Part 37 (1/2)

FOURTEEN.

Prince Vulkan's eyes opened. At once he was fully alert, like any wild animal eager to hunt. Tonight, he'd decided, he would go down into Los Angeles and join his troops rather than wait for food to be brought up to the castle. He would hunt with his soldiers and race with the wind, seeking out the scent of warm blood, the noises of humans whimpering in their attics and bas.e.m.e.nts. He was chilled with the need for food, though the cold wasn't yet painful. Uneasiness ached within him, a strange kind of confusion and uncertainty that he hadn't known in a very long time. In his dreams he'd stood at the center of a huge stadium, even larger than the Colisseum in Rome, with high banks of bright lights s.h.i.+ning down. He was on a platform, the green field marked off in columns on each side, and the waves of frantic adulation had swept down, cras.h.i.+ng on him, hot and sweet, from the thousands who filled the stadium around him. They were lall calling him Master, and when they started leaping onto the field and running toward him to kiss his hands, his lieutenants and their attack dogs had formed a ring around him for protection. It was at that moment that he knew the city had fallen. Los Angeles was theirs, the first conquest of the invincible vampiric army. The first of many. The shouting swelled. His name cracked through the sky like thunder, rolling ominously in all directions. His hour was at hand; next would be the fall of San Francisco and San Diego, securing a hold on the West. Then the army would begin crawling eastward, advance parties moving into the major cities, one wing swinging north into Canada and one south into Mexico. It was the beginning of a new age, and he would be its rising star.

But amid the joyful celebration, he felt a gnarled hand fall upon his shoulder, and he turned to face the Headmaster.

But a different Headmaster. Its eyes had dimmed somewhat, the black lips were tightly drawn. ”Beware, Conrad,” the Headmaster had said. ”Be careful, and guard yourself.”

”My hour has come!” Vulkan said. ”Beware of what? Listen to them scream my name! My name!”

”You stand in a dream,” the Headmaster whispered, the hand gripping the prince's shoulder. ”You lie at sleep, and these things have not yet come to pa.s.s. ..”

”They mil! I know they will! Listen to them shouting!”

”I hear the wind.” The Headmaster blinked, and when its eyes opened again, Vulkan sensed a weariness about his old teacher, a ... weakness. ”My opponent moves His pieces, Conrad. We've not yet won the game.”

”Game?” Vulkan asked. The shouting died to a whisper and was swept away. Now he stood alone in the center of the stadium with the Headmaster, and the glaring lights were beginning to hurt his eyes. ”What pieces do you mean?”

”They're strong, Conrad, don't you understand that? They refuse to accept defeat! They refuse to be broken! You've barely scratched the surface of humanity in this city, and you think the whole world is already yours. It is not!” The Headmaster's voice came out as a growl, rumbling down the length of the field. ”They're escaping by the thousands, Conrad . . .”

”NO! The storm won't let them!”

The Headmaster's eyes flared. ”There are limits to all things, Conrad, even to the powers I possess. And the power you have as well. But it is endurance that will win the game. And if nothing else, they know how to endure.”

”I've crushed them!” Vulkan shouted. ”The city is mine!” The Headmaster shook its dark head and stared at him sadly. ”You've learned all the lessons but one, and that is the most important. Never consider your position safe. Never! You may destroy a knight or a bishop, and be struck down by a p.a.w.n.”

”Nothing can touch me!” Vulkan cried out defiantly. ”I'm not . . . weak!”

”There are four who would destroy you,” the Headmaster said. ”They approach even now, as you lie dreaming of glory. Four pieces-one is a knight, another is a bishop, a third is a rook, and the fourth is a p.a.w.n. Without fully realizing it they have come together in a deadly combination, Conrad. I've done all I can to stop them, but they endure. And they advance. We can still destroy them. We can still win the game, but you must know them and beware . .

”We?” Vulkan shook free of the Headmaster's grip. ”We? Didn't you hear them shouting? Whose name did they call? Mine! Prince Conrad Vulkan, King of the Vampires! They call me Master. They recognize me as the highest power!”

”I have given you and your kind life. I have taught you the secrets of power, the sorcery of Aba-aner, Nectanebus, and Solomon. I have taught you what it means to be a king. But you're not invincible, Conrad . . .” Vulkan stared at him for a long time, then said coldly, ”Who would dare to test me?”

”Four humans,” the Headmaster replied.

”Four humans!” Vulkan said disdainfuly, and when he grinned he showed his fangs.

”Don't you understand the size of my army now? Before the sun rises again, they'll number twice a million! And tomorrow night...” He lifted a hand and curled it into a fist, his eyes wild and bright green. And then his grin suddenly contorted with the realization. ”You're . . . afraid, aren't you?

You're scared! Of what? Those four? Why don't you find them? Why don't you tear them to pieces for me?”

”Because,” the Headmaster said softly, ”our enemy is using them, working through theni just as we work through all the others. I can't . . . touch them . . .”.

”You're afraid!” the prince shouted. ”Well, I'm not! I've learned all the lessons now, my troops call out for me, and we still advance! Nothing can stop us now. Are you afraid because ...” He stopped, thinking the unutterable, but now he knew the truth, and the words burst from his throat. ”That's it, isn't it? You're afraid of me. You don't want me to get too strong, do you? You're afraid of what I've learned!”

The Headmaster watched him silently. Its eyes began to burn like pools of slag flowing out of a volcanic furnace.

”I'm going to live forever,” Vulkan said, ”and I'll always be young, always!

So you've seen what I can do, and you've come to make me doubt myself, haven't you?

You've come to make me afraid of four humans, just like you are!”

”Forever is too long,” the Headmaster said, ”and never long enough. I came to warn you, Conrad. I've done all I can for you, the rest will have to be-”

”I don't need you anymore!” the prince said. ”School's out!” The Headmaster seemed to tremble with rage. Its body began to gather into a hulking ma.s.s, like a thick blight of shadow. It neared Vulkan, covering him over with the force of a freezing wind. ”Fool,” it whispered. ”Little boy. Little fool . . .”

”I'm not a little boy, I'm not, I'm not, I'm NOT!” Vulkan shouted, but when he tried to step away from the Headmaster, he felt locked into its shadow.

”Did you think you were my only pupil, Conrad? You're not. I have other ones with the potential to be even stronger than you. It's not your strength I fear, Conrad, but your weakness. I see this city falling before your kind, but not by their power. You've done what we wanted to do; now time has come to retreat . . .”

”Retreat?” Vulkan repeated incredulously. ”No! This is my city now, my Babylon!

I won't run from four humans . . .”

”Taking ground is one thing,” the Headmaster said, ”keeping it is another. Take your lieutenants and as many others as you can, and leave this place right now.

Cross the mountains to the west. Start again. I can help you just as I did before . . .”

”WHY?” Vulkan shouted. ”WHY ARE YOU AFRAID?”

”Because of what our enemy will use against us. This city-” Vulkan clapped his hands to his ears. ”GET OUT!” he shouted. ”You won't make me afraid! You won't make me lose! Nothing can hurt me!” The Headmaster stared at him for a long moment, and when it spoke again, there was an edge of sadness and anger in its rasping voice. ”I treated you as a ... a special son, Conrad. My hope for a new beginning.” The thick shadow hovered, dark folds enclosing the prince. ”So you would deny me, wouldn't you? After all these hundreds of years, you would deny me in a moment!” The eyes began to burn with savage ferocity.

”I have taught you well, perhaps too well, but now I see what was beyond my power to give you. I could never make you grow up. You will be seventeen years old forever, filled with the childish needs and fantasies of youth. You haven't taken a kingdom, Conrad, I've given it to you. So be it. What is forever to you is to me . . . an episode. Now you have your kingdom. Protect it as you will.

But you're correct in one thing, my pupil. School is out.” The shadow began to turn like a whirlwind, while above it the two blazing yellow lamps of its eyes continued to burn into Vulkan's skull. Vulkan shuddered, the cold rippling through his veins. The shadow twisted itself into a frenzy, then began to roll up upon itself like a black scroll of ancient parchment; in another moment it had begun to fade. The merciless eyes were the last to disappear, darkening like unplugged lamps. When the Headmaster was gone, the stadium around Prince Vulkan swirled away, s.h.i.+mmering like a mirage, the bright banks of lights going out one by one.

And then Prince Vulkan's eyes opened in darkness.

He lay still for a few moments, wondering about the implications of his dream. He felt uneasy, chilled, unprotected. They were old feelings, and they stirred up memories of his human existence like dark debris from the bottom of a pond. Four humans? Coming to challenge the King of the Vampires? It was absurd. After a while he raised his arms, threw the coffin lid back, and stepped out of his bed of warm, protective dirt. He stood in the first-level bas.e.m.e.nt, a large network of corridors and rooms that had been filled with old, broken furniture, cardboard boxes, crates, and stacks of ancient newspapers and magazines bound together with rotting twine. In one of those boxes Prince Vulkan had found yellowing glossies and old placards advertising the films of Orion Kronsteen.

There had been a picture of the man in vampire makeup, hovering over a young blond girl who slept unaware. It had greatly amused Prince Vulkan to see the Hollywood impressions of his kind. The face in that photograph looked stupid and lethargic, not nearly hungry enough. Once while walking the streets of Chicago's Southside near Cornell Square after nightfall, Prince Vulkan had stopped with Falco-dear, departed, traitorous Falco-before a blinking marquee that said DAMEN SOUTH THEATER and beneath that, DOUBLE CHILLS! CURSE OF THE VA PIRE -Chr stopher Lee & COU TESS DRAG LA-Ingrid Pitt. Of course, he'd had to see them, two old vampire movies scratched to shreds, really quite humorous. He'd seen silent movies before in London, but now not only did they talk, they were in color too!

Some of the people in the spa.r.s.e theater audience laughed at the vampires on the screen. Prince Vulkan, acting more out of impulse than hunger, had moved across the balcony and sat behind a man who was snoring. Vulkan could peer through the balding skull at the inner workings of the brain and see that man's entire life-wife named Cecilia, two children named Mike and Lisa, images of a small apartment with a Swiss-style cuckoo clock on the wall, piles of papers and bills on a desk beneath a small yellow-shaded lamp, buddies crowded around in a dark tavern with swords crossed above the bar, a gla.s.s of beer on a napkin that said McDougall's. That man wanted very much to be young again, carefree, hot-rodding along a street called Brezina in a red car with a foxtail on the antenna. In less than twenty minutes, from the bite to the ingestion of the blood, Prince Vulkan had altered that man's destiny. And now that man, Corcoran by name, was one of the several hundred vampires in Chicago who awaited the Master's triumphant return.

It was time to call the dogs in for the night. Prince Vulkan concentrated on finding the largest of them, the gray-blue wolf that had taken control of the pack. His eyes rolled back in his head as he searched, but he couldn't find the dog. Like a wisp of cold wind or an errant shadow, he went beyond his body, casting his mental eye like a fiery globe out into the storm. He couldn't feel that dog anymore; the link between them had been inexplicably severed. Now he could feel some of them out there, but it was a confusion of pain and dumb rage.

He searched among them, touching their minds. They were out of control and afraid. Vulkan picked up mental impressions of thunder and lightning, dreaded fire, a pain that crushed and scorched. Quickly he allowed himself to come back.

His eyes rolled back in their sockets, their pupils narrowed into tight slits. Something had happened to the pack's leader. The dog must be dead. But what-and who-had killed it?

He hurried along the corridor, past the rooms where Kobra and his other lieutenants would just be drifting up out of sleep. He climbed a long, curving, stone stairway that led to a three-inch-thick oak door and, beyond that, to the castle's main floor. He unbolted the door and stepped out into a wide central corridor that ran the width of the castle. Beside the door, at the foot of another curving, stone stairway, stood Kobra's motorcycle, most of the black paint now scoured away by the force of the storm.