Karel shook his head.
'Bolted windows cannot hold away the creature, sir,' he said.
He stood, tall and lean, beside the kitchen table on which lay the cluster of silver he'd been polishing when Gheria had entered.
'The creature has the power to make itself a vapour which can pass through any opening however small,' he said.
'But the cross!' cried Gheria. 'It was still at her throat - untouched! Except by - blood,' he added in a sickened voice.
'This I cannot understand,' said Karel, grimly. 'The cross should have protected her.'
'But why did I see nothing?'
'You were drugged by its mephitic presence,' Karel said. 'Count yourself fortunate that you were not also attacked.'
'I do not count myself fortunate!' Dr. Gheria struck his palm, a look of anguish on his face. 'What am I to do, Karel?' he asked.
'Hang garlic,' said the old man. 'Hang it at the windows, at the doors. Let there be no opening unblocked by garlic'
Gheria nodded distractedly. 'Never in my life have I seen this thing,' he said, brokenly. 'Now, my own wife -'
'I have seen it,' said Karel. 'I have, myself, put to its rest one of these monsters from the grave.'
'The stake -?' Gheria looked revolted.
The old man nodded slowly.
Gheria swallowed. 'Pray God you may put this one to rest as well,' he said.
'Petre?'
She was weaker now, her voice a toneless murmur. Gheria bent over her. 'Yes, my dear,' he said.
'It will come again tonight,' she said.
'No.' He shook his head determinedly. 'It cannot come. The garlic will repel it.'
'My cross didn't,' she said, 'you didn't.'
"The garlic will,' he said. 'And see?' He pointed at the bedside table. 'I've had black coffee brought for me. I won't sleep tonight.'
She closed her eyes, a look of pain across her sallow features.
'I don't want to die,' she said. 'Please don't let me die, Petre.'
'You won't,' he said. 'I promise you; the monster shall be destroyed.'
Alexis shuddered feebly. 'But if there is no way, Petre,' she murmured.
'There is always a way,' he answered.
Outside the darkness, cold and heavy, pressed around the house. Dr. Gheria took his place beside the bed and began to wait. Within the hour, Alexis slipped into a heavy slumber. Gently, Dr. Gheria released her hand and poured himself a cup of steaming coffee. As he sipped it hotly, bitter, he looked around the room. Door locked, windows bolted, every opening sealed with garlic, the cross at Alexis' throat. He nodded slowly to himself. It will work, he thought. The monster would be thwarted.
He sat there, waiting, listening to his breath.
Dr. Gheria was at the door before the second knock.
'Michael!' He embraced the younger man. 'Dear Michael, I was sure you'd come!'
Anxiously, he ushered Dr. Vares towards his study. Outside darkness was just falling.
'Where on earth are all the people of the village?' asked Vares. 'I swear, I didn't see a soul as I rode in.'
'Huddling, terror-stricken, in their houses,' Gheria said, 'and all my servants with them save for one.'
'Who is that?'
'My butler, Karel,' Gheria answered. 'He didn't answer the door because he's sleeping. Poor fellow, he is very old and has been doing the work of five.' He gripped Vares' arm. 'Dear Michael,' he said, 'you have no idea how glad I am to see you.'
Vares looked at him worriedly. 'I came as soon as I received your message,' he said.
'And I appreciate it,' Gheria said. 'I know how long and hard a ride it is from Cluj.'
'What's wrong?' asked Vares. 'Your letter only said -'
Quickly, Gheria told him what had happened in the past week.
'I tell you, Michael, I stumble at the brink of madness,' he said. 'Nothing works! Garlic, wolfsbane, crosses, mirrors, running water - useless! No, don't say it! This isn't superstition nor imagination! This is happeningl A vampire is destroying her! Each day she sinks yet deeper into that - deadly torpor from which -'
Gheria clinched his hands. 'And yet I cannot understand it,' he muttered, brokenly, 'I simply cannot understand it.'
'Come, sit, sit.' Doctor Vares pressed the older man into a chair, grimacing at the pallor of him. Nervously, his fingers sought for Gheria's pulse beat.
'Never mind me,' protested Gheria. 'It's Alexis we must help.' He pressed a sudden, trembling hand across his eyes. 'Yet how?' he said. He made no resistance as the younger man undid his collar and examined his neck.
'You, too,' said Vares, sickened.
'What does that matter?' Gheria clutched at the younger man's hand. 'My friend, my dearest friend,' he said, 'tell me that it is not I! Do I do this hideous thing to her?'
Vares looked confounded. 'You?' he said. 'But -'
'I know, I know,' said Gheria, 'I, myself, have been attacked. Yet nothing follows, Michael! What breed of horror is this which cannot be impeded? From what unholy place does it emerge? I've had the countryside examined foot by foot, every graveyard ransacked, every crypt inspected! There is no house within the village that has not yet been subjected to my search. I tell you, Michael, there is nothing! Yet, there is something -something which assaults us nightly, draining us of life. The village is engulfed by terror - and I as well! I never see this creature, never hear it! Yet, every morning, I find my beloved wife -'
Vares' face was drawn and pallid now. He stared intently at the older man.
'What am I to do, my friend?' pleaded Gheria. 'How am I to save her?'
Vares had no answer.
'How long has she - been like this?' asked Vares. He could not remove his stricken gaze from the whiteness of Alexis' face.
'For days,' said Gheria. 'The retrogression has been constant.'
Dr. Vares put down Alexis' flaccid hand. 'Why did you not tell me sooner?' he asked.
'I thought the matter could be handled,' Gheria answered, faintly. 'I know now that it - cannot.'
Vares shuddered. 'But, surely - ' he began.
'There is nothing left to be done,' said Gheira. 'Everything has been tried, everything!' He stumbled to the window and stared out bleakly into the deepening night.
'And now it comes again, he murmured, 'And we are helpless before it.'
'Not helpless, Petre.' Vares forced a cheering smile to his lips and laid his hand upon the older man's shoulder. 'I will watch her tonight.'
'It's useless.'
'Not at all, my friend,' said Vares, nervously. 'And now you must sleep.'
'I will not leave her,' said Gheria.
'But you need rest.'
'I cannot leave,' said Gheria. 'I will not be separated from her.'
Vares nodded. 'Of course,' he said. 'We will share the hours of watching then.'
Gheria" sighed. 'We can try,' he said, but there was no sound of hope in his voice.
Some twenty minutes later, he returned with an urn of steaming coffee which was barely possible to smell through the heavy mist of garlic fumes which hung in the air. Trudging to the bed, Gheria set down the tray. Dr. Vares had drawn a chair up beside the bed.
'I'll watch first,' he said. 'You sleep, Petre.'
'It would do no good to try,' said Gheria. He held a cup beneath the spigot and the coffee gurgled out like smoking ebony.
'Thank you,' murmered Vares as the cup was handed to him. Gheria nodded once and drew himself a cupful before he sat.
'I do not know what will happen to Solta if this creature is not destroyed,' he said. 'The people are paralysed by terror.'
'Has it - been elsewhere in the village?' Vares asked him.
Gheria sighed exhaustedly. 'Why need it go elsewhere?' he said. 'It is finding all it - craves within these walls.' He stared despondently at Alexis. 'When we are gone,' he said, 'it will go elsewhere. The people know that and are waiting for it.'
Vares set down his cup and rubbed bis eyes.
'It seems i
mpossible,' he said, 'that we, practitioners of a science, should be unable to -'
'What can science effect against it?' said Gheria. 'Science which will not even admit its existence? We could bring, into this very room, the foremost scientists of the world and they would say - my friends, you have been deluded. There is no vampire. All is mere trickery.'
Gheria stopped and looked intently at the younger man. He said, 'Michael?'
Vares' breath was slow and heavy. Putting down his cup of untouched coffee, Gerhia stood and moved to where Vares sat slumped in his chair. He pressed back an eyelid, looked down briefly at the sightless pupil, then withdrew his hand. The drug was quick, he thought. And most effective. Vares would be insensible for more than time enough.
Moving to the closet, Gheria drew down his bag and carried it to the bed. He tore Alexis' nightdress from her upper body and, within seconds, had drawn another syringe full of her blood; this would be the last withdrawal, fortunately. Stanching the wound, he took the syringe to Vares and emptied it into the young man's mouth, smearing it across his lips and teeth.
That done, he strode to the door and unlocked it. Returning to Vares, he raised and carried him into the hall. Karel would not awaken; a small amount of opiate in his food had seen to that. Gheria laboured down the steps beneath the weight of Vares' body. In the darkest corner of the cellar, a wooden casket waited for the younger man. There he would lie until the following morning when the distraught Dr. Petre Gheria would, with sudden inspiration, order Karel to search the attic and cellar on the remote, nay fantastic possibility that -
Ten minutes later, Gheria was back in the bedroom checking Alexis' pulse beat. It was active enough; she would survive. The pain and torturing horror she had undergone would be punishment enough for her. As for Vares -
Dr. Gheria smiled in pleasure for the first time since Alexis and he had returned from Cluj at the end of the summer. Dear spirits in heaven, would it not be sheer enchantment to watch old Karel drive a stake through Michael Vares' damned cuckolding heart!
3 - DESCENT
It was impulse, Les pulled the car over to the kerb and stopped it. He twisted the shiny key and the motor stopped. He turned to look across Sunset Boulevard, across the green hills that dropped away steeply to the ocean.
'Look, Ruth,' he said.
It was late afternoon. Far out across the palisades they could see the Pacific shimmering with reflections of the red sun. The sky was a tapestry dripping gold and crimson. Streamers of billowy, pink-edged clouds hung across it.
'It's so pretty,' Ruth said.
His hand lifted from the car seat to cover hers. She smiled at him a moment, then the smile faded as they watched the sunset again.
'It's hard to believe,' Ruth said.
'What?' he asked.
'That we'll never see another.'
He looked soberly at the brightly coloured sky. Then he smiled but not in pleasure.
'Didn't we read that they'd have artificial sunsets?' he said. 'You'll look out the windows of your room and see a sunset. Didn't we read that somewhere?'
'It won't be the same,' she said, 'will it, Les?'
'How could it be?'
'I wonder,' she murmured, 'What it will be really like.'
'A lot of people would like to know,' he said.
They sat in silence watching the sun go down. It's funny he thought, you try to get underneath to the real meaning of a moment like this but you can't. It passes and when it's over you don't know or feel any more than you did before. It's just one more moment added to the past. You don't appreciate what you have until it's taken away.
He looked over at Ruth and saw her looking solemnly and strangely at the ocean.
'Honey,' he said quietly and gave her, with the word, his love.
She looked at him and tried to smile.
'We'll still be together,' he told her.
'I know,' she said. 'Don't pay any attention to me.'
'But I will,' he said, leaning over to kiss her cheek. 'I'll look after you. Over the earth -'
'Or under it,' she said.
Bill came out of the house to meet them. Les looked at his friend as he steered the car into the open concrete space by the garage. He wondered how Bill felt about leaving the house he'd just finished paying for. Free and clear, after eighteen years of payments, and tomorrow it would be rubble. Life is a bastard, he thought, switching off the engine.
'Hello, kid,' Bill said to him. 'Hi, beautiful,' to Ruth.
'Hello, handsome,' Ruth said.
They got out of the car and Ruth took the package off the front seat. Bill's daughter Jeannie came running out of the house. 'Hi, Les! Hi, Ruth!'
'Say, Bill, whose car are we going to take tomorrow?' Les asked him.
'I don't know, kid,' Bill said. 'We'll talk it over when Fred and Grace get here.'
'Carry me piggy-back, Les,' Jeannie demanded.
He swung her up. I'm glad we don't have a child, I'd hate to take a child down there tomorrow.
Mary looked up from the stove as they moved in. They all said hello and Ruth put the package on the table.
'What's that?' Mary asked.
'I baked a pie,' Ruth told her.
'Oh, you didn't have to do that,' Mary said.
'Why not? It may be the last one I'll ever bake.'
'It's not that bad,' Bill said. 'They'll have stoves down there.'
'There'll be so much rationing it won't be worth the effort,' Ruth said.
'The way my true love bakes that'll be good fortune,' Bill said.
'Is that so!' Mary glared at her grinning husband, who patted her behind and moved into the living room with Les. Ruth stayed in the kitchen to help.
Les put down Bill's daughter.
Jeannie ran out. 'Mama, I'm gonna help you make dinner!'
'How nice,' they heard Mary say.
Les sank down on the big cherry-coloured couch and Bill took the chair across the room by the window.
'You come up through Santa Monica?' he asked.
'No, we came along the Coast Highway,' Les said. 'Why?'
'Jesus, you should have gone through Santa Monica,' Bill said. 'Everybody's going crazy - breaking store windows, turning cars upside down, setting fire to everything. I was down there this morning. I'm lucky I got the car back. Some jokers wanted to roll it down Wilshire Boulevard.'
'What's the matter, are they crazy?' Les said. 'You'd think this was the end of the world.'
'For some people it is,' Bill said. 'What do you think M.G.M. is going to do down there, make cartoons?'
'Sure,' said Les. Tom and Jerry in the Middle of the Earth.
Bill shook his head. 'Business is going out of its mind,' he said. 'There's no place to set up everything down there. Everybody's flipping. Look at that paper.'
Les leaned forward and took the newspaper off the coffee table. It was three days old. The main stories, of course, covered the details of the descent - the entry schedules at the various entrances: the one in Hollywood, the one in Reseda, the one in downtown Los Angeles. In large type across eight columns, the front page headline read: Remember! The Bomb Falls At Sunset! Newspapers had been carrying the warning for a week. And tomorrow was the day.
The rest of the stories were about robbery, rape, arson, and murder.
'People just can't take it,' Bill said, 'They have to flip.'
'Sometimes I feel like flipping myself,' said Les.
'Why?' Bill said with a shrug. 'So we live under the ground instead of over it. What the hell will change? Television will still be lousy.'
'Don't tell me we aren't even leaving that above ground?'
'No, didn't you see?' Bill said. He pushed up and walked over to the coffee table. He picked up the paper Les had dropped. 'Where the hell is it?' he muttered to himself, ruffling through the pages.
'There.' Bill held out the paper.
TELEVISION TO GO ON SCIENTISTS PROMISE
'Consolation?' Les said.
'S
ure,' Bill said, tossing down the paper. 'Now we'll be able to watch the bomb smear us.'
He went back to his chair.
Les shook his head. 'Who's going to build television sets down there?'
'Kid, there'll be everything down - what's up, beautiful?'
Ruth stood in the archway that opened on the living room.
'Anybody want wine?' she asked. 'Beer?'
Bill said beer and Les said wine, then Bill went on.
'Maybe that promise of television is a little farfetched,' he said. 'But, otherwise, there'll be business as usual. Oh, maybe it'll be on a different level, but it'll be there. Christ, somebody's gonna want something for all the money they've invested in the Tunnels.'
'Isn't their life enough?'
Bill went on talking about what he'd read concerning life in The Tunnels - the exchange set-up, the transportation system, the plans for substitute food production and all the endless skein of details that went into the creation of a new society in a new world.
Les didn't listen. He sat looking past his friend at the purple and red sky that topped the shifting dark blue of the ocean. He heard the steady flow of Bill's words without their content; he heard the women moving in the kitchen. What would it be like? - he wondered. Nothing like this. No aquamarine broadloom, wall to wall, no vivid colours, no fireplace with copper screening, most of all no picture windows with the beautiful world outside for them to watch. He felt his throat tighten slowly. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow -
Ruth came in with the glasses and handed Bill his beer and Les his wine. Her eyes met those of her husband for a moment and she smiled. He wanted to pull her down suddenly and bury his face in her hair. He wanted to forget. But she returned to the kitchen and he said 'What?' to Bill's question.
'I said I guess we'll go to the Reseda entrance.'
'I guess it's as good as any other,' Les said.
'Well, I figure the Hollywood and the downtown entrances will be jammed,' Bill said. 'Christ, you really threw down that wine.'
Les felt the slow warmth run down into his stomach as he put down the glass.