Hunting Karoly (4 page)

* * * * *

The notes Nigel sent by email turned out to be bugger-all use. There was nothing there about vampire lairs and I was left in total ignorance as to whether they slept in coffins lined with their native soil like in Bram Stoker’s
Dracula
, or if they just pulled the blinds and kept out of the sun.

On the other hand, he did send the report received from his counterparts in Hungary, where the vampire had apparently spent much of his time. Plowing my way through the dizzying translation, I learned that, interestingly enough, they called my vampire Karoly—Hungarian for Charles. It seemed that in my sardonic humor I had actually hit on his real name. He had been around, they thought, since the fifteenth century, originally a minor nobleman of Transylvania, who, once “turned”, had terrorized the surrounding countryside for generations.

To their knowledge, he had made no new vampires for the first hundred years of his existence, even though he had continued to live in the castle with his wife and servants until they had died out. After that, he had lived a reclusive life for some years. Then had come a spate of travel and subsequent wake of terror and destruction, alternating with periods of quiet at his ruined castle.

Nowadays, his castle was completely flattened and though there were still occasional reported sightings of him in the area, he appeared in many places, most recently Hungary, usually with the low profile Nigel had mentioned and which he himself had hinted at to me last night.
“Why would I leave dead bodies lying about the place?”
Then came the indiscriminate carnage as he prepared to move on.

Over the centuries, he had lived with several companions, mainly female, the most recent of whom had been killed by a “specialist” in Paris last year. To the knowledge of the Hungarians, he had come to Britain alone.

So, I thought bracingly. This wasn’t too bad. I had just one vampire to track down and he was in low-profile mode, unlikely to kill!

Apart from the one at Kelvingrove, there were only four attacks that Nigel knew of, scattered across the city of Glasgow. Even these were merely deduced from unexplained puncture wounds in people’s necks. Only one woman—and she was generally considered unstable—appeared actually to remember being attacked.

Kneeling on the floor with the map of Glasgow spread out before me, I hung on to my mother’s huge dog to stop him sitting on it. Gazing helplessly at the locations of each attack, I knew there was no way I could narrow down the area of the vampire’s lair. Even including the city center hotel where Maggie’s wedding was held and where the vampire had told me he came every night, didn’t help. It was nowhere near any of the other known attacks.

Worse, I was fairly sure Nigel knew very well that his information would be no use to me, that I would be able to do nothing with it. Hilda and Frank would be able to blame me when they couldn’t find the vampire tomorrow.

It’s true I’m not much of a psychic, but contrary to popular belief, I’m not stupid either. This vampire had been around long enough to be familiar in several countries, famous enough for it to be known when he had left one and arrived in another. Yet no one had ever caught him. No one had ever stopped him. No one was likely to stop him here either, but Nigel could still keep the reputation of his beloved Centre if he could just blame bumbling probationer Jenny for this fiasco along with all the rest. It was only a matter of time ’til I got fired anyway. What a godsend this wedding had been, I thought bitterly.

Rocking back on my heels, I finally let the dog lie down in the middle of the map, from where he swished his tail at me and with huge, soulful eyes requested a walk.

Well, I could let them do it. I hated their damned Centre anyway. Even school libraries beat that shit and God knew it would be no hardship to come home. My mother would tolerate it and Dog would be delighted. My friends would never bring up the subject of my failure. I could get another job, another flat…

And yet it went against the grain to let the bastards win. That was the only reason I hadn’t told them to stuff it already. I was determined to show them—
something
! They treated me like some sort of hybrid of country bumpkin and blithering fool, determinedly misunderstanding my accent and ridiculing me ’til I was twice as clumsy as normal. But I
wasn’t
a country bumpkin. I had grown up on rougher city streets than most of them had crossed and I was at least as streetwise as they had learned to be since. Nor was I ignorant or foolish. I had a good degree from Glasgow University and a postgrad diploma from Strathclyde to prove it. What I
wasn’t
—and this did hold me back, under the circumstances—was a good psychic.

Although I’d bloody recognized that vampire! As soon as I’d seen him, I’d spotted something powerful in him and when I’d looked into his eyes, I’d known immediately, without doubt, despite the fact that I was rat-arsed and despite the extreme unlikelihood. And he had known me! He had called me vampire hunter!

Well, he had called me “
little
vampire hunter,” but it was the same thing, wasn’t it? Almost?

Excitement began to mount. This was something I
could
do.
I didn’t need Nigel’s silly maps. I knew if I went back to the hotel, I would be able to
feel
where he had been. And follow him to wherever he had gone.

I stood up so fast that the dog leapt up with me and began to bark.

“All right, Dog,” I said. “Let’s go and find my Bonnie Prince Karoly!”

* * * * *

It was a typical spring day in Glasgow—gray, wet and cold. The Caledonia Hotel overlooks the River Clyde. Since it’s made up of several converted Georgian or early Victorian terraced houses, both the architecture and the inner features of the hotel are beautiful, which is why it’s so popular for weddings. Poor Maggie, who’d only booked a year in advance, had had to make do with a Friday rather than the Saturday she’d originally wanted for her reception.

Today, on this miserably drizzling Saturday afternoon, there were two wedding receptions being prepared. Leaving the outraged Dog tied to the railings, I walked up the steps and into the hotel. One sign proclaiming “Drummond wedding” pointed upstairs to the smaller function suite and the other directed guests along the passage to the rooms where we’d celebrated Maggie’s nuptials yesterday. Since it was still a little early for guests, the hotel staff were all busy elsewhere and I made it to the empty dining room unchallenged.

Here, I paused in the doorway, as
he
had when I had first seen him. If I closed my eyes, which I did, I could feel the same tingle I had then. It could have been memory, just because he’d looked so damned gorgeous standing there proud as a king in his stolen antique kilt…

Slowly, I walked into the room, following the path I had seen him take before I’d got distracted by Davie and Jackie. The tingle came with me. Gradually, I managed to blot out the hotel noises, the banging crockery in the distance, the shout of laughter from the kitchen and just concentrate on myself, on the air I stepped through. The tingle grew stronger.

The door to the conservatory stood open. When I walked through it, it was as if somebody hit me. I truly felt his presence like a blow, the same chill of knowledge and recognition that had struck me the moment I gazed into his eyes last night. Only now I was looking for it, open to it, and it felt magnified a thousand times. Testing it, I sat where he had sat on the sofa and gasped out loud at the sensation that shot up my spine. Something equally dark, yet hot, stirred between my legs, reminding me against my will of the vampire’s hypnotic, electric touch…

Hastily, I stood again. To air the room, no doubt, the garden door was open too. I stepped outside into the relentless drizzle, wondering if all trace of his presence would be washed away by the rain. Wandering aimlessly about the lawn and patio, I could still sense him, but far less than inside. Though he had been here, it was probably not as recently as last night…

So where had he gone while I spoke to Nick? This door had been locked then, so he hadn’t come out here… Now I knew what I was looking for, I went back inside, through the conservatory and the dining room and back along the passage to the reception hall. Everywhere, I could sense him. When I touched the handle of the front door, I knew he had touched it too. The force of it nearly burned me.

Going back into the street, I untied the wet and grateful Dog and began to walk along the road. As I grew used to the novel feeling, I found I could pay at least a minimum of attention to my surroundings and still sense where he had been. And he had been in this street many times, just as he had said. So was his lair near here? I rather thought so, though the daunting task of finding it was not one that greatly appealed. Besides the hotel and other old houses, the disused warehouses and tenements nearby, all with suitably dank and dark-looking cellars, we were right on the river here and it was not outwith the bounds of possibility that he was hiding in one of its maintenance tunnels or drains or whatever they were. I really didn’t fancy investigating there.

Perhaps I would just give what I knew to Frank and Hilda tomorrow. Only, of course, they were under no obligation to believe me. And I did really like this recurring vision of showing them the vampire’s dead body with my stake through his heart…

At the next corner stood an old church, still in use judging by the services listed on the board at the door. He had passed here too, though when I quickly ran up the steps and touched the door handle, I got nothing. Well, Nigel’s helpful notes had said that most vampires avoided holy places. I turned down the next street, away from the river, and walked toward an old warehouse, or a factory perhaps, mostly boarded up. It seemed a likelier prospect. Certainly he had come this way and recently.

My heart beat louder now with the prospect of success, but when I touched the stone walls, the door handles, I felt nothing. He wasn’t there. Sighing, I dragged Dog back the way we had come. I realized I was really no further forward. I knew he had been here a lot, but then I had known that last night. His lair could still be anywhere in the city.

Dog pulled me hard across the road back toward the church, apparently for the sole purpose of lifting his leg on the railings that surrounded it. While Dog decanted in the rain, I peered through the railings to the scrubby ground surrounding the church building. Here, toward the back of it, the ground dropped steeply down to a small door low down on the building, as if to an undercroft.

Frowning, I grasped the railings to look more closely—and felt a shock run through me from fingertips to spine, so powerful that it made me gasp aloud. He had touched these railings, possibly often and certainly recently.

Dog was large, but mostly fur and bone, so he went through the railings easily enough when I pushed. Getting myself over was harder, though far from impossible, remembering the adventurous child I had once been.

In moments Dog and I were both down the slope. However, doomed to disappointment once more, I got no reaction from the low door. Touching the walls, I was sure there was
something
, yet I could see no way in.

Dog, snouting about in the scrubby, overgrown bushes, gave me the idea to look at the ground. A man in the street, his collar pulled up against the rain called down once, “You all right, hen?” and I shouted back cheerfully that I was fine, just looking for the dog’s ball, with which he appeared to be satisfied, for he walked away.

A minute later, I found the trapdoor.

It was well hidden, efficiently disguised with loose earth, a bush carefully dragged across it, but I could feel now that he had been there. The whole ground positively reeked of him. I managed to heave the heavy door open. Then, my heart thundering, because this time I
knew
I was right, I jumped onto the steps leading downward, dragging Dog with me, and quickly pulled down the trapdoor before anybody noticed. All my efforts would be in vain if the general population discovered me murdering somebody down here.

With the door shut, it was pitch black and silent save for Dog’s slightly anxious panting. Fumbling, I found my torch and switched it on. The beam offered some comfort and at least enough light to get down the steps. They led down to what appeared to be a huge area under the church. It might have been a bomb shelter during the war, I thought.

On the last step, I paused, my hand gripping tightly onto Dog’s collar, the beat of my heart so loud that it deafened me. The beam of the torch trembled as I shone it around the undercroft. In the far left corner lay an indistinct, vaguely mattress-shaped shadow that looked as if it might be his sleeping space. Carefully, I kept the direct beam away from there, shining it instead on a clean white shirt hanging on a stretched rope.

He does washing?

The amusing idea somehow restored my fading courage. Reaching inside my pocket for the ready sharpened stick, I took the final step into his lair.

Abruptly, without any warning, something leapt from above, flashing indistinctly before my eyes. With a light yet sickeningly solid thud, it came to land directly in front of me.

More bemused than terrified—I had no time for the fear to get properly started—I found myself staring through the torch’s glow at the only too-familiar figure of the tartan clad vampire.

It was only a glimpse before his arms slammed around me like a vice, pinning mine to my sides, preventing my hand from leaving my pocket, with or without the weapon. In the same instant, he pushed my head up and to one side with the heel of his hand and his parted lips drew back from his lethal teeth.