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  She closed the door, buttoned her lab coat against the cold, and dragged a chair next to the coffin.

  As promised, I returned to Passelwaithe the following evening with two security measures. One was quite obvious—I brought along an army signalman and his broadcasting apparatus. Passelwaithe was too wrapped up in itself, and this connection with the outside world would prevent any hysterical mob violence. The experiment served two masters: it provided the scrutiny needed to insure justice was done, and it allowed the military to test aspects of their latest equipment with a broadcast of such absurdity that no spy could take it seriously.

  The other measure was insurance against a possibility so outlandish I chose to keep it my secret.

  By prior arrangement, Dr. Jermin would escort Baron Zginski into town, and the tavern would be set up for our purposes. When Signalman Reynolds and I arrived, quite a crowd had already gathered outside the low building, trying to peer through the closed blinds and locked doors.

  At the sight of the gathered masses, Signalman Reynolds immediately perked up, straightened his uniform, and put on his best winning smile. The image of Mercury on his cap badge accented his jaunty air. The group clustered outside the tavern was exclusively female, and all frowned with desperate concern. The women and girls of Passelwaithe had gathered there to learn what fate their bitter, jealous men had in store for the handsome stranger who had brought excitement into their isolated and dreary lives.

  The women parted ranks to let us through. I noted another curious detail: a full third of the women wore neck kerchiefs or scarves, an unlikely fashion and certainly not due to inclement weather in this warm Welsh summer. The bescarved women all looked pale and drawn, as if recovering from some wasting illness.

  Reynolds lugged his portable wireless unit into the tavern, where the unruly menfolk clustered in little grumbling knots. Baron Zginski sat in the corner, in a large isolated chair, as if either a prisoner or some sort of exhibit. He seemed unmoved by the open hostility around him, and perhaps even a bit amused. Dr. Jermin stood nearby, and I nodded to him as we entered.

  Signalman Reynolds established communication with his unit and confirmed the broadcast connection. Magistrate Toomley called the assembly to order, and I stood before them to make my opening pronouncement.

  ‘Gentlemen of Passelwaithe, tonight we shall enter the modern age together. This is Signalman Reynolds of His Majesty’s armed forces. He shall supervise the broadcast of this proceeding, so the entire outside world will be aware of what goes on here. And I shall aid you in dispelling this superstitious nonsense once and for all.’ A few dissident grumbles were heard, but most said nothing.

  Toomley banged a judicial gavel on the bar counter. ‘I hereby open this meeting of the Passelwaithe Town Council. Our first item of business is the charge against Baron Rudolfo Zginski of being a vampire. Sir Francis?’

  Dr. Jermin had provided me with a list of the most vitriolic accusers. ‘I call Arvel Walker as my first witness,’ I said.

  I will refrain from boring the reader with a detailed account of the witnesses against Zginski. Enough to say that, to a man, they presented evidence not of supernatural evil, but of very mortal jealousy and resentment. My irrational misgivings of the previous night faded with each man who spoke.

  After the testimony, I established that Dr. Jermin had that very day, and on numerous other occasions, seen Baron Zginski moving about during the hours before sunset (the very reason I’d arranged for the good doctor to be Zginski’s escort). Although the tradition varied a bit, most authorities agreed that vampires stayed motionless and inert whilst the sun hung in the sky, and that a glimpse of its cleansing light would be enough to destroy them.

  I reminded the assembly that several witnesses had testified that the Baron easily crossed streams and rivers. In folklore, running water formed an impenetrable barrier to vampires.

  Finally it was my turn to question the Baron himself. First I asked him to eat some garlic, which he did. Then I held a mirror up to him, which clearly cast his reflection. I sprinkled holy water on him; it caused no damage. The Baron was calm, confident, perhaps even amused by these bits of folklore, as any normal man would be. Still, something in his demeanor struck an odd chord.

  Nonetheless, I went ahead with my most theatrical test. A virgin white mare was brought into the room. If Zginski had been a traditional vampire, the horse would have become quite violently agitated. She merely looked around the room and waited patiently to be led away.

  The crowd was silent. They were forced to confront the real root of their resentment, Zginski’s wealth and handsomeness, and this did not sit well. As Toomley asked meekly if anyone had any other evidence to present, I surreptitiously studied Zginski, attempting to identify what about him disturbed me so.

  Suddenly I isolated it. The man was not breathing.

  Impulsively I took his wrist and felt for a pulse. By the time he yanked his arm away, I’d learned the truth.

  ‘Great guns!’ I ejaculated. ‘He is a vampire!’

  The room collectively gasped. Zginski regarded me with a look of superior disdain. ‘Whatever,’ he said calmly, ‘are you on about?’

  Dr. Jermin leapt to his feet. ‘Heavens above, Colby, are you certain?’

  I met Zginski’s cold, lifeless gaze. ‘Beyond any reason,’ I said, and before he could respond, withdrew my revolver and fired point-blank into his chest.

  The report rang out, silencing all in the room. Zginski remained in the chair, eyes wide, then looked down at the smoking hole in his expensive waistcoat. Before he could react, I turned to the assembled roomful of gaping Welsh mouths and said, ‘As you can see, he has been shot point-blank and yet does not bleed, nor has he registered any pain.’ Facing Zginski, I concluded, ‘Your concealment was almost perfect. But now you have been exposed.’

  Zginski smiled weakly and started to speak. Then, with no warning, he leapt to his feet, his face twisted into a mask of fury and animal intensity. He grasped me by the throat in a grip of iron, his eyes blazing with demonic power, and pushed me against the nearest wall.

  ‘Fool!’ he hissed. ‘No one need have died this night, if not for you! Now I shall slaughter them all, and you shall be the first!’

  His arrogant confidence proved his undoing. While he flaunted his im mense physical strength, he failed to note the second security measure as I produced it from within my waistcoat. He did notice, however, when I plunged it into his heart above the still-smoking bullet hole.

  Instantly he stumbled back, clawing at his chest. It took mere moments for him to collapse and, at last, expire on the floor, his body frozen in twisted agony.

  I glanced at Signalman Reynolds. He was as pale as Baron Zginski’s now-lifeless corpse.

  I knelt by the fallen vampire. Protruding from his chest was a golden cross, a crucifix found by Richard the Lionheart on his first crusade to the Holy Land, blessed both in Jerusalem and later in Rome. A metalsmith monk in a distant cloister had reshaped it into a thin-bladed dagger for me, and it had proven too sharp indeed for the luckless continental nosferatu.

  Patricia put the manuscript aside and pulled on surgical gloves. She leaned over the coffin and examined the spot where the cross entered the withered tissue. The damage was so slight it was barely visible: just a tiny, thin slit where the blade parted the flesh. She took the handle in two fingers and gently pulled the cross from the corpse. It slid away easily, although she felt a little tingle when it finally pulled free, like a tiny arc of electricity just strong enough to pierce the rubber gloves. When she looked back, the injury had vanished into the folds of the wrinkled, dry flesh.

  The cross rested in her hand, solid and heavy, the sharpened end stained black with sixty-year-old blood. She held it under the illuminated magnifier, studying the wealth of detail carved into the soft metal. This was a genuine piece of art, and would make a magnificent display in the university museum. She placed it carefully in a plastic bag, sealed it, and put it
on the nearest examination table. It looked even more unreal and majestic against the cold, flat stainless steel. She removed her gloves and turned to the final page of the manuscript.

  I was charged with murder at the official inquest, but had two factors in my favour. One was, of course, a roomful of witnesses who supported my claim of self-defence. The other was the report of the official examination by Dr. Jermin, establishing that the rate of decomposition in Zginski’s body was consistent with a body that had actually died at least thirty years earlier. No one could explain that, of course, but neither could anyone dispute it.

  How could Zginski have been a vampire, and yet passed all the classic tests? I can only assume that vampires, like other creatures, are capable of evolving and adapting.

  Baron Rudolfo Zginski was understandably refused Christian burial in the local cemetery. As there was no identifiable next of kin, I claimed the body and stored it in my cellar. I sealed it in an iron coffin, grounded through a lightning rod. I considered burning the body, which is the only way to be thoroughly certain a vampire cannot return. Yet Baron Zginski was such a singular character, I could not bring myself to do so. He had learned to mimic human behaviour to an astounding degree, and forced me to rethink many things about which I was previously certain. I knew that as long as the cross remained imbedded in his heart, the world was safe.

  Patricia’s heart raced with excitement. This could be her academic ticket out of this backwater college if she could identify some rational, physiological explanation for the events Colby described, something that showed the face of prejudice in 1915 Wales as clearly as she knew it in 1975 Tennessee. After all, vampires didn’t exist, so it simply couldn’t be that.

  She looked up with a start. An overpowering odor suddenly filled the room. It was no chemical she could identify, or any organic process she recognized. She jumped to her feet and peered into the morgue’s darker corners, looking for a spilled bottle or leaking container. Then she gingerly approached the air-conditioning vent. The smell did not grow stronger near it, which was a relief. The danger in any educational environment was that some careless or stoned student might accidentally mix two harmless substances into something lethal, and if those fumes got into the ventilation system it could hurt a lot of people.

  The odor was, in fact, the scent of recomposition. Its unique tang was reminiscent of ripening fruit, meat being warmed over a slow fire, and blood pulsing from an open wound. It was the olfactory by-product of a process so rare that only a handful of people in all human history had ever witnessed it, although none had survived to document it. The fumes themselves were harmless; it was what they heralded that uniformly proved lethal.

  The smell began to fade almost at once. Patricia sighed with relief; whatever it was, it was neither extensive nor, apparently, dangerous. Probably the residue of some cleaning chemicals mixed by accident in the garbage elsewhere in the building. She turned her attention back to Colby’s manuscript.

  She smiled as she straightened the pages. She could only use excerpts from Sir Francis’s narrative in her professional paper. Whatever his other skills, one thing was painfully obvious.

  Sir Francis Colby couldn’t write worth a da—

  CHAPTER 2

  FAUVETTE WATCHED THE moon watch her.

  Despite the summer heat, the night wind blew cool and damp off the Mississippi River, ferreting pathways through the crumbling remains of the old cotton warehouse. When it finally reached her and traced its chill across her skin, she felt it the same way the river felt rain.

  She stood only partially in the shaft of moonlight, and the beam seemed to vertically bisect her. She studied her reflection in the window’s intact panes. Vampires didn’t cast reflections in the movies, but in real life—she almost laughed at that—they did. Nothing had changed; like the face of the moon, nothing about her ever changed. Her shoulders were still soft, her breasts still small with dark nipples, her belly still just a bit plump where the baby fat had never gone away. And her face, big brown eyes and dark straight hair, was still that of the fourteen-year-old virgin she’d been when she’d died forty-five years earlier, just after the start of the Great Depression.

  She pushed her hair from her eyes, disturbing something small and crawly that had taken up residence in the strands; she ignored its panicky flight down her back. She hadn’t bathed in maybe a year, and her hair was slimy with accumulated grease, dirt, and pollen. Dust and soil coated her skin, and she idly brushed a string of ants from the curve of one breast. She spent most of her time naked—dressing a walking corpse seemed ridiculous—and lately she seldom left the dry-rotted confines of her coffin. Only when the hunger grew too loud, too insistent, did she venture forth.

  Was it the hunger this night, she wondered, or the uncharacteristic chill in the air that woke her? She was awash in memories of her death, of the autumn night she’d been killed in the Kentucky hill country. She’d worn her best Sunday dress to the revival meeting, hoping to catch the eye of handsome Junior Caldwell. It had not worked; Junior had been seized by the spirit and carried off by his brothers as he filled the air with God-given gibberish. He never even knew Fauvette was there.

  Heartbroken as only a teenage girl could be, she took the shortcut home through the woods, usually a safe path between the church and her family’s farm. The vampire had been old, and looked feeble, but his hand at her throat had been like steel, and her struggles for her life did no more than annoy him. He took her quickly, efficiently, and thoroughly, draining her blood in less than five burning minutes and tossing her aside like an empty soda can. Her last living memory was of his wet, satisfied belch.

  But the worst thing was afterward, when her body—still warm and supple, even though her soul was gone—had been found and violated by the kind of backwoods thugs who would rape a dead girl. Hovering invisibly above the scene, she’d watched them rip away the beautiful dress made by her mother and aunts, and attack her body in ways she could barely comprehend at the time. The full moon had watched her that night as well.

  Fauvette felt suddenly conspicuous under the moon’s gaze, and slid out of the light. The undead, the damned, did not deserve to be seen, only feared and whispered of around hearths guarded by garlic, crosses, and the sanctity of belief. They dwelled in shadow; the light frightened them, like supernatural cockroaches. The bravest of vampires could prowl the streets in a semblance of life, but if anyone looked too closely, they could not maintain the illusion. Fauvette was not a brave vampire.

  As with any building left untenanted and untended, the warehouse was a disaster. Glass, metal shards, nails, wire, and pipes littered the big open floor. Rats, birds, and snakes lived in the available crevices. Fauvette never considered cleaning the place; it was dead, she was dead. At least the building had the luxury of falling apart with time.

  The warehouse had been abandoned for a decade, forgotten as the city grew north away from the river, around the new bridge that led to Arkansas. The land ownership was tied up in court, and the location wasn’t very valuable anyway, so no one came around much except for local kids who liked to get high on the crumbling shipping dock out back. Fauvette found the place already hidden by weeds and trees in 1970, moved her coffin into the basement boiler room, and then allowed the others to occupy it as well. Actually, “allowed” wasn’t the right word; she didn’t care one way or the other. She’d apathied them in.

  Her eyes scanned the enormous empty room. Vampire vision saw everything despite the darkness, saw the debris, the roaches, the rats, the dead bum decomposing in the corner. She felt silverfish scurry down her legs from their temporary home inside her, and it sent a little tickle through her. She almost smiled; she was still ticklish.

  She walked over to the hobo’s body, ignoring the sharp-edged detritus that punctured her bare feet; she didn’t feel them, and after a good day’s slumber in her coffin, any damage would be gone. Toddy had put a stolen fiddle in the corpse’s hands as a joke—“he’s de-composing
, y’all, geddit?” Toddy was always doing things like that.

  She stared down at the body, observing the changes since the last time she’d examined it. She wondered what it felt like to rot, to decay, to feel your body dissolve into its components. If she were to die now—if she strayed into the sun, or was caught and burned in her coffin, or staked through the heart—it would be sudden, the effect of half a century in an instant. No slow dissolution, no dignified breaking down of complex chemicals into simpler ones. None of the slack, empty peace she saw in the bum’s receding features. She was forever kept from this peacefulness, by no choice of her own.

  The junkie’s eyeballs were long gone, his skull a home to thousands of larval insects, but his empty sockets seemed to regard her with pity. Emotions she’d tried valiantly to kill stirred in her chest, in her cold unbeating heart.

  “Ah, damn,” she breathed.

  “Thinkin’ them Joni Mitchell thoughts again?” Toddy said.

  Fauvette shook her head, long strands of matted hair slapping her bare shoulders. “No,” she replied, her voice dry and raspy, the tissue desperate for blood. He hadn’t surprised her; nothing moved within thirty yards that she didn’t sense. But the last thing she wanted was Toddy’s half-assed amateur psychotherapy.

  Toddy moved out of the darkness, his tread so light glass did not crunch under his feet. He wore an open dark green trench coat and nothing else; his body gleamed white and clean, like new ivory. “Beginning to think you weren’t never coming outta your box again,” he drawled.

  She turned and smiled, letting her inner vampiric power reach out to Toddy. She understood the survival necessity for vampires to sexually excite their victims—why else would someone come willingly into the embrace of a walking corpse?—but she was surprised at how easily it worked on some other vampires. Not all, of course, but definitely Toddy. She almost laughed out loud at the pop-the-weasel suddenness of his erection.