Blood of the Impaler (52 page)

"Remember, all of you, remember?" Malcolm laughed. "Remember, Mina, when Van Helsing touched your forehead with the consecrated host a hundred years ago? It
burned
you, it
burned
you, just like it burned me in the churches here and in Rome, just like the consecrated wine burned Jerry this afternoon!" His hate-filled eyes turned to Lucy. "And we were just polluted. But you, Lucy, you are
pollution
!"

Lucy backed up against the wall of the basement, shaking her head, her eyes wild and frenzied, her body racked by unspeakable agony. Liquidy postules began to swell upon her face; her skin grew bright red and began to blister; the fluids in her body began to boil.

"Burn, damn you!" Malcolm shouted. "Burn!"

She did not burn.

She exploded.

The roaring blast of her intense and instantaneous internal combustion shook the very foundations of the house. Bits and pieces of her body flew out in all directions, bloody chunks of inhuman meat that splattered against the walls and the ceiling, then turned into delicate bits of dust before they reached the floor.

And at the moment of the explosion, Malcolm, tensed and eager, was waiting with the motionless potential energy of a coiled spring.

For an instant, just an instant, Quincy Harker was startled by Lucy's sudden destruction, and he relaxed his grip on his grandson's wrists. But that instant was all Malcolm needed to pull his right hand free, plunge it into his shirt pocket, and grab hold of the two pieces of consecrated host; and he needed only to hold it up in front of his grandfather to cause Quincy Harker to run screaming from the bottom of the stairs.

Malcolm took one wafer in his left hand and tossed the other at Rachel with his right. Holly shrieked and fell back from what might as well have been a flaming missile, and in her panic she let go of Rachel, who picked up the wafer and then scurried over to Malcolm and Jerry.

It had all taken less than five seconds; but now the mortals were free, they were armed, and they were facing one less opponent. Rachel began to undo Jerry's bonds as best she could with one hand as Malcolm smiled at the Voivode. "Well, well, well," he said softly. "Changes things a bit, doesn't it!"

The Voivode stared at him angrily. "All it means is that you may be able to escape your fates this night. You have bought yourselves a little more time, little Harker, a bit more life, that is all."

"Escape!" Malcolm exclaimed. "What makes you think we want to escape? We're going to keep you here until sunrise, Count, and then we're going to destroy you all. And don't try any of that shape-changing stuff to try to scare us away. I don't care if you're a wolf or a bat or a mouse, you still can't get by me as long as I have this." And he held the wafer up confidently.

The vampires all laughed as the Voivode shook his head. "Even now, such ignorant arrogance. How do you propose to hold us prisoner, Malcolm Harker? How do you expect to keep us from becoming mist and seeping out through window spaces, for example?" Malcolm clenched his jaw and did not reply. "I see that you discern my drift. This is a temporary stalemate. It does not even begin to approach victory."

Malcolm did not respond. Instead he walked cautiously over to the black athletic bag that he had left in the corner earlier that day, holding the wafer in front of him as he moved. The undead fell back from the hated element and stared at Malcolm with undisguised fury—all but Van Helsing, who remained motionless, staring at the wafer. Malcolm picked up the bag and then went back to Rachel and Jerry at the foot of the stairs. He did not lower his eyes as he joined his free hand with Rachel's and finished untying Jerry's wrists. Rachel removed the crosses and the garlic from the bag as Jerry began to work on the ropes around his legs. When he had untied them, he took a cross and some garlic from Rachel and then stood up between her and his friend. Only then did Malcolm say, "It isn't victory yet, but it's a start. We were supposed to be undead tonight, but we're going to walk out of here at dawn. That's one failure you have to swallow. You can't get at us, Count, not with the shields we have. That's another failure. And even though he didn't plan to do it, Jerry destroyed Lucy. That makes three."

The Voivode dismissed this last statement with a wave of his long, thin hand. "Lucy will be back with me long before this evening is over. Can you truly be so foolish, Malcolm? Her dust is here, in this room, and the blood which has resurrected her twice already still runs in my veins. No, Malcolm Harker, you have not won, you have not even injured me. You may live past dawn, but eventually I shall find you and your sister and your friend."

"We'll be ready for you," Rachel said firmly.

"Good! Good!" the Voivode said. "Make your preparations! Lay your plans, build your defenses! Live another fifty years if you can! It will mean nothing, for as long as I live, my blood lives on in you, and when you die, you shall join our company."

"We'll make sure that we're embalmed," Rachel insisted. "We'll see to it that your damned blood is pumped out of us and thrown in the gutter!"

"Do so," the Voivode said, "by all means! And then I shall dig up your bodies and bathe them with my blood. And if you have your bodies burned, I shall resurrect you from your ashes. And if you leave orders for your ashes to be scattered, I shall countermand the orders. But it will not come to that, for I shall have gained control of you long before."

Malcolm and Rachel exchanged looks. The beast was right, and they both knew it. They had managed to avoid death and undeath that night by sheer accident, and nothing had really changed. They were still cursed, and the author of their misery was standing arrogantly before them.

"It is as true tonight as it was a hundred years ago and five hundred years ago," the Voivode said darkly. "I spread my revenge over centuries, and time is on my side."

"Don't be so sure, Count," Malcolm insisted. "A lot can still happen."

The Voivode laughed. "Oh, and it certainly shall, Malcolm Harker, it certainly shall." He glanced over at Van Helsing. "Professor, take that broom and sweep up Lucy's dust. I will restore her now. I want her back with me."

Van Helsing seemed not to have heard the order. He was still standing in the same spot, still gazing at the consecrated wafer in Malcolm's hand, swaying slowly from side to side, staring at the host as if transfixed. Malcolm looked at Van Helsing carefully, wondering what the oddly human expression on the old Professor's face portended. And as Malcolm studied Van Helsing's face, he saw the red glow of his vampire eyes dim almost imperceptibly.

It's the same as when Lucy's eyes seemed human for a moment
, he thought.
When I mentioned Arthur tonight, and when I referred to him back in England, it seemed as if for an instant something of her mortal being was still living in her undead body.

He remembered trying to arouse in Holly some small element of pity for Jerry. Didn't her eyes seem human, alive, just briefly as he spoke to her?
I'm someone else now, Holly
had replied on that horrible first night of her undeath,
I'm something else now.

Maybe you aren't . . . maybe not . . . maybe not . . . Malcolm felt a slight surge of excitement.

In life Lucy Westenra had loved Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, and her love for him had been the all-consuming center of her existence. What if some small vestige of that love had remained, buried deep within the monstrous, undead mind? Might that love not have been a connecting link between the creature she had become and the human being she had once been?

Malcolm continued to stare at Van Helsing as Van Helsing continued to stare at the consecrated wafer.

And what had been Van Helsing's all-consuming passion? He had loved knowledge, to be sure, he had loved truth and wisdom and learning, but what had he been truly devoted to? What had been the central, structuring influence on the long life of Abraham Xavier Klemens Van Helsing? What had been his great love?

Malcolm knew the answer to his own question. He licked his lips nervously as he held the host in front of him and began to walk toward the professor. Jerry and Rachel looked at him quizzically but said nothing as he swung the host slowly from right to left, forcing the vampires to move aside and allow him to advance. As he drew closer to Van Helsing, he saw the professor begin to shrink back in fear, and he said quickly, "No, Professor Van Helsing, no. Don't retreat from the host. You have a dispensation, remember?"

"A . . . dispensation?"

"Yes, don't you remember? You are a faithful and loyal son of the Roman Catholic Church. Your faith is so strong and your devotion to the Church so deep and abiding that your archbishop gave you a dispensation so that you could carry the consecrated host with you when you went to England. Don't you remember, Professor?"

He shook his head sadly. "That was . . . that was before."

"Before or now, what difference does it make? You are still Abraham Van Helsing! You are still a Christian."

The Voivode laughed at this. "A Christian vampire! Oh, Malcolm, you are growing desperate! We are the mirror images of Christ. His enemies, not His servants!"

"
You
are, Count, you, not Van Helsing and the others," Malcolm shouted, and then looked back at the pathetic yearning in Van Helsing's face as the dimming red eyes again gazed longingly at the wafer. "Say the creed, Professor, say it along with me. 'I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible' . . . Professor, don't you remember the words? It's the Nicene creed! Say it with me. You said it a thousand times while you were alive, and you believed it. You must still believe it, you must! 'I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible . . .'"

"'And . . .'" Van Helsing murmured, "'and . . . in . . . Jesus . . . Christ . . . His only son . . . our . . . our Lord . . .'"

"Stop this at once!" the Voivode commanded. He took a step forward, but Malcolm swung the host in his direction and he fell back again, snarling angrily.

Rachel's heart skipped a beat when she realized what her brother was trying to do, and she embraced his attempt with an enthusiasm born of desperation.
Yes
, she thought,
yes!
They all lived in an age of faith, an age of Victorian devotion. Religion was a vibrant reality to them all, not a social custom or a cultural heritage, not something to be thought about only on Sunday mornings, if at all. It structured their lives, it was central to their lives. "Go on, Professor, go on," Rachel said. "'God of God, light of light, true God of true God . . .'"

"'Begotten of His Father before all worlds,'" Malcolm prompted, "'begotten, not made' . . . say the words, Professor, say the words! . . . 'being of one substance with the Father, through Whom all things were made . . .'"

"'Who for us men and for our salvation,'" Van Helsing
whispered, "'was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary . . .'" He sighed. "'By the Virgin Mary . . .'"

"'And was made man,'" said another voice softly. Malcolm looked for the source of the words, and he trembled with hope when he found it.

Mina Harker.

Rachel left Jerry at the foot of the stairs and went toward her great-grandmother. "Yes, Mina," she whispered eagerly. "You were a devout Christian, too! Remember, Mina. Remember." She turned to her great-grandfather. "And you, Jonathan, you were a pious man. All of you were—Dr. Stewart, Mr. Morris, Your Lordship, all of you were! Remember the words, say the words, remember who you were, what you were!" She walked forward and stood in front of her grandfather, Quincy Harker, and held the protective host behind her back. "Oh, Grandfather, please try."

Quincy looked at her oddly, knowing that her body shielded him from the consecrated wafer, knowing he could whip out one powerful arm and sweep her head from her body. He gazed at her and the dead flesh quivered on his face. "'And . . . and . . . was . . . made . . . man,'" he rasped.

The cracked dead lips of the other nosferatu began to move haltingly. Holly Larsen ran to the Voivode and hid behind him, clutching a sleeve of his caftan and looking at the other undead with confusion and fear.

"I say you will stop this at once!" the Voivode shouted.

They ignored him. "'He suffered under Pontius Pilate . . . was crucified, died and was buried. . .'"

"' . . . on the third day He rose again from the dead . . .'"

"'. . . He ascended into heaven . . .'"

"'. . . and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father . . .'"

"'. . . from whence He shall come to judge the living . . .'"

"'. . .
and the dead . . .
'"

"YOU TORE ME FROM MY REST!" Van Helsing screamed.

The blazing eyes of the Voivode fixed on the face of the old Professor. "You are undead, you fool, you are as I am! You serve Ordogh now, you serve the powers of Hell! Stop this foolishness! We shall go from this place, and we shall feed, and—"

"YOU TORE ME FROM MY REST!"
Van Helsing repeated, his fists clenching at his sides as he moved threateningly toward the Impaler.