* * *
“Friedrich! I need you!” Britta yelled at me.
Even frightened as I was and surrounded by screaming people equally as afraid as I was, I heard the steel in her voice. Somehow that timber in her voice gave me strength when I had none.
I went to her, pushing my way through the mad mob that tried equally to shove me away and to hang on to me, crying out for me to save them.
“We’ve got to get these people out of here,” Britta told me.
I nodded, because I didn’t trust my voice.
Her green eyes caught mine and held them as two vampires made their way toward us. “Remember your promise to me this morning,” she told me.
“I do,” I croaked, knowing full well that we were both about to die.
But I had not, even after reading so much of the exploits of the previous Slayers, taken into consideration the power that was Britta’s to command. I cannot, in all honesty, claim responsibility for all that I saw Britta do that night. Part of the Slayer’s skill lies in her training, but so much of it seems to come naturally once the power has manifested itself within her.
The Slayer ripped a hunting tapestry from the wall beside us and brought it down onto the two vampires coming directly for us. The tapestry was heavy and unexpected, and succeeded in knocking them down. Before they could regain their feet, Britta sheathed her stakes in them, unerringly finding their unbeating hearts and reducing them to dust.
A female demon approached me, her face a tight mask of bloody rage. Crimson stained her white evening gown, I remember that explicitly. It’s an image that will die with me. Only one among many, I’m afraid.
Erich Sahr yelled orders at his fellow demons, bringing them all to bear on Britta. Evidently by that point he’d realized who she was. But no matter how complicated things got in that room, Herr Sahr made sure the cameras kept rolling. Somewhere, that film exists. The Watchers Council should know about it. I can’t get the thought out of my head about all those horrified faces trapped forever in black and white, all those silent screams as they were killed.
Britta battled her way to the doorway that led to the grand ballroom. The vampire blocking the way there tried to stop her, but he had no chance. He threw a flurry of blows at Britta, but the Slayer stopped them all, then buried a stake in his heart. After the demon turned to dust, the Slayer kicked the locked doors open, freeing the surviving people inside the room.
Once a means of freedom was before them, the survivors of the movie showing had no qualms about using it. They fled en masse.
And to my shame, I fled with them. I tried desperately not to leave, but when the doors opened and the way to the street was seen to be clear, I ran, joining them with some herd instinct.
“Friedrich!”
Startled by the terror in Britta’s voice, I turned as I ran through the mansion’s main doors. Peering into the grand ballroom where we had dined by invitation only a short time ago, I saw a half dozen vampires holding Britta so that she couldn’t escape.
I stopped.
“Friedrich!” she wailed. “Remember your promise to me! Remember that you told me you wouldn’t allow me to die alone! You swore to me!”
God in heaven, I swear that I shall never forget that horrible cry. I’ve not slept since last night, and I know that I could not without hearing poor, poor Britta over and over in my nightmares.
In the next moment the vampires bore her to the floor and someone closed the mansion’s doors.
“Friedrich/” Then they covered her and, mercifully and selfishly, I heard her no more.
Forgive me, but I only gave fleeting thought to trying to return for her. But how could I, who was only human, stand against the demons strong enough to slay the Slayer?
I stopped, as I said, but it was only for a moment. Then I kept running.
* * *
I hid out all that night, not daring to return to Herr Kessler’s estate after I had let his beautiful daughter perish alone and untended. I watched from a rooftop as the bodies were recovered from the mansion the next morning. Evidently those in charge of the recovery of the victims had some small experience with vampires, because they didn’t try to go into the mansion at all that night. Of course, being involved with Adolph Hitler and the Nazi party occupied a lot of their attention during the night as well.
I couldn’t help thinking that Herr Sahr had planned well, and wondered if he had somehow known Hitler would make his move that night. Now I know that I shall never know. But Hitler’s efforts were defeated, and I shall take some cold comfort in that. Things here in Germany are hard enough after the Great War without madmen running around fomenting unrest.
I spent the day scared and alone, thinking only of my desertion of Britta and how I’d broken my promise to her. But I was no Slayer. I was just a man, a very scared man up against monsters that could have snapped me like kindling. I did the only thing a sane man would do.
Later that evening, knowing what Herr Kessler would do, I made my way out of the city and down the long road to his estate. Poor Britta’s body had been discovered with the others that had been taken from the mansion. As much as Herr Kessler loved his daughter, I knew that he would want to see her laid to rest as soon as possible.
I waited outside the mausoleum as the family, dressed all in black, conducted the funeral after Britta’s body had been interred. Then, shortly before sundown, I gathered the stakes I’d carved with my Swiss-made knife and sneaked into the mausoleum like a thief.
I didn’t know if Herr Sahr had attempted to Turn her when he killed her, but I didn’t see how the demon could resist corrupting the person who was supposed to stand against him and his kind. I tried not to think of poor Britta as some soulless hellion, but the image of her features turned bestial and cold wouldn’t leave me.
I also knew that Britta, at least the part of her that survived to welcome the demon into her body, would remember my betrayal of her. It was with great trepidation that I made my way into that ornate mausoleum.
I went immediately back to the wing that was slated to hold Herr Kessler and his family and spotted the casket I had seen carried to the estate earlier by a funeral coach trimmed all in black. My heart pounded in my chest as I stared at the sleek wood.
But I knew what I had to do.
Resolutely, I took up one of the stakes I’d shoved into my belt and approached the casket. All I had to do was pierce her heart with the stake, then there would be no coming back for her. My hand trembled and sweat poured from my body like I was a dish towel being wrung out in Cook’s strong hands.
Moaning, not wanting to see Britta this way, I reached for the casket lid and lifted. The freshly oiled hinges opened without a sound to reveal the empty bed inside. My breath froze in my throat as I wondered if she’d already risen.
“No,” a voice said behind me. “She’s not there.”
I whirled and found Herr Sahr standing inside the mausoleum. I trembled as I stood there, a disheveled and humbled man, I assure you, and one still very much afraid for his life.
“Where is she?” I croaked.
Herr Sahr grinned at me. After his night of bloodletting and filmmaking, he looked sartorially perfect.
I hated him for that. I hated him for what he’d done to Britta, and for making me feel so helpless and pathetic to prevent it or do anything about it now.
“Fräuline Britta is still here in this place.” Herr Sahr took a cigarette from a silver case inside his jacket.
“Is she—is she—” I could not bring myself to say it.
“Dead?”
I made no reply. My throat would have only strangled anything I might have tried to say.
“Oh,” the vampire said, “she’s dead. Very much so.” He blew a smoke ring into the still air in the mausoleum. “It is a very difficult thing to turn a Slayer, you know.” He regarded me. “Or perhaps you don’t. You look every bit as inexperienced as your young protégée.”
I started toward him then
, the stake clenched tightly in my fist. It wasn’t that I was suddenly brave. It was that I was so frightened that I could no longer stand still.
Before I took my second step, Herr Sahr moved with incredible speed and slapped me down.
I fell to the stone floor, smelling the old death that reeked around me. I tried to get up, but I couldn’t. My muscles wouldn’t obey my mind, and I teetered on the brink of unconsciousness.
“Before young Britta died, Herr Lichtermann,” the vampire taunted, “and she died screaming, let me assure you of that, I remembered how she’d screamed at you in the mansion. She reminded you that you had promised she would never die alone.”
Guilt hammered me, smothered me in its cloying embrace.
“You promised her that she wouldn’t die alone,” Herr Sahr repeated. “She won’t forgive you for that, you know.” He glanced down at the stakes on the floor. “I’m leaving you your toys. It’s only fair that you be armed. Still, I don’t think it will be an even match. I think she will still kill you, but perhaps you will surprise me. At least the exercise should provide a modicum of amusement for your audience.”
Abruptly, a chugging, hammering noise filled the mausoleum. I recognized the sound immediately.
Sahr smiled. “Generators,” he said. “For the cameras, you see. Your final confrontation here in this place is going to be saved on film, my friend. However it turns out. I’ve taken the liberty of placing men behind the gates of the various passages in this mausoleum. They will film your final moments.”
A small hope dawned within me then. Perhaps Herr Kessler’s main house was not so very far away—
“The sound of the generators,” Sahr assured me, “will never be heard by anyone in that home. And if it is, I will kill them as well.” He leaned toward me, still smiling that mocking smile. “I’m going to make you a star, Herr Lichtermann.”
Before I could move, he stepped forward and kicked me in the head. Everything went black.
* * *
I awoke in the mausoleum some hours ago only to find Herr Sahr had seen to it that I was locked in. No one at Herr Kessler’s estate has heard my pleas for help, nor the incessant thumping and banging of the generators that provide power to the damned cameras that tape my movements. The mausoleum is too far away from any of the main houses, and the groundskeepers seldom come out this way. When I checked through one of the barred windows—too tight for a full-grown man to slip through—I’d seen sundown rapidly approaching.
After that, I’d searched frantically through the mausoleum for Britta’s body. If I could have found her before she rose again in the middle of the night, I could have stopped the horror that I knew would be coming.
But although I searched everywhere I could think of, I couldn’t find her. The Kessler mausoleum is an old one, filled with a number of passageways that were gated off. I didn’t have the strength to open those gates, so I can’t help but think Britta was hidden behind one of them. The rats that infest this place kept me company and still do.
So do the cameras that Herr Sahr had installed. Perhaps he has rewritten the end of his picture. I wonder about the audience for such a thing. Will it be made up of demons? Or—even more horrible to consider—will that audience be made up of men with the hearts of demons?
I don’t know. Perhaps you will learn.
I must close now and try to get the papers in the wine bottle and the wine bottle down into the artesian well. I’m certain that the last scratching noise I heard wasn’t the sound of rats’ claws. It was more like the pampered nails of a young woman rasping along stone walls.
Now I hear her. She calls my name, and although I recognize the voice as Britta’s, I don’t recognize the mocking tone.
God, I am so scared. Nothing can be more horrible than this! But both our fates have already been sealed, haven’t they? Only the final scene needs to be played out—the one Sahr orchestrated so carefully.
Even though I am afraid of her, I am more afraid of death. Perhaps tonight, though, she and death are the same.
I will fight.
I know that.
God forgive me, I have NO CHOICE. I cannot allow her to continue the wretched existence she has begun if it remains within my power to stop her.
She comes toward me coyly, like a shy lover. I know this because the sound of her nails along the stone walls approaches very slowly. I cannot hide from her; I know that she can smell my blood wherever I go. And I know that after wakening from her recent death she will be ravenous.
Please get this message to the Watchers Council. I’ve included one of the postal addresses they use in Berlin.
As for me, I shall take up the stakes I carved during Britta’s funeral earlier and wait to meet her. One way or the other tonight, I shall keep my promise to her.
She will not die alone.
I pray only that my arm is swift and that I remember the girl I knew is dead, her place taken by the foul creature that will hunt me as surely as I hunt her.
God have mercy on us both.
Sincerely,
Herr Friedrich Lichtermann
And White Splits the Night
Yvonne Navarro
FLORIDA, 1956
She had always loved the swamp.
At seventeen, Asha Sayre was tall and well muscled for a girl, graceful as a snake as she walked along the mushy ground on the edge of Lake Okeechobee. The ebony tones of her skin were a natural camouflage, melding smoothly with the heavy, sunlight-mottled greenery. Still, she was mindful of the ’gators and cottonmouths that twisted silently through the underbrush and the swamp—they would not be so easily fooled. Any spot of standing water could be home to a territorial, hungry reptile, and their ranges spread far and wide. The hunting knife that hung off the belt of her denim jeans, serrated with a spiked guard along the knuckles, would split an alligator wide open with one swipe . . . but only if she saw it coming. Caught from behind, she’d be dragged into the water and drowned, then wedged under a rock or something beneath and saved to be a tasty later meal.
Such a damp, dangerous place, but Asha turned her face upward and smiled, enjoying the feel of the heat on her skin. There was so much life here—river otters and muskrats played in the water, as if daring the ’gators to chase them, swamp sparrows and marsh wrens sang while herons walked amid the grasses, their spiky legs keeping them above the low water level. Occasionally she’d catch a glimpse of a red-shouldered hawk dive-bombing toward earth, and Asha knew that some poor swamp mouse had met its end. Damselflies and skimmers skipped above the water lilies and pogonias, all beneath a sheltering umbrella of loblolly bay, willow, and bald cypress trees. Movement was everywhere, the dance of existence itself.
But there was death here, too.
Something dark and unnatural that didn’t belong with the threat of the ’gators and poisonous snakes.
It took her awhile, but Asha finally found it. She’d been wandering, really, traveling southward along the lakefront and deeper into the swampier areas on nothing more than gut feeling. It was the smell that drew her the final yards, the sickening stench of decomposition, and now she stood and studied the corpse half buried beneath the dense Possumhaw and bayberry leaves. A wave of her arm sent a cloud of horseflies skyward, giving her a few seconds to glimpse bare flesh before they resettled. Mother Earth was quick to reclaim dead material here, and already beetles and rodents had joined the flies in their feast. But that two-second look had shown Asha what she most needed to see on the body of this middle-aged Negro man:
Bite marks on his neck.
Whoever he was, there was nothing she could do for him now—drained, partially eaten, it was obvious he’d gone through several sunsets, so he was victim only, not fated to walk this world as a vampire. It saddened her that she had no idea who he was, what his name had been, or if he had a family who now wondered where he’d gone. In Martin County, Florida, 1956 was a hard time—work was hard to find, money was scarce. Perhaps there was a wife and children s
omewhere who thought, unfairly, that this poor man had run off to seek his fortune in richer climes.
A soft splash off to her right made Asha tense and back away from the body. It could be an alligator that had caught the smell of free food, but it could be something else entirely. This was Cajun country, and those hard, heavily accented men and women weren’t known for their friendliness to outsiders, especially Negro folk. Asha slipped away rather than risk a nasty confrontation, letting her shadow blend with the deep greenness of the vegetation. But she’d be back.
Because that wasn’t the only vampirized body she’d found in the swamp this week.
* * *
Laurent was waiting for her when Asha got back to their small shack. Settled comfortably on the weather-cracked rocking chair on the front porch, the middle-aged Cajun woman sucked on her old hardwood pipe and regarded her for a few moments without speaking. Smoke from the cheap tobacco swirled above her head, and while Asha didn’t like it, she had to admit that the tobacco smoke helped to keep the biting insects away.
“Find ’nother one?” Laurent asked around the pipe jammed between her lips. At Asha’s expression, the woman nodded. “Uhhuh. Evil’s afoot, all right.” She raised an eyebrow. “Gonna have to hunt it down.”
“I know.” Asha sighed and forced her fingers through the tight curls on her head, wishing for the tenth time that week that she could just cut it all off like a boy’s. Laurent wouldn’t allow it though, said that while it would be easier to care for, it’d be like a big sign pointing to her, marking her as being different from the rest of the colored girls in their small town. And she was different, but she didn’t need everyone else in Port Buck to know that; enough bad stuff happened there already, and she was supposed to help stop it, not become a target.
“Where’re you gonna start?”
“I’m . . . not sure. I guess I could go into the swamp tonight.” A risky business, doing that—her eyesight was keen but not like the animals, which had the advantage of a better sense of smell to boot. If there was no moon she’d have to carry a lantern. A light might lead her along the right path and keep her from stepping on an alligator, but it could also draw a few creatures her way that were far worse than the reptiles.