Vampire a Go-Go

Chapter 25

FORTY-SEVEN
High atop a rocky cliff, guarding the Vltava, the Vysehrad was much more a fortress than a palace. A zigzagging path climbed the cliff on the river side. A tram let off tourists on the other side. More respectable guidebooks than The Rogue's Guide suggested a scenic walking tour that started at the tram stop, passed the highlights of the Vysehrad, including Dvok's tomb in the cemetery, and then took the zigzag path down the cliff to the river.
Allen, Amy, Penny, and the priests had elected to come up from the other direction; that was why Allen was puffing and wheezing and finally collapsed when they made it to the top. "Why is every place I need to go in this town uphill?"
Finnegan reached down, hooked Allen under one arm, and pulled him to his feet. "You're out of shape, lad."
"It's been a rough couple of days."
"The trams don't run this time of night, and it's likely that side of the Vysehrad will be more closely watched," Father Paul said. "More stealthy to come up this way."
"Unless they hear young Cabbot's heart pounding," Finnegan said.
Allen wondered if he'd go to hell for giving a priest the finger.
Two o'clock in the morning. This is exactly what Allen didn't want, to be skulking around at night with a vampire on the loose. He supposed a trio of battle priests, a werewolf, and a pretend witch might provide some measure of protection, but Allen didn't feel protected. He clutched the crowbar tight. It was part of his grave-robbing gear, but Allen was ready and willing to smash anything in the face that tried to kill him or suck his blood. The others carried a variety of pickaxes and shovels. Allen also wore a backpack loaded with a flashlight and sundry other gear. Most important, he carried the Kelley diary. He refused to let it out of his possession.
"Let's keep it quiet from here on," Father Paul said. "This way to the cemetery. It's behind the Cathedral of St. Paul and Peter."
The winding paths, pleasant and open by day, were poorly lit at night, jagged shadows making the castle grounds seem eerie and dangerous. Penny walked very close to Allen, Amy just as close on the other side. If they hadn't all been holding pickaxes, shovels, and crowbars, Allen's instinct would have been to take each of the girls by the hand. A kindergarten flashback.
"This is starting to seem like a bad idea," Penny whispered.
"Starting to seem like a bad idea?" Allen said.
"At least you can turn into a werewolf," Amy said to Penny.
"Lycanthrope," Penny said. "And I haven't seen you tossing around a lot of mighty witch magic. Why didn't you turn Zabel into a rabbit or something?"
"You know that's not how it works," snapped Amy.
Father Paul looked back and shushed them.
The girls lapsed into embarrassed silence.
The path took them to the cathedral. They circled behind it and found an iron gate. Padlocked. Father Starkes clipped it off with a sturdy pair of bolt cutters, and they all filed into the boneyard, Finnegan closing the gate behind them. Ahead of them lay tombs, monuments, mausoleums, with narrow paths in between. Expensive and ornate stonework, crosses, and stars of David.
"Hallowed ground," Father Paul said.
"What's that?" Allen asked.
"The vampire can't come here." Father Paul patted Allen on the shoulder. "That's why she needed a patsy."
"Thanks."
"A lot of dead folk in here," Finnegan said. "This might take a while."
"I think you're right," Father Paul said. "Let's break into two teams. We can cover more ground."
"Split up?" Penny didn't like the idea.
Neither did Allen. "I've seen enough episodes of Scooby Doo to know that's a bad idea."
"Father Starkes will go with you and Penny," Father Paul told Allen. "Amy will come with me and Finnegan. Don't worry. We're trained for this. But we can't take all night. We have to divide up and find Roderick's tomb."
They split up, each team going a different direction. They raked monuments with flashlights, glimpsing names, trying to hurry. An hour later, Allen's team ran back into Father Paul's.
"This is getting us nowhere," Allen said. "There's got to be a way to narrow the search."
Father Paul nodded. "I think you're right. Finnegan, break out the laptop. I want an uplink."
The big Irish priest slung off the backpack, pulled out a thin laptop computer, and booted it up. He set the computer on top of a tomb, the screen's glow eerie in the cemetery. "We'll have the satellite in a few seconds. Okay. Got it."
"Let me try," Allen said.
"Give it to him, Finnegan," Father Paul said.
Allen's fingers flew across the keyboard, cross-referencing historical databases, Google, Wikipedia. He blinked at the computer screen, read the information again to be sure. "Oh... shit."
Father Paul read the screen over Allen's shoulder. "What is it?"
"The cemetery was founded in 1869," Allen said. "Two hundred and sixty plus years after Roderick died. There's no way he could be buried here."
"But the ghost said the Vysehrad cemetery," Penny insisted. "Zabel was clear about it."
Allen shook his head. "No. He said the Vysehrad-the castle. Remember? Zabel just assumed the cemetery."
"We can't search the whole castle, all the grounds," Finnegan said. "It would take hours and hours."
"More like days." Father Paul sighed, shook a fresh cigarette from his pack.
"Wait," Allen said. "Just nobody panic, okay? It's just another research project, right?"
The priests looked at one another. Father Paul said, "What do you have in mind?"
"Let's think it through. Hallowed ground, remember? If it were anywhere else in the Vysehrad, Cassandra could fetch it herself."
Father Paul nodded. "Good point."
"Right." Allen's hands went back to the keyboard. "So we concentrate on the cathedral and the cemetery."
The priests and the girls watched Allen go at it, calling up databases, following links to other links, web pages to dead ends, backing up, starting again. He became one with the machine, a virtual explorer in an endless world of bits and bytes and information.
I am the Matrix. That made him chuckle.
"What is it?" Penny asked.
"Nothing."
He arrived at the home page for a European architectural society, which took him to something about the castles of Europe. Click. The castles and palaces of Prague. Click. The Vysehrad. Click.
"This is all in Czech," Allen said.
"Hold on, lad." Finnegan took over the computer, his thick fingers entering information with surprising alacrity. "I've downloaded a translation program from the Vatican mainframe. It works fast. There you go."
"Thanks." Allen took over the computer again.
His eyes took in the words almost by osmosis. Vysehrad constructed in the tenth century. Stonework. Bulwarks. Battlements. Masons.
Freemasons.
Allen cleared his throat. "Listen to this. A Mason hall was constructed to house all the stoneworkers during the construction of the Vysehrad. The hall stood until 1701, when it was gutted by a fire and the stone blocks were looted for other construction projects. But the stone foundation was reused later, when the cathedral was built around 1869."
"What do Freemasons have to do with it?" Father Starkes asked.
"You've been neglecting your history lessons, Starkes." Father Paul looked at Amy. "Our lady friend can tell you."
Amy nodded slowly. "The Society hasn't been part of the Freemasons in hundreds of years. But way the hell back then... yeah."
"Edward Kelley had some sort of association with the Society," Allen said. "I'm not exactly sure. There was no time to read the journal completely. Some sort of alliance, I think."
Father Paul dropped the cigarette, mashed it out with his shoe. "Finnegan, get on the laptop and send the bishop an email. He can read it when he wakes up in the morning. Tell him we apologize, but we're going to have to bust into one of his cathedrals."
FORTY-EIGHT
Zabel watched them from the V of two trees about fifty yards away. The glow of the computer screen lit the small group. What were they doing? Obviously, finding Roderick's grave hadn't been so easy. Zabel had perhaps been strangely lucky. Better to let the priests and the college kids do the hard work, then Zabel could move in afterward and take the stone.
Six of them against one of him. He was regretting leaving Lars in the car. This might get tricky. Best to watch and wait for the right opportunity.
They were moving now.
He watched as the priests and the kids clustered around the door to the cathedral. Were they going in? The big priest approached the front door with a crowbar. A loud crack and the rattle of a falling chain. They were breaking in!
A large raven landed on a tree branch near Zabel. It flapped wings, squawked.
Shut up, you stupid bird.
He turned his attention back to the cathedral. They were going inside, but they left the tall black guy out front. A lookout. This gave Zabel an idea. He reached into his bag of tricks, took out a jar of goo, rubbed some on the palm of his hands. He bent down, grabbed a handful of loose dirt in each hand, and spread the dirt in a circular motion while chanting arcane words.
A mist seeped out of the ground around him, swirled around his feet. A thick fog. It began to spread.
The raven squawked again, and Zabel frowned at it. Many considered the raven to be a bad omen. A good thing Zabel wasn't superstitious.
"Find the light, Finnegan," Father Paul said.
"Right."
The Irish priest went fumbling into the dark, and sixty seconds later the lights, small electric bulbs made to resemble candlelight; came on. Charming. Every historical inch of Prague had been done over for the tourists.
Not nearly as grand and impressive as St. Vitus Cathedral, the Cathedral of St. Paul and Peter was nonetheless large and ornate, with rows of pews, hanging chandeliers, an altar with much gold, and other shiny stuff.
"Spread out," Father Paul told everyone.
Allen asked, "What are we looking for?"
"Let's hope we know it when we see it."
Allen strolled the aisle between a row of pews and a stone wall, glancing at the floor and ceiling. A narrow wooden door led to a small anteroom. Another door beyond that, stairs leading down. He descended into a small basement, where he had to feel along the wall for an old push-button light switch, which brought a naked high-watt bulb blazing to life overhead. Barrels and crates. Storage.
Think. Don't just wander around aimlessly. Who were these people?
Masons. Stoneworkers.
Allen got on his hands and knees and ran his hands over the smooth, wide stones, trying get a fingernail in the crack where the stones met. Allen new nothing of stonework, but this seemed to be solid stuff. He frowned at his dirty hands. The floor was covered in thick dust. Nobody had been down here in a good long time.
He continued to crawl along, knees scraping a trail in the dust. He crawled between barrels and crates, smearing dust on his sweaty face. Back and legs aching, he gave up at last. He stood, looked back at the dust trail. He looked down at his clothes. What a mess.
Allen stood there with his hands on his hips. Think, moron. But his mind went blank. He simply gazed at the floor, the mental equivalent of a test pattern droning in his head.
He noticed something.
The trail his knees had left in the dust was interrupted by a clean line that ran across it. No dust at all. He bent down for a closer look. A perfectly straight line. No dust. Right down the center of the line was another crack where two of the big floor stones met. Was it his imagination, or was this crack very slightly wider than the others?
He put his face right down next to the crack and held his breath. A slight waft of cool air touched his cheek. That's what kept the dust from gathering along the crack. He crawled again, followed the crack. It went under a crate.
Allen stood, put a shoulder against the wooden crate and pushed. It didn't budge at first, so Allen got lower, gained leverage, pushed again. It edged out of the way. Allen heaved again, his face going red, until he'd moved the crate completely off the crack.
He slumped against the wall, sucked air for a few seconds before bending over to examine the stone beneath the crate.
Something was carved into the far end of the stone, almost up against the wall. It was about as big around as a drink coaster and worn almost smooth. Allen shifted around so he wouldn't block the light. He examined it again.
The Freemason symbol with the pentagram in the middle. Exactly like Amy's tattoo.
He jammed his crowbar into the crack, tried to pry up the stone. It barely budged. He grunted, his face almost going purple this time. No. He backed off. He would rupture himself.
He ran back upstairs. He spotted the big Irish priest, Finnegan, searching the altar with Penny. "Where is everyone?"
"Searching," Finnegan said. "You find something?"
"Maybe," Allen said. "But I need some muscle."
They followed him down to the basement. He showed them the Freemason symbol, explaining how he'd discovered it.
"Okay, lad, get on the other side," Finnegan said. "Put your weight into that pry bar when I give the word."
"Right." Allen jammed the crowbar into the crack, and stood ready.
Finnegan positioned his crowbar on the other side. "Now."
They both grunted, sweat breaking out on their foreheads. Penny stood back.
The stone block was thicker than Allen had guessed, but they finally lifted it high enough to shove it aside, stone grinding on stone, a whoosh of air sending puffs of dust between their legs.
They slid the stone aside, revealing a three-foot hole down into deep darkness and a narrow set of stairs that could accommodate one person at a time. Finnegan shone the flashlight down but couldn't see much.
Allen got on his belly, shoved his own flashlight into the opening. "A chamber. And a tunnel, I think." He put his foot on the top step. "Let's go."
"Hold on," Finnegan said. "Best we fetch the others first. It wouldn't be polite to go off and get killed, letting the others wonder what happened."
Allen felt something tug at him, some force urging him down the stairs and into the tunnel, but he resisted. "Okay."
While Finnegan was gone, the compulsion to go ahead, not to wait for the others, nearly overwhelmed him. Part of him recognized this as Cassandra's doing. He had to face it. There was still some intermittent hold on him, something that only kicked in at certain key moments. It was Cassandra's will that he go down those steps. Don't wait. He had a mission to complete for her, and every second he delayed increased his discomfort, a deep sense of uneasiness at a task uncompleted.
"Are you okay?" Penny touched his arm with soft, cool fingers.
Allen closed his eyes tight, opened them again, and looked at her. He realized he was standing rigidly, with a white-knuckle grip on the crowbar. He took a deep breath and let it out. "I'm a little nervous is all."
Penny smiled crookedly. "Vampires and philosopher's stones? I can't imagine why anyone would be nervous."
Finnegan returned with Amy and Father Paul. They all leaned over, gazed down into the dark black hole.
Father Paul said, "Okay. Everyone wait here. I'll have a look."
"No way," Allen said. "I found it. I'm going too."
"If he's going, I'm going," Penny said.
"If she's going, I'm going," Amy said.
Father Paul grimaced. "Fine. Don't touch anything. Be careful."
Amy smirked. "Did you really just say to be careful?"
Father Paul ignored her, flipped on his flashlight, and descended the stairs. "Let's go."
The stairs delved deeper than expected, heading straight down at first before turning into a tight curve and spiraling. Allen noticed that the passage had been carved from raw stone. It grew colder as they went.
The stairs terminated in a round, twenty-by-twenty-foot chamber, the walls carved smooth. Their flashlight beams played over the walls before coming to rest on the circular door in front of them, carved pillars on either side. A larger version of the Freemason symbol with the pentagram in the middle had been carved neatly and deeply into the center of the door.
A foot below the symbol was a phrase in another language.
"It looks familiar," Allen said. "Not Czech."
"It's Latin," Father Paul said. "'Here dwell our dead, for nowhere else can they find rest.'"
"I think it's a Mortality Motel," Amy said. "Sort of a slang term the Society uses for these burial places."
Father Paul shot her a questioning glance.
"I've heard talk about them," Amy explained. "Often a Society member would get branded a heretic, all that witchcraft, you know. They couldn't be buried in regular church cemeteries."
"There's an iron lever here." Finnegan gestured to the left of the door.
Father Paul said, "Pull it."
Finnegan grabbed the lever and pulled with both hands. It made a rusty, scraping noise as he pulled it down. There was the distant, muffled sound of grinding machinery, and the circular door rolled aside. There was a whoosh, and all of their ears popped, a gust of stale air escaping from the door crack.
"It's been sealed a long time," Amy said.
Penny stepped closer to Allen. "I'd rather it stayed sealed."
They entered, all of them clustered together. Father Paul stepped on a stone, which shifted. More muffled sounds echoed throughout the cavern.
"Uh-oh."
Allen said, "'Uh-oh'? What do you mean, 'uh-oh'?"
On high shelves lining both sides of the hall, tiny flames sprang to life. The group flinched at the sudden pops of flame.
"What is it?" There was a bit of panic in Penny's voice.
"It's okay," Father Paul said. "I think I just hit the light switch."
Amy said, "Oil lamps. A spark spell to light them. Very simple to set up a remote-control trigger."
Penny raised an eyebrow. "You know, I've yet to see you do one bit of magic."
Amy gave her the middle finger.
The flickering lamps provided ample light, and they took a good look at the long hall. A vaulted ceiling arched twenty feet over their heads. The hall was fifty feet wide and twice again as long. Unadorned tombs cut from plain stone lined the walls. Clay urns sat on low pillars throughout the chamber. A dozen empty suits of armor stood along each wall, holding up swords in eternal salute, lamplight playing across dull metal breastplates.
Finnegan lifted the nearest urn carefully from its pillar, removed the lid, and peeked inside. "Looks like it's full of dust."
"Ashes, I would imagine," Father Paul said. "I think you have somebody's remains there."
"Bloody hell." Finnegan promptly returned the urn to its pillar.
"There." Allen pointed to the large tomb all the way at the other end of the hall. Some instinct drew him on.
They followed Allen to the tomb. Again it was plain, except for a single word carved into the center of the lid: Roderick. Allen felt his heart beat faster.
Finnegan stepped forward. "One more time, lad."
They jammed their crowbars into the slight crack of the tomb's lid. The great slab of stone was unbelievably heavy. Allen felt the muscles strain along his arms and back. The Irishman's face turned the color of a ripe tomato. Once the lid started moving, it went fast, tumbling over the other side, crashing to the stone floor with a racket to wake the dead.
No, I hope not, Allen thought. Let's not wake the dead.
They crowded around the open tomb.
Within lay the mortal remains of Roderick, astrologer at the court of Rudolph II. Bones. The remnants of a dark robe. Roderick laughed at them with hollow skull eyes. In his thin, skeletal hands, he clutched a lead box the size of carry-on luggage. The heavy box had crushed his chest, nestled in his rib cage like it was a bird's nest.
"Well," Father Paul said in a voice barely above a whisper. "There it is."
They all stood frozen a moment, the weight of history demanding a little respect.
"Let's get the show on the road then." Finnegan reached for the box.
"No!" Allen had not meant to shout. The idea of somebody else taking the stone suddenly panicked him. "I've come a long way for this. Let me."
Finnegan looked to Father Paul, who nodded.
Allen reached inside and grabbed the box by the handle on either end. Heavy. He tried to lift it. Really fucking heavy.
Finnegan said, "Lad, maybe I should-"
"No, no," Allen said. "I got it."
With a final heave, Allen was barely able to lift it out. Roderick's skeletal fingers slid from the box. The skull's mouth opened.
And screamed.
The shriek was painful. They clapped their hands over their ears-all except Allen, who refused to let go of the box. The scream seemed as much in his mind as in his ears. After an eternal five seconds, the scream stopped.
And something else moved.
The suits of armor along the walls began to take lumbering steps toward them, their swords lifted high.
"Oh, shit," Penny said.
Finnegan and Father Paul drew pistols. "I think Roderick sounded the burglar alarm."
The suits of armor creaked and clanked, seemed to be working out the kinks, moving faster to cut off the group's escape route back to the surface.
"Run!" shouted Father Paul.
Allen was already moving, Amy and Penny right behind him. He heard the pistol shots at his back, the metallic tunks of slugs piercing armor. He didn't look back. He had the stone. He would take it to his mistress.
Allen and the girls made it past the ghost knights right before they closed the circle. He hit the stairs and went up, grunting as he carried the box, sweat oozing from every pore. Gunshots echoed behind him.
He kept going. Up and up.
Father Paul watched Allen and the girls make it past the knights, but the suits of armor closed in, cutting him off. He and Finnegan had been surrounded.
They fired until their magazines clicked empty, the shots punching useless holes in the armor plating.
"No good, Boss," Finnegan said. "Got any magic wands?"
Father Paul grabbed an urn off a nearby pillar, launched it at the nearest knight with a two-handed throw. It struck the helmet, exploded in a cloud of ash, the helmet clattering away, shards of clay flying. The knight dropped its sword, began to twirl in a lost circle without its head to guide it.
Finnegan dove for the sword, grabbed it, popped to his feet and swung the blade, lopped off the metal arm of a knight that had been coming up behind Father Paul, who knelt and scooped up another sword.
They parried clumsy blows from the ghost knights. The clattering suits of armor were slow and awkward, but sheer numbers threatened to swamp the priests.
"Cut your way to the door," Father Paul shouted over the clanging weapons.
They hacked at limbs, sent helmets flying.
They were almost to the door when a knight thrust a long blade into Finnegan's chest. The big Irishman yelled, kicked away the empty suit of armor, pulled the sword out of himself, and let it fall to the floor. Blood gushed. He stumbled after Father Paul through the door to the other side. He collapsed, rolled onto his back.
"Oh, no." Father Paul knelt next to Finnegan.
"The door." Blood gurgled from Finnegan's mouth.
Ghost knights still lumbered after them.
Father Paul grabbed the lever, shoved it back into place. The door began to roll shut just as one of the ghost knights attempted to step through. The heavy stone door tried to close, jammed the suit of armor, slowly crushing it like an old car at a junkyard. It stayed jammed like that, a few of the ghost knight's gauntleted fingers still twitching, helmet crushed flat.
Father Paul returned to Finnegan. "We'll get you to a doctor. Hang on."
Finnegan laughed, his teeth stained red. "Don't kid me, okay? Get out of here."
"Shut up, you stupid Irish lump. Just stay still. I'll find a phone, and then we'll call in some help. It won't take too long to-"
Father Paul realized he wasn't talking to anyone anymore. Finnegan's eyes stared at nothing, lifeless and empty.
It had been a long time since Father Paul had performed last rites; he stumbled though them half blind, tears blurring his vision.