Back | Next
Contents

Chapter Two

The Witch of Cachtice remained on my mind as I jogged into the gloaming.

Gloaming. What a lovely word for that deepening purple twilight between the setting of the sun and the actual fall of night. My state of mind, however, was anything but lovely as skies downshifted from azure to indigo and the first stars of the evening faded into timorous glimmers.

Of all the mumbo-jumbo that the so-called fortuneteller had thrown at me, that one phrase continued to burn in my mind. What else had she called her? Marinette Bois-Chèche? I wasn't familiar with the reference but she had mentioned the "Loa" and that meant Vodoun or voodoo. I'd have to do a little research from that angle, maybe drive down to New Orleans this weekend.

Or, better yet, fly to Haiti, I decided, loping back up onto the sidewalk as a car approached. Aside from the assumption that the island source material would be purer, I knew there was a vampire enclave down in the Big Easy—reason enough to not make a return visit.

While Haiti had its own supernatural blood-drinkers—specifically the mauvais airs and the mauvais nanm of voodoo origin, and such West Indies imports as the loogaroo of Grenada, the asema of Surinam, and the sukuyan of Trinidad—I doubted that the island had any organized demesne system. The Crescent City enclave wasn't much on structure either but, sooner or later, every badass vampire wannabe decided to make the pilgrimage and few were said to return. Perversely, I was probably safer in the jungles of an alien nation than the back streets of an American tourist trap.

Mama Cséjthe didn't raise no dummy.

Unless you count my buying any part of Mama Samm's sideshow act.

The car passed by and I hopped off the sidewalk, sprinted across the street, and cut across a vacant lot. The streetlights were old and mostly out of order in this section of town, which was why I liked to run here. Even though I didn't huff and puff anymore, I detested being on display for the neighbors. The only thing I hated worse than jogging out in the open was running laps on a fixed track where the repetitive scenery is slightly less boring than watching the Golf Channel on cable.

A row of decrepit shotgun houses loomed ahead. Their coffinlike silhouettes provided an appropriate backdrop to my thoughts as I considered Mama Samm's veiled warnings and her troubling reference to Marinette Bois-Chèche.

The "Witch of Cachtice" made sense in only one context.

The ruins of a castle remain today in the Slovak Republic—Cachtice, Slovakia, to be precise. Once upon a time it lay within the borders of Hungary and was known by a different name. It was the ancestral home of Countess Erzsébet Báthory who practiced the dark arts and came to believe that the blood of virgins would keep her eternally young and beautiful. During the opening years of the seventeenth century, she murdered over six hundred young women, practicing abominable tortures and draining their bodies of blood for her horrific beauty regimen.

Mama Samm's admonition to "unmask the whore of Babylon before she puts her red dress on" might have made sense four hundred years ago. But the infamous Blood Countess of Hungary died, walled up in her dark tower, in 1614. How could that have anything to do with me?

Other than the fact that the Báthory castle had two names.

Today it is known as Cachtice in the Slovak tongue.

In Erzsébet's time, the Hungarians called it Castle Cséjthe.

* * *

Five blocks up and one over was the Community of Christ church.

I took a shortcut through a long alleyway, going from late evening to near midnight conditions in one swell foop. As the sidewalls of the alley blocked even the ambient light, my vision shifted over into the infrared spectrum without conscious thought. Perhaps it was a reflexive response to the sudden darkness. Or maybe the thrumming rhythms of the physical act of running triggered ancient predatory presets in my hindbrain. No matter, I went with it. I needed the practice and it made the scenery more interesting.

Imagine humidity as a color: blackish red. With swirls of dark purple like eddies of smoky black light. Mindful of the glimmering yellow splotches signifying the thermal decay processes of rotting garbage, I thought about dropping by to see if anyone was in this late in the evening. I dodged the small red-orange heat signatures of rats scurrying along the alley walls and recalled that the Book of Revelation in the New Testament said something about the "Whore of Babylon." If memory served, there was even something about a red dress or something. Maybe the pastor would be available for a quick Sunday school lesson.

Maybe we could have a nice friendly chat about eternal damnation and whether the blood of Christ could wash away the sins of those who must take bloody communion from human hosts.

The issues of sin and salvation were abruptly back-burnered: I was not alone.

Two human-shaped openings knelt in the crimson-flecked mists. The victim was a flickering yellow-orange, like a candle flame slowly guttering down. The executioner was a dark hole in the reddish curtain, its flesh too cool to register as a heat signature.

Too cool to be alive.

Wrong shortcut! I decided as it turned a dark, head-shaped emptiness up to stare at me. I whirled and ran the other way.

At the mouth of the alley where the warm darkness shied away from the icy wash of a corner street lamp, I stumbled against a garbage can. I dropped out of the infrared spectrum and shifted back to normal vision.

What are the odds? I wondered, shifting from a sprint to an all-out run. Move to another city, another state, complete change of identity, paper trail erased: a brand new friggin' life and I run into one of them by accident!

I kicked it up a notch so that I was doing twenty-five, maybe thirty mph.

Once upon a time I had taken up jogging as a healthy pastime. That was in another lifetime. In my present incarnation I ran more to alleviate my boredom than to condition my transforming flesh. Except now I was anything but bored and was literally running for my life: two birds with one stone, as it were.

The sun had been down an hour but the temperature still hovered in the mid nineties. The edges of my vision still registered in the infrared band and the pavement glowed brick red out of the corners of my eyes.

How could I have been so stupid?

If hot summer nights had seemed a soothing balm for my too-cool flesh, wouldn't it be all the more attractive to those whose bodies had grown eternally cold? In thinking of my own comfort, I had probably raised the odds of this encounter by a hundredfold. I glanced over my shoulder, expecting pursuit. Saw none. Swung my attention back to the front and saw him come floating down, out of the night sky, like a lunatic Peter Pan.

Black chinos, black shirt and shoes, black duster: a very Goth Peter Pan and overdressed for the season, to boot.

I braked, leaving gummy streaks of rubber sole on the hot asphalt. Then I cut to the right, turning down a side street, and picked up speed. Six blocks ahead and two streets over I could see an on-ramp for the highway.

He elected to catch up to me on foot. I think it was intended to spook me; his running just ahead of me, turned backward to converse as if we were participants in a casual stroll—not running at breakneck speed down a darkened city street.

"My, but you're a fast one," he hissed with grinning, bloody lips. "I like it when the rabbit tries to run a bit."

"Do you?" I puffed. Ten more minutes of this and I might break out in a sweat—an increasingly rare experience in my "after" life.

Now that I had the occasional street lamp to manage the "visible" spectrum, I could make out a face—doughy, round features overlaid with a ruddy glow, and overly prominent eyes. His sunburned appearance had nothing to do with the sun and his bulgy eyeballs weren't tied to a thyroid condition. Rather, he'd overfed just moments before and so he was no longer motivated by hunger.

He was just tidying up; making sure there would be no witnesses.

"What is your name, little bunny?"

Not that he was in a big hurry, you understand. Like many predators, he liked to play with the prey.

"Bugs," I answered, trying not to "puff" too much.

"What . . . ?" My lack of terror was throwing him a little off-balance.

"Can you say 'Wascally wabbit'?" I asked.

And shoved him. Hard. He wasn't expecting it and his momentum carried him down in a tumble that sounded none too gentle for the parked car at the side of the road.

Now I ran as fast as my lungs would permit, inadequate draughts of air rasping in and out of my chest like a fiery crankshaft. I started up the on-ramp. If there had been more than one of him, I would've been dead already.

"Lit-tle bun-neeeee!"

And even with only one, it was just a matter of time.

He settled across my back and shoulders like a stack of cold, wet, woolen blankets, riding me like a grotesque jockey. He was surprisingly light, but far too strong for me to dislodge on my own.

"Little bun-nee," he whispered with a sniggering giggle, his wet lips close to my ear, closer to my neck. I threw myself down, twisting in midair and thrusting with my legs to ensure a long, sliding skid before I stopped.

It hurt!

It would have hurt a lot more if I hadn't put the vampire between the concrete and myself as I went down. I tumbled to my feet and limped the last dozen yards onto Interstate 20.

Traffic was light: a couple of semis and a dozen or so cars and pickup trucks. Playing dodge-em at 60 mph was better odds than what I had just left behind. As I ran, jumped, and spun across three lanes of traffic, I found it odd that no one swerved. I expected the sound of horns and the squeal of brakes but the drivers seemed oblivious to my presence. Reaching the concrete divider, I risked a glance back.

The creature stood at the entrance to the freeway, directing his attention to the oncoming traffic. He was obviously concentrating, using vampiric mind control to delete my image from the drivers' consciousness. For all intents and purposes, I was invisible for the moment! He turned his face to the right as I vaulted the divider, clouding the minds of motorists in the eastbound lanes, now.

I took my time as the traffic was heavier and he wasn't moving for the moment. As I reached the far side I risked another glance back and saw him launch himself into midair, off of the hood of a sedan that had slowed on the ramp. I climbed over the side of the elevated highway, dangling some three stories above the ground as he sailed across four lanes, headed directly for me. A large semi in the fifth lane intercepted him as I let go. There was a squall of surprise and rage heading eastbound with the truck while I prayed for only a broken arm or dislocated shoulder on the way down: either was survivable, while a broken leg or ankle would leave me helpless until he returned. The semi had only bought me some time—probably seconds rather than minutes.

Power cables broke my fall. Three lines of electrical burns across my back and buttocks, a flash, a pop, and I was thrown under the overpass. I rolled, trying to minimize the impact and discourage my singed clothing from bursting into flame. Came up on my feet. Took two steps. Fell down again.

The buzzing in my head diminished after a few moments and I regained some motor control in my left leg. I creaked to my feet and staggered into an ungainly sort of run, barely resisting the impulse to lisp: "Sanctuary . . . sanctuary . . ." in a bad Charles Laughton impression.

There were lights up ahead and I was staggering across a parking lot when the creature came floating back down some twenty yards ahead of me.

His clothes were torn, transforming the black-on-black Goth look to more of a punk statement. His face was bruised and one hand bloodied. The semi had made some impression, at least. So had I: "What are you?" he pondered, his googly eyes narrowing.

"I'm what goes bump in the night, Junior," I growled. I hunched forward, hands on skinned knees, and considered my next move as he contemplated his.

"You're too warm to be one of us," he mused, "but not warm enough to be human . . ."

"Sticks and stones."

"Killing you would be prudent but . . ."

"But?" He was stronger and faster and it was a miracle that I was still breathing, so I wasn't making plans past the next thirty seconds.

" . . . You may have your uses."

Uses? I was beyond fear, now, and edging into seriously pissed off. "What is it with you guys and the black-is-the-only-color-in-my-spectrum get-ups?" I snarled. "If it isn't black trench coats and eye-shadow, it's leather and chains."

"Black is the color of death," he intoned, saying it like some bad Vincent Price impression. He pulled a cellular phone from his pocket, activated it and punched in a number.

"Color of death, my ass," I hissed, still trying to re-inflate my lungs. "Color of brain-damaged losers who watch too much MTV and think a lack of fashion sense makes them look dangerous. Too bad Wal-Mart doesn't carry a Pretend-I'm-A-Badass line; that way you wouldn't have to accessorize at Dweebs-R-Us."

He cursed and shook the phone. Between our little tussle and his unexpected ride on the semi, it was apparently DOA.

"Hey," I said, bracing myself, "even Marilyn Manson moved on to color and spandex: get a clue."

As he attempted to return it to his pocket, he was off-balance for all of four seconds.

I hit him with my shoulder on the third. He went down and I went right over him. If I'd been wearing pants instead of jogging shorts he would have snagged me. Instead, long clawlike nails raked my leg and clutched my left Reebok. I left it in his grasp, sprinting across manicured grounds and rounding the corner of the next building. A door was open! I leapt for it and nearly collided with an elderly black couple who were just emerging. A twisting pirouette and I was safely inside!

He was right behind me standing on the steps, hands clenching and unclenching in impotent fury. I glanced over my shoulder and saw the large, wooden cross on the back wall of the entrance hall. Felt a smile start to bloom across my face: he couldn't enter a church. I turned back and saw that he was already gone. Just as well: I was too spent to gloat.

"Sir, are you a friend of the family?"

I turned again and found myself face-to-tie-clasp with one of the deacons. Or so I assumed. He was tall and elderly with pale, seamy features and a snowy pompadour such as only a mature, Southern gentleman can properly cultivate. He wore a plain, black suit and tie, sharply contrasted by a crisp white shirt and the man, himself, was nearly as monochromatic as his apparel.

"Beg pardon?" I asked, resisting the urge to grab my trembling knees, tuck my head down and gasp for air.

"Are you a friend of the family?" he asked once more.

"Um, sure," I said cautiously, hoping that, whatever family I was claiming association with, it would be large enough to allow me unobtrusive passage. . . . 

"Would you care to sign the book, then, sir?"

It took me another moment to figure the trajectory from his gesture: an ornate guest book sat atop a podium near the doorway to the right.

"Um, sure." I took a couple of steps and recalled that one of my shoes was outside, near the edge of the parking lot. In fact, I was suddenly aware that, overall, my appearance and apparel were hardly appropriate for a church service.

Or a funeral.

A closer look at my surroundings revealed that I wasn't as safe as I first assumed. A church enjoys the automatic presumption of "holy ground" and, therefore, out of bounds to creatures of darkness. A funeral home, despite its religious symbols and services for families of the departed, is a debatable edifice on the sacred footage issue. The vampire had not followed me across the threshold, but then it couldn't follow me across any doorstep unless it received an invitation to enter.

While this might have been an impediment in the nervous North, we were down here in the sociable South: all that ole fang face needed to do was amble around to the back door, knock, and ask permission to come in. Sanctuary would give way to sanction.

The deacon cleared his throat behind me. I hurried to the guest book and grabbed the ballpoint pen that was glued to the bleached ostrich feather. Having spent the past six months living under an assumed name, I suddenly found myself unable to concoct another fake moniker: Caving in under the pressure, I signed my real name, figuring no one here was going to attach any significance to Christopher L. Cséjthe's signature.

Outside of taking a little detour through Weir, Kansas a year or so back, it would prove to be one of the biggest mistakes of my life.

"We'll be closing in twenty minutes," the deacon intoned, nodding toward the doorway to the visitation rooms. "The funeral is tomorrow morning. Ten o'clock." He looked at me expectantly.

Expecting me to turn and bolt out the front door, most likely.

I glanced out at the darkness beyond the double entry doors: not bloody likely! My best bet was to find a hiding place and wait till an hour before sunrise. I turned and limped through the side doorway to the visitation rooms.

So much for low profile: I wasn't the only white person in attendance but the three or four of us were a distinct minority. A young black woman in her twenties was surrounded by a throng of young men who seemed to be competing for the opportunity to offer solace. Other faces turned and began to notice the banged up white guy in the scorched tank top and running shorts. I kept moving, trying not to step on the flailing laces of my remaining shoe, and ducked into an adjoining room.

It was blessedly empty—if you didn't count the open casket at the far end. I limped over to a chair next to the coffin and started to retie my shoelace then decided to just chuck the whole footwear thing.

I sat down heavily and tried to let my lungs catch up to the rest of my body. As my respiration slowed, I thought about Mama Samm D'Arbonne's warning. What had she said? Something about Je Rouge—a rough translation suggested "the blush" but I'd heard the phrase used once before in a more compelling context. It was during a lecture on Haitian Vodoun. Je Rouge was the name given to cannibalistic, evil spirits by the boku or sorcerers who invoked them. The interpretation meant, quite literally, "Red Eyes."

Which certainly seemed to fit my fanged foe.

What else had she said? That it was hunting for the Goo-goo Battleaxe—or something like that. I should have paid more attention.

So now what?

Scoot out the back door or find a hiding place and wait until morning? The deacon would be closing up shop shortly and I needed to find a broom closet if I was going to stay. As I straightened up, I glanced down into the open casket. An elderly black man wearing a brown suit lay in repose. "You wouldn't happen to know where they keep the broom closets around here, would you?" I murmured.

Wrinkled eyelids twitched, slid upwards; yellowed eyes rolled in the corpse's sockets, focused on me.

"Uh!" I said. The question had been implicitly rhetorical.

A skinny arm shot up and dark, cold fingers closed on my wrist before I could react. "Bairrr," the old man croaked, "rrunnn . . ."

"Oh mama!" I said.

" 'Tect . . . of enge . . ."

"Say what?" I tried to pull back but the old corpse's grip was like refrigerated iron.

"Baarronnn . . ." The dead jaw creaked audibly as it tried to form the words.

"Hey!" said a voice from behind me.

"Pro-tect," the dead guy was saying.

"What are you doin'? Get away from there!"

I glanced over my shoulder. It was one of the consolers from next door. He was a lot bigger than me and looked more angry than anguished, now. "What the hell you doin', man?"

I turned, trying to show that I wasn't the one doing the doin'. Maybe he couldn't believe his eyes—I knew I couldn't.

"Moses! Elvin! Some cracker is messin' with Mr. Delacroix!"

Maybe it was one of those perspective-based optical illusions: the two guys who appeared in the doorway behind him looked big enough to push the first guy around in a stroller. The only way this could get any worse was if the vampire came back.

There was a blur of black and white at the edge of my vision and my luck for the evening was just about complete.

No one is here. Although the creature's lips did not move, his thoughts echoed through the room like a public address system on the edge of feedback. Leave this room and close the door behind you. 

The three mourners shuffled backward like extras in an extremely corny zombie movie from the '40s.

Forget what you have seen. . . .   

Or as Oz, the great and powerful, had once thundered: "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!"

The door closed and it was just the two of us. Or three, counting Mr. Delacroix. Who I suddenly realized had released my wrist. Trouble was, the vampire was now between me and the two exits from the room.

"Nice," I said. "A real 'Men In Black' sort of thing. How about I forget what I've seen, too? I'll go close the other door." I took a step.

Instantaneously, he was across the room, slamming into me like a freight train. I went down with the thing on top of me, Mr. Delacroix and his casket landing on top of us both.

Then, just as suddenly, he was off of me. I didn't waste time looking around to see why. I took off on all fours, plowing through a clutch of folding chairs on my way to the other exit.

I almost made it.

The vampire caught me three feet from the doorway and threw me into the wall. Or through it—it was only double sheet rock with two-by-four bracing, after all. But I was in luck: I had found the broom closet.

A taloned hand reached in and clutched my leg.

Yanked.

I grabbed a mop on the way back out and slammed it across the newly made opening, halting my momentum. Momentarily. As I chinned myself into a sitting position, he yanked again and the mop handle snapped in two with a loud crack. As I exited the closet, feet-first, it seemed obvious who was going to mop the floor with whom. But as he climbed on top of me and bared his fangs, he got careless. He also got the jagged end of a broken mop handle planted in his chest. He screeched and fell backward. I scrambled up and headed once more for the second exit.

This time I made it. I ran down a connecting hallway and found myself in the chapel. Dodging between the pews, I had almost reached the podium at the front when I heard a familiar hiss behind me. To quote my realtor, "location is everything": I had evidently missed the monster's heart.

Rounding the podium, I cut to the left, behind an ornate screen of carved wood. As I reached for the door set in the far wall, the vampire crashed through the screen and into me. I crashed through the door and we both went tumbling down a flight of stairs into the basement.

The vamp was still stronger and faster than I was but, surprisingly, I was the first one back up on my feet. Maybe I just had more experience in taking punishment. I saw a door to my left and a heavier, reinforced door to my right: I gambled on the one to the right. I slammed it behind me and fumbled for the lock.

There was no lock.

I fumbled for the light switch.

There was a light switch.

I had just enough time to take in the general layout of the mortuary's workroom and vault the first embalming table as the vampire kicked the reinforced door off its hinges.

He stalked into the room and glared at me now crouched between the steel table legs. No mocking smile, no "little bunny" now; he had finally figured out that, despite my appearance, I was more dangerous than a human. And the mop handle through his chest had pushed his need for fresh blood to a dangerous level. I wouldn't catch him off guard again.

Slowly, deliberately, he reached over and flipped off the light switch, plunging the room back into darkness.

Unlike the hot, humid air outside, the embalming room was kept cool by refrigeration units that were separate from the central air system serving the rest of the building. That kept the room temperature in the upper fifties for the customers who passed through for their final cosmetics. With the lights off, he could still see my heat signature in the infrared spectrum. Down in this air-conditioned bunker, I had the disadvantage: he wasn't warm enough to register as a heat source and the surrounding air wasn't warm enough to offer a contrasting backdrop.

Blind man's bluff and I was "it."

I rolled under the embalming table as he vaulted it in turn, his heels smacking down on the tiled floor where my head had been a second before. I upended the table, throwing some four hundred pounds of steel over and onto my undead assailant. I heard him toss it aside as I fell across a second table. The metal edge knocked half the wind out of me but, more discomfiting, this one was already occupied. Instinctively, I flung myself to the left and the vampire smashed against my former location, sending the dead body flying in one direction and the heavy structure careening in another.

A light glimmered at the far end of the room, a tiny wisp of blue-gold flame. I stumbled toward it—stumbled being the operative word as I caught my toe on some unknown part of a corpse's anatomy. As I went sprawling, I felt the intimate breeze of someone passing just overhead.

He caught up with me just before I reached the glimmering light. I was slammed against the wall—brick this time and not as forgiving. As I slid downward, the rough surface peeling my cheek like a cheese grater, I grasped a dim projection. A knoblike handle. It twisted in my hand and the tiny flicker of the pilot light erupted into multiple rings of flaming gas jets behind oven-tempered glass.

As an icy claw closed around my throat, I looked at my assailant's face in the flickering light. His lips were split and one eye was puffed shut. He grimaced and I was rewarded with the sight of one and a half fangs instead of two, now.

I tugged futilely at his wrist with my right hand while my left scrabbled behind me for leverage. I found another handle, pulled down. The door of the crematory oven creaked open and, with a puff of hot air, the flickering light intensified. His eyes widened, the puffy one showing a little iris, now: rings of red surrounding the pupils glowed with a crimson incandescence.

"Red eyes," I croaked.

"Je Rouge," intoned a dead voice from just behind the monster's head. A cold dark hand appeared and pried the vampire's fingers from my throat. He whirled and another dark hand clasped his shoulder, tearing him away from me and into a stranger's embrace. Mr. Delacroix had come, it seemed, to cut in and demand his own dance with the devil.

I eased aside as the dead man forced the vampire toward the open oven. The monster struggled and snarled, slashing at the corpse's throat with his teeth. Dark flesh tore but no blood emerged, just the slow trickle of embalming fluid dripping down and tinting the edge of Delacroix's collar a pale green.

"Baron . . ." the dead man croaked. The vampire twisted and squirmed in his grasp. His face swiveled from the vampire's to mine. "Baruhhhnnn." 

"You talking to me? Are you talking to me?" Great: two dead guys are dancing the tango and I'm doing Travis Bickle impressions.

" . . . Baarruuhhhnnn . . ."

"What!"

" . . . A boon . . ."  

"Boon?"

" . . . A bargain . . ."  

"Bargain?"

" . . . Protect . . . my . . . daughter . . ." He lifted the vampire off of the floor and threw him headfirst into the crematory oven. The creature screeched and spun, clambering out like a great, smoking spider. Delacroix pushed him back into the flames. " . . . Avenge . . . me . . ." He blocked the vampire's second attempt to escape and, shoving the undead thing back once more, climbed into the oven to hold him in the fire.

"Promise . . . me . . . Baron!" Delacroix bellowed as the vampire exploded in flames. A great jet of fire shot out from the oven's opening like a great blowtorch and I blistered my hands getting the steel and tempered glass door to close over it.

"I promise," I whispered to the writhing knot of flames on the other side of the glass.

I heard the sound of footfalls on the stairs.

Time to leave.

 

Back | Next
Contents
Framed