An Old Friend Of The Family (Saberhagen's Dracula Book 3), Fred Saberhagen [best large ereader .txt] 📗

    “Yes…I am not…as other men. Pull it out.”

    Straddling the shrunken scarecrow, Judy laid hands on the shaft. It felt unyielding, like something fixed to the floor as part of the solid house. Hard as she pulled it would not move. She bent to get a better grip and tried again. Eyes shut, she twisted and heaved with all her strength.

    The old man made a sound that Judy interpreted as pain. But when she let go of the stake his voice lashed up at her, more terrible for its very weakness: “Pull!”

    Eyes still closed, she straightened for a moment and tried to pray, then gripped the wood again. His fingers, whisper-feeble at first touch, came creeping up the shaft to settle on it beside hers. Now Judy threw her weight sideways, first this way then that, like trying to loosen a nail before you pull it out. She felt the spasms of quivering in the spear as his arms joined their efforts to her own. She thought of wrenching at a nail with a claw hammer…suddenly the stake pulled free, with a cracking as of a barbed head breaking off, down in the solid floor.

    The abrupt release of strain sent Judy staggering back. She threw the horrible, broken-ended thing away from her, and swiftly crouched at Corday’s side again. Fresh blood, dark red, was welling up now from the great wound between his shoulder and his chest. His body shuddered, then lay so still that for a moment Judy was sure that she had killed him.

    But once more feeble movement returned. “Better, better,” rasped his voice, though it sounded as lifeless as before. There was a pause. Then one of his hands, its fingers hardly distinguishable from bones, brushed feebly at the floor, re-creating the sound that had first drawn Judy’s attention to this part of the house.

    He said: “Bring here all you can of the dust…earth of my homeland, you see. Fragments of my bed.”

    “Dust?” she wondered aloud. “Bed?” The only dust in sight was that from the crumbling fragments of the shattered sarcophagus. Obedient without really understanding, she began to scrape the pieces and their powder toward him with her hands. “So you rested…inside this,” she murmured as she worked.

    “He came upon me sleeping. Otherwise…but never mind. He will come back, or another even deadlier than he will come. So you must flee now, love. Run to some house nearby. Tell them to allow no strangers through their door tonight, no matter—”

    “Here, I’ve got a bunch of this dust scraped into a pile. What do I do with it now?”

    The sparks in his eye-caverns glinted at her thoughtfully. He said: “Push the dust under my body, along my side—no, do not try to lift me! I die quickly if you move me now. Else he would have taken me away with him—to her.”

    As though tucking a dry blanket beneath the fragile-feeling body, Judy performed the foolishness with the dust. As if playing a game that had to be won, however childish and ridiculous it seemed on its face.

    She sat back. It was hard for her to look at his terrible face, his wasted form. She fought for control over her face and voice, and asked: “What now?”

    His horrible voice said: “You must flee.”

    “I can run out somewhere, to one of the other houses here, and get them to call for the police. Then I’m coming back to be with you.”

    He shook his head feebly. “Police will be of no help to me. Any doctor they bring will order me moved. That must mean my death. Neither of us will be able to prevent it.”

    “Then I’m not leaving you at all,” Judy decided. “What’s the next thing I can do?”

    “Oh, my dear,” he whispered. And again: “My love.” Then just when she thought her tears were going to break out at last, he ordered: “Gather more of the earth. Crumble the larger pieces to powder. You will find them brittle. It is the earth of my homeland, and very special to me. Mix the dust with my blood, and use it to staunch my wound.”

    Again Judy did as she had been bidden. She pulled back his ruined clothing to get at his parchment flesh, and fought to stem the flow of blood that still oozed richly from God knew where inside his mummified body. In all this nothing now struck her as horrible, except only the chance that she might fail.

    At last the bleeding stopped. Judy had lost track of time, but her neck and back ached as if she had been crouching in the same position for hours. Her patient let out a sigh, and moved his whole body for the first time since she had found him, stretching out to what must be an easier position for him on the floor. Suddenly mindful of her first-aid training, Judy wanted to bring him a blanket, but he insisted that it would do no good. He also refused her offer to fetch an ordinary pillow, preferring that she slide a fragment of the broken sarcophagus underneath his head.

    That done, he took her hand and pressed it in his twig-like fingers. “Thank you. Now, for the last time, Judy, I warn you—go.”

    “No.”

    “Listen to me. He who made your sister a vampire—yes, that is the truth—he will soon be back. I am still too weak to fight him, or even to get away.”

    She pushed back brown hair from her eyes. Her voice was hoarse. “I’ll fight him, then. You’ll tell me how.”

    “Oh. My dear love.”

    Her tears were threatening to brim again. “You do look stronger than you were. You can move, now, at least a little. Maybe if