Victor Gischler - Vampire A Go-Go

I land on the rooftop. Zabel is there, sending away other ghosts, lost souls. Confused. I don’t want this. I try to blend in, hide toward the back of the crowd. Zabel spots me over the shoulder of another ghost, and I look away.

Come here .

I shake my head no.

Yes .

I resist, but it’s no use. I float toward him. He has me now. The other ghosts fade, dissolve, dismissed. They evaporate to whatever perpetual doom they call home. It’s only me and Amy and Allen and Zabel holding my leash.

You are Edward Kelley?

I say nothing. My ghost teeth bite my ghost tongue. The pain is real.

ARE YOU EDWARD KELLEY?

Yes.

Zabel pauses to say something to Allen and Amy, but I can’t hear it. It’s as if a translucent, purple curtain hangs between us. Zabel turns back to me.

Tell me about the philosopher’s stone .

I say nothing.

Tell me .

No.

Now Zabel gets tough. I feel something, like he’s reaching inside me, strong-arming. It feels like cold iron fingers in my chest, getting a hold of my soul, squeezing it like a physical thing. I scream, and nobody hears it. I cry. Nobody sees the tears.

I see the look on Zabel’s face. Annoyed. Like he couldn’t open a tough jar of peanut butter.

And then there is pain. I talk, spill everything I’ve ever known or will know about the stone. I’m not sure how long it takes. I talk until I stop, and then Zabel asks another question and I talk again. It becomes a kind of confession, but Zabel becomes impatient whenever I get too personal. He cares not one tiny shit about my tortured soul. Just the facts, man.

And I’m weeping. Telling it all over again. It has been so long, so many years. To talk to somebody and have them talk back. But he’s finished before I am. I want to tell him so much more, so much I’ve seen over the years and centuries. Zabel’s indifference is like a punch in the face.

Where is Roderick the astrologer buried?

I tell him. Why not? I’d tell him anything. Just please keep talking to me.

The Vysehrad. Prague’s other castle.

“Where’s he going?” Allen asked.

“I sent him away,” Zabel said. “It was almost as difficult as summoning him in the first place.”

“Did you find out? What did he say?”

“The Vysehrad,” Zabel said. “That’s where Roderick is buried. There’s a cemetery there. I imagine that’s where he is.”

“What’s the Vysehrad?” Allen asked.

“South,” Amy said. “It’s a fort.”

“Tell us the rest,” Allen said. “What else did he say?”

“Come with me.” Zabel headed for the hatch in the roof.

Allen hesitated. “Where are you going?”

“This is important,” Zabel said. “Hurry.” He disappeared down the hatch.

“Come on,” Amy said.

They followed Zabel down the spiral stairs and then down to the first floor. Zabel glanced over his shoulder to make sure they were still following. He led them through a cramped kitchen. Another door. More stairs. Down.

In the basement. Allen glanced around. A cupboard. A chair. Shelves with bottles and jars of who-knew-what. A small table with a dirty tablecloth. It was a small room, dimly lit. “What are we doing here?”

“Please,” Zabel said. “Stand over by that wall.” He pointed to the only wall bare of shelves or other furnishings.

Amy and Allen stood against the wall.

“Hold out your hands,” Zabel said.

Amy and Allen looked at each other.

An impatient sigh from Zabel. “Come on, come on.”

Amy and Allen each held out their right hand. Zabel placed a smooth chunk of quartz into each upturned palm, muttered a smattering of unintelligible words.

Allen felt himself go rock-solid stiff.

He tried to turn his head, blink his eyes. No go. He was a statue. He couldn’t even glance sideways to see if the same thing had happened to Amy, although he assumed it had. He couldn’t even feel himself breathing.

“You’re both okay,” Zabel said. “But I need to keep you on ice while I check this out. It’s still hard to believe. The philosopher’s stone. But if it is true… well, that’s the wizard’s jackpot, isn’t it?”

Allen thought, Eat shit, cocksucker as loud as he could on the off chance wizards could read minds.

“I might have more questions for you,” Zabel said. “So I’m keeping you until I can confirm or deny this fairy tale. I’ll need to go up to my office, gather some things, look up a few spells. Then I suppose I’m off to the cemetery. Now, don’t go anywhere, you two.”

He went back upstairs.

Allen tried to move any part of his body-finger, toe, tongue, eyebrow. He might as well have been carved from marble. How many minutes slipped by? Thirty? Forty? An hour? It was amazingly difficult to measure the passage of time when one was forced to remain utterly motionless. No windows. No sounds. This could drive him mad in no time flat. He could not stop trying to look at Amy.

Allen heard something, almost like a faint scratching. He would have whipped his head around to look if he hadn’t been frozen. The door creaked open. Footfalls came down the steps, a strange clicking. Oh, hell. What was coming for them? Maybe Zabel had decided he didn’t need them after all and had come to tie up loose ends.

Allen tried one more time to move any part of his body. Stone still.

The wolf’s head came into view. There was still an instinctual moment of fear before relief flooded him. Penny. Thank God. He tried to will the wolf to action. Come on, knock the quartz out of my hand. You can do it. Come on, figure it out .

The wolf looked back and forth between Allen and Amy, pacing anxiously. Penny emitted a questioned sound halfway between a whine and a growl, then sat in front of Allen, head cocked.

Get the quartz. Come on. Fetch .

Penny pawed at the air, edged forward, and put her paw on Allen’s leg. The wolf snorted. When Allen didn’t reply, she got up on her hind legs, put her paws on his chest. Her full enormous wolf weight knocked him back into the wall. His whole body shifted, and the quartz slipped out of his hand, rattled on the stone floor.

Feeling flooded back into Allen’s body.

“Oh… shit .”

Hot needles scorched his knees and the elbow of the arm he’d used to hold up the stone. He collapsed to the floor, moaned, rubbed the circulation back into his elbow. Who knew standing still could be so grueling?

Wolf Penny licked his ear.

“Turn back into a girl before you do that, okay?” Allen moaned again, rolled over and looked up at the wolf. “Did he see you come in?”

Penny shook her head.

Allen looked at Amy. She still stared straight ahead at nothing, mouth slightly open, hand outstretched, the chunk of quartz still in the center of her palm. “The rock in her hand,” Allen said. “Get rid of it.”

Penny bumped the bottom of Amy’s hand with her head, and the quartz went flying.

“Motherfucker.” Amy fell back against the wall, slid into a sitting position, rubbed her elbow, and stretched out her legs. “I need to start doing yoga or something.”

Allen looked at the wolf. “You going to change back?”

Penny shook her head.

“She doesn’t have any clothes,” Amy said.

“Oh yeah.”

Amy stood, stomped her feet trying to get the feeling back. “We’ve got to get out of here. Maybe we can sneak back up the front stairs without Zabel hearing. Run out the front door.”

“No,” Allen said. “He still has the Kelley diary.”

“So what?”

“I’m not leaving without it.”

“When did you get all action hero all of a sudden?”