Victor Gischler - Vampire A Go-Go

“She ‘made’ you?”

Allen sighed. “It’s sort of… complicated.”

“Allen, if she sent you for it, then she’ll want it. When night hits, she’ll come, and then we’ll have a vampire on our hands. The Society thought Evergreen had something bad planned for the philosopher’s stone, but it was Cassandra all along, wasn’t it? She needs it for something.”

“She didn’t tell me for what,” Allen said. “But I plan to find out. She may have sent me to find the diary, but I didn’t take it to her, did I? I’m going to get to the bottom of this, but I’ll need your help, okay? I just… I don’t want to say anything to Penny about Cassandra. It’s embarrassing.”

“Embarrassing? But why would-” Amy’s eyes went big, comprehension dawning in her expression. “Oh, my God. Did she do that vampire hypnotism thing on you? Did she seduce you?”

“Keep your voice down.” He felt himself turn red.

“She did , didn’t she?”

Allen saw Penny returning with tea and coffee. “Shush.”

“That’s hot,” Amy said.

Allen glared her into silence just as Penny sat down and passed a mug of tea to Amy.

“Did I miss anything?”

“Nope.” Allen kept his eyes fixed on the manuscript, deliberately not looking at either of the girls.

He focused on passages, trying to find something important. Kelley went on and on about life at the castle, lengthy tirades against somebody named Dee. He skipped ahead, feeling a little more urgency to get to the meat of the matter. Amy and Penny lapsed into a conversation about shoes, then poetry, then where Amy had attended college. Allen tuned them out, focusing on Kelley’s words.

At last he found something, but he reread it again to be sure.

Allen cleared his throat. “Ladies, I think you might want to hear this.”

Kelley entered the castle but turned away from the dungeon. He hadn’t been there in nearly two years, not since operations had moved entirely to the caverns beneath St. Vitus Cathedral. Instead he turned toward the castle infirmary, going in quietly so as not to disturb the few lingering patients-soldiers who’d injured each other during sword practice, stable hands kicked by horses, and other minor injuries.

He paused near an old nun who wrapped a bandage around a soldier’s shoulder. “How is he today?” Kelley asked.

She shrugged. “No better. No worse.”

“He’s still by the window?”

The nun nodded.

Kelley walked past the beds to the end of the long room and around a silk screen that had been erected to allow the man in the final bed some privacy. Sun streamed in the window, its warm rays illuminating the floating dust motes.

Roderick lay under a thin sheet, perfectly still, arms folded across his chest, his face like chalk. His chest did not noticeably rise and fall with breath; nothing animated any of his features. Kelley thought he might already be dead, but the old man’s eyelids lifted slowly.

“Hello, Kelley.” Roderick’s voice was a weak croak. “I said you didn’t have to visit me anymore. It must be terribly depressing.”

“I can make you some more of that tea if you like,” Kelley offered. “To calm your stomach. If I can find the right tree bark and some other ingredients.”

“No more of your alchemy. It doesn’t help anymore,” the astrologer said. “There is only dying left to do, and that will be that.”

During those early months, Roderick had seemed only slightly ill or, perhaps, malnourished, given his long hours trying to complete the project for the emperor. The astrologer was an old man, after all, and while Kelley’s first impression of him had been of a tireless force of manic energy, certainly a man of his age could only go for so long without an extended rest.

But Roderick’s health had grown steadily worse. He’d faded to skin and bone, hadn’t been able to keep food down. His teeth had rotted and fallen out. Finally, he hadn’t been able to walk anymore and had been confined to bed for the past two months, where he’d continued to wither.

Kelley sat in silence on the windowsill, looking at his shoes, not saying anything.

“I was arrogant,” Roderick said at last.

Kelley looked up. “What?”

“Arrogant and foolish,” Roderick said. “I’ve toyed with powers that have killed me. We have all damned ourselves. Why don’t you go home?”

“Rudolph won’t let me,” Kelley said. “With you about to… die… I’m the only one that knows what to do with the machine.”

“Yes, I suppose that’s true. I’m no longer needed, am I?”

“I know how to position the lenses and activate the machine, but I have no idea how or why it all works,” Kelley said. “If something breaks, I wouldn’t know where to start.”

“Just remember never to open the box,” Roderick said.

“Never. I transferred the stone to a lead box. Did I tell you that? It protects better.”

“You told me last time.”

“Did I? How long ago was that? Never mind. My mind is going, Kelley. It won’t be long now. You have to keep the lenses clean. There are maintenance spells to ward off casual dust and rot, but anything done by you the spells will interpret as an intentional alteration. The lenses must be spotless before use. If something warps the light flow, it might alter the effects.”

“You told me.”

“You should escape, Kelley. For God’s sake, don’t you have a family?”

Kelley said nothing. He had no family. But really, where else was there to go? He felt branded, like an outcast. He felt it so strongly in his heart that surely it must show on his face. Where could he go where decent people would look him in the eye and not know he’d spit in the face of God? No, Kelley was doomed to live out his days in Prague Castle, a sinner hiding among other sinners, a madman in a city of madmen.

“The dreams are the worst,” Roderick said. “It is always early in the morning, on the verge of waking. I’m dead and my soul travels into a deepening gray, no color, no light, just on and on into eternal gray, a vast nothingness.”

“It’s just a dream.”

Roderick erupted into a spasm of coughing that startled Kelley.

The astrologer gestured to a white cloth on the stand next to his bed, and Kelley handed it to him, jumping back when the coughing was renewed with double the force. Roderick coughed into the cloth, his body shaking violently. The cloth came away bright red.

Roderick sank back into his pillow. He seemed to deflate right before Kelley’s eyes, as if the life force fled from the old man’s decaying body.

The astrologer closed his eyes. “Don’t let this happen to you. Edward, listen. Don’t let it happen. Go now. There’s nothing you can do here but watch me die.”

Kelley opened his mouth, could not think of one comforting thing to say, no words of hope or wisdom, nothing to acknowledge anything other than death. He said nothing, walked away from Roderick’s bed, walked out of the infirmary, didn’t look back. His mind’s eye saw again the blood so red on the white cloth.

Kelley went back to his room in the White Tower and uncorked a fresh jug of wine. He drank and drank, but nothing would wash away his sins.

The sun shimmered orange on the horizon when Kelley heard the bells. Something was happening. He rose from his chair, stumbled, realized he hadn’t moved in hours. He’d sat staring out the open window, slowly making the jug of wine disappear. He righted himself, went to the window ledge.

People ran across the courtyard below. One came toward the White Tower.

Kelley flopped back into the chair, closed his eyes, and waited. Soon he heard the footfalls on the stairs. A second later, there was a knock at the door.