Drakul waited only so long for a response. “Make no mistake, boy, you are no match for me. I demand answers and will have them. What are you reading?”
“Words.” He smiled, actually smiled, and an unwelcome scent wafted past Drakul’s nostrils.
“Clever. So clever, but you must not believe that will win your life from me.” He stood, turned the book over in his hands. “I have seen times when clever men like you were burned, hanged, broken, and,” a smile to remembrance here, “impaled simply for possessing such a volume.” He looked down. “Knowledge of the Devil, the men of God called it, as they did the Devil’s work against science.”
“I don’t believe in God.” The boy jutted his chin in defiant dignity. Drakul raised an eyebrow at the claim, and he elaborated, “I believe in what I see. I’ve never seen God or the Devil.” He swallowed, the apple of his throat bobbing. “They don’t exist.”
“You have seen the Devil now!” Drakul reached out his shadow to the cheap lamp, smothered the flame effortlessly. In the sudden and shocking darkness, his eyes were as blind as those of his prey, but the youth’s gasp and scramble betrayed his movements. The vampire laughed, reached with a clawed hand toward the radiant terror, “I expect that you will call out to God before we part!”
Suddenly the boy scrambled forward, threw his arms around the Count’s person, and slapped something against his sternum. “By Gevurah I invoke you!” Those words were half-familiar, but the power quickened the air, this Drakul knew.
“By Chockmah and Netzach I invoke you!” The incantation rose to a breathless shrill as Drakul seized the boy’s narrow throat. “By Kefer and Malkuth I summon you! Come Uriel, Archangel of the Dead to my aid!”
Ghost light, chill and blue, swirled around the vampire, searing, freezing his long-dead skin. A million tiny motes coalesced into a ball of fire, then shocked like lightning, like a battering ram into Drakul’s breast. The force flung him into the crumbling wall as his prey scrambled out of reach, then bolted for freedom.
***
Half a mile down the road, Al risked a backward glance. “He’s—he’s not coming after me. It worked. It worked!” He slowed, but his thoughts did not. “Ye gods, it worked. It’s for real!”
Al’s disbelief found its way into sporadic mirth. He vaulted a stile and took off across a pasture, hardly minding his wheezing lungs. “Fancy, I did that. Me! I could have—out of the way, bleedin’ sheep!—but I didn’t— bastard!—and now—” He shouted gloating laughter to the sky. Across the river, London’s great clock tower chimed four.
He reached a village and slowed to a trot, sensing safety in the surrounding cottages, though he still rambled aloud in wonder at his discovery. “The power in those books! I could rule the world! The books—oh ballocks!” Cold reality jolted him out of his smugness: in his panicked flight from Carfax’s ancient crypt, he’d left the books behind —all but the one he clutched.
The breath caught suddenly in Al’s chest. Pain squeezed it tight. He stumbled to a halt, sobbing for air as he tried to examine the lone book he’d managed to win. It was too dark, and the moon had long since set. Al turned the rough leather over in his hands, peered close, held it up to his face, and squinted some more. All in vain. He swore heartily. Then, through the tangled hedgerow, a gleam of light caught his eye. A church! Dozens of candles in the window, and a bench out of the wind in which to read. St. Catherine’s, the carving over the door read. Al took only that much notice of it as he strode up to the church’s window, looked at the book, and swore.
“Holy sodding ballocks of Christ! It’s the buggering German one!” Suddenly he felt like crying. Al trudged back to the church’s front steps and sank down to brood. “You have to go back, you know,” he told himself, sniffing. “Nothing for it. You have to get those books. Poltwhistle will serve you up to the Peelers if you don’t.” His foot began to cramp. Al absently yanked his boot off, getting sheep dip on his hands in the process. Dammit! He wiped the filth on the church’s steps, then massaged his foot, mind racing.
“He’s dead. You killed him, you know. You saw him.” He paused, for he hadn’t actually seen. “But you felt it happen.” Al stood up, hopping on one foot to pull his boot back on. “There now. Going back. For the books. Off you go—” The back of his neck prickled; a pair of glowing garnet eyes blazed out of the darkness at the end of the lane.
“Shite!” Al lurched toward the door, boot half on, and pulled at the latch with all his might. “Ballocks!” Tripping across the threshold, he hit the stone floor and rolled. His boot flew free. He snatched his foot to safety, watched in horror as the creature appeared out of the darkness. Skin white, bloodless, and waxen but for a single slash of red across the forehead, lips pulled back in a rictus of fury. Pointed, long teeth like a feral wolf in those red lips. His hands were talons. Al felt his heart skip as the eyes, crimson and filled with hate, bored into his for a moment. Then the spell of horror broke and Al realized that the monster was coming toward him. Fast.
“NO!” he screamed, scrambling back. “Get away!” The creature reeled from the church’s threshold with a furious snarl. After several breathless moments, Al worked up the nerve to shut the door.
No sooner did the latch click than the monster spoke from the other side in a voice as cold as the grave and rumbling with anger. “Open the door. Now.”
Al backed away, hysteria tightening his laugh to a giggle.
Something hit the door, made the ancient timbers creak and shiver like matchwood. Al jumped, backed farther. A reek of scorched hair filled his nose as the steely voice commanded him again. “Let me inside!” The tone, icy, murderous, shook Al’s bravado to the core.
“Oh no!” Al whispered, shaking his head. “I will not open that door! You can just stay outside and rot! By Gevurah I inv—”
“DESIST!”
With a sudden horror, Al found that the Qabbalic names of power fled his mind like water. He couldn’t remember them. Any of them!
A paving stone hurtled through the window, scattering the candles across the floor. Al scrambled to stamp out the flames, his breath coming in sobs as he realized the trap in which he’d snared himself.
He screamed as another stone smashed in through the window, splintering the rear pew.
“Come out and your death will be quick!” The monster bellowed. “I’ll spit you on a sharp stake. I’m merciful.” That won a giggle from Al. “Laugh, do you? My servants will hunt you down and destroy you! You cannot imagine my reach!” His rant grew desperate, more a child’s tantrum than a devil’s promise. “Animals, elements obey my will! I have mastered the arts in which you merely dabble! Your lifetime is the blink of an eye to me, your insignificance so slight it is—insignificant! Damn you— open the door!”
Al whirled to shout at the door and the horror it held at bay. “SOD OFF!” He sobbed, “Shut up, shut up, shut u—” His breath and his litany of despair caught short as he realized that there was only one thing to do.
The door opened. Framed in the threshold slumped his lanky tormentor, head down, defeated. Drakul blinked, then laughed, scenting victory in the boy’s terror. “Come forward, slave. Come and meet the death I promised you.” He crept from the shelter of his holy sanctuary like a dog on its belly. Drakul licked his lips, tasting already the rush of triumph. This one he would kill utterly. No un-death for this boot-wearing, too-clever peasant.
Drakul seized his prey as he came within reach, shook him to see the fear in his eyes. “Now who is the clever one?”
In answer the youth spit, spraying a mouthful of burning holiness into the vampire’s face. It blinded him, sending him reeling to his knees.
“That would be me,” came the boy’s voice, choking a little with laughter or holy water as he backed away.
Drakul clawed the air, snarling, howling as the lingering fire deepened his agony. “Your name!” He thundered the battlefield cry of old. “Give me your name, little beast, that I may remember you properly!”
Retreating footsteps were the only reply.
Al was well and truly wrecked by the time he got back to Fleet Street. Grinning, he wound his way through
