A Sharpness On The Neck (Saberhagen's Dracula Book 9), Fred Saberhagen [some good books to read TXT] 📗

piece of cloth that had once been Smith’s coat, and put the bundle carefully under his arm.

      Then Radu, like an insect newly emerged from his latest chrysalis, resumed his coupling with the young man, strengthening himself further and weakening his breathing victim.

      Presently the two began to walk together toward the cemetery fence, and the murmuring night-sounds of the great city that lay beyond.

* * *

      Before the sun had worked its way up into the cloudy sky to brighten London, Jerry Cruncher had come home to the room he shared with his girl, bringing with him a man she had never seen before, and who introduced himself to her as Mr. Shade. Jerry, looking unusually pale, seemed both pleased and put on edge by the newcomer.

      “Who is he, then?” the girl whispered to Jerry when they had a moment to themselves.

      “Never you mind who. I’d say the fewer questions you have t’ ask, the better.”

      She was intrigued to receive the attention of the handsome stranger who had now attached himself to Jerry.

      But she was somewhat surprised when the suave newcomer almost at once pulled her to the bed and began to bite her throat. And she was even more surprised—though now her head was spinning in a haze of pleasure—when Jerry, responding to Mr. Shade’s gesture of invitation, shed his clothes and climbed into the bed with them.

      She’d never thought that Jerry was the kind of man who did such things with other men … but at the moment nothing mattered but what was happening to her. Pleasure unbelievable, delight that she had never imagined until now…

* * *

      Gradually, in the hours and days following his fortuitous release from his drugged, nightmarish sleep, Radu satisfied himself that Vlad was nowhere in the immediate vicinity of the cemetery. Indeed there was no evidence that his hated elder brother had ever visited London at all, but instead had entrusted his younger brother’s transportation and burial there to someone else.

      The one who had been buried, freed now from unbearable dreams of hell, granted an escape from his coffin, knew basically what he had to do in these circumstances. He had played a very similar role in other scenes very much like this one, several times before, in other centuries—and so began the lengthy process of warily, methodically, ruthlessly, patiently learning and working his way into the changed society into which he had emerged.

      Over the next few days he gave attention to his speech and wardrobe, bringing both up to date, equipping himself to move when necessary in both the highest and the lowest strata of society.

* * *

      For a whole month following his latest emergence from a coffin, the pallid and handsome vampire spent most of his daylight hours drowsing indoors, in one poor room or another in the neighborhood of Hanging-sword-alley, Whitefriars, where Jerry Cruncher lived. The revenant, breathing only when he felt it necessary to get wind to speak, closed his nostrils against stench and tolerated ugliness and noise.

      Ah, to be able to admire himself in a mirror! But that pleasure was permanently denied him. The eyes and faces of admirers were the only looking-glass he could ever use.

* * *

      He kept his eyes open for the man who had run away in terror from the graveyard, and managed to learn his name from Jerry. But that man was gone from his old London haunts, vanished as if … yes, as if the earth had swallowed him.

      Few men loved luxury more than did Radu, but few could be more patient in assessing the right priorities. In present circumstances, luxury could wait.

      By night, now almost every night, he strengthened himself with the blood of youth, seeking and attracting both sexes to his couch. Coolly he gave thought as to who among these breathing folk, and how many, he should begin to recruit to his cause.

* * *

      During this period he drowsed and daydreamed away many a daylight hour. But he did not really sleep at all. What Radu Dracula’s soul demanded now was not rest—he had had enough and more than enough of that—but vengeance. Retribution, overwhelming and exquisite, on the man who had put in him the ground. Upon his elder brother. Upon Vlad, who had been, for most of the last three hundred years, true head of the House of Drakulya.

      Through all the nights during the next several months, through all the long days of that time, during hours when bright sun made even shaded rooms uncomfortable, Radu’s eyelids were seldom closed for more than a few moments consecutively. In that epoch he spent most of his hours lying in one cheap room or another, listening to the noises made by breathers enacting their wretched existences around him. Now and then he enjoyed the blood of one or another of the youthful, savory bodies who could be so easily persuaded— with a few words, a tender look, a gentle touch—to yield to his embrace.

      But there were many hours when he was quite alone, resting wakefully in as dark a room as he could find, clinging to the bagful of his native earth he’d salvaged from what his buriers, determined that he should not die, had provided for him in his most recent grave.

      Time and again, on gray or sunny afternoons, he caught himself beginning to drift into trance, and with a start and a shiver of fear he fought himself free from the soft entanglement. Then he would arise, and pace the cramped room for a time, pushing sleep away as if it were his deadly enemy. His sufferings during the long slumber so recently concluded had immeasurably deepened his terror of nightmares. Thanks to his brother, he had had enough of helpless, abandoned sleep to last him for the next ten centuries.

      And what else had been done to him? Could he be sure that his personal beauty had not suffered? Again and again Radu yearned for the help of a