The Vampire Megapack. Nina Kiriki Hoffman

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СКАЧАТЬ you choose to call it, of Mrs. Amworth, going on its grisly business, and therefore, beyond doubt, the vampire spirit which abode in her during life animates her again in death. That is not exceptional—indeed, all these weeks since her death I have been expecting it. If I am right, we shall find her body undecayed and untouched by corruption.”

      “But she has been dead nearly two months,” said I.

      “If she had been dead two years it would still be so, if the vampire has possession of her. So remember: whatever you see done, it will be done not to her, who in the natural course would now be feeding the grasses above her grave, but to a spirit of untold evil and malignancy, which gives a phantom life to her body.”

      “But what shall I see done?” said I.

      “I will tell you. We know that now, at this moment, the vampire clad in her mortal semblance is out; dining out. But it must get back before dawn, and it will pass into the material form that lies in her grave. We must wait for that, and then with your help I shall dig up her body. If I am right, you will look on her as she was in life, with the full vigour of the dreadful nutriment she has received pulsing in her veins. And then, when dawn has come, and the vampire cannot leave the lair of her body, I shall strike her with this”—and he pointed to his pick—“through the heart, and she, who comes to life again only with the animation the fiend gives her, she and her hellish partner will be dead indeed. Then we must bury her again, delivered at last.”

      We had come to the cemetery, and in the brightness of the moonshine there was no difficulty in identifying her grave. It lay some twenty yards from the small chapel, in the porch of which, obscured by shadow, we concealed ourselves. From there we had a clear and open sight of the grave, and now we must wait till its infernal visitor returned home. The night was warm and windless, yet even if a freezing wind had been raging I think I should have felt nothing of it, so intense was my preoccupation as to what the night and dawn would bring. There was a bell in the turret of the chapel, that struck the quarters of the hour, and it amazed me to find how swiftly the chimes succeeded one another.

      The moon had long set, but a twilight of stars shone in a clear sky, when five o’clock of the morning sounded from the turret. A few minutes more passed, and then I felt Urcombe’s hand softly nudging me; and looking out in the direction of his pointing finger, I saw that the form of a woman, tall and large in build, was approaching from the right. Noiselessly, with a motion more of gliding and floating than walking, she moved across the cemetery to the grave which was the centre of our observation. She moved round it as if to be certain of its identity, and for a moment stood directly facing us. In the greyness to which now my eyes had grown accustomed, I could easily see her face and recognise its features.

      She drew her hand across her mouth as if wiping it, and broke into a chuckle of such laughter as made my hair stir on my head. Then she leaped on to the grave, holding her hands high above her head, and inch by inch disappeared into the earth. Urcombe’s hand was laid on my arm, in an injunction to keep still, but now he removed it.

      “Come,” he said.

      With pick and shovel and rope we went to the grave. The earth was light and sandy, and soon after six struck we had delved down to the coffin lid. With his pick he loosened the earth round it, and, adjusting the rope through the handles by which it had been lowered, we tried to raise it. This was a long and laborious business, and the light had begun to herald day in the east before we had it out, and lying by the side of the grave. With his screw-driver he loosed the fastenings of the lid, and slid it aside, and standing there we looked on the face of Mrs. Amworth. The eyes, once closed in death, were open, the cheeks were flushed with colour, the red, full-lipped mouth seemed to smile.

      “One blow and it is all over,” he said. “You need not look.”

      Even as he spoke he took up the pick again, and, laying the point of it on her left breast, measured his distance. And though I knew what was coming I could not look away…

      He grasped the pick in both hands, raised it an inch or two for the taking of his aim, and then with full force brought it down on her breast. A fountain of blood, though she had been dead so long, spouted high in the air, falling with a heavy splash over the shroud, and simultaneously from those red lips came one long, appalling cry, swelling up like some hooting siren and dying away again. With that, instantaneous as a lightning flash, came the touch of corruption on her face, the colour of it faded to ash, the plump cheeks fell in, the mouth dropped.

      “Thank God, that’s over,” said he, and without pause slipped the coffin lid back into its place.

      Day was coming fast now, and, working like men possessed, we lowered the coffin into its place again and shovelled the earth over it…

      The birds were busy with their earliest pipings as we went back to Maxley.

      LOST EPIPHANY, by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

      A Story of Saint-Germain

      There was no doubt that the man chained to the other massive steering oar beside his own was dead; the body was stiff, the rigidity making him as great a weight as the long oar was. His skin was cold and taking on the color of clay; he lay bent almost double over the oar, his elbows poking out at awkward angles because of his manacles. Not that Sant-Germainus cared, for he was consumed in the misery that only travel over water could bring him. He had ceased to feel the hard blows of the oar-master’s lash two days ago, nor did he bother any longer to look for distant land beyond the heaving sea as the merchant ship plowed on through the advancing storm; rain-clouds obscured the distance and heaving seas demanded his full attention. The steering-oar shuddered as the ship climbed the side of a wave. Below-decks all but a dozen oars were pulled in; those that remained in the water were plied with steady purpose to keep the boat from floundering.

      “You there! Steersman!” The captain’s first officer, known as Ynay, struggled along the deck, clinging to the rope as the ship pitched and wallowed. His language was a variation of Byzantine Greek, but with an accent that indicated the man came from Colchis.

      Sant-Germainus lifted his head, his body aching with fatigue, his clothes soaked and clammily cold, his eyes almost swollen shut from the relentless waves washing over the deck. He stared at the first officer and forced himself to speak.

      “What is it, Ynay?”

      He knew his response could earn him a beating for insolence, but that hardly seemed to matter; being on running water without the protection of his native earth was more punishment than any whip could mete out. He found it ironic that this night or perhaps the next would be the anniversary of his birth.

      “The other steersman!” shouted the first officer.

      “He can’t answer you,” Sant-Germainus responded.

      Ynay was almost up to the steering-oar; blinking into the wet; he reached to shake the second steersman, then hesitated. “Is he ill?”

      “No longer,” said Sant-Germainus. “He stopped breathing some time ago.”

      The first officer faltered. “Dead?”

      “From a fever,” said Sant-Germainus, who had recognized the disease as something that could not be treated on this boat at sea. “It settled in his gut. He complained of it last night: to you.”

      “But…he hasn’t fallen,” said Ynay, reaching for the amulet that hung around his neck.

      “Because he is closely chained to me, and I can only hold the oar standing up. His oar is СКАЧАТЬ