Wolves of Dacia – Chapter Eight – The Testing

[Miki Yamuri]

Chapter Eight – The Testing

(Anthony Burns, all rights reserved)

Following his restless night and disquieting morning, Captain Meinert had barely managed to snatch a couple of hours of fitful sleep on his office couch, when he was awakened by Corporal Schroeder:

“Begging your pardon, sir,” he opened, tentatively, though he was acting within his orders, “but we’ve got the man you asked for. Leastways, we reckon it must be the right one. No papers or ID of any sort, but you ought to have seen his hut: like something out of the movies, it was. If we’d searched the place we’d probably have found Bela Lugosi lurking in a cupboard.”

“And why didn’t you search the place, Corporal?”

“Well …” he replied, very awkwardly and with the sense that his nervousness had been sadly justified. “Our orders were to bring this hermit bloke. We didn’t realise-”

“It would be pleasant, to say nothing of reassuring,” interrupted Meinert, rising to his feet stiffly, and straightening out his uniform, “if one could rely on one’s subordinates to occasionally show a glimmer of initiative. Still, no matter. Bring him in,” he ordered, sitting down behind his desk and hastily clearing all of his cluttered stationery into a drawer. Not that there was any priority to impress his “guest”, except for the common sense desire to project a powerful image, which loose paper-clips, old pencil-stubs, and doodled scraps of paper did not assist in. Schroeder left the office, and presently returned with Brother Shandor in tow: an all too appropriate image, as the elderly anchorite was dragged rather than escorted into the room, if not actually brutally then certainly not daintily. Behind its mass of bedraggled hair, what could be seen of Shandor’s face was pale, wide-eyed, and glistening with beads of sweat, further testifying that his journey had been neither enjoyable nor willing.

“What’s the meaning of this, Corporal?” asked Meinert, sternly. “This man’s not under arrest. It’s my hope that he’ll be able to help us. Push off, now, and help Sergeant Lang with the equipment inventory. You and I, Padre,” he said, turning to Shandor, “have matters to discuss.”

Schroeder saluted and left, with a decidedly sullen air. Sensitive though Meinert was when it came to insolence and insubordination, he let this pass without comment, as the corporal had indeed been under orders to bring back Brother Shandor, willingly or not, and not to be over-gentle should the good anchorite offer any objections. Now that he was here, however, there was no harm in applying a softer touch, at least for the present. He motioned Shandor into the seat on the opposite side of his desk, took a bottle of Tokay and a glass from the drawer, and poured him an ample measure, which he was not overly surprised to see the holy brother gulp down with desperate, well-practised eagerness. Fair enough, he thought, pouring him a second glassful. Especially if it helps to loosen his tongue, and no doubt the old barbarian can hold his liquor, at least long enough for my purposes.

“Well now,” he opened, with a strained effort at geniality which was hastily given up as a lost cause. “I’m sure you’re curious to know what all this is in aid of, and I’m not one to beat about the bush. Word has it that you’re an authority on vampires.” Looking intently, he thought he observed a slight muscular spasm amidst the anchorite’s forest of beard, but nothing more incriminating. He had been willing to hope that he might at least choke on his drink, but no such luck. Nevertheless, it was something to be going on with. “Would that just be a lurid rumour, or are you indeed an expert in that … interesting subject?”

“I wouldn’t have said ‘expert’, sir,” he replied, respectfully but very guardedly. “Leastways, no more than most round these parts. It’s a common enough belief. The gypsies all swear to it, and there’s more than a few of the country folk who still hang garlic and wild rose branches over their doors and windows.”

“No doubt, Padre, no doubt. Still, you must admit it’s curious to find a priest – ordained, I assume – who encourages the people in such pagan superstitions. Not that I’m an expert on religion, but I don’t recall that the Bible has any reference on the subject of vampires, so I’m thinking that a man in your position must have some personal reasons to be so … I’m sorry? What was that you said?” he asked, as Shandor muttered something, dejectedly and incoherently, into his glass.

“Book of Isaiah,” he repeated, more clearly and just as gloomily. “God’s wrath will fall upon the armies of all nations. The land will be as burning pitch, and in the desolation that follows the wild beasts and demons of the night will make their dwelling place.”

“Interesting … though vague,” replied Meinert, indifferently. “Not much of a basis for unconditional faith in anything, never mind the impossible, I would have thought. Is that scrap of prophecy all you have to go on for living like some wretched gypsy yourself, if you’ll pardon the observation?”

“If you’ll pardon me, sir,” he answered, with very cautious indignation, “isn’t it sensible of me to take note of a fulfilled prophecy? The last war was terrible enough: flamethrowers burning men alive, poison gas eating out their innards … There were days I could well believe we’d all died and gone to Hell.”

“I suppose military service takes some men that way,” said Meinert, with just the hint of a sneer. “Especially conscripted men. Take heart that you’re too old now to be called up for this war, Padre. Anyway, finish off your drink, and take a walk with me. There’s something I’d like you to have a look at before I have it packed off to Berlin for analysis.” With a grim but invigorating sense of pleasure at the anchorite’s mystified expression, he led the way out of his office, along the corridor, down a few flights of stairs, and into the cellar of the old town house that his SS unit had commandeered for their HQ. An alcove had been partitioned off and converted for use as a refrigerated storage area, which Meinert opened, and from which he wheeled out a metal trolley upon which lay a long shape, shrouded all over in a white sheet, and immediately inspiring only the most morbid of expectations. Before Shandor could adjust his wits even to this grisly sight, Meinert whipped back the sheet to reveal the withered corpse beneath it, conferring instant and total sobriety upon his guest. Stifling his satisfaction at Shandor’s obvious horror, the captain commenced a dispassionate lecture:

“We found this body while conducting a routine resettlement operation in the foothills. There are a few … bizarre anomalies, which our pathologist is minded to attribute to supernatural causes, though if you want my opinion he’s been sniffing too much of his own formaldehyde. I’ll lay odds that this is some sick hoax perpetrated by the gypsies, possibly in league with the communists, to scare the peasants away from their hideouts. I don’t expect you to confirm or deny that, Padre. However, I would like to know if any other bodies like this have been reported recently, and if so … Now what was that?” he asked, in acknowledgment of an indistinct but very disturbed mutter from Shandor.

“It’s not been killed, I said,” he repeated, his urgency bordering on panic. “Please; you must-”

“It’s got a bullet-hole clean through its heart, and it’s a dried-out husk to boot. I’ve rarely seen a more killed body, and I’ve seen my share.”

“You can’t be sure. The spirit … the demon, I ought to say, can lie dormant, unless you destroy both heart and brain. Or better still, burn the whole filthy thing.”

“Out of the question. The Reich laboratories-”

“Won’t thank you for sending them a ticking bomb! You’ll learn nothing from this creature, dead or alive. The only useful knowledge about them is how to destroy them, and I can tell you that.”

“Grateful, I’m sure,” deadpanned Meinert. “However … assuming this cadaver is or was a vampire, which I don’t believe for a second, then I would have thought there was a great deal to be gained from a scientific study. If we can’t imagine a few military applications for the secrets of immortality and magical powers, then it doesn’t say much for our-”

“Didn’t you hear a word of the prophecy?” snapped Shandor, with such courage, conviction, and downright recklessness that Meinert could not but be impressed with, although some of it was doubtless due to the Tokay. “You’d make loyal soldiers out of these creatures, would you? Reckon they’d help you to win the war? Help you to destroy yourselves, more like it. When the desolation comes – as it will – and all nations lie in ruins and cinders, this will be their world. Why would they do anything to stop that from happening?”

“In the unlikely event that this isn’t complete gibberish,” hissed Meinert, quickly re-instilling Shandor with his sense of due caution, “then an alliance was not what I had in mind. However, if there was any potential for discovering controlled genetic enhancements, or possibly a biological weapon, I would consider it my duty-”

“Please, sir. You mustn’t consider that, either. The powers of Satan do not serve the cause of anyone else. Zalmoxis himself thought that he had cheated the Deceiver of Mankind, yet he and all his civilisation are dead and-”

“I’m sure. Who the hell was he?”

“The first of their kind,” answered Shandor, gesturing at the corpse with intense loathing, “or leastways in this part of the world, he was. The Dacians worshipped him as god and saviour, but he couldn’t save them from destruction by the Romans. The Emperor Trajan besieged and razed their capital in-”

“I’m tolerably well versed in the history of the Roman campaigns, thank you. The history of tin-pot pagan gods is definitely not my strong point, though.”

“Maybe you’ll have heard of his companion, then. The Dacians knew her as Bendis, but to the Romans she was Diana: goddess of the hunt, the moon, storms, wild animals, witchcraft-”

“Heard of her, obviously,” he interrupted, peevishly, “though I fail to see what bearing she has on this situation, unless you’re suggesting that this corpse was a friend of hers.”

“Might have been, like as not.”

“Jolly good,” he opined, wearily. “You’re making me regret having raised this wretched subject, if that’s any consolation to you,” though he could see from Shandor’s sickly expression that it was not. “So then … you’d like me to shoot this thing in the head, would you?”

“Better still, cut its head off,” advised Shandor, with a tentative note of renewed hope. “Please, you must-”

“Possibly, if you’ll tell me plainly where you come off with all of this mumbo-jumbo about Diana. A fine sort of Christian you must be, believing in vampires and in ancient Roman deities.”

“Having met her, sir, I’ve not much choice but to believe.”

“You hold your audience, Padre, I’ll give you that. Would you care to tell me something more detailed, and hopefully more plausible?”

“If you’ll guarantee me protection.”

“From what I hear, your place is already decked out like a shrine-cum-garlic warehouse. Seeing as how I don’t have the Holy Grail or a piece of the True Cross to give you, I don’t really see how I can-”

“Not that sort of protection, sir. I need protective custody … from Colonel Dragomir.”

“Very interesting,” said Meinert, patronisingly, but not quite concealing a genuinely awakened interest. “Maybe it would reassure you to know that the Colonel is, at least to my satisfaction, a traitor to the Reich, and the next time I see him I mean to shoot him. Would you consider that adequate protection?” Fleeting expressions of surprise, doubt, and even of faint hope fought for mastery of Shandor’s face, but as his gaze again drifted to the corpse, grim resignation won the field.

“All right,” he declared, with determination if not good cheer, “though I shouldn’t wonder if you’ll find this impossible to believe, but I’ll give you all the facts. It happened back in the last war. I was part of a reconnaissance patrol, scouting out Allied positions in this area. Captain Dragomir, as he was then, was in command …”

************

1916

Laszlo Shandor was six years old, stepping upon ants, grinding them underfoot for no logical purpose, but taking definite satisfaction in it … then he was twenty-four, waiting in line at the recruiting post, realising full well that he was volunteering to kill for a mere political cause he cared nothing for, but more afraid of being thought a coward than a murderer … then he was thirteen, fleeing at full pelt down the lane while behind him his best friend was being beaten by Hungarian youths … then he was twenty-six, in a blind panic, firing his M1895 rifle into the dense woodland from where the sniper fire had come. He heard a scream …

“Enough, Rothwyn! Pull him clear.”

He heard the voice indistinctly, barely penetrating through the chaos, horror, and shame of his all-too-vivid memories. He did, however, feel a sudden and powerful sense of gravity, which resolved into a specific and decidedly painful sense of a rope tied around his waist, dragging his limp form along a rough, stony floor. The guilt-inspiring hallucinations that had been playing out in his head rapidly faded, but their revived memory continued to torment him as keenly as the rocks stabbing his back, or the icy hands that clawed at his bonds, with no apparent care if they raked his flesh in the process. His senses still reeling, he could form no clear impression of his captors’ faces. As far as he could ascertain, there were two of them, both with very pale faces and eyes that glowed like dull embers in the darkness of the cavern. Their cold voices, now clear to him, were expressed in a corrupted dialect of Latin, possibly to conceal their meaning from the captives (though evidently unaware or unconcerned that he, having been studying at Sibiu Seminary before the war, was well enough advanced in the language to follow their conversation).

“Pathetic, aren’t they?” hissed the one closest to him, as she untied his bonds. “No courage … petty and uncommitted even in their sins. Their leader has some promise – ambition, at least, and a genuine thirst for knowledge – but the rest of them-”

“Courage alone is no virtue, Rothwyn,” interrupted the second, from deeper in the haze and darkness that still predominated his vision, in a calmer voice.

“Maybe, but we need stronger material than these if we are to survive as a race.”

“Like them, my dear friend, we shall have to find our strength in togetherness and not in waiting for the perfect ‘chosen ones’ to come along, or our survival will be in mere legend and fairy-tales.”

“‘Togetherness’?” repeated Rothwyn, with contemptuous incredulity, as she manhandled Shandor into a shadowy corner and deposited him alongside his equally dazed and dejected comrades. His vision clearing, he could now make her out to be a young woman in ill-fitting (and doubtless scavenged) combat fatigues, with short brown hair, and sharp elfin features that might have been capable of an attractive and pleasant expression, but were currently waiving that right. “If this war is their way of expressing ‘togetherness’, I’ll take anarchy any day.”

“The war has taken a toll on us, as well,” replied the other, still at the periphery of the weak, wavering candlelight centred in the iron bracket over the doorway, but just distinguishable as a tall, raven-haired roman, dressed in a similar fashion to Rothwyn but of a far more stately mien. “Many troops and refugees have sought loot and shelter in the tombs and ruins that were once home to our sisters and brothers, just as they did in the Ottoman wars and the Roman invasion. When mortal soldiers find our kindred in daylight, at their most helpless, their mercy is more often than not conspicuous by its absence … These unfortunate wretches, however, did not come to kill or to plunder, and if they are not saints then they are certainly not fiends … although their ambitious leader, as you say, troubles me. Our ‘friend’ in there attacked the others with their worst memories … with fear and shame, as it usually does, but it soon gave up that tactic with him, and started presenting him with visions of success, fame, and power, as if it sensed that temptation rather than despair was his point of least resistance. From our point of view, he may prove unreliable.”

“He’s young, Diana. You can bring him round to your way of thinking,” urged Rothwyn, with a definite tinge of vague dismay that her favourite among the potential converts had not met with her leader’s approval. “In your time, surely-”

“I’ve claimed much worse? All too true, alas. I have initiated many promising mortals who have gone on to become rogues, tyrants, and monsters. Hence, the testing, and the reason I am far more choosy these days. Had I chosen disciples who had acted in a way that reflected more honour upon me, then perhaps that prattling busybody Paul would not have driven me from Ephesus, and I might still be revered as a goddess rather than reviled as a mere night-hag. Indeed, I have learned to value obedience, which is not foremost among his qualities,” she declared, with a curt gesture at the slumped and silent form of Captain Dragomir.

“You’d prefer it if we were all sheep, then?” asked Rothwyn, sullenly. “You don’t think we might benefit from a few strong, purposeful minds, or are there to be so few of us left alive that you won’t even need me as a lieutenant?”

“From what insight I had into that one’s mind, I doubt he would ever be content with being a mere lieutenant, even to an erstwhile goddess. However, if you wish to make him your responsibility, on your head let it be. So far, the remainder of them seem acceptable, if unexceptional. Honest, at all events, and definitely controllable. That leaves only the corporal to test, though it must be done quickly. The attack upon that last soldier was especially vigorous. I am afraid that we may have ‘warmed it up’, so to speak, and if it should break down this one’s barriers-”

“Why even give it the opportunity? I can’t speak for you, but I’m ravenous, and surely we don’t need all of these interlopers.”

“And feed you shall, but I do not propose to act unjustly. We shall test them all, then you may indulge yourself, providing that you bite to claim.”

“Easily said,” she grumbled, while tying the rope around Corporal Bartok’s waist. Wounded and despondent, he offered no resistance. “Not so easily done, if my heart isn’t in it,” she explained, as she escorted him to the narrow, arched iron door and shoved him through into the pitch-black alcove that lay beyond, into which they had all now been. Rothwyn herself took great care to remain beyond the threshold, keeping hold of the safety line. “To have to make an immortal out of someone I feel nothing for at all … Not a talent I ever mastered. Don’t you find- ?”

“Quite. Desire is an aid to transmission, no doubt, but enough for now. I have to concentrate on the testing. Our ‘friend’ in there is pulling no punches.” A hollow cry of despair sounded from the alcove, and Shandor knew, with nauseating certainty, what it signified: that whatever creature or presence existed in that room was putting Corporal Bartok through the same ordeal it had made him endure, using his own memories as a weapon to manipulate, destroy, or possess him mentally. Apparently, these she-devils used it to save themselves the bother of interrogating their prisoners, although they sounded less than confident in their ability to control it. Outrage and pity at the continued anguished cries came close to overcoming Shandor’s fear, and it took only a tiny flash of inspiration to tip the balance: the sudden remembrance of the crucifix he carried in his tunic pocket, not that it had noticeably conferred much in the way of divine favour on this expedition so far. However, and though the war had certainly given his faith a battering, in the presence of these supernatural – though by no means sacred – beings, it paid to keep an open mind.
He half-expected, as he drew the symbol from his pocket and brandished it in the faces of his captors, that it would have no effect. On that score, at least, his pessimism was unfounded, though it soon found more substantial material to sustain itself. His first target – partly because she was closer and mainly because she seemed a thoroughly cruel and bloodthirsty piece of work – was Rothwyn, and her reaction upon seeing the crudely-carved wooden trinket was as extreme as if he had attacked her with an electric cattle-prod. With a short, agonised screech, all of the power and coordination seemed to desert her muscles, and she collapsed in a flailing heap, like a drowning insect. Before Shandor had time to come to terms with either the success of his scheme or its grotesque results, the leader had advanced upon him. Seen up close and in the full light, her undeniable beauty was counterbalanced by its disconcerting qualities: the colours were too sharp, and the skin too clear and unblemished, as if she were a living and walking airbrushed photograph. Her expression mitigated the effect somewhat, as no photographer would have dreamed of so delicately retouching such a contorted, mask-like snarl of preternatural fury. The sum total of humanity’s savage emotions seemed to have pooled just beneath the surface of her porcelain-pallid skin, mustering strength to tear him limb from limb. Emphasising that point, a slender hand of stony temperature and rigidity lashed out and clamped viciously around his wrist, immediately causing him to release both a piercing cry and his crucifix, which she immediately ground underfoot. This taken care of, her expression underwent a very slight amelioration, and with a casual though powerful gesture she flung him against the cave wall. As he crumpled into a bruised and battered heap, he would gladly have been at leisure to enjoy his pain and sense of abject failure, but the woman’s voice was too much like her appearance: cold and elegant, with an inhuman, crystalline clarity that drilled its way into his brain:

“A courageous, but incomparably stupid action, and a very ill turn by your friend.” Shandor noticed that the cries of despair from the alcove had given way to a no more encouraging silence. “His fate is now sealed, and so must the chamber be,” she declared, slamming the iron door shut with absurd ease, the now-useless safety line trailing underneath it. “I sense only the one presence within there, and not that of your friend. On no account must it leave.” To his horror, she began sealing the massive external bolts, slamming them home as if they had no weight whatsoever, unmoved by the sounds of scrabbling, laboured breathing, and presently of scratching and beating upon the other side of the door. This proved too much for Captain Dragomir: hitherto, he had been slumped in the shadows with the rest of his unit, contemplating his own experience in the chamber in abject silence. The idea that one of his men should be entombed alive was too much to be borne, however, so he dragged himself upright, lurched over to the door, and made a valiant effort to draw back the bolts, but the lady swiftly moved to restrain him, pinning his hands behind his back.

“Do not compound your man’s foolishness, Captain,” she advised, pulling him away from the door, unhindered by his increasingly feeble struggles. “Your people will be endangered as surely as mine if that door is opened.”

“Corporal Bartok,” protested Dragomir. “He’s still-”

“He is not alive, except in the strictly biological sense, though we can but hope that will not be for much longer.”

“And what the devil do you mean by- ?”

“You have experienced the chamber yourself, Captain. You can hardly have failed to notice that it is … structurally unsound, so to speak.”

“I noticed that you’re pumping it full of hallucinogenic gas,” he replied, with more indignation than actual conviction. “If I’d known it was subject to cave-ins as well, I’m sure it would have improved my morale no ends.”

“You’re a man of science, I know, but that is no excuse for being stupidly literal. Beyond that door, neither time nor space are firm and fixed. In your military parlance, the defences in there are weak, and irresistible to a clever, determined enemy.”

“‘Enemy’? What- ?”

“Paul of Tarsus and his pious rabble would have called it a demon, but what you would call it I have no idea. Perhaps an ‘extra-terrestrial’, if you follow the works of H G Wells. That is not strictly the case, but it has this much in common with his Martians: it is a ruthless invader that will stick at nothing, least of all killing everyone in this cavern, given the chance.”

“H G Wells … English, are you?” he asked, in what even Shandor, in his Slough of Despond, felt to be a wretched attempt at putting the lady off her guard (though all things considered, it was mildly impressive that Dragomir had even retained the wits to make such a half-hearted stab at deviousness).

“Not by birth,” she answered, with an arch, faintly amused smile, “though I have enjoyed considerable honour in that country. No more, alas, though we live in hope for the future. Men like you give me hope, Captain: men who dream of reforming this squabbling race of jumped-up apes with the power of science and reason, just as your forefathers dreamed of reforming them with the power of faith. Their idealism was just as clouded by ambition as yours, but your generation are better equipped for playing god, and there are so many of you with the same idea. When would-be gods go to war, the result is no mere skirmish, but Ragnarok, to coin a phase. Whatever remains of the world after your kind have finished slaughtering each other over control of it may be very grateful to accept the guidance of a true goddess.”

“Then I’m sorry I don’t seem more impressed,” replied Dragomir, somewhat defiant but primarily dejected. “Possibly I’m not seeing you at your best.”

“That goes without saying, but I trust you will at least concede that I have power of life and death over you. How to use it, though … I detest needless bloodshed, yet I cannot help but feel that you are as much a potential danger to me as you are to the world. Are you recovered, Rothwyn?” she asked her lieutenant, who was slowly regaining her footing, and had already regained enough of her wits to turn a venomous expression upon Shandor.

“Well enough to settle my score with that one,” she snarled, treating Shandor to the kind of focused look which is more often the last sight of small, herbivorous mammals in the presence of large carnivores.

“I would appreciate it better if you would simply escort these mortals to some place of security, unharmed. Except for their leader, who must answer my questions.”

“Must I? Aren’t you omniscient, being a goddess?” asked Dragomir, dryly. “Or if not, why not just let your ‘extra-terrestrial’ in there do the hon-”

Whereupon, as if it had been awaiting its cue, the hammering upon the iron door intensified, and the voice of the trapped corporal joined in the clamour, plaintively calling out the names of his comrades. It was unmistakable Bartok’s voice, yet subtly wrong, with a faint slowness and over-precision, and an almost exaggerated intonation that gave the disquieting sense of a man performing an impersonation of himself. This did not escape the captain: he made a brief effort to break from the lady’s grip, but immediately gave it up, and offered no resistance as she tightened her hold.

“Very good, Captain,” she declared, cautiously relaxing her grip, though not to the point of granting him freedom of movement. “Put that rationalist mind of yours to good use, and you must concede that even if you are right, and that room is full of hallucinogenic gas, your man would not be capable of calling out so coherently.”

“It doesn’t have to follow from that that he’s …”

“Possessed? Then think up whatever explanation pleases you best, but until you have one that fully reassures me that door remains shut. Now, let us resume this conversation somewhere less haunted.”

“If the subject of it’s to be my imminent demise, I couldn’t give a damn about the setting.”

“Not necessarily, though I shall want convincing that I can trust you, either to serve me or, should I release you, to be discreet about what you have seen.”

“My men- ?”

“With have the same option, though not him,” she announced, shooting a dark look at Private Shandor. “Well-intentioned or not, I detest slavish piety. Lead on, Rothwyn, and we’ll escort them between us. Solitary confinement for now, I think. They have proven quite troublesome enough singly for us to tempt fate …”

************

1941

“Let me guess,” ventured Captain Meinert, who had listened to this point with patient incredulity. “They took you to a great big crypt under a ruined abbey and locked you up in coffins, right?”

“Not far off, sir,” replied Brother Shandor, with just a hint of well-suppressed annoyance. “Separate chambers in the catacombs, not much bigger than the space of a coffin, and they closed the entrances with great slabs. Left us in total darkness. Reckoned I’d suffocate down there. Fair wore myself out trying to shift that slab, though that sadistic little waif-”

“Rothwyn?”

“Aye, that one. She moved it like it was a sheet of cardboard. I couldn’t move it worth a damn. Reckon I must have collapsed from the effort. Next thing I knew, I was lying on a hillside south of Brasov, soaked to the skin. I thought at first I must’ve blacked out after the plane attack, and dreamed the rest of it.”

“You astound me … What, if I might ask, did it take to sway you from this very sensible conclusion?”

“It took enough … I got through the war, and through seminary, and kept on thinking the same. It was going on five years before I heard from Dragomir again. Turned out that after he’d been declared missing in action for some weeks, he turned up in the south, and defected. Traded all the military information he had to the Allies, and so-”

“And so he was allowed to keep his family’s Transylvanian estates after the Allies won. His backsliding history is common knowledge, Padre. Tell me something I don’t know.”

“That was what she wanted of him. Don’t you see? He was more useful to her that was, when she learned that her catacombs were on … or under his ancestral lands. He could provide those fiends with a safe haven, where the priests, peasants, and Roma couldn’t hunt them down … where she could build up her forces and plan for the future … or the present, rather, when mankind is slaughtering itself faster than the Plagues of Egypt could manage … Her time will come, and God save anyone who isn’t one of her kind when it’s all over.”

“Guesswork, Padre, or did you get all of this from Dragomir himself?”

“Not everything. When he called on me, he just said that it was thanks to him and his influence with those creatures that my life had been spared, and he warned me to keep a still tongue about the whole thing, if I didn’t want them to reverse that decision. He wasn’t taking no chances: also warned me not to try leaving the country, or they’d know about it and take measures. Can’t say as I know what sort of pact he made with that false goddess – immortality, knowledge, or power – but he sure as hell wasn’t going to let me rock the boat. Having to live with a secret like that, not even being able to talk openly to the confessor-”

“Explains your preference for the Robinson Crusoe life, yes?”

“Partly,” he answered, grimly, “ but as for becoming an anchorite, I’d long had a mind to do that. I couldn’t get my mind off that chamber they put me in, even if what I saw was an illusion: my sins, played out in all their ugliness, showing me how God must see my soul: a hideous, self-mutilated, crawling thing … With that sort of insight, Captain, I reckon there are few who could stand to be much in company, wondering how much of that evil everyone else sees in you, and wondering if they’re all just as rotten to the core.”

“Irksome for you, no doubt, and I’d be quite happy, under normal circumstances, to leave you out in the sticks trying to make it right with God. But please go on, if there is any more. I’d be reluctant to arrest even Dragomir on the strength of the fairytale you’ve been feeding me so far.”

“Well here’s something you might check up on, sir,” declared Shandor, with irrepressible frustration. “About two, three years ago, he visited me again, and asked me for a ‘favour’. Said if I played my cards right, there was a good chance I’d be allowed to settle elsewhere – that he’d help me to get a place in a monastery in Hungary, or maybe even Greece – but if I was going to be ‘difficult’ he couldn’t even guarantee my safety where I was. Coward that I am, I gave in, and he gave my instructions to put up some foreign professor in my hut. They didn’t dare book him a hotel, I gather, as they didn’t want his journey to be traceable. After he’d had a night’s rest, I was to guide him to Dragomir’s old castle: that’s way up in the Carpathians,” he added, at Meinert’s unspoken but obvious surprise. “Only the locals know about it, sir, and even most of them think it’s been destroyed. Always had an evil reputation, that place … One of his ancestors built it slap-bang on top of them pagan burial chambers, and spent years trying to harness the powers of Hell with rituals and alchemy and what have you. Went stark raving mad in the end. Even laughed like a maniac while they were burning him, or so the records say.”

“Lovely story … And what about this professor? Do you have a name, or anything more informative than a vague job description and ‘foreign’?”

“He was English, I reckon, or American. Didn’t know much Romanian. Had to get through to him mostly with signs. As for his name … Curtis … Or Curwen, maybe. Don’t know if that helps.”

Not that I’d care to tell you, but the REM will be most interested to hear that, thought Meinert, with well-concealed satisfaction. As far as he could recall from ministerial reports, Professor Dexter Curwen, late of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, had designed a kind of programmable, electronic calculating machine, and had been sending begging letters to several governments in the hope of getting a grant to actually build the thing (which would have required several rooms’ worth of expensive equipment and considerably more than normal domestic power to run it). Hoping to cash in on the war that seemed imminent even back then, he had named his machine LOCI – Logical Operations Code Identifier – and had tried to market it as a device capable of decoding any military ciphers, and even of predicting enemy strategies with a high level of accuracy. The Reich Ministry of Science and Education had closely considered his designs, but finally dismissed them as not having enough proven military value to justify the expense. I wonder … did he find Dragomir and his shady allies more willing to cough up the Reichsmarks for his electronic baby? If so, where might one find them now?

“It will require investigation,” answered Meinert, with an air of indifference. “This castle is obviously the place to begin. I’ll assemble a strike team, and you’ll lead-”

“I’d advise you to rethink that, sir. That castle-”

“Oh, I believe we can handle your ‘vampires’, Padre. Old Dragomir may have been consistently lying through his teeth since 1916, but I think he hit the nail on the head when he realised that burial chamber was full of hallucinogenic gas. A natural underground vent of it, perhaps. No doubt those rebels – communists, or partisans, or whatever they are – have been using it for years to frighten and delude the feeble-minded … nothing personal. The ancient priests probably used it for much the same reason: convenient religious experiences on tap, so to speak.”

“Vampires be damned. What I meant to say was that one squad of men could completely defend that castle, if they had the ammo … or even if they had a few pans of hot oil to pour out of the window. The main approach is so narrow that you’ve no room to manoeuvre except straight down the ravine and into the river, not to mention that they’ve got excellent cover. Storming the place with infantry would be like queuing up to get shot. Maybe if you radioed for some planes to bomb the place-”

And in all probability kill Curwen and wreck this priceless machine of his? Oh no, we can do better than that …

“I’d prefer a more subtle approach, and since you say that the catacombs run beneath the castle, and since you and your old comrades found a tunnel leading into those catacombs, I would call that a fairly major security weakness. Could you still find your way to those Dacian temples?”

“I’m … not sure,” answered Shandor, his tone suggesting that he would be only too glad to have forgotten that knowledge than any real hope that he had. “Maybe … but I don’t know as that’s such a great … That’s to say,” he hastily added, as Meinert, with grave, inscrutable look, took out his Luger and flicked off the safety, “I’ll take you there, and show you the tunnel, if it’s still there. Just don’t ask me to go down there again, please. If they were to see me helping you, breaking my word to them, I dread to think … For God’s sake, sir,” he pleaded, as the captain primed the weapon and treated him to a grim stare. “There’s no need for-”

But the plea shortly became academic, as Meinert levelled his pistol and shot the emaciated cadaver on the hospital trolley in the side of its skull-like head. It came as no surprise to him that it took the shot quite passively, without screaming or writhing or otherwise behaving like a proper Hollywood monster, and he immediately turned his attention back to Brother Shandor, whose state of mute shock was scarcely more animated than that of the exterminated ‘vampire’. If ever there was a time to demand an unpleasant favour of him, this was it. Of course, I could just bring the old fool along at gunpoint, but I might as well have his cooperation while it’s for the taking, and not chance it that he might have the wit to lead us into a trap.

“Isn’t it your duty, Padre, to destroy these ‘demons’, or whatever you suppose them to be?” he argued, with only a hint of suppressed mockery. “And if you suppose wrongly, and it turns out that they are just a rabble of criminal conspirators, then it’s my duty to stamp them out. We’ll set out as soon as my lads have had some rest, and in the meantime I suggest you take their example,” and sleep off the Tokay, we can but hope. If you’re to be our guide on this mission, I’d as soon we were all marching in a straight line.