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

no effort to conceal the fact that she found it definitely boring simply to sit around all night and all day, especially when she was forbidden to taste this young breather’s blood; she thought there ought to be some fun in this kidnapping business for her.

      Then the gypsy girl wistfully asked June how her hair looked. Even as she asked the question, she was twisting the dark curly strands around her finger, pulling them forward while she frowned up toward them with her eyes crossed. “It’s not really long enough for me to see.”

      “Why don’t you go and look in the mirror?”

      Connie only giggled, as if the idea were somehow painful.

* * *

      By this time Philip and June had had the idea of vampires thoroughly drummed into their heads by the videotape. Now June asked their visitor point-blank if she was a vampire.

      Connie answered simply that she was.

      The other woman pursued the point. “And when Mr. Graves on the tape talks about a woman named Constantia, who is doing all these things in France, two hundred years ago…”

      “Oh, he means me. Oh yes, absolutely.” Connie smiled, a cheerful conspirator. “Not that everything he says about me on the tape is necessarily strictly true.”

      The captives, not knowing how to respond to this declaration, looked at each other. It sounded to them like this girl really believed what she was saying.

      “If you’re a vampire,” Radcliffe proceeded cautiously, “is there some way you can demonstrate the fact—I mean short of actually biting someone and drinking blood?”

      “I could, sweetie. Oh, it would be very easy. But Vla … Mr. Graves doesn’t want me to do anything like that yet.”

      Nervously Connie looked around. June was staring at her in an unsettling way. She was also afraid of Vlad’s anger, and admitted as much to the prisoners.

      Spontaneously Connie added, in the manner of one impulsively giving good advice: “I wouldn’t make him mad at me, if I were you.”

      Graves had never uttered any threats, but Radcliffe found himself in full agreement. “Is he really five hundred years old?” he asked on impulse.

      “Just about.” Constantia smiled; her look had undertones of wickedness. “I’m years younger than ‘Mr. Graves.’“ This time she pronounced the name with more than a hint of mockery.

      “Oh?”

      With a giggle she delivered her punch line: “Not a day over four hundred and eighty.”

      June and Phil had gathered from the tape, where the identification was strongly implied, that Mr. Graves and the story character called Vlad Dracula were supposed to be one and the same—now and then Graves, narrating on tape, even slipped into the first person without appearing to notice that he had done so. But like any rational breathers at the end of the twentieth century, the couple had been resisting the idea.

      Radcliffe wasn’t ready to give up on the subject. “How old is he, then? Really?”

      “Oh-oh!” Her long lashes flickered at him flirtatiously. He couldn’t tell if the gesture was serious or self-mocking. “You haven’t been really studying your videotape, or you’d know.”

      “That’s not true, we have been watching it. I mean really.” He looked at June for confirmation.

      June nodded vigorously.

      “Not the whole thing.” Connie was dubious.

      “Yes, really.” June added her assurance to her husband’s. “We’ve seen it now from beginning to end.”

      Their visitor shook her dark-curled head, marveling. “You see it and hear it, but you don’t believe it.” Now Miss Gypsy was about to pout. “We went to a lot of trouble to make that tape. I ran the camera most of the time.”

      “I didn’t know.”

      “Well, I did. And I know some folk who’d give a million dollars to have it. Even to know half of everything that’s on there. You’re being given it for nothing and you won’t even take it seriously.” Now she was really pouting. Maybe, thought Radcliffe, she was perturbed because she thought the tape mentioned her only in a slighting way.

      June was following another train of thought. “Who? Who’d give a million dollars?”

      The girl in silver earrings smiled. “Some people I know. Men and women who study things like this.”

      “Like what?”

      Connie’s smile took on a different quality. “You know. So, you want me to go and look in the mirror? I will, if you come along with me. But maybe I’d better ask Mr. Graves first if it’s all right.”

* * *

      Once or twice when Radcliffe and Connie were out of earshot of the others, the young man, belatedly becoming aware of the attraction Connie felt for him, began hinting to persuade Constantia that it would be to her own benefit to help him and June escape from these crazy kidnappers.

      Connie answered playfully at first. He was just too cute and she wasn’t going to let him go—things like that. But when Radcliffe persisted in being serious, the woman blinked and her face went sober. For once she was entirely serious, and her face, while still as unlined as ever, just might have been a hundred years of age. “You don’t know Mr. Graves.”

      “No,” he admitted after a few moments. “No, I don’t guess I do.”

Chapter Eight

      It may help the reader to an understanding of my relations with my brother, to be told that centuries ago I adapted a version of the Golden Rule to serve as my guideline: since the early years of our ongoing quarrel, I have striven to do unto Radu before he does unto me. So far, being slightly older, considerably stronger, and totally untroubled by any fear of consequences, I have been successful in the great majority of our clashes.

      But I regret to report that as yet there is no end to our conflict in sight. Sometimes I wonder: What would our father have thought, had he known the true nature of the burden he had placed on me, of responsibility for my brother? Had Father imagined that it might possibly continue for five hundred years and more?

      No, I simply cannot imagine the paternal reaction to such knowledge. My mind simply boggles—as, I