited, so easily trapped.

  And how very talented a huntress was she.

  Death came to Berlin that night, though no one knew it–not immediately. It arrived not by storm or fire or plague, but in a black carriage drawn by a team of six horses as dark as the shadows that surrounded them. And it came in the form of a man.

  But it was not the eyes of a man that gazed out from between black curtains at the sartorially attired men and gaily dressed women strolling the cobblestoned streets, but the red-rimmed, hate-filled orbs of a monster. A creature that must have once dwelled within the deepest, blackest pit of hell long before it rose up to walk the land of mortals. An abomination whose very existence was proof enough to the people of its Transylvanian homeland that Satan’s minions truly existed, stalking the Earth in search of souls to destroy–and blood to drink.

  Berlin was a city overflowing with both in these early years of the 20th century. Enough, perhaps, to quench even the constant thirst of its newest visitor: an undead horror that called itself Count Orlock.

  Seated atop the carriage, the creature’s hunchbacked servant directed the horses down a narrow alley, away from prying eyes, and into a mist-shrouded courtyard. The carriage rolled to a halt, and the hunchback clambered down from his seat. Tremulously, he approached the passenger door.

  “We have arrived, Master,” he croaked. “What would you have me do?”

  Orlock inhaled deeply, filling his lungs with the smells of the city: factory smoke and horse offal; ladies’ perfumes and the candy-sweet scent of young children; the musky tang of men and the sweat-tinged fear of his servant. So many aromas to draw in, so many spices to savor in this city of cattle, he thought, and rolled his worm-like tongue along the edge of yellowed, misshapen teeth that refused to remain hidden behind thin, bloodless lips. Slowly, he exhaled and closed his eyes, letting the sounds of this metropolis, this new stalking ground, assault his pointed, bat-like ears. There was the clatter of horse hooves on cobblestones, the roar of motorized conveyances, the clanking of machinery, the strains of music from the cabaret down the street, the incessant chatter of humans discussing worthless topics.

  And above it all there were the quicksilver currents of blood: flowing along arteries, pulsing in veins, racing through organs. Like the bubbling of a mountain stream that greeted the exhausted traveler, it called to Orlock, enticing him, urging him to drink his fill and be replenished.

  The monster smacked its lips and grinned. It had been centuries since he had had occasion to fully quench his thirst, and the trip to Berlin had been a particularly throat-parching one...

  “M-Master?” the hunchback stuttered.

  Orlock frowned at the interruption, and opened his eyes. “Very well, Geist,” he growled softly. “You may start by opening the door.”

  The carriage door flew open, and moonlight flooded into the compartment. Reflexively, Orlock drew back to the safety of the few shadows that remained, then snarled at his foolish reaction. He had nothing to fear from the Moon, his one constant companion through the long years. Unlike the accursed Sun that forced his kind to relinquish their possession of the nighttime world with the approach of each hated dawn, the Moon’s light was as cold as the grave, its chill caress just as inviting.

  He stretched his pipe cleaner-thin legs, and grasped the doorframe with long, bony fingers–digits that appeared less like parts of a once-human hand and more like the appendages of some enormous, winter-white spider, scrabbling for purchase on the lacquered wood. Orlock pulled himself from the compartment and stepped onto the slick cobblestones, then took a few moments to gaze at his surroundings. The courtyard was surrounded on three sides by a carpenter’s shop to the east, a factory to the south, and a boarding house of some sort to the north, and set back far enough from the street that no passersby would take notice of the ghastly blood-drinker–or disturb his plans for the evening.

  And yet, Orlock sensed a nearby presence. He paused, and sniffed the air. “Someone is watching us...” he said, and slowly looked over his shoulder at the boarding house behind him.

  There was a light on in a window on the third floor. And standing at that window, staring down at the vampire lord, was a young woman. Hair the color of spun gold framed an oval face pale with fear. Hazel eyes, wide as serving platters, locked on the glowing red orbs of the walking corpse. Lips soft as rose petals trembled in soundless terror. But she would not remain silent for long.

  Orlock raised a talon-like hand and reached out to the girl. He could hear her heart pounding–almost loud enough, he imagined, for even Geist to take notice. And as the shadow of that cold, dead hand fell across her breast, he closed his spider-leg fingers and seized control of the frantically beating organ, squeezing it, slowing it. Halting it.

  The girl’s eyelids fluttered, and she swooned against the window frame, then slipped bonelessly to the floor. Orlock slowly opened his hand, just a tiny bit. Enough to allow some flow of blood to continue through her veins; enough to keep her alive. After all, she was worthless to him as the appetizer for this night’s sanguinary repast if she was already dead by the time he reached her. To a vampire, the only thing more distasteful than the nauseating stench of garlic was the taste of warm blood gone horribly flat.

  The ghoul licked his cracked lips, his black heart beating just a trifle faster in anticipation of the feast to come, then clambered up the wall to claim his luscious prize.

  He greeted her with a single rose the color of freshly spilled blood.

  Reclining on a zebra-striped settee in one of the Metropol’s dressing rooms, Irma graciously accepted Wilhelm’s romantic gesture and invited him to take a seat. She fought the urge to laugh when he spied the curve of her bosom above the open neckline of her robe and quickly averted his gaze. It was really quite charming, in a way. So different from the coarse manners and even coarser language displayed by the majority of the ruffians and cutthroats who comprised the Vampires’ legions; so exquisitely refined. It made her feel like a real lady, instead of a petty thief who merely acted the part.

  “So, did you enjoy the performance as I’d hoped, my curator?” she asked.

  “It was magnificent!” he declared enthusiastically. “You were magnificent!”

  “Thank you,” Irma said pleasantly. “Then I trust I’ve made a suitable enough impression on you this time.” She took a tiny sniff of the rose, then lowered the flower until its petals rested on her cleavage. As expected, Wilhelm’s eyes followed the path it took, then moved on to glance down at his hands.

  “You could say that,” he agreed with a shy grin.

  “And now it is your turn to impress me, dear Wilhelm,” she said.

  The curator looked up from his hands, his rugged features twisted in obvious confusion. “And how would you propose I do that?” he asked innocently.

  Irma smiled wolfishly. So easily baited, she thought. So easily trapped.

  He wasn’t the finest lover Irma ever had–and unlike painting, the art of lovemaking was an area in which she truly excelled as both gifted artisan and informed critic–but his skills were adequate enough to keep her entertained so she didn’t drift off to sleep before he had finished. A difficult task, but thoughts of the r
eward to come from the Great Vampire helped keep her awake.

  Vampire, she reflected as she lay on the bed in her hotel suite and let Wilhelm busy himself. Such a cruel, ignorant way to describe the image of a woman offering comfort to a lost soul. “She is obviously stealing the life from the poor fellow,” Wilhelm had said at the museum. A wry smile curled the left corner of Irma’s mouth as she wrapped her legs around his waist and pulled him closer. I don’t know where a man would get such an idea...

  Above her, Wilhelm groaned in ecstasy; his body shuddered. Taking her cue, Irma focused her wandering thoughts on the task at hand and quickly responded in kind, gasping “Oh, Wilhelm!” for added effect. Then she pushed him off. It was time for the next stage of her plan. There was much to do before the night was over, and wasting even five minutes to spout some meaningless pillow talk about his sexual prowess–or, rather, the lack thereof–would only disrupt her schedule.

  “A magnificent performance, my curator,” she commented, hoping the words didn’t sound as hollow to him as they did to her own ears, and rolled off the bed to stand on the floor.

  “Danke,” Wilhelm replied with a satisfied grin. If he had detected the bland tone in her voice, he was apparently too much the gentleman to say so. Not that it mattered all that much to Irma. He had taken the bait; now came the moment to spring the trap.

  She took a moment to glance seductively over her shoulder at him, her eyes promising only a brief intermission before the next act, then crossed the suite to an oaken chest of drawers, on which lay a silver tray containing an open bottle of champagne and a pair of wine flutes. She poured some of the champagne into a glass and brought it to him. “Here–drink. You must be thirsty after all that exertion.”

  He nodded in gratitude and raised the glass to his lips. But then he paused, gazing at her above the rim. “Am I to drink alone? Will you not join me?”

  “Oh, I never drink... wine,” the dark-haired vamp said with a coquettish smile. “It makes my head spin frightfully. But, please, don’t let that stop you.”

  “Very well.” He grinned broadly, and raised the glass in a toast. “To love.”

  And pain, Irma thought with a bitter smile. For you can never experience one without the presence of the other...

  Wilhelm drained the flute in one gulp, and placed it on the nightstand beside the bed. The powerful sedative with which the champagne had been laced took effect almost immediately. One moment he was reaching out to stroke her face; the next, his hand had flopped limply by his side.

  Irma watched him slumber for a few moments, then delicately touched his wrist, checking for a pulse. It was slow but strong and she nodded appreciatively, pleased that the handsome curator possessed a hardy enough constitution that ensured the dosage she had given him wouldn’t turn out to be a fatal one. He would sleep for hours and awaken late in the morning with a terrible headache–and no doubt a heart broken by her betrayal.

  Well, he would not be the first to realize he had been played the fool by the irresistibly alluring Irma Vep, nor would he be the last. Love and pain, Irma thought as she turned from her latest victim. They are the weapons of my trade–and all I have to offer.

  She stepped lightly over to a mammoth wardrobe and opened its doors. Reaching behind the suitcases and hatboxes that were already packed, she extracted a large rectangular valise, set it on the floor, and flipped open its metal clasps. Inside were two items: a pair of collapsible wings covered with black material, and a black body stocking that, at first glance, would give the appearance that its wearer had been transformed into a living shadow–or a gigantic bat, once the wings were added to the silhouette.

  A fitting image, Irma considered, given the anagrammatical nature of her name. She unfolded the garment and began slipping it on. “And so to work...” she said with a hungry smile.

  “Exquisite,” Orlock muttered with a hungry smile, and wiped his bloodstained lips with the back of his hand. The blood in this latest victim–the third course of his banquet–had been the most satisfying so far: sweet like nectar, rich with life. Superior in every way to the brackish swill that oozed from the throats of the lowborn, working-class trollops on whom he had earlier supped.

  He rose from the bed and gazed down at the prone figure lying before him. The woman was in her early 20s, with a shape pleasing to even a dead man’s eyes, and tresses so brilliant a shade of red it almost appeared that the white satin pillow on which her head rested was engulfed in flame. Who she might have been in life was unimportant to the vampire lord, though the opulent trappings of her apartment and the quality of her blood suggested aristocracy of some sort. No, all that mattered was the purpose she served in his nocturnal feeding: as a source of nourishment.

  Not that he was immune to the charms of the fairer sex, he reflected; far from it. In that regard, he was much like the human males on which he sometimes feasted. Women were his weakness, his passion, his favored choice of victim, for it was their blood that always ran the hottest. But it was not only the waters of life that pulsed through their veins that drew him to them. The sparkle in their eyes when they stared at him in fear, the quickening of their hearts as they felt the chilled hand of death caress their cheek, the tremulous whisper of their honey-sweet voices as they begged for mercy–was it any wonder he could never refuse an opportunity to take his fill of such delectable creatures?

  And yet, more often than not, it was those very same creatures that served as the catalyst behind every downfall he had ever suffered these past four centuries. He snarled, recalling the last time he had allowed himself to be lured into a trap by the promise of a slender throat upon which to gnaw...

  It was to Bremen, a bustling German city to the West, that Count Orlock had traveled in 1838. Desiring to spread his vampiric influence beyond his Transylvanian homeland, he had chosen Bremen as his new location–and the comely young wife of his real estate agent as his first victim.

  Ellen Hutter was a dark-haired beauty whose angelic features had captured the monster’s stilled heart the moment he saw the picture of her that was carried by her husband, Johann. The couple had only been married a short time before Herr Knock, Johann’s employer, had sent the young man to Orlock’s remote castle in the Carpathian Mountains to finalize the Count’s purchase of an estate in Bremen, yet not even the great distance separating them could diminish the love Hutter possessed for his bride. The outpouring of affection he showed toward the photographic image, speaking to it late at night as though Ellen were sitting right beside him, had both nauseated the vampire lord–and made him extremely jealous. Never in over a century had he seen so alluring a creature; he had to possess her. And so Orlock vowed then that he, too, would know such unbridled love, even if it meant he would have to make Ellen one of his undead “children” in order to win her heart. He would win it; of that he was certain. She would be his bride in death–forever young, forever beautiful, forever faithful. And together they would walk in eternity.

  At least, that had been his intention. He started the process shortly after his arrival in Bremen, visiting her bedchamber late at night on a few occasions to nibble at her swan-like neck, but he did not complete the task. His thoughts became occupied with carrying out his other, far greater plan: to establish Bremen as a staging area from which his invasion of Western Europe would begin. The rats and other vermin he had infected with the Black Plague were to be his first line of attack; the human victims he turned into vampires would be the second. There were many preparations to make and, even with the aid of a crazed Herr Knock, who’d come to imagine himself the Count’s faithful assistant, laying the groundwork for his proposed subjugation of the human race took precious time. When Orlock finally returned to claim his prize, it was to discover that Johann–whom the Count thought already dead back in Transylvania–had rejoined his bride to protect her from the vampire’s unholy attraction. And the cur had gathered friends to help him, including an authority on vampirism named Professor Bulwer. Suddenly, Orlock�
��s relationship with the girl was becoming needlessly, infuriatingly complicated. Something would have to be done to simplify the situation–something involving a number of horrific deaths... and a great deal of bloodletting.

  Yet Ellen Hutter was not only a fetching young lass, but an intelligent and resourceful woman as well. She knew it was only a matter of time before her undead admirer tried to force himself upon her once more, and feared for Johann’s safety if he tried to interfere. And so she came up with a plan of her own: to lure the vampire lord into a trap, with herself as the bait. Not even the Grim Reaper himself could resist such an invitation.

  What Orlock had not known was that Ellen possessed the greatest weapon a mortal could hope to use against a vampire: knowledge. When Johann returned from Transylvania, he brought along a leather-bound tome he had acquired during his frightening adventure: The Book of the Vampires. It recounted the legend of the living dead–the creatures known as nosferatu to the people of Orlock’s land–and provided the sole means to vanquish such a monster: Only a woman pure in heart could defeat the nosferatu. A woman who willingly offered herself to the bloodlusting demon and remained at his side until daybreak, when the light of the rising Sun would destroy him. And though she knew that by enticing Orlock to enter her bedchamber she was dooming herself, still Ellen went through with her plan. Better she sacrifice her life, it seemed, than allow any harm to come to Johann.

  And Orlock, fool that he was, stepped willingly into the temptress’s lair–and paid the ultimate price for allowing his passions to get the best of him.

  It took decades for his body to reform after the Sun’s rays scattered his atoms across Bremen, but not even death’s crushing embrace was strong enough to hold Count Orlock for very long. Still, by the time he returned to corporeal form, more than 60 years had passed. The world had moved on; more importantly, the world had forgotten he ever existed, so that he was now free to hunt without fear of exposure. His enemies were either dead or soon would be. Hutter’s copy of The Book of the Vampires had likely turned to dust, and the plague that ravaged Bremen had become a distant memory. Most surprisingly, however, was that the word nosferatu apparently no longer held the terror it once did–but, as Orlock had concluded some time ago, he now had all the time in the world to restore its horrific reputation...