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Kaiser had the corridor to themselves again, her pleas resumed, low,
quavering, and sometimes hard to understand.
"He means it. They all do. Please, you've got to let him in now. He won't hurt
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you. If you don't, they're going to " John hit the speaker switch, and a
moment later the switch that turned off the video. The little screen went
blank.
Now someone had begun pounding, though feebly, on the door. If Elizabeth was
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still trying to talk to them, from out there in the hall, it was impossible to
hear her through the soundproofing of the walls and the door's thick wood.
John and Angie looked at each other. He said: "There's a chance they won't
hurt her. I think a better chance than if we let them in. And it won't do any
good to call the cops. It won't do any good at all. Do you believe me, Angie?
Do you understand me?"
She made a gesture between a nod and a shrug.
John hurried back to the phone in the nearby alcove.
Someone was still thumping weakly on the door.
Aimlessly, moving in shock, Angie turned away and wandered back down the
hallway, into the guest bedroom where she had had about two hours' sleep
before the vampires the bad, dangerous vampires, not the one that wasn't quite
John's uncle came on the scene.
Sinking down into a chair, she stared at the tape machine. In a moment she
began to cry.
Chapter 4
The return of full awareness, the reestablishment of the full presence of the
soul within the mangled but mysteriously healing flesh, was a long, gradual,
and parlous process. I need not discuss here what trials and journeys my soul,
my self, was required to undertake before that process was complete. Nor will
I
detail here all the twists and turns through which that evolution progressed,
before restoring my spirit to my transformed body. Suffice it to say that at
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length, however tardily, full consciousness returned, was localized in altered
flesh.
In drastically altered flesh indeed. More on that subject later.
To begin with I understood little more than that I was alive, though garbed in
the cerements of the grave. I was out-of-doors, where bright moonlight oh, it
was undoubtedly only the moon, however fantastically bright it seemed to me
showed me that I was alone, occupying a small glade in a woodland setting.
When I came to myself I was crouched on all fours upon the earth, like some
beast about to spring. The cold of the winter night meant nothing to me. My
limbs were free of any restraint, and by this I knew that I must have somehow
escaped my murderers, whose last efforts to torment me filled what were almost
my last clear memories.
Almost, I say. For it seemed to me that I could remember listening and
watching in some disembodied fashion, even as others prepared my corpse for
the grave.
And the newly refrozen snow around me still showed the dirty traces of
excavation and burial.
Slowly I stood erect, trying to recognize the sylvan spot in which I found
myself.
Had it been only a dream of death, that seeming memory of falling to the
swords of my treacherous lieutenants, of inhabiting a coffin, of riding in it
through the night aboard a jolting wagon?
But now I was not dreaming. I was as certain on this point as the reader is of
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being wide awake and reading now& and just at this critical juncture of
metaphysics I was distracted by a peculiar physical sensation.
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Something, besides the obvious damage caused by recent wounds, seemed to be
gravely amiss with the muscles of my chest. The truth was that I no longer
breathed. But this lack was more than compensated for by the discovery, which
followed swiftly, that I no longer felt any need to do so.
Pain I still experienced in plenty; sharp pangs, radiating from my many
injuries, shot through my body whenever I moved. But I had known worse
torment. I was a soldier, and wounds and suffering were part of my natural
state.
For the time being I could ignore the pain. And if I were in any danger of
bleeding to death, I thought, I would have done so long ere now. The fact was
that I did not even feel weak; indeed, quite the opposite. And a quick
inspection of my wounds satisfied me that I was no longer bleeding at all.
Strange. But, even stranger, the mere thought of blood evoked neither fear nor
disgust, but instead a rich, red thirst, a craving of such intensity that for
the moment I forgot all about my pain and injuries and stood there growling
like a hungry beast.
That red thirst could not entirely distract me from an even stronger lust.
This was a great and all-encompassing drive for vengeance, without which,
perhaps, my will might have failed, and I would never have found the power to
come out of my grave. This craving was centered primarily upon the traitor
Bogdan, and to a lesser extent on his two chief companions, Ronay and Basarab.
As for the common soldiers who had taken part in the attack on me, I scarcely
thought of them; they had done me no real harm, and besides they were mere
hirelings, only obeying orders.
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At the moment none of the three men I wanted were in sight, nor did I have the
least idea where I might lay hands upon two of them. But as for the third,
Ronay, a part of my recent and most strange dream had concerned him. It seemed
to me that I could remember someone's voice, saying that Ronay, wounded,
unable to ride far, had sought shelter within the nearby monastery of Snagov.
Walking slowly, I was halfway across the clearing, looking for some landmark
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