Links to previous installments are at the end of this chapter
Radu-Chapter XXXXII (A Novel by Patrick Kelley)
13 pages approximate
Marlowe Krovell never felt so powerful in his life. The blood of Agnes Khoska made him seem invincible, and unstoppable. He could barely control himself. He watched lustfully as the various patrons filed in and out of The Crypt. He smiled when he saw Marty Evans, his old friend, standing outside the newly opened Goth club, passing out samples of what he promised was an “immortal elixir”. The last time he saw Marty was when he used him to help him retrieve Raven’s corpse from the Baltimore Morgue. From the top of the adjacent building, he turned to see Cynthia eyeing him curiously.
“I won’t be long, old friend,” he promised the creature. Within an instant, he was at Marty’s side.
“You,” Marty shouted in shock. “What do you want now?”
“Now, Marty, is that any way to greet an old friend?” he asked. “That is my blood you’ve been handing out, you know. You have done an admirable job at that.”
“This stuff-is yours?” Marty replied in disbelief.
Before Marlowe could respond, a young Goth girl named Brandy approached them both, her eyes focused on the cardboard box which hung around Marty’s neck from a leather strap.
“I’m glad you’re still here, Marty,” she said. “How much would you charge me for some more of that stuff? Is that really some kind of blood? Whatever it is, it’s great.”
Marty informed her anxiously that he had no more and was going home soon, but the girl now had her attention focused on Marlowe.
“Hey, I know you, ain’t you Marlowe Krovell? Damn, I thought you was dead.”
“Me, dead? Naw, I just been hiding out, ya know? Joseph and his crew already tried to kill me and they did kill my mom and dad, and I just learned they all got what was coming to them. So, here I am. Man, you look fine. Rachel is it?”
“No, Brandy,” she replied. “You remember, don’t you? You were at my party a couple of years ago, though you didn’t stay long.”
“I just broke up with Raven, and when she showed up it was time for me to go,” he explained, all the time noticing that Marty looked increasingly worried, as Brandy stepped up closer to Marlowe.
“Hey you know,” he continued. “This is a good night to just kick around town. You ain’t with anybody are you?”
“Nobody important,” she said. “I could use a Latte. There’s a new place down the street that beats the hell out of Starbucks, and don’t cost nowhere near as much. You ever been there?”
“Yeah, here in a few minutes. Hey, Marty, hold down the fort here for me, will you?”
“What fort?” Marty asked suspiciously. He was well aware that Marlowe was telling him plainly not to bother to try to tag along, which he had no intention of doing. He knew deep down exactly what Marlowe was up to as they started walking on down the street. Marty watched them helplessly, aware there was nothing he could do or say that would not put his own life in extreme danger.
“Talk to you later, Marty,” Brandy said. Marty just said, simply, “Goodbye Brandy.”
Marlowe shot him another cold hard look as they continued down the street. Marlowe’s breathing was becoming labored and erratic, though he tried with great effort to conceal this. Brandy did not seem to mind, if in fact she noticed it at all. She is a horny bitch anyway, Marlowe thought to himself. She probably has every intention of being fucked after leaving what she called “Duke’s Coffee Joint”. For that matter, she probably wants to fuck well before then. Marlowe of course had other, more pressing matters on his mind.
Suddenly, well out of sight of The Crypt, Brandy stopped abruptly.
‘Wait a minute, I just remembered-I was at your funeral,” she said. “Your Uncle Brad”-she stopped short of any further observations, as though unable to process the sudden re-emergence of the memory of her attendance at his own fake funeral. The bitch was probably high, if not totally fucked up, he realized.
“What about Uncle Brad?” he prompted her.
“He had a closed-casket funeral for you,” she said. “So, he was in on this as well?”
“Yeah, in a manner of speaking,” Marlowe replied, now suddenly tired of the pretense. He needed her now in the worse possible way, while still dreading the consequences. This filthy bitch, he realized, in ordinary circumstances would render him almost incapacitated, as bad as-or worse-than the results of his assault of April Sandusky. He looked up in the sky above his head, and perched on a distant ledge was Cynthia, glaring down at them sullenly, and expectantly.
“I heard about what happened to him,” she continued. “That must have terrible for you, to lose your only surviving relative, especially so quickly after your parents died. You and he must have been real close.”
“We had our share of problems,” Marlowe said. ‘Like I told you, he was only in on it in a manner of speaking. There was a body in that coffin, and it was mine, in a way. Just a spare I made out of some random DNA from some teeth and spit. I didn’t have enough blood at the time to do the job, so I had to improvise. It was kind of rough ripping out my appendix, but hey, I had to have something for the DNA to build on. It was too bad you didn’t see the body. You would never have known it was a fake. Hell, it fooled Brad, and he was an expert mortician-what can I say?”
She digested all this without comment, though her eyes seemed to betray a sense that he must have been joking. Yet, he seemed so serious. He stepped up to her closer. There was now no one around, and a deathly silence pervaded the night. Only the cool of the night air betrayed any sense of reality as Marlowe Krovell now hovered over her.
“I need you now,” he said, and she fell into his arms. With one quick, savage thrust, he ripped open her throat with his long, black painted nails. She gasped as she jerked back, as the blood spattered all over him. He hungrily lapped it up as he held her tightly. She swooned as the blood gushed to his face as though it were a fountain. He pressed his lips up against her throat, feeding on the hapless girl as every desperate thought and random memory raced through her head and into Marlowe’s mind, much as a quickly racing stream that ran faster with every second that ran toward oblivion. She finally died, after putting up not the least bit of a struggle. He then ripped open her chest and extracted her heart. He had no desire for her to return, and so he devoured it completely, like a ravenous wolf, in the space of under a minute.
It worked, just as his grandfather had promised it would. The blood, the sacred blood that she and so many others had imbibed, had enabled Marlowe to feed upon her with impunity. More importantly, the virus they all now carried would easily transmit to any they encounter. It would spread further, ever further, until soon there would be few, if any, upon whom Radu, in the person of Marlowe Krovell, would be unable to feed.
Cynthia flew down now and began feeding upon the freshly slain corpse. Marlowe watched her intently, until she stopped after some ten minutes of gorging, and met his gaze.
“Lead the way, old girl,” he said. “We have much work to do tonight.”
Marlowe gazed into the creatures eyes, and soon the green aura surrounded his consciousness, bathing him in it until a form took focus within his consciousness. He could see it- the church, with its many members now exposed to the same virus that enabled Brandy to fall victim to his designs. Though it was yet nighttime, the church was not empty.
Marlowe gleefully bounded up toward the top of the nearest roof, reaching for the corner, and pulled himself over the ledge with little effort. He bounded from rooftop to rooftop, like some great mythical ape, no distance too great for him to traverse, until after a relatively few number of minutes, he found himself on the opposite side of town. He looked directly toward the Catholic Church, the one attended by Lieutenant Berry, who had unknowingly and inadvertently infected the sacramental wine with the virus that raged through Marlowe’s blood stream, turning all who partook of the sacred Eucharist into his potential and unwitting victims.
Like Brandy before them, they too would have no defense against him. Where before, the faithful of the church, the devout, could repel him with the power of their faith as channeled through the crucifix, now they were as so many sheep. Their accursed savior would not protect them now. His power, if all went as it should, would be useless to them. Even their most devout prayers would be to no avail.
He approached the Church. No longer did the giant crucifix attached to its roof fill him with dread. He looked over toward Cynthia. The creature waited expectantly for Marlowe to make his move. He could see the family inside the church. They seemed as devout a family as any other that entered the edifice. That they were here at this time of the night was solid testament to that fact. There was a problem. The child, the infant recently born, just under a year ago, was not well. Were he to live, he would be a hopeless invalid due to some rare disease of the blood transmitted through the mother.
They prayed earnestly. The father was grief-stricken. The mother was guilt-ridden. The teenage daughter was bored out of her wits, and resentful, as she looked out the window, and saw Cynthia. She stifled an automatic gasp, then continued to gaze. After a few minutes, she informed her mother she needed to walk outside, for just a few minutes.
By the time she walked out the door, she had forgotten all about Cynthia. She came out here for a cigarette. She lit one up, certain neither her father nor her mother would follow her out here, at least for now. She extracted a cigarette from her purse and lit it. She took one deep drag after another, allowing the smoke to waft out of her mouth, and then inhaling it through her nostrils and out of them again in an effort to minimize the scent of the tobacco on her breath. Finally, she allowed herself first one, and then another, long, luxurious drag through her mouth and down her throat. Marlowe waited in silence, behind the large evergreen, as she finished. She put the cigarette down to the ground and cautiously ground it out with her foot. She was not ready to go back inside-not just yet.
Marlowe however was ready, and waited long enough. He pounced, and quickly ripped open the girl’s throat before she had time to so much as gasp, let alone scream. As he fed upon her blood, her thoughts flooded through clearly into his consciousness, unlike the hazy and dazed ramblings that emanated from the mind of the Goth girl named Brandy who was his previous victim.
This girl, he realized, was on methamphetamines, hooked as badly as her last victim was on heroin. No longer did any of this have an effect on him. Ordinarily, his addiction would roar back to life and make him crave the substance as much as any mortal junky, perhaps worse. The pain of withdrawal had been constant and fierce. Now, he was free from this effect as well.
As had also been the case with Brandy, with this girl he saw concisely everything in her life. It was as though, in those final few seconds, her life flashed before Marlowe’s eyes. It was most amazing. He knew everything about her, her likes and dislikes, her needs and fears, her desires and her-wow, this little girl was a lesbian, he realized. Now, she was just dead, and not only did he know the entirety of her life, but much of the people who waited yet within the church-from her perspective, of course.
He entered the church openly, and the two people stopped their prayers and looked at him with obvious shock and some trepidation. He sensed a degree of loathing from woman, and not a little fear from the man.
“Who are you?” the woman demanded.
“Are you here to see Father Chuck?” the man asked warily.
“No, I came to ask you why you’ve been treating your step-daughter so badly,” Marlowe replied in an accusatory tone of voice.
“That’s a lie,” the man stammered, but the woman looked at him with a suspicious fury.
“Did Jean tell you that?” she asked.
“Yep,” he replied. “The first time was when he went into her room during your vacation to Disney World. I think that was like three years ago. She was what-twelve, thirteen? Of course, as I said, that was the first time. According to her, there have been others-many, many others, in fact.”
“Mister, I don’t know who you are or what Jean has told you, but it’s all bullshit,” the man insisted.
“Where is she?” the woman demanded. “I’ll go talk to her about this right now.”
She headed for the door of the church as the man just stood there, enraged and yet fearful, trembling with impotent fury.
“Who in the hell are you?” he demanded in a coarse whisper.
“Radu-Radu Dracula,” came the reply. “I just did you a big favor, by the way. Your stepdaughter has been talking to the cops. Oh, and to her father, who desperately wants to kick your ass in the worse possible way. You see, after so long, they expect you to do more than just feel them up. It seems she knew it was getting to the point that if she didn’t do something, something bad was going to happen.”
“I swear, mister, I would never do anything to hurt Jean. I”-
“You love her?”
The man just looked down to the ground, and toward where the infant waited for a salvation and healing that was months long in coming. In all the time he had been inside this church, the child had made no sound. Suddenly, the woman came back inside.
“Jean is gone,” she said, obviously mystified. “There’s a vulture out there, sitting on the ground, just staring at me.”
“Let me get right to the point,” Marlowe said. “I am here to heal this child. I can remove every disease in his pain-wracked little body, and in fact, I can make him not just normal, but better than normal. I can remove the curse with which your cruel God has afflicted him. All of this I can easily do, but not without a price-a steep one, as it happens.”
“Why should we trust you?” the man demanded.
“Shut up!” the woman shouted, then turned her attention back toward Marlowe.
“I don’t know who you are, but if you can do what you say, I’ll pay you anything-I don’t care what it is.”
“You can’t be serious,” the man replied. “This guy is a demon. Look at him. He has entered the House of the Lord and is talking about some abomination involving our son-our child, not just yours. He is as much mine as he is yours and I say”-
Before the man could continue, however, Marlowe had him by the throat. Within a matter of seconds, the woman watched in desperate terror and, what was worse, uncertainty, as Marlowe drained the life force from the body of her husband of four years. He then turned to the woman, now paralyzed with fear and anxiety.
“Please-do what you promised,” she stammered.
Marlowe, now gorged on the blood of three victims, looked at her with a perverse serenity, the blood and gore caked and dribbling from his lips.
“You must hand him over to me,” he said. “Before you do that, however, there is one other thing you must do. You must give yourself to me, willingly.”
The woman began silently praying, unsure of what to do. A part of her resisted his entreaties, which was just as well. Marlowe grabbed her by the head of the hair and pulled her against him. She resisted him automatically and called on the Lord, but Marlowe had her pinned helplessly against his body and bit into her neck fiercely. He continued to feed upon her until she collapsed. She lay on the floor unconscious, next to her now sufficiently dead husband.
He walked over to the child, and fed upon his frail form, extracting just a small sip of blood from his lips. The child jerked and finally made a moaning sound. He opened the mouth of the child, regurgitated a small amount of blood into the open orifice, and then sat him upon the floor by his unconscious mother. As the child lay there trembling, Marlowe extracted the heart of the father and fed upon it. By the time he finished, the mother awoke. She rose in fear, and then saw the child on the floor beside her. The child now cried. He was on his hands and knees. For the first time in his life, the child crawled. The child smiled, and babbled.
The mother looked upon the sight of her child with delight. Forgotten, at least for now, was the fate of her daughter and that of her treacherous husband as well. Forgotten for the time being even was Marlowe, who stood over her, well satisfied with the events of this night, as the door opened to admit Father Chuck, who stood in obvious shock at what he saw.
“Who are you? What in the name of God has happened here?”
The woman rose and in a delirium swept the child up in her arms.
“This man has healed my child, Father Chuck,” the woman explained in delight, as the priest looked in horror on the mutilated body of the man on the floor.
“I’ve just performed the Devils’ work, here inside this very church,” Marlowe bragged. “I have done what you, with all your prayers and useless rituals, could never hope to do. Oh, and by the way, that confession you received from this man, and the so-called therapy you attempted with the daughter-you no longer need concern yourself with the matter. Justice has been served, if I might be so bold, and the sins of both wiped clean from the face of the earth.”
Father Chuck immediately called upon God, Christ, Mary, the Saints, all in an effort to dispel the demon who stood in his presence, mocking him and mocking God, as he held out his crucifix to ward off the Satanic intruder. Marlowe snatched it from his hand as though it were a piece of chewing gum, and flung it to the ground with a snarl.
The woman sat with her child in the front pew, holding her son, who cooed happily at his mother’s attentions for the first time since his birth. She talked back to him in baby gibberish as Marlowe ripped Father Chuck’s throat out of his neck, and fed upon him. Blood splattered everywhere, as a stream once splashed upon the blouse of the now relieved and happy mother, who laughed as her child made baby faces as he smiled at her, both of them laughing merrily as Marlowe quickly gorged himself on the heart of Father Chuck.
“I hope the two of you will be happy,” Marlowe told the woman. “There will be questions asked, of course. Say that I came to leave a message for the Patriarch Daniel, and that I will be coming for him soon. He will know what it means. Will you do that for me?”
“Yes, of course,” the woman, said. “I don’t know how I can ever thank you. I’ll be sure and let them know. What is your name again?”
Marlowe, however, was on his way out the door, where he saw not Cynthia, but the Land Rover. They were just in time. Marlowe opened the door to the back seat. Toby looked at him sullenly.
“Okay, here I am,” he said. “What do you want, you freak?”
“I think you already know,” Marlowe replied, in no mood to trade insults with the rapper who he now had no reason to fear.
“Yeah, I think I do, but the question is, what the hell do you expect me to do about it?”
“Turn all of them off,” Marlowe replied.
“How the hell do you expect me to do that?” he asked.
“Just do it, or else,” Marlowe said.
“Now look here, you fucking”-
But before Toby could continue, Marlowe had him by the throat.
“Listen to me well, you fucking nigger,” he hissed. “I’m not in the mood to play games with your fat ass. You know what you have to do. If you can’t do it, somebody else can. Otherwise, what has happened thus far is nothing compared to what will happen. Do you read me?”
Toby pulled away and simultaneously fell into a near state of collapse. He then realized he had urinated on himself. The freak wasn’t playing games, and now turned his attention toward the driver of the Land Rover.
“Take me back to The Crypt,” he demanded.
Mercury Morris simply voiced a quick agreement and began driving away. Toby sat back silently, not uttering a sound, but breathing heavily. It was a silent ride of some forty minutes back to the south side of Baltimore, and to the front door of the Crypt.
“You do know how important this is, don’t you?” Marlowe said.
“Yeah-I know,” Toby replied. “I’ll do what I can.”
Satisfied, Marlowe stepped out of the car. Looking up toward the sky, he saw Cynthia perched on the ledge of the Crypt. He looked around, and saw Marty down the street. He still passed out the vials, a seemingly never-ending supply of them in his possession. As the Land Rover pulled away, Marlowe could hear Marty pronounce the coming end of the world and urging passers-by to partake of the magic formula that would enable them all to survive the coming destruction.
He turned with a smile and walked to the door of the Crypt. It was now empty, save for the lone figure of the new owner, who waited within.
“Marlowe, I see you’ve had a busy, busy night tonight.” The old man said.
“Grandfather.” Marlowe said by way of greeting. “Are you sure I will be safe here?”
“Oh, much safer than you would be at the funeral home, to be sure,” Martin Krovell replied. “It is only a matter of time before the old Priest will come looking for you, and he must not find you before you are able to face him. So, I take it all went well? You experienced no difficulties?”
“It worked even better than I hoped in my wildest dreams-such as they are,” Marlowe replied.
“Good,” Krovell replied. “Soon, there is going to be a brand new world, with a completely new order-a sacred world, one in which Christ will be the final ruler and arbiter. You, my grandson, will be the one chiefly responsible for helping to finally bring that about. It has been five long centuries in the making, you know. But the time and sacrifice will prove to be well worth it.”
Marlowe scowled at the mention of Christ, and at the thought of what this proposed new world would cost. Something was not quite right. There was something he was not being told. His grandfather promised that he would have a life free from pain and despair, a life of freedom and abundance. At the same time, his grandfather was not a man he trusted easily, for good reason. No Christian, of any sect, had ever given him anything but misery. A Christian and a champion of Christianity-his brother Vlad the Impaler-was responsible for the tragedies and the ultimate curse that afflicted him. Vlad did this not only out of his own malicious need for vengeance, but on behalf of the Mother Church, in their shared goal of defeat of the Ottoman Empire, against whom Vlad warred relentlessly. Now Vlad was dead for centuries, but his own Order, the Order of The Dragon, yet existed within the framework of what his grandfather hailed as the essence of the One True Church of Christ, driven underground two millennia ago first by the Roman Empire in it’s drive to extinguish the new Christian cult.
When that cult grew to predominance over the Empire, it became in time the Catholic Church, and al but exterminated what his grandfather called the true church, while insisting that the Catholic Church was the first of the heretical Christian sects. When the true Christians fled to Dacia-later known as Romania-it was not too long before they were driven into hiding yet again, this time by yet a new heretical Christian sect, in the form of the Romanian Orthodox Church.
As far as Marlowe was concerned, one faction was like another, all of them power hungry and intent on world domination as much, if not more so, than those Muslims of the Ottoman Empire with whom he was during his brief life obliged to align himself.
What would his new life be worth under such people as this so-called One True Church? If his grandfather achieved the entirety of his stated goals, there would be precious few people left on whom Radu could feed. He cared nothing for politics and power. That was another life, one long gone. He had no chance of relief from the curse with which Vlad afflicted him-nor in fact did he wish for relief other than the freedom to exercise his desires on anyone he wished. After five hundred years of suffering, he now had the chance to pursue this dream to the fullest extent possible.
He would therefore exist as he now did-if not forever, then certainly for a good time to come, far longer than any mortal human could hope to live-for many generations, in fact, or until someone finally destroyed him. That did not bother him. He would in fact have it no other way. He longed for nothing more than to feast upon the flesh and blood of those who now lived and who would come to live within the world-to feed his ravenous appetite during what amount of time he continued on the earth. He wanted only one thing more.
“My wife-what news do you have of her?”
His grandfather looked sullenly in response to this question. They had already been through this.
“I told you, Marlowe-or Radu, excuse me-your wife is gone forever.”
“That is a lie. She is here. I can feel her presence.”
“Of curse you can feel her presence. She will always be a part of you. We are all a part of the universal whole, Radu. Even when we die, we are all as one. Your wife is now with Mircea.”
“No!” Marlowe screamed with rage at this pronouncement.
“You do understand that she was promised to Mircea before his death, do you not? Her marriage to you came about after, and due to, his unfortunate early murder. It was all in the way of adhering to the family alliance-nothing more. You also had the chance to make matters right between the two of you, but of course you failed. Yet, this was to be expected. Now, she is with Mircea, the way the two families originally planned it to be-and as she always wanted to be, by the way. You must learn to accept this.”
“I will never accept it,” Marlowe said.
“Well, just sleep on it for now,” Martin suggested with inferred finality. “The sun will soon rise. Unfortunately, its effects on you are yet one more thing it seems will never change. Modern sunscreen, no matter how much you use or how medicated it is, is yet only good for so much, you know-especially in your case.”
He accompanied Marlowe to the attic, where waited not one, but two coffins.
“I hate sleeping in these damn things. Is there any reason I can’t sleep in a fucking bed like a normal human?”
“These protect you from the sun better than any bed possibly could, more even than any save the most completely sealed off room can. More importantly, they provide a ready made explanation to any who might inadvertently discover you.”
“Of course, as long as a dead body in the attic of a Goth bar is in a coffin no one would ever be the wiser, huh?” Marlowe stated sarcastically. “So what is this other one for?”
Martin opened one of them to reveal the mummified remains of Radu Dracula. Marlowe looked upon it with sadness.
“You should never forget where you came from,” Martin said. “Besides, if it fell into the wrong hands, it might provide information which could be used to your detriment.”
“Speaking of which, since you are obviously talking about that old busybody Priest,” Marlowe asked, “why not just kill him outright and get it over with?”
“If you don’t destroy him yourself, he will simply return in some later incarnation and resume the job, probably to greater effect, as he will be the wiser for the experience and so better prepared. Don’t you see, Marlowe-if you destroy him now, with your own hands, with your own power, directly, you do away with him for good.
“Of course, he is not the only problem. James Berry seems to have found his independence. His involvement was always problematic at best. We merely made use of an unfortunate set of circumstances. He will have to be dealt with.”
Marlowe looked morosely down at the coffin within which he would spend this night. He opened it and prepared to climb in. The exhaustion that now started to overwhelm him was not the same as experienced by normal humans. It was more like an approaching, inevitable death.
“Stop concerning yourself with your old life, Marlowe,” Martin advised him as he climbed inside the waiting coffin.
“You tell me that with that thing here in the room with me?” Marlowe asked indicating the remains that rested beside him.
“I must confess, that was another reason I brought it here-to bring home to you the simple fact that that life is indeed over and done with, as well as everything that life revolved around. Your wife, your daughter, they are all gone. All the friends, servants, courtiers, down to your most trusted guards, are no more. Your new life bears no more relation to that old one than the world has to the one in which you were born and raised.
“You now have a new life, and soon, a new bride-not too long from now, a new child. They are your life now, Marlowe. Grace will soon give birth to a new child, free of the taint of this world and its wicked sinfulness, yet as ready as you to devour and feast off it. That time will be soon, I promise you.”
Marlowe lay there as Martin Krovell finally closed the lid on his coffin. He now felt cold, devoid of any semblance of life, as he began the sleep of death, a death that in his case ended nothing. He could feel the coldness embrace him as he saw a vague light that, as always, mockingly beckoned him to enter into it.
Yet, he knew he could never enter into the warmth of its embrace. He stood outside as he watched countless souls entered within, blissfully unaware now of their former torment, while outside the light, an even greater number of others moaned and wandered aimlessly, in despair and pain, bereft of comfort or guidance, tortured souls beyond redemption. He knew that if not for the curse that afflicted him, he would share their fate.
He watched as others called out to him, the generations of his family that proceeded forth from and after him. He saw the Krovell family, those original immigrants from Romania, watching him in longing for him to achieve their final vengeance on the world that rejected them and despised them for the heritage they were obliged to keep secret.
Magda, the old gypsy, looked at him with malicious glee, confidant that soon he would reap the harvest she had so long ago planted, as had her ancestors before her. Her son-in-law Vlad watched and twitched with hopeful anger, while even Irenea, his young wife, now the most ancient of them all, in her advanced degree of dementia seemed to understand, on some deep inner level, that their revenge would soon be complete.
All of the others stood and watched-the incestuous children no longer concerned themselves with the older brother who in trying to destroy them provoked a fiery Holocaust throughout the city of Baltimore. The older sister, though wracked with the pain of the hideous disease that destroyed her, nevertheless seemed at last content in her anguish.
All of the others, those who yet bore the scars of their ultimate fates, waited along with them. The multiple gunshot wounds of the soldier, the diseased heart of the youngest brother, the crushed skull and battered body of the dockworker, the rat devoured addict, all of them stood in muted anticipation, as they mumbled and moaned, until two other forms took shape, that of Richard and Mabel, Marlowe’s mother and father. Even they, who for their own selfish reasons had rejected the family tradition, now in their failure came to grips with their ultimate destiny, and seemed finally to understand the rightness of it.
No longer did Marlowe despise and fear them as he once did. Now, he felt nothing for them beyond pity. It was right that they should be avenged, as they spent their whole lives trying to avenge his own death centuries earlier as much as their own disenfranchisement. Magda now walked up to him.
“We all shall live again, through you,” she declared.
Suddenly they all vanished, and Marlowe was alone in his dream that was death. He knew he would walk one day in this shadowy world forever, with no ending. Nothing lived forever. Even the undead had no permanent grip on the world of life. Soon, it would fade away, unless he found yet another form in which to inhabit and possess. Unfortunately, he would never have the same grasp on any other form he might so possess. Marlowe Krovell was of his bloodline. In fact, he was the last of it. When he was finally gone-as eventually he would be-who could possibly take his place to anything near the same effect?
There was one more person he wished to see. Soon, he saw not one but two forms. His daughter stood beside him, alongside his wife. His daughter looked disappointed. She looked angry. She blamed him for the failure that cost her own place, her rightful royal heritage. Because of him, her life became that of a gypsy vagabond.
She transformed the curse of his brother Vlad into one that would extend into the ages. She fully intended to wreak destruction on the descendants of those who had raped her, humiliated her, stolen her birthright, and left her a legacy of shame, disgust, and fear. Even that would not be enough. She intended for the whole world to suffer, far more than she herself had suffered.
“It will not end until all or dead, or enslaved,” she declared.
“Do you see now what you have done?” his wife said to him. “Your thirst for power has brought all this about. I had no choice in the matter. She had no choice in the matter. Because of you, our lives were misery in human form. She, our daughter, lived a life of shame, as the wife of a despised gypsy. Can you fault her for wanting everyone on the face of the earth to suffer worse than she suffered herself, over things that were not her fault, while everyone she met mocked her, reviled her, and persecuted her as though she were the lowest born trash?
“Yet, even now, all you care about is living your new existence with no thought of responsibility, and hope that somehow you and I will be reconciled. It is impossible. My soul has been reunited with Mircea. You have no right to expect a new life with me. Go, Radu, live your life, your new existence, and start anew. Forget about me, just as I try to forget about you and the misery you brought upon me, and upon our daughter. You owe us at least this much. Leave us alone.”
He reached out but she turned away, and soon they both faded into the gathering fog, a gray fog that grew ever darker and more ominous, until soon, it engulfed everything around him, until two giant emerald eyes glared out through the fog and pierced inside him. He knew now that Mircea, who never really left him, was now with him. Now, he could feel Mircea’s thoughts as easily as he knew Mircea knew his own.
“You will end sooner rather than later if you continue on the road you are on, brother,” Mircea said to him as he suddenly took on the form of the man in the dark gray robe and hood, which covered his mutilated face as the eyes, in life burned from their sockets, now transformed into red hot embers. They burned inside Radu’s soul.
“You always loved the life of comfort and vice, Radu,” Mircea now told him. “You have never changed, nor will you ever change. Look where your life of luxury led you. Look at what the result was then. There is nothing inside you but a longing for pleasure and leisure. You were willing even to fight for it then. It seemed never to occur to you to fight instead for your birthright. You willingly and gladly sold your heritage for a bowl of pottage.
“Well, it will soon end, as surely as it ended then. This time, there will be no reprieves, no second chances. That is your true curse, Radu. The dead, even those like yourself who are conscious and aware, can do no more than suffer for their crimes in perpetuity. You are no more capable of learning from the mistakes of the past and changing your nature than you would be of atoning for your sins. You cannot atone-you can only suffer. Nor can you change-you can only rot. Good day to you, my brother. You will see me no more, until the day your miserable existence finally ends for good.”
Radu could do no more than rave and growl in fury like a maddened animal, and so he screamed and cursed as he kicked and flailed at the ground beneath his feet-only to discover no ground was under him. He floated in his death dream, until he found himself over the coffin that rested beside the one in which his present body now reposed, but which now was empty, as he seemed suspended above it as well. He watched as the coffin that held those ancient remains suddenly opened as if of its own volition, but it was the corpse of Marlowe Krovell upon which he gazed in confusion. He looked toward his now empty coffin, and toward a mirror, into which he stared to see the grinning, mummified cadaver of Radu Dracula staring back at him.
The room began spinning around as he was now surrounded by a mist, one that grew thicker, until he realized he seemed now to be in a stagnant lake, while all around him mosses, leeches, and lichens gathered around him, holding him down under the same water that he at the same time gazed into from the shore. He saw himself on the shore, looking down from the shore onto himself trying desperately to rise to the surface toward where he waited on shore.
He reached out from the shore to where he now rose to the top of the lake, and reached his hand toward his hand that reached to him from the shore. He raised his moss-covered head to see Marlowe Krovell, trying desperately to pull Radu out of the water of the lake. When Marlowe saw it was not himself but Radu, he tried to push him away, but Radu gripped the outstretched arm. He pulled himself onto the shore, and saw now that Marlowe had taken his place in the water of the stagnant lake. He was now trying desperately to rise back to the surface, but when Radu looked down into the lake, he saw not his own reflection, nor the reflection of Marlowe Krovell. They both had disappeared now under the waves, as the blackness of unconsciousness finally overwhelmed him.
The dream then finally gave way, as the sleep of death finally overtook him, again for yet this one more day.
Previous Installments-
Part One
Prologue and Chapters I-X
Part Two
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
PartThree
Chapter XXIII
Chapter XXIV
Chapter XXV
Chapter XXVI
Chapter XXVII
Chapter XXVIII
Chapter XXIX
Chapter XXX
Chapter XXXI
Chapter XXXII
Chapter XXXIII
Chapter XXXIV
Chapter XXXV
Chapter XXXVI
Chapter XXXVII
Chapter XXXVIII
Chapter XXXIX
Chapter XXXX
Chapter XXXXI
