Konrath, J.A. - DRACULAS (A Novel of Terror)

“Okay. You ever heard of a secret society called the Order of the Dragon?”

“That’d be a no.”

“It was formed in the early Fifteenth Century, ostensibly to fight the Turks and Ottoman Empire.”

He winked. “You mean the people responsible for the furniture you rest your feet—”

“Hang with me, Clay. Members of the order were called Draconists. Around this same time, the black death was raging throughout Eurasia. Today, historians and scholars believe it was the bubonic and pneumonic plague that caused the black death, but there has been no absolute evidence to support this hypothesis, only educated guesses. My contention, based on all the research I’ve done for Mort, is that the black death caused dracula-like symptoms in some of its hosts, especially in people with certain genetic precursors. Certain royal bloodlines.”

“You lost me, girl.”

“I’m saying the black death, in some cases, caused a mutation, resulting in vampirism.”

“Mutation. Got it. Like in Blade II with Wesley Snipes. Remember the scene with Ron Perlman when he—”

“Do you want to talk about movies, or about what I think is going on?”

Clay would have preferred movies, but he needed to hear what she had to say. “Okay, tell me what’s going on.”

“The son of Oswald von Wolkenstein, a member of the Order of the Dragon, was afflicted with horrific dental deformities. While the Draconists were killing vampires, Oswald hid his son, kept him chained up in a cellar. But the son escaped, went on a killing spree, ending up in Transylvania and causing a dracula epidemic. Ever heard of Vlad the Third of Wallachia?”

Clay knew that from the Coppola flick. “That guy who went around impaling folks?”

“Exactly. Legend has it that Vlad, because of his brutality, was the original Dracula, but my contention—”

“Just love how you contend everything. It’s cute.”

“Clay!”

“Sorry.”

“So my um, my…”

“Go on, you know you want to say it.”

“I hate you… contention is that he didn’t impale thirty thousand of his innocent subjects and countrymen. He impaled thirty thousand of these monsters in an epidemic started by Oswald’s son! Vlad saved his country! And what better way to stop these monsters than to impale them on twenty-foot stakes, immobilized so they starved to death?”

An explosive round to the brain pan was a lot better, but they didn’t have that hundreds of years ago.

“What about Oswald’s son?”

“Vlad caught him finally, beheaded him, and buried his head in a field in the Romanian countryside.”

Clay smirked, finally getting it.

“You going to tell me that Oswald’s son’s skull is the same skull your buddy Mort paid several million for so he could bite himself? Didn’t he need those genetic precursor thingies?”

Shanna’s eyes got wide. “Shit! How’d I miss that? Mortimer’s robes! They all have an Ouroboros insignia on them! A dragon eating its own tail! That’s the symbol of the Draconists!”

“So old Mort is a Wolkenstein.”

“He’s got the bloodline, and the genetic precursor. Do you know what that means?”

“That we need to kill the son of a bitch.”

“It means Mortimer’s not only predisposed to getting this disease, but perhaps he also carries the antibodies within him.”

“Huh?”

“He carries the virus that makes the vaccine.”

“You mean like a shot?”

“Yes, Clay. Like a shot.”

Jenny

THE children had begun to scream when the lights went out.

Their screams lured the draculas to the storage room door. They thumped and scratched and pounded on it, jerking and rattling the knob, pressing up against the square window in the door and blocking out the faint emergency lights from the playroom, which plunged the closet into complete darkness.

Working from memory, Jenny flailed out her hands until she found the shelf on the wall, then followed it until she came to the children’s art supplies: boxes of crayons, construction paper, bottles of finger paint, balloons…

Dammit, where are they?

Her probing fingers found their way into a cardboard box, locking onto a cylindrical, pen-shaped object. She shook it vigorously and bent it in half with a faint CRACK . Immediately, it gave off a faint, green light. Glow sticks. Essential for any underage patient afraid of the dark.

Apparently encouraged by the light, the monsters outside the door became even more frantic in their zeal to get in. The glass window shattered, and a taloned arm forced itself through, slashing at the air inches from Jenny’s face.

Jenny lurched away, tripping over someone’s legs, falling onto her ass. The children continued to scream. The dracula thrashed and swiped its claws. It even managed to push its head through, scraping its face against the jagged, broken glass, its neck kinked at an odd angle.

Jenny tore herself away from the horror, reaching for the box of glow sticks. To quiet the screaming of the children, she began bending, shaking, and passing them out as fast as she could. There were different colors, red and purple and yellow and orange, all giving off a diffuse, pastel light that reminded Jenny of another of Randall’s favorite VHS tapes—the movie Tron .

But rather than pacify the kids, the increased illumination allowed everyone to focus on the spastic dracula stuck in the window.

“Shh. Quiet. Everyone quiet down. It’s okay. The worst is over.”

She was wrong. The creature went from hissing to screeching, its head and arm flopping around as if in the throes of a grand mal seizure. Its eyes rolled up, showing the whites. Froth, then blood, sprayed from the torn vestiges of its lips. It began to shake its head, faster and faster, beating it against the sides of the windows, shredding off its own ears in the process.

Then the monster’s eyes bulged, protruding like hardboiled eggs. With an audible POP , they escaped their sockets, dangling by their optic nerves.

No…not the nerves. The eyeballs were pierced on the ends of two talons.

Another dracula had dug into the back of this one’s skull.

A millisecond later the dead creature was yanked free of the door. Jenny and the children listened to the frenzied feeding. Growls. Snapping jaws. Gurgling blood. Wet smacking.

It was like listening to a BBQ in hell.

Jenny sat back in the corner of the room, four children desperately clinging to her. Their hysterical screaming eventually subsided to steady sobs. Jenny kept her arms around them, patting arms, tousling hair, trying to figure out what to do next while nervously waiting for something else horrible to happen.

But nothing did. Eventually the feasting sounds died down, then vanished all together.

Jenny began to count her heartbeats. At any moment, she expected another dracula to try and force itself in through the window.

By the time she reached two hundred, all sounds had ceased.

There was only silence.

Dreadful, expectant silence.

“Are they gone?” one of the kids asked.

“I don’t know,” Jenny answered. “Is anyone hurt? Did anyone get bit?”

“I wet my pants.”

“It’s all right,” Jenny told the little boy. “We can take care of that later. You’ve all been very brave so far. I need you to keep being brave.”

Jenny tried to stand, but eight little hands clung to her.

“I have to check to see if they’re still there.”

“No! Don’t go!”

“It’s okay. I promise I’ll be fine. I need to get to the intercom and call my husband.”

“Is he the big man with the chainsaw?”

“Yes.”

“Is he going to save us?”