James Becker - The Nosferatu Scroll

With a throaty roar from its turbo-charged diesel engine, the second police boat swung away, two searchlights snapping into life as the crew started their search.

‘You shot him,’ Bianchi said, a statement rather than a question.

‘I shot at him, Inspector,’ Bronson replied, ‘and that’s not quite the same thing. He dropped his robe,’ he added, passing it over to the police officer.

‘You’d better get back to Venice, Signor Bronson. That looks like a nasty wound on your head, and you need to get it checked. We’ll stay out here until we find the body, and I’ll send somebody round to your hotel to take a statement in the morning. It’s been a long night for all of us. Oh, before you go, you’d better give me that pistol, unless you’ve managed to acquire a licence for it in the last twelve hours. And any ammunition you might have picked up as well.’

Bronson handed over the pistol, holster and spare magazines, then spent a couple of minutes separating his powerboat from the one the cult leader had been driving. Once he’d freed the gunwale, he waved a hand at Bianchi, started the boat’s engine again and motored away.

As they headed back towards the lights of Venice, Bronson slipped his arm around Angela’s shoulders and she nestled her head against him.

‘How’s your head?’ she asked.

‘I’ll live,’ Bronson said. ‘It feels like a bad bruise, but I don’t think it needs stitches. All I really want to do is get back to the hotel and lock the door against the world. It’s been a hell of a night for us all, and especially for you.’

Angela shivered. ‘Thank God it’s all over. I really thought I was going to die in that bloody cellar. I couldn’t believe it when I saw you there — and carrying a gun.’

‘Well, we’re safe now. Just don’t think about what happened tonight.’

Angela was silent for a few moments, then looked up at Bronson again. ‘Are you sure he’s dead? That foul creature?’

Bronson nodded. ‘At that range, I couldn’t possibly have missed. I fired four or five shots into him at a range of about six feet. If that didn’t kill him outright, he’d bleed to death in minutes. He’s dead, that’s for sure. Tomorrow, Bianchi will tell us he’s recovered the body, and that’ll be the end of it.’

Bronson and Angela walked into the hotel dining room the next morning only a few minutes before breakfast stopped being served. Angela had bathed and dressed the wound on his head as soon as they got back to the hotel the previous night and then they’d fallen into bed. They’d talked for a few minutes about the traumatic events of the previous few days, and especially the last frantic hours out in the lagoon, then exhaustion had overtaken them both and they’d quickly fallen asleep.

Bronson collected a coffee pot, a couple of cups and the last remaining basket of bread and croissants from the serving table and took everything over to the table by the window where Angela was sitting. She fell on the food as if she was starving.

‘God, I’m famished,’ she said, between mouthfuls of croissant.

‘I’m not surprised.’ Bronson poured her a cup of coffee, then sat back in his chair and looked at her.

‘What?’ she said, smiling.

‘I just like looking at you, that’s all,’ Bronson replied, ‘and for a while there I really didn’t think that was something I was ever going to be able to do again.’

Angela shuddered. ‘Don’t remind me,’ she said. ‘I never thought I was going to get out alive. You know, I still can’t believe you managed to find me.’

Bronson had explained about his visit to the Isola di San Michele and the events that had followed it the previous evening.

‘I don’t think I could have lived with myself if I’d lost you a second time,’ he said, taking her hand. ‘You know, I was certain that Inspector Bianchi was one of the bad guys, but now I’m really glad I was wrong, because if he had been, my guess is we’d both be dead now.’

Angela nodded, and in a halting voice described in more detail the code-breaking she’d been forced to do.

‘It was appalling stuff,’ she finished. ‘That scroll I found in the bell tower on Poveglia — which is a severely creepy place, by the way — was neither more nor less than an authorization to go out and commit multiple rape and mass murder. But what really bothered me about it was the whole tone of the text. It was so matter-of-fact about vampires, as if they were simply another sector of society that everyone would have known about. Oh, and by implication everyone could become one if they really wanted to, and were prepared to follow the rituals.’

‘I had a question about that,’ Bronson said. ‘They had a female wolf chained up in a stable, and before the ceremony started I saw two men go into the building and milk her. And then they forced the milk down poor Marietta’s throat. What the hell has that got to do with becoming a vampire?’

Angela’s face was pale and strained as she remembered what she’d been through. ‘That was something they got completely wrong. My guess is that the members of the vampire group had studied all the ancient literature. They would certainly have read about the eighteenth-century Vampire Princess of the Schwarzenbergs — Eleonora Amalia. Almost every contemporary source agreed that she was a vampire, and her body was autopsied after her death, something that was only very rarely done in those days, and almost never on a member of the aristocracy. It’s now thought that the procedure was performed not to find out why she died, but simply so her heart could legitimately be removed from her body. Because she was of royal blood, they couldn’t decapitate her or burn her corpse. Wrenching out a vampire’s heart was supposed to make sure they stayed dead.

‘But one of the other odd things about Eleonora Amalia was that she drank the milk of wolves, and my guess is that the members of the group discovered that and thought it was just something else they — or rather their victims — should do. But, according to other sources, Eleonora Amalia didn’t think she was a vampire, and she drank the milk for an entirely different reason, though it was based on another old legend — Romulus and Remus. She was trying to increase her fertility.’

Angela stopped talking and looked across at Bronson. Then she voiced the unspoken question that was uppermost in both their minds.

‘Last night … the leader of that group … was he really a man, do you think?’

Bronson shook his head helplessly. ‘I don’t know,’ he muttered. ‘What I do know is that he was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen.’

‘When I came round after that taser hit me, he was carrying me, and I’ll tell you this: he was incredibly strong. For part of the time he literally held me in one arm. You’re strong, Chris, and I’m sure you could pick me up fairly easily, but I very much doubt if you could carry me very far, especially not over such rough ground.’ Angela paused, and Bronson noticed her hand was shaking. ‘There’s something else about it that bothers me. I know it’s not definite proof either way, but there is one consistent factor that seems to crop up in all the records about-’

She broke off as the door to the dining room opened and Inspector Bianchi walked in. He crossed over to their table, pulled up a third chair and sat down.

‘Good morning, Inspector,’ Bronson greeted him in Italian. ‘Would you like a coffee?’ Without waiting for an answer, he picked up an unused cup from the next table, poured coffee into it and slid it over.

‘Good morning. I think we’ve wrapped up almost everything on the island,’ Bianchi said, sticking to English so that Angela could understand what he was saying. ‘The forensic people are still out there, and will be for a while, but I’m pretty certain we’ve got all the evidence we need, including the pistol that was used to kill my superior officer here in the city. I hope this means an end to these disappearances and murders.’ He paused for a moment to taste his drink. ‘But I’m afraid we’ve still not found a body in the lagoon.’