Vampire a Go-Go(29)

Nothing happened at first. The emperor watched, unblinking, through the window, holding his breath. Then there was movement so slight it seemed a mirage at first. But when Rudolph gasped, Kelley knew the emperor had seen it.

A flutter of a single finger to start off. The male corpse lifted his head first, lurched out of the chair to stand on wobbling legs, head lolling like a dead chicken’s. It opened its mouth, and a sort of choking cry erupted from its gob.

Rudolph crossed himself, a gesture Kelley had never seen the emperor make.

“You’ve brought him back to life,” Rudolph said with awe.

“Er, well, not quite, Highness,” Roderick admitted. “They are merely animated-undead, if you will.”

“Undead?”

“Yes, a sort of state between life and death,” Roderick said.

“And that’s what you think I wanted?” The emperor’s stare was as hard and flat as the iron door.

“No!” Roderick’s eyes went wide. “Of course not, Highness. My goodness, no. I’m merely pointing out that we’ve taken such a big stride. Not immortality, not yet, but not death either. We haven’t quite conquered death, but we’ve given it a good kick in the family jewels.”

Rudolph nodded toward the shambling corpse. “Death would seem a preferable state to that.”

“You’re right of course, Highness.” Roderick bowed formally. “Still, they are rather durable. We’ve made a dozen or so the past week, and they’re damn hard to get rid of. Chop off an arm or a leg and they keep going, eh? Might actually be a little more like immortality than we thought.” Roderick chuckled.

Rudolph did not laugh. At all.

Roderick cleared his throat. He wiped sweat from the back of his neck. “Your Highness is rightfully concerned. I simply wanted to demonstrate that we’re doing some amazing things. I feel certain it’s a matter of time before we find the right combination, filtering out the bad properties and allowing only select ones to bathe the subject. Life, Highness. It is within our grasp. I know it.”

The emperor looked back at the zombie, which was now clawing uselessly at the wall. “Immortal life. Is science the answer, Roderick, or are we damning ourselves?”

“Highness, if there is a God, then surely He has given man dominion over all the earth. This stone may be from the heavens, but it fell to earth. Surely God has sent it to us, perhaps even as a test. I think it’s our lot to push our intellects to the breaking point, to divine that which our Lord has sent us. Maybe He’s testing us. Perhaps it’s the ultimate test.”

“Perhaps,” Rudolph said quietly.

Roderick signaled Kelley to cease cranking. He pulled the lever to close the iron box. Kelley rubbed his shoulders. He’d worked up a good sweat.

Rudolph put his hand against the glass, looking into the chamber, as if mesmerized. “What about the other one?”

“Highness?”

“The other dead body. The young girl. She… it… isn’t moving.”

“Not uncommon, Highness. Sometimes the procedure fails to yield results. Perhaps certain bodies are not receptive.” A shrug. “It’s one of the mysteries that make our research so fascinating.”

“Yes. Fascinating.” The emperor’s face remained blank. “I must think on this. Thank you, gentlemen, for the demonstration.” He turned and left, a shadow seeming to hang over him.

“That’s damned peculiar,” Roderick said after Rudolph had gone. “I thought he would be more enthusiastic.” He scratched at his beard, contemplating.

“Maybe he was ashamed,” Kelley muttered.

“Eh?” Roderick lifted his head. “What was that?”

“Nothing. What should I do with it?” He indicated the zombie.

The astrologer looked up and down the hall. “Damn. All the soldiers have gone. It usually takes three or four each to hack them down safely. Can you let him chase you into the storage room we set up, Kelley?”

“They bite.”

“Yes, but they’re so slow. They just sort of shuffle along, don’t they?”

Kelley sighed. “That worked fine when the room was empty, but now I’ll run straight into a mob of them if I lead the new ones inside. It’s getting crowded in there.”

“Hmmmm, we’ll need to devise some new way to dispose of them, I suppose. Maybe we can burn them all when the room is full.”

Kelley pictured it, his gut lurching at the thought.

“We can leave them for tonight. Get some sleep, and we’ll figure it out in the morning.”

Kelley nodded, looked one more time at the back of her head, all that red hair.

He was glad he couldn’t see her face.

Kelley returned to his room in the White Tower, and lay down, exhausted, in bed. Sleep would not come. Part of him was appalled at the crimes against nature he’d witnessed in the past few weeks, and another part of him was ashamed by the fact that these scenes were a little less appalling to him each passing day. He even found himself occasionally sharing Roderick’s scientific enthusiasm, wondering how a particular experiment would turn out. Could a man get used to such things? He hated the thought of it. Seeing Bianca’s dead face had shaken him, had yanked him back to the reality of what they were doing.

He tossed and turned, tangled the blankets, every muscle in his body aching for the sleep that wouldn’t come.

He lay a long time, then he heard the door to his chamber open on rusty hinges. Kelley turned his head, saw the darkened figure enter.

“Who is it?”

No answer. Kelley held his breath.

The figure approached, and the bed sagged as it climbed on. Kelley’s pulse clicked up a notch.

The figure crawled on top of him and Kelley trembled. He opened his mouth to scream but couldn’t find the breath for it. The figure leaned forward, her face coming into the moonlight, her nose an inch from Kelley’s. Bianca was ghost pale, her lips black, eyes red, teeth sharp and yellow.

“Take me, Edward, my love. Put yourself inside me.”

And then Kelley did scream.

He thrashed, bucked the zombie off of him, kicked her away, rolled off the bed and hit the floor hard, tangling himself further into the bedclothes. He…

… opened his eyes.

He stood, panting, his heart racing. The yellow rays of dawn crept over the trees beyond his window. He looked around the room frantically, little panicked noises leaking out of him. A dream. Bianca. Just a dream.

He knelt to retrieve his journal from its hiding place beneath the chest. He took it to his desk and dipped his quill in ink, but he couldn’t write. His hands shook. He filled a cup with cheap, dark wine, spilling some. He drank, letting it burn down to his belly, then took up the quill again.

I can no longer be part of this abomination. Edgar must be contacted. It’s time. The Stone must be destroyed or hidden. It stops now.

Kelley poured another cup of wine. He drank and wept.





THIRTY-THREE




“It has to be now,” Kelley said heatedly. “I’m cracking up.”

Edgar shushed him. “Keep your voice down.”

They knelt next to each other on the cold stone floor of St. Vitus Cathedral, hands clasped in prayer. Edgar had snuck in dressed as one of the workers, although there were fewer workers now. In the castle, there was a strange tension, a growing, unspoken sense that something portentous was coming to fruition. There had been fewer and fewer casual visitors to court, little sign of foreign dignitaries and the normal activity of state, almost as if Prague Castle had been quarantined. As if the city held its breath, waiting for something dire and long-anticipated to finally drop its turd of doom right into the soup.

“We’re not ready,” Edgar whispered. “We’re still gathering strength.”

“I’m not doing this anymore.” Kelley said it with authority. He was putting his foot down. “Do it now, or I quit.”

“Are you forgetting?” Edgar asked. “You’ve sworn allegiance to the Society.”

Did the brand on Kelley’s ass flare slightly, or was it his imagination?

“I might not be able to escape, but I’ll kill myself. I’ll drink poison or throw myself off the top of the White Tower. Then you can find yourself another dupe.”

“Pull yourself together, Kelley. My God, you’re a wreck. I can smell the wine on your breath. It’s seven in the morning.” He eyed Kelley, a hard appraisal. “You’d do it, wouldn’t you? You’d kill yourself.”

Probably not. Kelley was too much a coward. “I can’t stand the constant horror anymore.” This, at least, was the honest truth.

Edgar sighed. “Two days. Give us two more days.”

Kelley closed his eyes tight and bowed his head. He couldn’t remember how a prayer went, couldn’t think of anything that didn’t sound like whining, couldn’t think of anything to ask that he deserved. To Edgar he said, “Two days. No more.”

“We’ll need your help from the inside.”

“Just tell me what you want.”

Roderick had set up a small antechamber near the entrance to the dungeon as a personal study. That’s where Kelley found the astrologer, hunched over a table littered with documents and diagrams, small models of the machines and gadgets he’d designed in service of the emperor’s mad project.