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

mirror, even knowing as he did how useless such were to him. Then he would thoughtfully finger his own neck where the skin, its youth renewed thanks to his recent heavy feeding, had now grown seamlessly back together. He could tell, from the way that breathers looked at him, the things they said to him, that they thought him no more than seventeen years old, and as gloriously beautiful as ever. Well, in a way he was fortunate. Mutilation at least he had been spared. The torture and dismemberment that Vlad had inflicted upon him in 1705 might have left permanent scars.

      Radu looked forward with keen anticipation to meeting his older brother again. He craved a carefully planned meeting that would give him the opportunity of surprising Vlad. Dear Vlad, who had arranged to have him put under the ground. Had beheaded him and beaten him as punishment, had drugged and hypnotized him into decades of dreaming hell.

      Dear old Vlad, who would not really be expecting to encounter his younger brother in one piece and above ground again. Not now, not for many decades yet.

* * *

      Radu knew from long and bitter experience that trying to revenge himself upon his brother was not a business to be lightly or impulsively undertaken. When he had succeeded in such efforts in the past, it had been only after careful and thoughtful preparation. Therefore he now postponed any plans for fresh revenge until he should have established himself in this unfamiliar world of the late eighteenth century—which was considerably changed in many ways from the city and the society of a hundred years earlier. Radu had been on fairly familiar terms with the London of a hundred years or so earlier, so that the city’s vast expansion in the interval had not left him entirely disoriented. A number of familiar landmarks, parks and monuments and palaces, were still helpfully in place.

      Observing the size to which the metropolis had grown in both area and population during his recent extended sleep, and taking note of the relatively frantic pace of activity now occurring the newly revived vampire could not escape the conclusion that the world was changing faster and faster as the centuries whirled by—soon it would be absolutely dangerous to sleep for more than a few years. The scope of transformations accomplished in even a few decades would render the new world unintelligible.

* * *

      Dear old Vlad. There was so much, so very much, that Radu had to thank his brother for.

Chapter Five

      Still the gypsy-looking Connie and the darkly handsome Mr. Graves boldly displayed their faces, while their less flamboyant associates continued to wear masks in the prisoners’ presence. These disguised underlings, or some of them at least, evidently shared living quarters in the larger mobile home, a few yards from the smaller unit that served as their victims’ prison. Looking out through one or another of their own barred windows, the Radcliffes could see them always scrupulously masked, occasionally coming and going at the larger house. Their victims decided that the place must be crowded if it housed them all.

      Having a second breakfast, largely because of the speed and simplicity of preparation, had been the Radcliffes’ first choice when they once more got around to dealing with their hunger. During the meal they kept expecting to be interrupted by one of their cheerful guardians, but that didn’t happen. The only sign of the kidnappers’ continued presence was an occasional murmur of muted voices from the other room, where the guardians had gone when their victims occupied the kitchen. No one sat with Phil and June, or stood over them, while they ate their cereal and toast, drank their juice and coffee.

      By the time they had finished breakfast, subtle changes in the muted sounds from the other room suggested that a different pair of kidnappers had relieved the pair originally on duty.

      Occasionally the mask of one of their overseers in the living room could be seen turned toward the kitchen, but no one bothered the prisoner couple. When they had finished the brief meal, they were left, still without direct supervision, to wash up the handful of dishes and utensils.

* * *

      Several times since they had been lodged in this prison, it occurred to Philip to wonder if hidden microphones and even cameras might be recording his and his wife’s behavior. He whispered his suspicions to June, who shook her head and looked helpless. He made a close-range inspection of the cheap battery-powered clock on the kitchen wall, and of the dully ordinary electrical outlets, without observing anything suspicious. Maybe the feeling was paranoid, but he couldn’t entirely shake it.

* * *

      After mechanically cleaning up the remains of two breakfasts, both prisoners found themselves exhausted. The kidnapping had dragged them through a long and sleepless night after full day of vacationing. They glanced into the bedroom, where the single small bed looked inviting, but agreed that there was still no possibility of being able to sleep.

      Alternatives being severely limited, they went back into the living room for a second session with the tape. The current pair of masked attendants took themselves unobtrusively out of the way.

      June threw herself down on the little sofa and nodded at the machine before them: Her face was pale, her voice unnatural with stress. “How much more have we got to go?”

      Philip popped the reel out of the VCR and peered into it through the little window on one side. “Looks to me like we’ve watched about an hour so far; about five hours of tape left on the reel, but I can’t tell how much has content.”

      “Let’s give it another try. Maybe there’ll be some magic revelation.”

      “Don’t hold your breath.”

      When they tried fast-forwarding, stopping at intervals to sample content, it was soon plain that they had more than an hour of material to look at. Viewings taken at random spots along the tape indicated that the next