Lycanthropos (28 page)

And thus when they set out from Baghdad in the fall of the previous year they needed give no thought to border
guards or enemy soldiers as they trudged onward through the
desert to Damascus; they needed neither identification nor permission, but only gold with which to pay the shipmaster at Tyre for transportation north to Istanbul; and as they walked from the Golden Horn across the hills of Thrace and through the forests of Bulgaria and Wallachia, still they were in the realm of the Ottoman Turks. It was only then, after a journey of a thousand miles, that they found
themselves standing before a border as they sought to cross
over into the lands of the
Kingdom
of
Hungary
, into the
province
of
Transylvania
.

They spent months in the squalid towns and villages, making the inquiries which resulted inevitably in frightened, suspicious looks and evasive answers, until at last they had determined that the object of their quest
slept by day in the ruined castle which loomed before them.
As they walked onward along the hard, frozen dirt road, Claudia turned to him and asked. "Will he be able to kill us, Janus?"

Janus Chaldian shrugged. "I don't know, Claudia. He seems
quite capable of killing, if the stories we have heard are
true."

"Yes, capable of killing people. But what about us?"

His response was not exactly irritated, but it was somewhat brusque. "Claudia, I know as little as you know
about him, and as little as you know about us. Why do you ask me these questions?"

"You must know more than
I,"
she replied hotly. "You have suffered from this longer than I have. It was you who made
me what I am."

He laughed grimly. "How do you know?" She had no answer
to this, and so she fell silent as they continued on to the
castle.

It had been over a century before that the castle had
been sacked and pillaged by the Turks, but the cracked walls and broken windows, the charred beams and broken battlements
remained as mute testimony to the havoc of bygone war. Janus and Claudia strained their currently human muscles to pull open the iron gate, and then after the slightest hesitation, they walked into the courtyard, and from there into the
great hall of the castle itself.

Wordlessly they wandered through the ruined fortress, searching through the rooms and the passageways from level to level until, shortly before sunset, they found the entrance to the subterranean crypt that served as the burial place of the princes of the small Carpathian realm. They wandered along the rows of wood and stone sarcophagi, searching for the resting place of the Prince who had died at the hands of the Turks over a hundred years before, but who, it was said, had
returned from death with his wives to spread misery and panic
among the defenseless population. It did not take them long to find his tomb, the tomb of him who since his death a century before had been the plague of the
Carpathians.

Janus Chaldian tried to lift the lid of the
sarcophagus, but was unable to do so unaided. Claudia joined him the effort, and between them they were able to swing the
hinged lid upward. Within the stone coffin lay a corpse, a dead and lifeless thing, unremarkable but for the fact that it should have rotted away to nothing years before, but had not. The cold, white, dead flesh of the corpse made the long gray moustache all the more striking, and the thick, dark eyebrows stood out starkly against the pallor. Janus Chaldian and Claudia dropped the lid shut and then Janus sat down in front of the sarcophagus and waited. Claudia sat down beside him. As the sunlight which streamed in through the small, broken window near the ceiling of the vault grew rosy and then gray, she turned to him and said, "Will we have time?"

"Hmmm?"

"Will we have time? To talk to him, to explain what we want. The sun will set in a few minutes, and then the change
will come upon us."

"We will have time," he muttered. "You know that. The change doesn't happen immediately. It never does. If the
stories are true, he will awaken as soon as the sun sets. We
will not change until the sunlight is completely gone and the moon dominates the sky." He looked at her. "Why do you ask me this, Claudia? You know this yourself."

She did not reply. They waited in silence as the gray
sky grew black, and then she asked, "Who are we, Janus?"

He sighed. "I don't know, Claudia."

The next few minutes seemed to pass like years, and then the
lid
of the coffin creaked slowly open.

Janus and Claudia rose quickly to their feet, each
experiencing a shiver of excitement which neither had known
for many, many centuries. They watched in silent anticipation as the lid swung completely up and the undead prince rose from his grave. He noticed them instantly;
indeed, from the calm expression on his thin, hawklike face
one might have assumed that he had been aware of their
presence all along. His cold, dead lips curled into a cruel
smile beneath his gray moustache, and his sharp teeth glistened in the light of what was either the dying sun or
the rising moon.

The vampire climbed out of his coffin with a slow, graceful, almost fluid motion, and his right hand had
reached out to caress Claudia's throat even before both of
his feet had come to rest on the cold stone floor of the crypt. He glanced quickly at Janus, but the look in his
glowing red eyes was too filled with the confidence of power
to be described as wary. He seemed merely to be registering
the presence of the young man, nothing more.

The vampire pulled Claudia slowly toward him, and she bent her head back obligingly, baring her throat to him. He
laughed softly, perhaps relishing what he believed to be his
power over mortals, perhaps pleased that his meal had so conveniently found her way to his bedside, and then he pressed the tips of his fangs against her white throat.

It had been many years since the vampire had been surprised by anything, but his face displayed nothing less than astonishment when he found that he could not penetrate the woman's skin; and then he understood. He pushed her away
from him and looked from the woman to the man. "
Vroloki
," he
whispered, speaking the language of his people.

"Yes," Janus nodded, addressing the vampire in the language of the Turks. "We are werewolves." He allowed himself the
slightest
of smiles. "And you, to all appearances, are
nosferatu
."

The vampire stared at him for a long moment and then
emitted a bellowing laugh. "And are there now werewolves
among the Turks and the Magyars?" he asked in the same tongue. "If so, I fear that between you and me their histories will be brief ones!"

"We are neither Turks nor Magyars," Claudia said. "We do not know from whence we come."

"Nor whither go," the vampire said, smiling with genuine
amusement. "The common lot of man. Still, it is an odd twist of fortune which brings such as you together with such as us." As he spoke, Janus and Claudia heard soft movements behind them, and they turned to see three shrouded women walking slowly toward them, their burning eyes alive with appetite. The vampire raised his hand and stopped them,
saying in the Romanian tongue, "Spare yourselves the effort,
my dears. They are werewolves. Their skin will blunt your
teeth. Go, feed elsewhere."

The three women looked at each other briefly and then withdrew from the crypt. As the sky outside the castle was suddenly filled with the sound of flapping, leathery wings,
Janus said, "It is not fortune which brings us here. We have
come to enlist you
aid."

"Indeed!" the vampire smiled. "How interesting! I have not had occasion to, ah, aid anyone for quite a long time!"

"We want to
die."
Claudia said.

"Oh, no doubt, no doubt!" he laughed. "Therein rests the difference between your kind and mine. To me, immortality is
a gift, a blessing."

"To us it is a curse." Janus said.

"My point precisely," the vampire responded.

Claudia stepped forward and stared into his eyes, eyes
dead yet alive with merriment and cruelty. "Can you kill
us?"

The vampire laughed again. "Apparently not! I fear that were the three of us to keep company solely with one another, we should all soon find ourselves plagued by
unsatisfied thirst and hunger."

"Do you know how we can be killed?" Janus asked.

"Do I know how you can be killed," he echoed, and then paused as if considering an answer. After a few moments he
smiled. "Of course I do," he replied casually. "Such things
are not mysteries to one such as I, who is privy to the
secrets of hell itself."

"Do not tell us of silver weapons," Claudia said. "We know from long experience that such things cannot harm us."

"Am I an ignorant peasant,
Vroloka
, an untutored serf?" he asked her. "I have knowledge, not superstition!"

Janus felt hope surging up in him as he asked, "Then you
know how we can be killed? You know how this curse can be
ended?"

"Most certainly," he said, leaning back against his
coffin. "The solution to your problem is the opposite of its
cause, its mirror image, as it were." He smiled again. "Not that my experience with mirrors has been very extensive of
late..."

"Be specific," Claudia demanded. "What must we do to
die?"

"Oh, anything that kills mortals will kill you, once the curse has been lifted," the vampire said. "It is lifting the curse which may cause you some difficulty."

"And how," Janus asked, trying not to give voice to his impatience, "can the curse be lifted?"

"By doing the opposite of that which brought it down upon you in the first place," he replied amicably.

"But we don't
know
what caused this to happen to us!"
Claudia screamed. "We can't remember, neither of us can
remember anything!"

"It's true," Janus nodded. "The past fades into mist and
darkness. I do not know how I became what I am. She says that she has a memory of being attacked by me..."

"But I'm not certain," Claudia finished for him. "It may be a memory. It may be a dream."

"No matter," the vampire smiled. "Two elements are
involved here. Only one thing creates a werewolf, and only
one kind of person, in one kind of situation, can become one. The first element is obvious."

"The bite of another werewolf?" Janus asked.

"Yes," the vampire replied. "The bite of another werewolf. That far the legends are correct."

"And the second element?"

The vampire laughed softly. "Why should I tell you?"

Neither Janus nor Claudia replied at first. Then Claudia said, "To help us rid ourselves of this living hell!"

"Ah, yes, but why should I help you?" When no response seemed to be forthcoming, the vampire suggested, "Out of a
feeling of moral obligation? As an act of Christian charity?
To free the poor, defenseless mortals from your bestial depredations?" He began to laugh heartily as Claudia's face grew red with rage. Janus looked at him coldly as the vampire continued, "As an act of gratuitous kindness? To strike a blow against the forces of evil? To render aid and
succor to my fellow man?"

"As an act of self-defense," Janus replied softly. "As
part of a bargain. You tell us what you know, and we will not come back here at sunrise to pound a wooden stake into your chest."

"Oh, my goodness!" the vampire said, feigning surprise at the suggestion.

Claudia grinned at Janus, delighted at his statement. "Yes, self-defense, the oldest motive on earth. If you do not destroy us, we will destroy you."

"An interesting suggestion," the vampire smiled, seeming
not the least disturbed by the statement. "But has it not occurred to you that you are, shall we say, temperamentally
unsuited to such an act?"

"We have killed hundreds of innocent people..." Janus
said firmly.

"Thousands, I would think," the vampire observed.

"...and killing one such as you would be an act of positive goodness, all things considered."

"Ah, yes, my poor
Vrolok,
" he chuckled, "but you cannot consider all things, because you do not know all things. At least, you know less about yourselves than I do." He shook his head with mock sorrow. "You pose no threat to me."

"Can you be certain?" Claudia asked, her own uncertainty masked by a tone of menace.

"Certain beyond any doubt," the vampire said. "And even if I had doubts, do you think me such a fool that I have only one place to rest during the day? Do you think that, come sunrise, you will find me lying here, awaiting you?"