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

      For all their feverish anticipation of the Master’s arrival, every one of his disciples missed the event when it took place, a few minutes after sunset. As had been the case earlier with the comings and goings of Mr. Graves, Radcliffe had been able to hear no sound of aircraft, motorcycle, car, or even horse. There was just the sudden presence, standing in one of the barn’s farthest recesses, of a remarkably handsome young man wearing a Greek fisherman’s cap and a dark suit jacket over a dark T-shirt.

      “Radu,” said Philip Radcliffe, aloud and quite involuntarily. Half-untied as he was, he started. He was the first, or very nearly the first, to notice who had just come in.

      Radu was simply standing there, hands down at his sides, looking at them all. When his followers finally noticed his presence and began a murmuring movement toward him, he raised one pale hand in a curious gesture that seemed half warning, half benediction. The advance stopped instantly, and silence fell.

      “Philip Radcliffe,” said the beautiful young man, as if simply returning a greeting, and smiled his winning smile.

      Casually he approached the place where Philip sat half-bound before the guillotine. The people who had been arguing and fussing over his bonds stepped back.

      Philip looked up into eyes of gentian blue, under hair of raven black. The man smiled, revealing frankly pointed teeth, a jarring note like something out of Hollywood.

      “I knew your namesake, long ago,” said Radu. His voice was gentle, almost whispering. He put one finger under Philip’s chin, and raised it gently. “I thought that I had seen him dead, and tasted of his blood, in 1794 … but it turned out that I was wrong about that. So now I must have yours.”

      He shifted his position by a step or two, so that now he was looking down on Philip from a different angle. “You do not seem surprised. Someone has been telling you the story.” And he raised his eyes to his supporters, seeking information. The looks he got back were blank, or frozen with fear and fascination.

      Once more the vampire dropped his gaze to Radcliffe’s. “To settle the vexing question of your ancestor’s fate to my own satisfaction, I investigated the genealogy of your branch of the Radcliffe family during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.”

      It had taken Radu some time and effort to make sure, he explained now, but in the end there could be no doubt—somehow the beheading he’d thought he’d witnessed had been a fake. “And I think I know now how that was accomplished.”

      Philip Radcliffe, bastard son of Benjamin Franklin, had survived the Terror in France, and—as Radu’s subsequent research demonstrated—had returned to America with his French bride, Melanie Romain, to settle in the state of Virginia, where he founded a substantial family and eventually died in 1861 at the age of ninety-two.

* * *

      Radu’s words trailed off slowly, and he fell silent. He was looking at the guillotine.

* * *

      The world seemed to be dissolving in horror and unreality around Philip Radcliffe. Tied down, unable to move more than one hand, he was surrounded by smiling and giggling enemies, all their attention now focused for a moment on the object they had brought him out here to see. The full-scale instrument of two hundred years ago, or so nearly so that it made no difference. Spruced up with a fresh coat of bright red paint.

      “Demonstrations,” said Radu at last, stroking a pale hand up and down one upright of the massive frame. “I wish to see how well it works. Just how reliable it is.”

      Murmuring their eagerness, his slaves got busy. The heavy blade, sharpened edge gleaming a little in the lantern-light, was hauled to the top of its track on a new rope. On the first trial, with nothing in the lunette, the blade fell with a startling crash, to be caught by the slot in the lower frame. The fall of the knife had a distinctive double sound, because the heavy metal bounced up and fell again.

      On the second trial it became evident that parts of the death machine were not always going to work smoothly. When a head of lettuce, recently brought from town, was set in the lunette, the blade when triggered began to fall, then heart-stoppingly became stuck halfway down. As soon as someone touched the machine with the idea of making an adjustment, the blade recovered itself, plunging the rest of the way at the impulse of a very slight vibration. The jarring impact sounded just as heavily as before, and the lettuce fell in two, divided as neatly as if by some fine kitchen tool.

* * *

      The second subject of the day’s demonstration—Radcliffe was not sure who had made the choice—was the live cat. Sensing evil intent, the beast clawed and bit one or two people before they could get it under control. Two or three of Radu’s breathing acolytes, ignoring their bleeding scratches—it seemed that no one, including themselves, placed any value on their blood—held the animal’s four limbs in a practiced way, as if this were not the first time they’d done this trick, and pushed its snarling, screeching head in through the little window at the front end of the machine.

      Once more the blade came down, putting an abrupt end to living noise. The sound of its fall was only subtly different than before, but it was to stay with Radcliffe for a long time. Somehow the smallness of the jet of blood was a surprise, a mark of the pettiness of evil that would spend its energy to kill a cat.

      Someone at once snatched up the fallen head from the barn floor, and tossed it into Radcliffe’s lap. Another apprentice vampire, heedless of crimson splashes, held up the dead cat and tried to drink the blood which had not yet entirely ceased pumping from the vessels in its neck.

      Philip felt a wave of dizziness, gray faintness threatening to blot