A Sharpness on the Neck

lingering psychic smell of vampire-death. A few small stains had been allowed to dry on the stone floor, and had since almost disappeared. But Radu could sense them.

Vampire blood.

The investigator was tempted to take advantage of the earth of his homeland to catch a daytime nap. But in the end he did not dare do so, thinking it quite possible that Vlad might be returning at any moment.

There might, he thought, be some advantage to finding out who else had been living here. Perhaps he would be able to talk to one of Vlad's active breathing helpers; there always seemed to be a few such folk around.

Prowling the deserted upper rooms of the house, he sought with no success for some evidence of the identity of the latest occupant. Well, there were other ways to obtain information.

At dusk Radu emerged from a doze on his portable earth, which he had tucked away inside the trunk of a fallen tree, to look for someone from whom he might be able to obtain more information.

The young girl appeared very conveniently, climbing a gentle path that led up to the rear of the house, obviously coming back from the stream, where she had caught a fish or two, now gill-looped on a string, to eke out her meager diet. She was as wide-eyed and innocent as her fish. Oh, charming, charming!

He stood beside the path, impeccably handsome, radiating kindness. 'What is your name, my child?'

'Marguerite, sir.'

And the girl, with her fond memories of Vlad, was easily seduced by this man who in some ways resembled his older brother.

In the farmyard, and later inside the house, in the small room off the kitchen where she slept, Radu petted her and interrogated her. The girl's cheeks glowed and her breath came faster, and her fish soon fell to the ground forgotten.

When he thought he had all the information he was going to get, had learned all he could about Vlad's stay in this house and the breathing folk who'd sheltered him, the game which had begun as a form of lovemaking quickly grew more intense. He began the leisurely process of killing the girl, paralyzing her early in the game, sipping blood, a little from here, a little from there, and inflicting mutilation.

I know, he thought, pausing, licking blood from his long nails, listening abstractedly to the sounds of pain. This reminds me of a discussion I had once, with—someone, I forget his name. I know the very person with whom I would like to share and describe this adventure. Too bad that he is only a breather.

Marguerite's body was still shuddering, still breathing, when Radu let it slump to the floor amid stained bedding. Sniffing fastidiously, he could easily sense the flavor and the scent of Vlad upon her. Even the two small puncture wounds his brother had left upon her shapely neck were still unhealed.

He tasted her in that very spot, and then, in slow succession, at several other places on her now fully exposed body. Experimenting, to discover how quickly he could locate the nerve centers that afforded the most exquisite pain. This gave her remaining blood a delicate flavor, which could be thoroughly appreciated only by the true gourmet.

To complete his enjoyment of the young peasant girl he decided to allow himself an hour or so longer, and during that time he put aside all problems, giving himself over entirely to the experience. Regretfully he concluded that he could not spare more time than that.

Casting the still-shuddering body aside for the last time, he stretched luxuriously, put on his clothes again, and let his mind go wandering. He had quite forgotten about Marguerite before her last thread of life quietly parted.

Radu, startled out a reverie by a slight noise behind him, out in the kitchen, jumped to his feet with a pang of fear, nerves twanging like plucked catgut, then jumped again, spinning around in his tracks.

Only a mouse. Yes, only a mouse, this time.

He stood there shivering and angry, suddenly a terrified vampire. For a moment he was convinced that Vlad had lured and trapped him here…

He even feared for his life, though he knew Vlad was not going to kill him. For Radu the true death was always—almost always—a terrifying prospect.

Radu, unlike his elder brother, was not immune to fear. Far from it.

That was one reason why he hated his brother so intensely.

Reason returned, and soothed him. Yes, someday—he could not escape the thought— someday he would turn around and Vlad would be standing there, staring at him. And there would follow another century or two of punishment, of mental and physical torture that only one Dracula could devise for another…

Yes, someday. But just now Vlad was nowhere in sight. Gradually his pulse returned to normal.

Radu supposed it likely that he was never going to hear the full story of how his brother had been speared in his earth and almost done to death.

Rather it was now up to Radu to be on guard against Vlad's inevitable counterattack.

Traveling most of the way on two wings, part of the way on four legs (all his own), making faster time than on his outward journey, he was soon back in Paris. Once there, he set someone to finding out more about the owners of the chateau.

Shortly after Radu returned to Paris, one of his people reported to him with great excitement a rumor racing through the vampire world that Vlad was dead; but the younger brother was far too canny to trust to the truth of any such tale without substantial proof.

He said: 'It will take very persuasive evidence indeed to convince me that he is truly dead. Never mind that for the moment. I want to know all thereis to discover about an American named Philip Radcliffe and a young Frenchwoman, Melanie Remain.'

Radu the Handsome considered it prudent to invent yet another new identity for himself, to use when he chose to walk among breathers as one of them. He changed his residence as well, moving to humbler quarters though he still remained within the city.

And now, for the first time in several years, he seriously considered abandoning France, even Europe, altogether. He pictured himself fleeing, to America, or the South Seas, some land in the remotest corner of the earth. Vlad would not kill him; no, Radu felt confident of that when he thought about it calmly. But Vlad was quite capable of inflicting truly terrible punishments, indeed was ingenious at devising them. The thought of another century of nightmares was enough to make Radu feel faint. Yet he never considered abandoning his schemes against Vlad; it was as if he really had no choice.

Then Radu heard, through one of his revolutionary contacts, that Philip Radcliffe, an American who was supposedly of an aristocratic family, heir to the very manor in which Vlad had taken shelter, had been arrested at the orders of the Committee of Public Safety.

Radcliffe was being held in prison, and had already gone through a form of trial on charges of being an aristocrat—there seemed no doubt of that, given his mother's family. He was also charged with plotting, a vague but generally effective accusation.

Radu's informant shook her head and muttered: 'They say that he is Franklin's bastard son, but I doubt that will be enough to save him.'

Radu continued to find out all he could about the condemned suspect Radcliffe.

* * *

Knowing Vlad as well as he did, Radu was not slow to assume that Vlad considered himself bound in honor to save Radcliffe.

The younger brother thought: 'Surely I can turn that to my advantage somehow.'

The more the younger vampire thought about this news, the more it seemed to open a great opportunity. Now the scheming younger brother determined to lure Vlad into a trap, force him to fail in something he had sworn to do, and possibly engineer his death. He knew how his elder brother driveled on and on about what he conceived of as his honor.

The first step was to make sure that young Radcliffe was indeed sentenced to death, despite any connection that might be shown to exist between the young man and Benjamin Franklin, and/or Tom Paine.