Séance for a Vampire by Fred Saberhagen (top ebook reader TXT) 📗

folk of any class or inclination were up and about. both men expressed mild surprise on observing that the central stake of the three was now unoccupied, the chains in which they had hanged the Russian’s body for display now lying in the mud below, still looped and locked together but quite empty. Surely mere tide and current could not have done this–yesterday these experts had secured their trophy well. but there were obvious explanations. Either relatives had shown up belatedly to spirit his corpse away–or someone, even in this enlightened seventh decade of the eighteenth century, had coveted morsels of hanged man’s flesh as an aid to practicing the black arts of magic.

The hangmen, discussing these possibilities, were momentarily distracted by the sound of shrill feminine screaming. The sound was repeated several times, carrying readily over the water, through the bright incongruous early morning sun, all the way from the south shore. Only momentarily distracted; at the river’s edge in Wapping, such racket was common enough. Actually, what Turlis and his comrade heard were the screams of horror uttered by some innocent female servant who had just opened the door of a certain room in the dockside Angel Inn.

More than a hundred years would pass before any rational investigator connected that hanged man’s disappearance during the night with the shocking sight which met the maid’s eyes a few hours later. Not that the maid was startled by the walking undead form of Alexander Ilyich Kulakov–she was perhaps an hour too late for that. No, she had unsuspectingly come upon a corpse much more severely mangled.

Shortly after the midnight immediately following the execution, Altamont had been awakened by something in his room. It was a supreme despair, more than terror, that choked off his first scream in his throat when he beheld what had roused him and now stood beside his bed. It was the figure of Kulakov, still wearing the prison clothes in which he had been hanged. The Russian’s red beard was dripping water, his dead face a ghastly livid hue, his strangled throat, though no longer required to breathe, made croaking noises. but his limbs were free of chains, and his white hands were half-raised and twitching, groping toward the bed. The pirate’s eyes, the only feature appearing to be fully alive in that corpse-countenance, were fixed on Altamont.

Doll in turn was awakened by Altamont’s hoarse abandoned cry. On seeing Kulakov, she registered mild surprise–so, she had been wrong about Kulakov’s dying a true death yesterday! It was obvious to her that the Russian, stimulated by Doll’s repeated attentions on the voyage and in his Newgate cell, had, after all, become a vampire instead.

The woman immediately slid her compact, dark-nippled, quite un-English body naked from the bed. She smiled, and before her bedmate’s uncomprehending eyes melted into mist-form and disappeared–only pausing long enough to pick up her jeweled bracelet from the bedside table, and slip it on her wrist. The bangle went with her when she vanished–we who are wont to travel in that fashion commonly carry with us a few small items, most commonly our clothing, when we go changing forms.

Kulakov paid little attention to either the woman’s presence or her departure. The red rage filling his whole mind concentrated his attention elsewhere. In the next moment, the hands of the undead man had fastened their icy, awkward grip on Altamont. Then the vampire– new to the powers he had been given, almost as bewildered as his victim by his own seemingly miraculous transformation, and still unsure of how to handle it–plucked the treacherous, nightshirted Englishman like a louse out of his bedclothes, and cast him aside with stunning force. In the next moment Kulakov, moving in a kind of somnambulistic fury, groaning and grunting foul Russian expletives, began ransacking the room in search of his stolen treasure. Drawers, bags, and boxes were hurled about and emptied, furniture shifted in a grip of giant’s strength. All in vain.

A moment later the searcher grunted in befuddled triumph, on discovering some small, hard objects sewn into a quilt or featherbed. Carrying his find to the moonlit window, smashing the dim smoky glass in a reflexive move to gain more light, (not that his newly empowered eyes really needed any more; but Kulakov did not yet understand this fact) he ripped the cloth to shreds. Inside, to his great disappointment, the searcher discovered only sand and gravel, what was to him mere ordinary dirt. In anger he hurled the torn cloth from him, letting its worthless contents scatter into the Thames below.

It flashed across Kulakov’s mind that Altamont, rather than risk carrying the treasure about with him in London, had very likely given it to his brother for safekeeping.

And he turned to complete his vengeance upon Altamont.

The doomed Englishman had turned back to the bed and now had both hands under his pillow–in a moment they were out again, not holding gems and precious metal, but newly armed with a loaded pistol and a dagger. A tough, resourceful man, old Ambrose Altamont; but both weapons very quickly proved completely useless.

There was really not much more noise–the pistol was never fired– and those among the other breathing dwellers at the Angel Inn who were awakened by muffled screams and thumps only grumbled and went back to sleep. Soon enough–well before Kulakov really thought of trying to force him to tell where the jewels were hidden–Altamont had ceased to breathe.

Kulakov, having thus achieved a kind of victory, was suddenly overwhelmingly weary. Once more he returned to his search for the jewels that he still thought might possibly be here somewhere... struck by what seemed to him a good idea, he went to search in the connecting room.

Only a minute or two after the hanged pirate had stumbled out the door, the woman called Doll, a much more experienced vampire, reappeared in the room of carnage. Doll was as naked as when she left–more so, for she no longer wore her bracelet–and