A Passing Curse (2011) (2 page)

“It’s really not much of a job for someone of your stature,” Ajax had told her days earlier at his mansion in Santa Marina, overlooking the warm Pacific, somewhat north of LA. “But then few people realize the historical significance of Vlad Tepes.”

“When you mentioned a dig in Eastern Europe,” she’d said, “I had a prehistoric site in mind, the Thracians or early Celts. I wasn’t planning on Dracula.”

He was clad in a black silk suit, his neck wrapped with a yellow cravat, the only color in the room. His face unlined, alabaster hued. “You dig up people don’t you?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I do,” she said, angry at his implication that she was little more than a laborer. “I dig people up. That’s people, not horror movie characters.”

His black eyes never moved from her own eyes. He nodded slightly as he considered her statement. “I have many interests, Miss Webber. Today, it is Vlad Tepes. Tomorrow, it may well be the Aztecs or the Sumerians. If things proceed well in Romania, you could have your pick of projects, with my total financial backing, of course.” A smile crossed his thin red lips. “I didn’t mean to imply that you simply handled a shovel well.”

She now grabbed the handle tighter as Radu shot around a curve. The sun burned smoky white through the mist. Why had Ajax made the clumsy attempt to con her with the promise of legitimate work? She recalled the old French , Flater, to lick.

She hardly trusted flattery, especially from the world’s most eligible bachelor. Someone of her stature? Who was he kidding? She’d been nearly broke, filling out applications for prep school teaching jobs when Ajax called out of nowhere with his crackpot idea about building a museum with Vlad Tepes’ funerary as the centerpiece.

With some foreboding, she’d spent the night at the mansion. Her bedroom was filled with blocky Empire furniture, some Biedermeier, all of it multilayered, severe, and gargantuan. Hanging on the walls were two small paintings by David, generals on horses, sabers raised, and a penciled gargoyle by Picasso. She slept with a rickety chair, an authentic Louis XIV, wedged under the sterling silver door knob, a devil’s laughing face. But the night passed quietly and in the morning she agreed to work for Ajax.

After driving back to her Burlingame apartment, a few miles south of the San Francisco airport, she’d less than three days to prepare before Ajax Fed-Exed a folder crammed with the plane ticket to Bucharest, visa, various permits, and a map to the castle ruins she was now approaching.

She could not imagine why Ajax wanted her going into a country blind, knowing nothing, unless it meant that he would have more control.

At Otopeni International, under flat gray skies, she’d breezed though customs by handing the inspector a mere twenty dollar bill. While changing some of her dollars into lei, she noticed Radu waving a sign with her name, misspelled of course, and then they drove five hours over the Transylvanian Alps into Villareceau.

So, here she was, hunting for goddamned Dracula’s tomb, but only because she needed the money, never a good reason, the handmaiden of disaster. It was the life she led. But was it only the money? Or was it because Ajax was up to something and she was too damn curious for her own good?

Radu stopped the jeep in the former courtyard of the thirteenth-century castle. She quit thinking about Ajax and climbed out. Piles of broken granite, nothing higher than a meter, ranged over three acres. Dwarfed spruce and wolfsbane bred among the stone blocks. Patches of ground fog rose a foot before dispersing. The snow had drifted to three feet in some places.

“I do not like it,” Radu said and shut off the engine. The air was cold and smelled metallic from the snow.

“You don’t have to like it,” she said and reached behind the seat for the rifle. It was a BRNO, a good Mauser copy, bolt action, five-shot clip, topped by a Chinese scope. She snapped the rifle to her shoulder and sighted on a far-off tree. “How does it shoot?”

Radu raised his one eyebrow dramatically as if to say she was not in charge of him or his rifle, that he was merely putting up with her because of the money. “You pull the trigger,” he said as if to a dull child. “Do you know guns?” he asked suspiciously.

She moved the safety, opened the bolt slightly, and, as she’d expected, saw the brass glint off a round in the chamber. “I know enough not to be driving over rough roads with a loaded and cocked Mauser.”

“It was on the safety,” he said curtly. “Can’t you see? The three way on the bolt. Before you moved it.”

“One good jolt can fire a Mauser, safety or not.”

Before Radu could argue, she slapped the bolt shut, moved the lever to safe, and put the rifle back, making sure the muzzle was pointed out the back.

Radu made a big deal of taking the rifle out again and inspecting it. He replaced the rifle, stomped his feet, and looked around. He grabbed a flare from under his seat. “I still do not like it. Being here.”

“Think of all that easy money you’re making,” she said and opened her pack, grabbed the large lantern and pry bar. She hung the pry bar from her webbed belt and walked the fifty feet through shallow snow to the top of the stairs.

Radu came up and ceremoniously handed her the flare. “You might need this.” He bowed from the waist and swept his hand toward the stairs. “I’ve done my job.”

The flare was Russian, the body metal with an eye that she snapped on her belt. What was Radu so afraid of? “Why don’t you come with me?” she asked. “You might like the dark. We’ll be all alone, just you and me. Think of that.”

Radu was thinking and being very dramatic about it. He looked around and shivered. He looked at his feet. “I’ll be right here. That is my job.”

“You’re a coward, Radu,” she said, but could not get a rise from him. What was he up to?

She shrugged and started down the narrow, crumbling steps. When her head passed under the ground line, she switched on the lantern. It was true what they said about the walls closing in on you. Syria had not been that long ago. And why was Radu so worried about doing his job?

Twenty steps down, she shined the light on a door of wood planks and iron straps. She pushed the door once, felt it give, rammed it with her shoulder. Three hits and the door opened two feet, grating roughly across the stone. The smell was damp and musty, a field of dead grass, something else, too, like a bag of old coins. At least the air wasn’t freezing.

“Talk please!” Radu yelled. He sounded far away, probably sitting in the jeep, keeping warm and smoking his crummy Turkish cigarettes.

“A door,” she yelled and heard water dripping far off.

She forced the door another foot and poked her light through. Heavy granite blocks glistened from underground springs. She went through the door and turned right. Something cracked underfoot. The spiky teeth of a narrow head smiled up at her. She lit the floor and saw more heads along with the bones and bloody fur of several large rats, freshly killed judging by the wetness of the blood. Wolf? Possibly, but a wolf could not have come though the door. Another entrance? She thought about getting the rifle, but if it were a wolf, her light would scare it off.

She stepped over the carcasses. Wolves were shy. They liked their dens far from the smell of men. They liked their homes dry. The work of a fox? Yes. A fox she could deal with.

She wondered about the possibility of anyone else being down here and just as quickly disregarded it. There had been no footprints in the snow, and, judging by the thick ice on the creek, the road had not been traveled on recently. It bothered her that she’d heard no birds singing from the surrounding forest.

She followed the corridor, stepping lightly, and soon came to a small chamber.

She saw a limestone casket resting on a pedestal of black marble.

Carved into the top, a stone knight slept, his broadsword held close, running the length of his stone body. The cross on his shield was upside down.

The chamber was fifteen feet square. Another corridor trailed off in front of her. Cobwebs and rat droppings glistened. She caught a reflection from the opposite corridor and turned off the bulky lantern. A dim light seeped from the corridor before all was pure black. Had she imagined it?

She stood still, listening and soaking up the blackness and empty dead smell of the place. She took a deep breath and held it but only heard water running in the distance. She was alone.

She ignored her sudden apprehension, putting it off as underground jitters, and turned on the florescent light on the edge of the lantern. The chamber turned ghostly blue.

She touched the smooth limestone face. Depthless, yet familiar, the face reminded her for a moment of Ajax Rasmussen, who, for all his urbane and debonair qualities, had a face from the past, a Renaissance face, like a Borgia or one of the Medici Popes, cruel and munificent at the same time.

It struck her how easy it had been: the job interview, the first-class flight to Paris then Bucharest, finding this crypt on the second day. She was either on a roll or being led by the nose. And hadn’t Radu seemed a little too familiar when talking about Ajax? As if he personally knew the tycoon and wasn’t simply a contract guide who had met her at the airport.

With the point of her Buck knife, a three-inch skinning blade, she traced the line where the lid connected to the coffin. She wondered why the joint was so clean, not mortar filled as it should be. A rifle shot echoed from above.

She backed away from the casket and sheathed the knife. The shot was probably nothing, but she had to check. She’d have Radu’s ass if he was shooting rabbits.

She was down the corridor, halfway to the door, when she heard a heavy grating behind her. Limestone against limestone? No one could be climbing out of the sarcophagus, the lid alone weighed four hundred pounds, but instead of turning to check, she felt herself running for the door, her boots slipping on the fur, the blood, and up the stairs, suddenly very much wanting to see daylight again.

She burst into cold brightness. The orange, rusting Volkswagen. Radu on his back, gasping and throaty. A crown of blood against stark white.

A soldier with dirty red gloves standing stiff legged and mashing the butt of his Kalashnikov into Radu’s face, like a man churning butter. Radu’s arms fluttering slightly. The BRNO in the snow, a good six feet away.

In the background, two soldiers, their Kalishnakovs against a low stone wall, stripped her pack, casually flinging the contents into the snow. There went her box of soap. A hairbrush. Her toothpaste. One pulled royal-blue panties over his head and did a clumsy pirouette.

She slipped the pry-bar from her belt and held it loosely in her right hand.

The crunching from Radu’s face and a possible moan. If she was quick, she could save him. Distract them and go for the deer rifle.

Before she could get close enough to be accurate, Red Gloves saw her. She threw the bar, but he ducked. The bar sang past his head, missing him by a good six inches. Red Gloves waved both arms and yelled at her. The freed Kalashnikov balanced on Radu’s face for an instant before falling into the snow.

The panty-sniffer whipped off his headgear, glared at her, and rubbed the lingerie crotch level. Red Gloves, the leader, pointed at her and yelled at them to stop the horseplay, “Finitzi!”

One pointed at her feet and laughed. She glanced down. Fur and blood covered her boots, dirtied the snow.

All three came for her ducking back and forth, bobbing, weaving, laughing. She saw it in their eyes, why they weren’t shooting her outright. She felt her heart tighten. The closest weapon was the deer rifle.

She unsnapped the Russian flare and twisted the cap to light it.

The laughing stopped.

This was insane, facing them. But she was not going back down those stairs. “Come on, suckers,” she said softly. “Come on, boys.”

Red sparks bounced off her jacket sleeve. Red smoke billowed straight up. The first soldier came in high, leading with his chin. She faked a kick. He dropped his hands. She rammed the metal flare in his mouth, breaking teeth, stopping at the back of his throat.

She stepped back. Left him with the flare. Smoke falling from his nose. His cheeks glowing. He screamed and jerked the flare loose. He spit teeth and burning sulfur. He dropped to his knees and shoved snow into his mouth. The snow hissed. His screaming climbed an octave.

Red Gloves and the big one blocked her way to the rifle. She could not slug it out with them.

With no choice, she turned for the stairs. The big one moved with surprising speed and picked up a rock. She ran, trying to duck. A sudden white flash. A sickening, far away crack.

She dropped, the snow strangely warm against her face. She heard them but could not move. From the corner of her eye they got bigger and smaller. They laughed and clapped their hands. They jumped up and down. Clear white, then fuzzy. Bright and hazy. She felt them dragging her through the snow, flopping her over, the howling of their buddy over it all.

She saw them clearly and in slow motion. Red Gloves pointed between her legs and picked up the still burning flare, making upward thrusts with the sputtering end. The big soldier shook his head violently. He jerked his hips, made kissing noises, and laughed.

Red Gloves seemed to agree that other possibilities must be explored before cauterization and poked the flare in the snow, upright like a candle. Sparks had caught his coat sleeve on fire and he slapped at the flames with his red gloves.

The big soldier sat on her hips and tried to kiss her. The arm holder, she thought, the leg spreader.

To the side of her new friend, Red Gloves dropped his pants to reveal yellow stained shorts. The sun, now red, balanced on his shoulder. He stopped to scratch himself. He loudly cleared both nostrils in the snow.

Radu was dead. The burned soldier was sobbing. The big one on top of her had freezing, nasty hands inside her jacket, busy with her breasts, his tongue in her ear as he murmured sweet nothings.

Radu was dead but she was alive and the feeling was coming back to her hands.

Red Gloves nonchalantly played with himself, getting ready. He spit on his gloved hand, for lubrication no doubt, mumbled something, and advanced. He tried to pull the big soldier off her. The weight eased from her right arm.