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

      One or two of the newer members of the club, though they had recently met Radu, had never heard of me at all. Or they had heard vague tales of Prince Dracula (the peak of whose international fame, literary and otherwise, still lay far in the future) but took it for granted that Radu was the only member of the family to bear that title, the only Dracula still alive (or “undead,” if you prefer), and had always been the only one of any importance.

* * *

      Radu had been giving intense consideration to the problem of recruiting people, preferably people of proven capabilities, to help him defeat his brother. In the end, as far as I could piece the facts together, he thought it best to try to intrigue them with the idea of a kind of hunt. He seems to have described the upcoming effort as a kind of sporting event—it would be fun, and not very dangerous, to track down the cowardly Vlad (whose, reputation, he assured them, was based on falsehood!) and torment him or kill him. How well Radu succeeded in this effort we shall see.

      I may digress for a moment to remark that now at the time of writing, as the twentieth century jitters unpredictably toward its close, the study of vampire populations still offers a fertile field of investigation, though (I admit we ourselves are partly to blame) facts are often hard to come by. An investigator of a scientific turn of mind might endeavor to calculate our probable longevity in terms of half-lives; in using that word I am not speaking of some supposed twilight existence of the undead, but adopting a scientific concept which is most commonly applied to the heavy nuclei of radioactive atoms. A population of such atoms is said to have a half-life of one thousand years, if its numbers are diminished by fifty percent after the passage of that measure of time. And in the Europe of two centuries ago, I now compute that the half-life of the nosferatu as a group was more than two centuries.

      Certainly the scholarly movement, which came to be known as the Enlightenment, sweeping across Europe in the last half of the eighteenth century, had brought some decline of belief in our existence, at least among the self-considered intellectual elite—though not nearly as great a falling-off in supernatural terror as was produced a century later by the widespread adoption of the electric light.

* * * * * *

      While still perhaps two hundred yards away from the small group which was already gathered for the meeting, I could recognize the voice of Radu. No mistaking it, though he was speaking quietly and his mellow tones had not graced my ears for many decades. My flesh crept—no, I am not a total stranger to that sensation—with a premonition of evil. I listened, paying close attention, as I drew nearer. My brother was engaged in telling a small assembly of our colleagues his version of our family history—a lively chronicle in very truth, though perhaps not as extravagant as his tales would have made it—in an effort to enlist their support against his brother.

      The answers given by the group were skeptical and not particularly enthusiastic. Only one of the other voices was that of a vampire I had met before.

      Nodding to myself, I paused before joining the small assembly, to take thought, weighing the several possible ways in which its members might react to my presence, which to some of them would be totally unexpected. Much would depend on how much progress Radu had already made in winning them to his cause. And then, having made some preliminary decisions, I moved forward again.

* * *

      Certain students of our miniature society have wondered why I appeared at this secret gathering of vampires in the traditional clothing of a French priest—wearing a black soutane, which is a cassock, along with the traditional buckled shoes and a black broad-brimmed hat. My reasons for this choice of dress were personal; I did not explain them to anyone at the time, nor do I consider it my duty to account for them now. It was not the first time I had worn such an outfit, and several explanations have been suggested, among which the reader may take her/his choice. The simplest may be that a clerical identity made certain things easier when one moved in society—or at least that was how things had worked in France before the Terror got under way in earnest.

      Others have speculated that Vlad Dracula was wearing a cassock and a black priest’s hat on that night as a gesture of defiance, simply because the Revolutionary government had forbidden such apparel, at the same time as it required all priests to take an oath of loyalty to the new government.

      There is even one quite romantic, chivalric interpretation, to the effect that I had disguised myself as a priest in the hope of giving a certain real priest, whom I knew to be a worthy man, a better chance of getting away from his sans-sculotte pursuers, who were determined to deprive him of either his sworn loyalty to God, or of his life. I can imagine those unfortunate fellows discovering, too late to help them, that they were chasing down Vlad Dracula instead; and like a varied assortment of rascals before and since, they were not to profit by the exercise … but the reader may take his choice.

* * *

      I did not really expect to be challenged when I arrived at the meeting, but I was.

      Even as I neared the door, I was formally commanded to present some ancient password to a young vampire-sentry.

      “Who told you of our gathering?”

      The question was asked in tones of a childish suspicion, and from one of my age and accomplishments it deserved no answer. I tilted back my head and raised two open hands toward the sky, like one