James Becker - The Nosferatu Scroll

There were two islands directly in front of him, both about the same size as the one he was standing on, and both inhabited. He could see lights shining through the windows of the small properties that had been erected on them. They looked homely, welcoming, and were also quite close together. That juxtaposition argued against either of them being the location of any kind of illegal activity, simply because anything that happened on one of the islands would be clearly visible to the people who lived on the other. The only way that either could be the place he was looking for was if the residents on both were involved in some kind of joint conspiracy. And that was a stretch.

Bronson scanned the islands through the binoculars, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. Then he looked over to the left, where another small island was visible in the fading light. But as far as he could see, there were no buildings of any sort on that one. It was a similar story when he searched the lagoon further to the west: just a couple of small islets without any sign of habitation. So where, exactly, had the two men vanished to earlier that afternoon?

He lowered the binoculars and stared out across the lagoon, despair clutching at his heart. He’d been so convinced that he’d found where Angela was being held, so sure that he’d be able to rescue her. But the cold hard reality was that he was no further forward than he’d been the previous day. All he could think of doing was climbing back into his boat and carrying out a visual search of all the islands in the vicinity, and just hoping that he spotted the blue powerboat — the right blue powerboat.

He was about to reach down to release the bow line when a tiny gleam of light attracted his attention. It was coming from the area between, and obviously behind, the two inhabited islands he’d already looked at. At first, it looked as if the light might actually be on the mainland, but when he brought the binoculars up to his eyes he could see that there was another island in the lagoon, quite some distance to the south, which he’d never noticed. He’d been so fixated on the island owned by the Italian politician that he hadn’t thought to check any further south.

He studied it carefully through the binoculars, and noticed straight away that it was reasonably isolated. The only thing anywhere near it was a tiny patch of reeds and scrubby vegetation about a hundred yards away from its western shore. Bronson wasn’t even sure that he’d find any solid ground there, but it was absolutely the only possible vantage point from which he could see what was happening on the island.

There was another grey stone house there, and some kind of outbuilding nearby. The light he’d seen was coming from a downstairs window, and was a mere sliver escaping through the gap between two shutters. Other than that, he could see no sign of life.

Bronson took a final look at both the island, where the thin vertical line of light still marked the position of the house, and the tiny clump of reeds, fixing their relative positions in his mind. Then he unhitched the rope, climbed down into his boat, started the engine and moved slowly away. At least the gathering darkness might help conceal him from anyone who might be watching from the island.

He steered the boat well out to the west, then turned the bow so that it pointed directly towards the reeds, closed the throttle still further and approached at little more than walking pace. He kept as low as he could in the vessel, knowing that the silhouette of a man sitting in a boat was very distinctive, and that by lying almost flat, his craft would hopefully just look like another shadow on the water in the gloom.

He turned off the engine when he was still a few feet clear of the reeds, and allowed the boat to drift into them. At the very least, they would hold the boat reasonably steady while he looked at the island through his binoculars.

But in fact, a few moments later the hull grounded, probably on mud, and the boat shuddered to a stop. That was better than he had hoped. Bronson climbed out of the vessel and pulled it further into the reed bed. The ground, such as it was, was soft and spongy underfoot, and several times his feet plunged into holes several inches deep, soaking his shoes and trouser legs. But he didn’t care. His search for Angela was back on course.

Making certain that the boat was wedged tightly in place, Bronson stepped back on board and resumed his scrutiny of the island through his binoculars.

Marco hadn’t finished with her. Despite his bleak statement to her that she would be dead — dying screaming in agony — within hours, there was still the final section of the text to be translated. And Angela knew she had no option but to comply.

Tears clouding her eyes, she again bent forward over the photocopied pages.

After describing in graphic detail the appalling ceremony designed to turn a human being into a vampire, and which would, almost incidentally, necessitate the rape and murder of not one but two young women, the author of the work had concluded by describing how an initiate would know if the process had been successful.

This section of the text was perhaps the least detailed of the entire corpus of work. The author admitted that there was no definitive proof, but suggested that an increasing dislike of consuming the meat of animals, of the beasts of the fields, and an aversion to daylight, were positive indicators. And if the initiate eventually found that he could only be sustained by the flesh of the recently dead, then it was certain that he would live for ever.

And now she even knew the name of the lapsed monk, as Marco had described him, and where he’d lived, because the very last section of the Latin text contained a single sentence that identified him, clearly written by the member of the society who’d copied down the words of the author. The translation read: Inscribed by my hand this fourteenth day of the month of August in the year eleven hundred and twenty-six, from the sacred words of our most sacred and illustrious Master, the noble and revered Father Amadeus of Gyor, Transdanubia .

Angela had actually heard of Gyor — it was one of the counties of what became known in the eighteenth century as the Districtus Trans-Danubianus, that part of Hungary which lay to the south and west of the River Danube. It was one of the twelve counties of Transdanubia whose boundaries had been established by Stephen I of Hungary, and which remained unchanged until 1920.

But if ever a monk — lapsed or otherwise — had been misnamed, it was Amadeus of Gyor. His name meant ‘lover of God’, and what Angela had read had convinced her that she’d rarely read anything more evil, more contrary to the essential goodness preached by most religions and especially by Christianity, than the treatise in front of her.

She shuddered slightly, and handed the page to Marco, who retreated to his chair, where he read slowly through the rest of what she had transcribed.

‘So what happens now?’ Angela asked nervously.

Marco smiled coldly at her. ‘The good news,’ he said, ‘is that you get to keep all your fingers. But you already know the bad news. You’ll take part — in fact, you’ll have a starring role — in the ceremony tonight.’

The slight smile left his face, and he nodded at her, his eyes travelling up and down her body appreciatively.

‘It would have been helpful if you’d had your passport in your handbag,’ he continued. ‘But even so, we’ve managed to initiate some enquiries in Britain, and on the Internet, into your family history, and as far as we can tell there’s no evidence that your bloodline — any of your ancestors, I mean — have ever been linked to one of the noble families of the immortals. So you’re an ideal candidate for the ceremony. You’re here on the island, and we need to dispose of you anyway, simply because you’ve seen our faces and you know too much about us. And, to look on the bright side, having you here means we don’t have to snatch another girl off the streets of Venice. So your death will actually save the life of a stranger.’