hunting adolf hitler:

a celebrity supernatural #6

 

anne kelleher

 

 

for phillip allen and ric nalette

with many thanks for your unwitting inspiration

 

 

 

y2k, artificial intelligence, online gaming, vampires, ghouls, gargoyles and william shakespeare all compete in this mad mash-up of a nazi hunt taken to the furthest extremes of human experience…

 

when dr. john watson – immortalized by conan doyle much to his regret - realizes that the only way to save humanity is to unleash a ten-thousand year old demon, he turns to his friend and fellow vampire william shakespeare, for help.   but shakespeare’s solution – a game within a game – seems like too much of a gamble, even as an army of ghouls and gargoyles descend upon london…

 

this story is a work of fiction.  any resemblance to real persons, places or events is purely coincidental and/or a work of the author’s imagination.

 

 

i.

first of all, the war was over.  long over.  all the trails were cold, all the rat lines long sealed.   the rats themselves, most of them, long dead.   so i wasn't exactly surprised when martin arrived that cold thursday afternoon, just as i was putting my second sugar into my tea.  he took one look around the office, the threadbare office that had so long ago ceased official funding, that no one remembered the source of its unofficial funding.   i was fortunate i continued to draw a salary, and i suspected it was that, rather than any report of mine, that had drawn the attention of the powers-that-be, thus resulting in martin's dispatch. 

 

"martin," i said, looking up from my hot-plate as he opened the door.  "just in time for tea." 

 

"hello, old man."  at least he had the grace to look abashed, as he slunk around the dusty door-frame and streaked glass, and settled, without being asked, into the sagging leather chair on the other side of my desk. 

 

he gestured to me as i stared, taken aback, not just at the visit, but at the air about him.  something was up - all my hackles were raised.  "won't you sit?" he gestured across the desk. 

 

i hesitated.  there was only one reason i could think of for martin's unannounced visit.  martin did everything by the book, by the schedule.  it's what made him the perfect civil servant, the perfect bureaucrat.  it's what made me rely on him for absolutely anything and everything. 

 

that, and i had no choice.   there wasn't anyone else left.   i screwed my courage to the sticking place, squeezed a quarter wedge of lemon into my tea, and took refuge behind my desk.   "i wasn't expecting you," i said.   there was no point beating around the bush.   if he was going to tell me to pack my things, hand over my files, empty the desks and the drawers and turn off the lights and lock the doors forever, he was going to work for it.  

 

martin spread his hands.   he had the grace to look even more embarrassed.  at least i assumed it was embarrassment.  "your last report caused quite a stir."

 

i waved my hand dismissively just before i picked up my tea.  "that's what it always does.  until something else causes an even bigger stir, and then mine is swept under the rug, once again.   no one wishes to entertain increasingly inconvenient truths."

 

"one never wishes to entertain inconvenient truths, john."   martin said this kindly, almost lovingly.  and why not?  we've been friends a very long time. 

 

"is that what i'm doing?"

 

"i beg your pardon?"  martin looked confused.  

 

"isn't that why you're here?"  i leaned back against the creaking wood of my own chair, scanning the walls of the dim, high-ceilinged room where i spent the better part of the last half of the current century.   maps, edges curling and brown, were pinned to every inch of the walls; desks that hadn't been occupied in three decades sagged beneath the weight of dusty files that hadn't been opened in nearly that long.  the hunt went cold a long time ago.  

 

"why i'm here..." martin trailed off.  "you think i'm here to shut you down, john?"   he shook his head, leaned forward and slapped his hand on the surface of my desk.  "far to the contrary...you couldn't be further off the truth, old man.  i'm not here to shut you down - i'm here to tell you it's time to wake...well, you know."

 

 

ii

for quite a long moment i stared at martin, uncertain that i had actually heard him correctly.   "wake her?  wake her now?"

 

"you don't agree?  even after your last report?" 

 

i sat back, dumbfounded.   now? i remember thinking.  now?   "that...that was only to be considered an option after all others had been exhausted."

 

"isn't that where we are?  haven't all other options long been exhausted?"  martin’s eyes were as guileless as they'd been the day he came to my laboratory the first time, and suggested that i might be ideal for the work of finding the fugitive adolf hitler. 

 

"i don't understand.  what about... what about funds?   perhaps there'd be more options if there were more funds."

 

"you'll have all the funds you need."

 

"if i... if i do as you suggest."

 

"exactly.   all the stops will be pulled, old man, all the skids greased.   everyone's aware of the risks -"

 

"and who, exactly, is 'everyone?'"

 

i wasn't reassured that martin squirmed, just a bit.  "let's just say...the people who understand."

 

"as opposed to the people who don't?"

 

"as opposed to the people who don't know."

 

"who don't know...?"

 

"that vampires exist, for one thing, john."  martin said this even more gently.  "that doctor frankenstein and doctor watson have more in common and are more alike than most people realize.  and that the great sherlock holmes and his sidekick were really..."

 

i held up my hand.  i didn't need to be reminded about sherlock holmes – that drug-addicted figment of an overwrought conan-doyle’s tortured imagination.   holmes was an insult, a mockery, of everything i was or had ever been, for that matter.   i should never have allowed that two-bit hack to use anything of myself in those wretched stories.  i loathed the very thought of them.  "what do you want me to do?"

"haven't i been clear?  wake lilith.   use her to find hitler – or whatever you think it is that hitler’s become."

 

"and when lilith finds hitler?"  i said that because i wasn’t sure what hitler had become.  the world of possibilities continued to expand the more i contemplated. 

 

martin hesitated, and the shadow of doubt crossed his face.   "use your discretion, old chap.  because that's what everyone's really counting on."   he rose to his feet, shrugged his rumpled burberry over his shoulders.   "and i do mean everyone...from her majesty on down."

 

"and after?  what happens then?  when she’s flush with feeding for the first time in six hundred years and angry as puke?  then what?  is everyone relying on my discretion then?"

 

martin looked at me then, really looked at me, and this time, i thought i saw something like pity in his expression.  "of course not, john.   we're relying on you to kill her."

 

 

iii

i waited until martin left to finish my tea.   by then it was stone cold, but i didn't care.  i lost my taste - my need - for warmth a long time ago.  and, of course, i was too stunned by what martin had to say.   the idea of unleashing lilith had been bandied about at the beginning, but no one ever took the suggestion seriously.  

 

no one really thought awakening a vampire more than ten thousand years old was a good idea. 

 

least of all another vampire like me. 

 

 did martin know?  i assume he did - sooner or later it had to occur to him that i was no more the grandson of the late great doctor john watson than he was:  i was the gentleman in question himself.

 

now i hope, gentle reader, if you will forgive me the conceit, that you will not stop reading at this point, that you will not close your book in despair with a shake of your head and a sneer of your lip.   this is not another tale about a blood-sucking vampire - well, yes, in some respects, yes, it is - but i'm not like that.  none of us as a rule go around ripping into the throats of innocent mortals - none of us worthy of the name "vampire."  

 

and surely, in this age of transfusions and blood donations and intravenous delivery systems, you don't truly believe that any self-respecting vampire would bite into a human neck given a choice? have you any idea how tough a living human’s hide really is?  have you any idea what a god-awful mess all that spurting arterial blood makes? 

 

but i hope you understand that of course we need to feed, like any other creature.  

 

you do understand that, right? 

 

good.  because feeding on innocents isn't the way it is with me, or any of my kin.   not that there are many left. 

 

the pogroms, the scourges, the witch hunts that raged through europe, long before an infant hitler saw his first sunrise, ensured that most of our kind were gone.   and then hitler and his minions did all they could to eradicate those of us who remained. 

 

that's why it seemed reasonable - even in the beginning, before hitler managed to escape so neatly through our nets, to suggest we rouse the one remaining vampire to whom all living vampires can trace their lineage.   after more than six hundred years of rest, they reasoned, she should be ravenous enough to hunt down anything.   and angry enough at hitler to find him. 

 

the only problem was that, once unleashed, no one knew how to control her. 

 

set free, without a homeland, without an anchor, lilith would ravage through the world, feasting on whatever took her pleasure.  given that it was fair to say she was singlehandedly responsible for the creation of every demon-woman myth in every culture around the globe, i was quite sure the world – even at the dawn of the twenty-first century of the common era, as they style it nowadays – wasn’t ready for her reappearance. 

 

at all. 

 

 

iv

i waited until i was sure the building was almost empty, but not as late as my usual wont.  consequently i was noticed by a couple of late-lingering employees, but i didn’t care.   there were rumors of a grey man haunting the old offices in the basement.  every so often it was good to let everyone know they were true.   

 

and besides, i wouldn’t be in the basement much longer.   the unspoken part of martin’s visit was clear. 

 

i made my way through london’s busy streets, the rush and bustle different only in color, pace and smell from the rush and bustle of days past.  lost in my thoughts, i heedlessly traced my steps, wandering wherever my restless feet chose to take me while all around me, the shadows thickened into black. 

 

almost fifty years had gone by while the trail went cold and turned to dust, while the other agents turned to other pursuits, retired, or died.  for me, of course, it was a blink.  but for the others…

 

it was all my fault it had come to this.  it was my project, my responsibility. 

 

at some point i found myself sitting by the serpentine.  the hour was late, but not so late anyone would question my presence on the bench beneath the lamp.  i hunched my coat around my shoulders, turned up my collar to a pretended chill.  i tucked my arms around myself and bent my head, staring at my feet. 

 

to give up was to admit defeat.  but to wake lilith was to bring about… what?  i wondered.  with no clear idea of where hitler was, or what he had become, with no strategy in place, how could i unleash such a creature on an unsuspecting world? a world that believed such creatures could ever be anything more than the creations of their computing machines?

 

but what was the alternative?  to attempt to confront him – or whatever terrible thing he’d become – myself?

   

my mind veered, into places i never let it go.  i felt my pulse start to race, as cold sweat gathered like pearls on my forehead.  with a gasp i forced myself to open my eyes, stare at the clear swath of water before me.  i had renounced all that, given it all up so long ago i no longer even smelled human flesh.  i was…not like lilith.  i wouldn’t risk becoming like her, to suit the whims of martin’s masters. 

 

 from behind a sultry layer of low-lying clouds, i could feel the full moon.  i’m hungry, i thought.  of course i was.  i couldn’t really remember the last time i was home, let alone the last time i fed. 

 

i got up from my bench and began to walk.  at some point, i happened to look up.  high above the street, tucked beneath a down-spout, a pair of red eyes blinked back. 

 

shocked, i stopped, and peered more closely, wondering if it were possibly simply a trick of the light, a reflection of the traffic lights off glass.  but it wasn’t.  to my complete and utter dismay, what could only be a gargoyle stared back at me.

 

the last infestation had been over a hundred and fifty years ago, when there were far more vampires in london – not to mention fewer nooks and crannies for them to breed – than there are now.  i made a mental note to tell martin and hurried home. 

 

 

v

god bless mrs. hudson.  she’s kept the home-fires burning and the lamps on through two world wars, even when i don’t come home for weeks on end.   it was close to midnight when i staggered up the worn marble steps, inserted my antique key into its antique lock and stepped inside the foyer of my modest apartments on b- street. 

 

you may, gentle reader, assume for the sake of convenience that i still reside on baker street, though i was forced to abandon those digs long before conan doyle put his peculiar stamp on my life and compatriots.  and so, for the sake of convenience, you may assume that all is just as he described, and that the mrs. hudson who waits for me, drowsing, by the fire, is just a namesake of the mrs. hudson who tended us so graciously all those years ago. 

 

or you may accept she’s the same lady, and that she’s a vampire, too. 

 

“john,” she said, when i stepped into the parlor, “i was thinking you might be home this evening.”

 

“i’m so glad not to disappoint, my dear.”  i bent over her hand, kissed the back.  we had long since crossed and re-crossed boundaries to which even conan doyle had dared not allude, and our relationship had settled, as it must, into one that at times felt nearly brotherly. 

 

nearly.  mrs. hudson had her undeniable charms. 

 

“you must be hungry.”  she rose to her feet without waiting for my answer and crossed to the sideboard, where my supply of serum was kept, always ready. 

 

i sank into my leather armchair with a sigh, and listened for the pop of the cork, the clink of the decanter against the glass, the whisper of the syrupy liquid as it filled the glass.  there is a balm in gilead.  the line from the old hymn ran through my mind as the coppery scent of the serum perfumed the space. 

 

there is a balm in gilead…there is, there is, there is. 

 

my fingers trembled undeniably as they closed around the crystal stem. 

 

“bottoms up,” mrs. hudson whispered. 

 

i downed it one swift gulp.  i was famished; i should never have let myself go so long without food.  i felt the liquid roll down my throat, down my gullet, all the way to my stomach, where it exploded into a slow burn, expanding in a slow steady tide into all the empty spaces.  

 

it’s the closest a vampire comes to orgasm.  when i could, i opened my eyes.  mrs. hudson was watching me from the other side of the fire.  “another?”

 

i shook my head, set the glass on the small table beside my chair and took a deep breath.  “they want me to wake lilith.”   

 

the next sound i heard was the sound of the decanter shattering. 

 

 

vi

by the time we licked up the mess – there was no sense wasting it – the grandfather clock in the hall was chiming three.  mrs. hudson sank back on her haunches, her chin slick and shimmering in the light of the dying fire.  she licked the last of the serum from her lips, and cocked her head at me.   “i think we both needed that.”

 

i sat back, feeling immeasurably better than i realized i had in a long time.  i closed my eyes and leaned against the bookcase.  “i think you’re right.”  but when i opened my eyes, she was staring at me with a troubled expression. 

 

“you’re going to do it, aren’t you, john?”

 

“i don’t believe i have any other choice – i don’t believe we have any other choice.”

 

“we?”  she gathered her skirts modestly around her knees, tucking the antique fabric beneath her.  from somewhere inside her bosom, she withdrew a dainty lace-trimmed handkerchief, with which she began to dab at her face.  sometimes i wondered why she clung to the conventions of such a long-ago age, but then i remembered that mrs. hudson was even older than i was.  she’d been wearing skirts to her ankles longer than i had been alive. 

 

“we…us…all of us.”  i threw a log into the fire, reached for the andiron and poked the fire back to life.

 

“human, vampire – if what i suspect is true, we don’t have any other choice.”  i looked back at her over my shoulder.  “we truly don’t have any other choice.”

 

“it’s that bad?”

 

for a long moment i stared at her.  “no,” i said at last.  “it’s worse.”

 

her expression didn’t change.  “john.”  her tone was mildly rebuking, accusatory, even.  “you know, conan doyle would never have been able to exploit you the way he did if you weren’t at times so…”

 

i rose to my feet.  “melodramatic, i believe is the word you like to use.”  i extended my hand, helped her to her feet.  shattered glass crunched under our shoes.  we vampire have a tendency to cling to the past in ways humans can’t begin to understand, but at that moment i was very glad we were in possession of that most amazing convenience most recently termed a “dyson.”

 

bits of glass clung to our clothing, to her hair so that she glittered in the reddish light.  i reached down, traced a faint line of serum from the corner of her mouth down her chin.  she raised her chin.  “there has to be another way.”

 

“no,” i shook my head.  “even if i were to go myself…the situation has simply gone beyond my –“

 

“what about me?  what if i went with you?”

 

“to south america?”  my eyebrows flew up.  “my dear, you haven’t been out of this city in a century.  and now you’re proposing to take a seven thousand mile jaunt?  really, mrs. hudson.”  i chucked her under the chin.  “now who’s being melodramatic?”

 

“i don’t understand...hitler was human, not vampire.  even if he’s become a ghoul – “

 

“no…” i cut her off more sharply than i meant, and the shock registered on her face.  “this is far worse than anything we’ve ever imagined.  mrs. hudson, martha….if only he’d become a ghoul.”

 

 

vii.
what’s worse than a ghoul?  

that depends on who you ask.   

i’m quite sure for most of humanity, the idea of ending one’s life as a shambling, drooling, mindless animated blob of rotting flesh is quite terrifying.   but for those of us charged with rooting out this particular scourge, the idea that hitler might’ve morphed into a ghoul would’ve been greeted with welcome ears and open arms.  

 
after all, at that point we could’ve simply dispatched him with a single bullet through his head or a slice through his neck.  

i watched the sun rise over london while mrs. hudson swept up the glass.  

“we could go,” she said, just before she left me alone.  “we could.  we did it more than once, you know we did – after all, it was us that tracked down the ripper.”

i took a deep breath and turned from the window to face her.  “my dear mrs. hudson, for the very last time – neither of us has left london in more than a hundred years.  you know as well as i do…” i broke off.  she knew perfectly well what was at stake.  “it’s not worth it.  and by the time i arrived in argentina, it’s more than likely i’d be too…unhinged …to be of much use to anyone.”

“you don’t know that.”

“i think this newfound faith in my abilities has more to do with your wish i not wake lilith than that you truly think i could stop –the enemy.”  i couldn’t keep thinking of him – of it – as merely “hitler.”  one name was probably no longer sufficient.  another quote ran through my head, this time from the new testament:  my name is legion.  that’s what the demon told jesus, before it was cast into a herd of pigs and stampeded off a cliff.  i doubted i’d get so lucky. 

in one neat leap she was beside me, shoulders squared, brows knit.  i was forced to look directly down, reminding me what a small woman she was, physically at least.  “you’ve always underestimated yourself, john.”  she took a breath, looked as if she might say more, but instead she pressed her lips together and shook her head.  “besides, aren’t you going to have to accompany lilith, wherever she goes?”  

of course i was.  that was the reality i was dancing around all this time.  

i stood at the window longer than i probably should have, given how long it’s been since i’d had even the slightest taste of fresh blood.  but i was too rooted into place, too stunned by what martin’s suggestion really meant.  

it was to be the end of me, too.  they might be relying on me to kill lilith.  
but they were also relying on lilith to kill me.  

 

viii.
dust was thick on the surfaces of my desk when i finally went to my study.   i remembered then, the last time i was here – i’d come to bring a copy of my report – my final report, as it was apparently going to be.   there would be no record, no account – official or unofficial – of anything concerning lilith.  

i turned the leaves of the calendar, until i stared at the current date.  november 9, 1999.  

in the world of humans, rumors of an apocalyptic potential swirled as the end of the year approached.  they thought it had to do with their computing machines.  

we vampire are more subtle.  

i sat down behind my desk, turned on the lamp and opened the file.   the soft golden light illuminated the onion skin, the sheets nearly transparent, covered in my antique scrawl, in the code they’d given me a long time ago.  

i scanned the report.  the words themselves meant almost nothing in their current combination, unless one understood the code.  but to anyone who did, my words were more than clear.   

in the mountains of south america, in the jungles of the amazon, something ancient was awake.

 ancient, and now sentient, in a way it never had been before.  but still, and now perhaps even more so, neither vampire nor human.   

the aztecs called it “mictlantecuhtli” and believed it reigned over the land of their dead.  they worshipped it with ritual cannibalism.  

the inca called it “supay.”  they worshipped it with ritual dancing, which ended with the dancers casting themselves into enormous fire-pits.  

the spanish conquistadors called it “devil,” and didn’t mention it, lest they be charged with consorting with demons.     

nowadays people call it legend, or myth, and in more recent times, an increasingly vocal group of theorists have suggested it originated in outer space.  but no one thinks it’s alive and well – and real – today.  

except me.

 
i suspect it truly is alien – brought here as an unfortunate and unwilling traveler on a meteor, perhaps the very one that killed the dinosaurs.  somehow it made a home in south america, burrowing deep into the mountains, rooting itself into the rich amazonian ooze.  i also believe it didn’t become truly dangerous until it encountered the planet’s most intrepid life form: humans.  

whether the fugitive hitler went to south america with the intention of seeking it out, i have no idea and i doubt that question could ever be answered definitively.  i was quite sure it sought him out.  i suspected somewhere in the jungles of columbia, where the trail went cold.  

i sat at my desk for a long time, watching a sliver of pale sunlight work its way across the room.  even if – when – i roused lilith, what then?   all the stops would be pulled, all the skids greased.  that’s what martin said, but i wasn’t sure what martin meant.  

i’m not sure martin really understood the thing that separates us vampire from you humans.   humans are rooted in time; vampires are rooted in space.  there was a time in the not so distant past when we were understood to be the spirit of a place, an incarnation of another reality, another dimension, the evidence of things hoped for, the essence of things unseen.  

that was until humans learned to fear us.   and what humans fear, they kill.  

fortunately vampires are remarkably difficult to kill, rather like human infants who can survive all manner of indignities from disease to being dropped on their heads.  

unless you’re doing it deliberately.   and what humans do deliberately, they do well.  

hunted to nearly extinction, we were.   

until.  

until it occurred to humans there were worse things than vampires.  like other humans – sickened and twisted into things more inhuman than almost anything a vampire could become.  

 

 

ix

it was already dusk when i bathed, changed my clothes and put on my hat.  mrs. hudson was nowhere to be seen, probably sleeping off the glut of serum we’d imbibed the night before. 

 

it made me feel sluggish myself, but i had a call to make.

 

i made my way across the thronged streets of london, a light rain falling on my cheeks.  i could smell dinner when i arrived at martin’s house, a neat semi-detached with a front garden and a gate. 

 

welsh rarebit was on the menu. 

 

standing on the entrance stoop, i could smell the ribbons of scent curling around the cracks in the doorframe.  i shut my eyes, inhaled.   there was a time when i spent far more time among humans than i do now.  there was a time i imagined i was genuinely welcomed beneath their roofs. 

 

i know better now. 

 

i hesitated, gathered my wits, straightened my tie, and knocked. 

 

after a few minutes the door was opened by a young girl who appeared to me to be in her early teens who stared up at me with the kind of alarm usually reserved for monsters in movies.  i had no idea martin had children.  “good evening,” i said.  “is your father home?”

 

she nodded, eyes wide, chin trembling.  

 

“will you tell him dr. watson is here?  dr. john watson?  from the home office?”

 

she vanished down the hall, leaving me standing on the stoop, helpless to cross the threshold. 

 

“what the devil are you doing here?” hissed martin, after i’d been properly invited in and introduced and ushered into a side parlor his wife referred to as “the library.”  i looked around and didn’t see any books. 

 

“i have questions,” i replied. 

 

“then why didn’t you telephone the way you always do?”

 

“i didn’t go into the office today.  i have all i need at home.  except, of course, a telephone.”

 

martin took a deep breath and let it out.  “what is it?”

 

“i have questions and concerns –“

 

“damn it, john, need i point out to you that while you dither the situation is becoming even worse?  i mean, assuming you believe your own report, that is.”

 

that stung.  i recoiled, visibly.  “what are you suggesting?”

 

martin rolled his eyes and let out an exasperated sigh.  “isn’t it obvious?  on the one hand, you’re pushing panic buttons.  but on the other, when you’ve been told to pull all the stops, to do everything you possibly can to stop this…this threat from spreading…you…”  he paused, gathered himself up.  “you dither.”  he paused again, cocked his head as if considering what to say next.  “and that’s not like you, john.  at least, not the john i’ve known for – what’s it now?  forty years?”

 

“thirty nine next spring.”  i said this faintly.  not that anyone was counting. 

 

martin took another deep breath.  “i’m sorry, old man.  look, come and sit.  we’ll have brandy – tell me your concerns…i’ll do my best –“

 

unexpectedly the door flew open and a young man of about the same age as the girl, fourteen, skidded into the room.  “is it true,” he was in the midst of saying, “dr. watson’s here – the doctor watson –“

 

the words stopped in his throat when he saw me.  he straightened, his face drained of color. 

 

“leave us alone, julian,” said martin.  he crossed the room, took the boy by the shoulder, and twisted him around, forcing him out the door and shutting it at the same time.  then he twisted the lock. 

 

“there.   now – as to your questions?” 

 

 

x

“well, first of all,” i said, “i saw a gargoyle the other evening – not far from the serpentine, as i recall.  you might want to check into that.  but my most pressing questions are about lilith.  after i wake her, then what?  i don’t speak any of the languages i imagine she knows.  and what, exactly, am i expected to do with her?  escort her to the airport?  the harbor?  these skids, as you call them, to be greased – exactly how, and exactly with what, will they be greased? and when?”

 

“i think by the time you get home, old man, you’ll find that more than enough funds will have been added to your account,” replied martin.  he swirled the ice in his old-fashioned glass, and took a quick sip.  “and as for everything else – well, i suppose we were rather expecting that you would—well, handle all that.”

 

“handle all that?” i repeated, not sure i was hearing correctly.  “all that?  are you aware of what all that will entail?  i don’t just need a translator – i’m going to need clothing and lodging and guides – someone to take her wherever she says she wants to go–“

 

martin cleared his throat and took another sip of his whiskey.  “as i was saying, old man…we were expecting you’d be the one to take care of all the details.  and we were rather expecting that you’d be the one to escort her wherever – well, wherever she needs to go.”

 

and that’s when it occurred to me that martin, despite our long association, despite the files, despite all he was supposed to know about our kind, knew absolutely nothing at all.  “that’s not possible,” i said, as cold and flat as the soda in my glass.  “i haven’t been away from london in more than a hundred and fifty years…it’s simply…”

 

“high time you saw a bit of the world, then, old chap.  after all, who best to cope with all the particulars of all her …. appetites?”

 

“and what about my own… appetites, as you call them?”  i met his eyes and stared into them, bringing the force of centuries to bear.  for a species who only until recently achieved the biblical three-score and ten with any certainty, humans are always remarkably sure of themselves.  “don’t you understand how difficult it is to rip myself from the fabric of this place?  any more than you can rip yourself from the fabric of this time?”

 

i could see he was taken aback.  “surely…surely…but you have left – there was all that ripper business in the states -?”

 

“and that was very nearly my undoing.”  i shuddered to myself, remembering the voyage back to london, strapped, for my own safety into a leather trunk in the hold, helpless while conan doyle made free reign of my condition and created his monstrous chimera. 

 

“but it is possible for you to leave-?”

 

“for a short period.  a very short period.  no more than three-quarters of a moon cycle, from waxing to waning gibbous.  but even so…it is the most dangerous thing a vampire can do.”

 

“so you have… three weeks, more or less?”

 

“less,” i said.  “a week, on either side of the full moon.”  at least, that was as much time as i was willing to risk.  and the problem was that i had no idea where she – where we – should go.  i was assuming we’d begin in south america.  but what if the thing that hitler had become had managed to do the nearly certain?  leap across continents and oceans via that new and damnable invention, the internet?  what then were we supposed to do?  lilith was already unhinged – a monster in both time and space, in every sense of the term.  and i had absolutely no intention of becoming so. 

 

i recoiled at the very thought of the word.  unhinged.  it was truly the very worst fate, short of immolation, that could befall a vampire. 

 

 

xi

why, you’re wondering? (this is new to you, isn’t it, gentle reader? well, take it as evidence that much of the vampire nonsense you’ve been fed is complete claptrap, and we’ll move on with the story.)  

 

as i have alluded, the primary difference between my kind and yours, gentle reader, is that you humans are rooted in time.  you’re born in a particular year, and you die in hopefully distant one, but the length of your life, the time period of your life is circumscribed by, at most, perhaps a few more than a hundred years. 

 

but within that speck of time that belongs to you, you’re free to roam three dimensional space as far and as wide and as much as you please.   some of you become equally unhinged in your traveling – that’s when you get an edmund hilary or a roald amundsen or whatever lunatic soul led the first troupe of you out of sub-saharan africa.  but i digress. 

 

when a vampire becomes unhinged, uprooted from his own particular space, he – or she – becomes a dracula.  an ivan the terrible, or a catherine the great (oh, yes – believe me.)  or a lilith. 

 

in short, a vampire whose appetites are no longer bound by any sense of love or loyalty or kinship.  yes, of course we feed upon the energy of the place in which we’re born, and any and all that inhabit it, but pray tell me, gentle reader, which of you does not?

 

your kind feeds upon the entire planet. 

 

the scum we vampire eradicate are little less than the froth that forms on a rotting corpse. 

 

it would be impossible for us to keep up.  at any given time there’re hundreds of millions of you – if not billions, gnawing like termites, breeding like roaches. 

 

we vampire are at least judicious in who we make. 

 

and please spare me your fussiness about what happens…birth of every kind is messy.  including this one, as i can see as i scan back through my notes. 

 

i left martin’s house, shaken and with a deepening sense of dread.  i glanced up at the night sky.  the clouds, so low of late, had dissipated at some point during our conversation, and now a silver sickle of a moon hung high over big ben. 

 

without thinking, my footsteps led me to the abbey.  or at least what remained of it. 

 

it was little more than a crookedly-paved courtyard, a few ivy-covered arches, and a few moss-covered plaques. 

 

but the grate in the ground was exactly the same as the one in the fuzzy old photograph in its yellowing file.    

 

she’d been placed here by dracula himself, after those two mountebanks, conan doyle and bram stoker brought him here in a coffin shaped box partially filled with his native soil, an innovative, if ultimately ineffective solution.  vlad the impaler was the only one who’d managed to subdue her in anyway. 

 

but it cost eastern europe its wampyri, its soul, its unifying force, and the region slowly disintegrated into one of the world’s sewers that it’s become.  not that conan doyle or bram stoker gave a fig about that – and why should they? they knew in their bones they’d never be alive to answer for the consequences of their disastrous expeditions and explorations. 

 

no human ever is. 

 

and you wonder why we feel entitled to hunt you with such impunity. 

 

in virtual despair, i leaned against rough stone column, placed my cheek directly on the surface of the cold, damp rock.  and that’s when i saw it, a stone mason’s mark … chiseled in the stone … and under it , for all the world to see, so painfully carved, it might have been done by a child, wil m f. 

 

it stood for, i believed, the latin inscription “wil me fecit.”  will made me.  a common enough mark for the time the column was constructed, though not usually so cheekily, so visibly placed.  i had no idea who the antique will might be, but i imagine he earned himself a beating for so painstakingly leaving his mark. 

 

it was under this column i earned myself far more than a beating.  i stepped away from the column, staring all around in the dim, uncertain light.

 

how was it possible that the very place of my own making was the same place in which lilith had been bound?

 

i was aware the location was in the same district, of course.   but i had no idea of its modern address, which is how, of course, it was communicated to me by martin et al.  in the year of my making, however, london had a church on every street corner, or that’s how it seemed, especially on feast days or special occasions when they’d all ring their bells at once.  and this was no district i ever frequented, until seduced here by my vampire maker. 

 

at least that’s how i’ve always seen it. 

 

i stared at the stone mason’s mark as the memories overwhelmed me, of the wet and the hot and the coppery metallic smell as our tongues intertwined before his teeth tore into my willing throat, and i remembered how i thought, “oh, the irony, the irony, to be taken beneath this column, that will made, this column, while another will makes me.”

 

 

 

xii

i stayed there longer than i intended, thinking of my maker, thinking of lilith.  it’d been more than two hundred years since i’d seen him, a little over four hundred since my own making.  how was it possible that they’d happen to inter lilith in the very church my maker used to frequent? 

 

was such a monstrous coincidence possible? 

 

or could it possibly mean something more? 

 

it had never occurred to me that my own maker might’ve been involved in the damnable business. 

but i’d been in america, after that ripper business. 

 

who knew exactly what had happened, or who, exactly, had been there? 

 

nothing remained of the story.  not even bram stoker’s lurid and overblown tale contained a morsel of the truth, except the fact of dracula’s voyage to england.  was it possible my maker had had a hand in the business?  true, he was one of the oldest vampires in england, but he very seldom came to london, not since he’d buried himself in the warwickshire countryside almost 400 years ago. 

i paced the quiet streets, considering if i should seek him out.  i just wasn’t sure how a barbarian turned glover turned actor turned play-write turned whatever he was doing to occupy himself at the moment could help.  and if he had been involved with her capture, he’d be more of a hindrance, anyway, i ultimately concluded, with a pang of disappointment. 

 

i missed him, i realized.  once this damnable business was over – if it could be over - it was long past time for at least a visit. 

 

dawn was breaking over london when i finally returned home, to find mrs. hudson waiting in the library, a glass already poured, another crystal decanter filled with serum nearby on a silver salver. 

 

“you’ve been to see her, haven’t you?”

 

mrs. hudson spoke before i could reach for the light. 

 

“how did you know?”

 

“you brought something of her with you…like a bad smell.”  mrs. hudson’s skirts rustled as she moved in the graying light, her eyes the opalescent green of every vampire’s at dusk and dawn. 

 

was that a hint of resentment i detected in my faithful housekeeper’s voice?  i sighed.  we vampire are by nature territorial.   the idea of another vampire – another female vampire occupying what was to mrs. hudson’s mind her city – was naturally upsetting.   “i realize this is difficult for you, my dear.  but you do realize we have no choice, don’t you?”

 

mrs. hudson’s sigh was her only answer.  “will you eat?”

 

i took the goblet from her outstretched hand.  i drank the rich, sweet coppery serum down, and licked the glass inside for good measure, but while it satisfied my hunger, it didn’t satisfy my thirst.  “i want to hunt,” i said, as i handed the goblet back to her. 

 

her eyes flashed emerald.  “when?”

 

“tonight.  after two.  nothing good ever happens after two.”

 

she smiled at that, a phrase we’d come up right around the time of the ripper murders.  her teeth were white against her silvery skin, her lips taut across her canines.  “oh, john,” she answered with a husky laugh. “i thought you’d never ask.” 

 

she left me alone then, to make her own preparations.  

 

a hunt is always a messy affair, and my dear mrs. hudson is nothing if not fastidious.  i was going to need the added nourishment.  we were going to need the added nourishment.  if things got as bad as they potentially could become, i might have to call on mrs. hudson for help.  i might have to call on every vampire i knew. 

 

it was one thing to contemplate waking a ten thousand year old vampire from a coma like sleep.  it was another to contemplate spending days, if not weeks, in her company. 

 

hopefully she’d remember i’d had nothing to do with the sordid affair of her captivity– both mrs. hudson and i were fortunately on the other side of the atlantic, solving another set of serial murders. 

hopefully lilith would remember that. 

 

hopefully. 

 

it occurred to me then that it would probably be a wise precaution to wear some sort of protective gear.  kevlar, perhaps, something fireproof and bullet proof.  not that either of those were lilith’s primary weapons, or the ones she was ever most likely to use initially.  chain mail was effective, but heavy.  i made a notation on a notepad to give to martin. 

 

and speaking of stopping her from ripping my own throat out, she was going to need food. 

 

immediately.  and she was not likely to want to swill serum, no matter how much like blood it tasted. 

 

even though the united kingdom had stopped executions as a means of punishment, there had to be a low-life or two lurking in the solitary confinements as guests of the state undeniably guilty of something particularly heinous.  if he could be from her original country of origin – which was believed by most to be modern day ethiopia, that would be a plus, although some suggested lilith’s true origins were in india or possibly indonesia.  short of waking her up and asking her, there was no way to know.  i made a note.  perhaps we could provide her a selection. 

 

she would need more than one.  maybe even as many as one for each century she’d been asleep – that would bring it to six.   at least.

 

the records weren’t clear about the last time she’d fed.  so the reality was that it was quite possible i’d be dealing with a ten thousand year old vampire who quite possibly hadn’t fed – at least to her satiation point - in well over six hundred years. 

 

wonderful. 

 

 

xiii

i spent the remainder of the day in my study making notations, checking time-tables, and otherwise attempting to foresee as many details as possible before attempting to compose something coherent to send to martin et al.   as the daylight behind the blackout curtains began to fade, i painstaking pecked out a letter on my typewriting machine so that i could post it before mrs. hudson and i began our evening excursions.   

 

i took a long time with the letter, mulling over every phrase, every paragraph.  i was, after all, laying out the most logical and rational plan i could devise for what was indisputably the most irrational and illogical of objectives.  not to mention unbelievable. 

 

no one who ever read this would ever admit to having even seen it.  even to each other. 

 

and so there was no room for error.  i had one chance, and one chance only to get it right.  it was good practice, i told myself, as i once more read over my prose.  once i roused lilith and we took off hunting hitler, or whatever it could be determined he had become, i wasn’t going to get more than one chance to get that right, too. 

 

i was putting the final flourish on my signature when the study door opened and a woman i didn’t recognize stepped over the threshold.  “are you ready, john?” she asked, in mrs. hudson’s voice. 

 

i saw then that mrs. hudson had outdone herself in anticipation of the night’s activities.  no longer dressed as the victorian lady she preferred, or the 1950’s housewife she sometimes favored, mrs. hudson had managed to transform herself into what i can only describe as a modern day barbarian. 

 

her hair, normally a neat chignon at the nape of her neck, now rose in jagged spikes along the crest of her head.  a row of silver earrings lined one ear, metal studs glinted above one eye and a single ring poked through her lip.  she was wearing the ubiquitous denim uniform of this entire human generation, topped with a black leather jacket and finished with black leather boots.  shiny black leather boots.

 

“mrs. hudson,” i said faintly, shocked and undeniably alarmed.  “what have you done to yourself?”

 

she stretched her lips over her engorged canines in that hideous resemblance of a human smile.  it made me think twice about turning my back on her, that night or any other. 

 

“oh, come now, john,” she said, in exactly the way mrs. hudson would, “it’s been more than a hundred years since we allowed ourselves this kind of fun.” 

 

 

xiv

we dragged ourselves home as a red sun was rising over the rooftops of our quiet street.   a vampire in full blood-bloat is not a pretty sight, even to another vampire, and bears, to human eyes, at least, a closer resemblance to the character jabba the hutt than anything even remotely human. we crawled our way down the alley which ran between the rows of houses, seeking to avoid even the most casual notice by our neighbors.  

 

mrs. hudson bid me a barely coherent goodnight, before retiring to the bowels of the basement to digest, possibly for days.  i had not the luxury.   i waited only until enough of the day had faded, and i was able to bathe and change my clothes before venturing out into the streets once more. 

 

on the way to my office, i stopped at my bank.  it was there that based on the reaction of the tellers and other assistants i remembered how significantly fresh blood alters a vampire’s appearance.  i glanced down at my hands as i signed the required documents and noticed how plump and fresh my skin had become, how dewy the veins pulsing with nourishment. 

 

i feigned a need to stroke my face, and was rewarded by a beard with the suppleness of mink and the thickness of beaver.   i noticed the assistants glancing in my direction, whispering behind their hands.  it is in just this state that humans and vampires are most attracted to each other, and the one in which, an unhinged vampire poses the greatest threat to every living human around him.  or her. 

 

fortunately, i was not unhinged.  not yet.  i signed what was required, produced the ancient key, and followed the lovely young man down the hall toward the oldest of the bank’s vaults.  he pressed his hand against mine a bit harder than necessary when he shook it.  “your grandfather, dr. watson,” he stammered.  “such a fan – such a fan.”

 

“as am i, old boy,” i murmured back.  “as i am.” 

 

then i flashed my fangs at him and he took off down the corridor, his face ghastly white. 

 

i had no time for awe-struck mortals. 

 

the deposit box hadn’t been opened in more than three hundred years, not since the contents were relocated here, after the great fire of london in 1666.  i retrieved everything that was in it: map, amulets and keys.   and then i left, with a greater heaviness in my heart and a deeper foreboding in my soul than i had ever experienced in all the centuries since my death. 

 

i was half afraid of what i might find when i made my way into my office, but all was as i left it.  i checked the balances in my bank account, and just as martin said, the skids had indeed been greased.  with a heavy sigh, i began to gather the few things that i – we – would need.  after all, i could hardly plan to bring lilith here. 

 

of all places. 

 

i was sorting through my desk for a final time when martin knocked, then entered.  “i received your letter,” he said, without even the hint of a greeting.  “i’ll need a few days to pull everything together – have you decided, yet, exactly when?”

 

“it has to be as soon as the preparations are ready.  it’s the tenth of november.  if what i suspect is in fact true, we have barely seven weeks before the world goes dark.” 

 

martin shook his head.  “it all sounds so far-fetched, and yet…”

 

“and yet i read in today’s papers that even her majesty’s government is sounding less than confident about the – what are they calling it?  the “y2k conversion?” if that’s in the papers, someone has noticed something’s up.”

 

martin stared back at me blankly.  he wasn’t at liberty to tell me everything; i understood that and respected his boundaries to the extent i could.  “i’ll do what i can to speed things up.  and then when… when, exactly, do you plan to wake her?”

 

“ideally six days before the full moon.  which is in…four days.”

 

i thought i saw a shudder pass over martin’s face, and his mushroom-colored face seemed to pale by several shades.  i realized then what i suspected to be true – he’d been chosen to assist me, and that everything i’d requested for my own safety he required for his.  i thought of martin’s children, young julian and the girl, growing up without their father.  he died bravely, my dears, waking a demon.  i tried to imagine mrs. martin saying that, and failed.

 

but the only answer martin gave me was to tap on the door and say, as he left, “i’ll get right on that list of yours.”

 

 

xv

two days passed, while i struggled to formulate a strategy.  but the truth of it was that i had no idea exactly what to do to find hitler, or even to explain to lilith what, exactly, we might require of her.  “find” and “kill” seemed too basic even for a ten-thousand year old demon, but beyond that…my imagination ran into a blank wall. 

 

the problem was that while i understood what was at stake, i had no idea what to do about it.   i pondered and paced and pondered some more.  i even flirted with the idea of using up a precious day and taking a train down to warwickshire, to consult with my maker.  but even he, wise as he might be in the ways of how to contain lilith again once unleashed, was as unlikely to know what to do about hitler and the thing he’d become as i was. 

 

on the third day, late in the afternoon, the study opened unexpectedly, and a visibly disturbed mrs. hudson stepped over the threshold.  “i’m so sorry to disturb you, doctor,” she said, “but there’s a young man and a young lady at the door insisting they need to see you.  a very young man and a very young lady, as a matter of fact.”

 

“how very young?”  i frowned.

 

“children.”  mrs. hudson looked confused.  this was so far outside of anything that normally transpired she was clearly all out of sorts. 

 

“did they give their names?” i asked.

 

“emma and julian martin.”

 

“the devil you say.”  i simply couldn’t help myself.  i jumped to my feet, and, ignoring lilith, gestured to mrs. hudson to lead the way back down the corridor to the foyer. 

 

there, in the graying light of the fading afternoon, martin’s two children stood, looking for all the world like a modern day hansel and gretel on the doorstep of the witch.  they wore anoraks and backpacks, and it was clear to me they’d come directly from school.  i wondered where martin and his wife thought they were. 

 

“master julian,” i said, “miss martin.  to what do we owe the pleasure of your most unexpected company?”

 

if they’d announced an ability to make the lame walk and the blind see, i don’t believe i could’ve been more surprised.  the boy raised his chin and gestured to his sister.  “we know who you’re looking for, and we know where he is.”

 

 “the devil you say,” i said, for the second time in five minutes.  but i couldn’t help myself.  i’m not usually on the receiving end of information i believe to be impossible.  i cleared my throat and glanced at mrs. hudson.  “perhaps you’ll bring us some tea, mrs. hudson, while i listen to this – these most…most extraordinary claims.”

 

at that the boy nudged the girl.  “i told you he’d listen,” he said in a stage whisper. 

 

“of course, i’ll listen,” i replied.  “and then i’ll send you back to your father for a proper caning if this is a prank.”

 

“not at all, sir,” said the girl, speaking up for the first time.  her voice was clear and bell-like, it echoed in the dark and dusty corners of the house.  i gazed down at her guileless blue eyes, which swept over me and then settled on my face.  “you look different from when you came to the house.” 

 

“i was… quite under the weather the last time you saw me, miss martin.”  i paused.  i couldn’t remember the last time i had been in the company of young humans. 

 

“you looked like something dead,” said the boy. 

 

“julian,” hissed the girl. 

 

i choose to ignore them both.  “won’t you come this way?”  i said, heading toward the library.  i ushered them inside, bid them take a seat.  before i shut the door, i spoke to mrs. hudson.  “tea, my dear?  if you don’t mind?”   as she glided down the corridor toward the kitchen, i shut the door behind her.  “now, children.”  i smiled, hopefully in a friendly, not terrifying way.  “perhaps you’ll be so good as to share with me all you think you know.”

 

 

xvi

“you tell him, emma,” said the boy, julian.  “it was you that found him.”

 

“you were the one who figured out what the game was about.”

 

“i don’t understand.” i sat down.  “we’re talking about a game?”

 

“it’s not a real game,” answered julian. 

 

“you know,” i began, “what i truly don’t understand is why you’re not having this discussion with your father.”

 

at that they exchanged expressions truly guilty.  “we can’t tell him,” answered emma after a short silence.  “he doesn’t know we have the game.”

 

“it came in the post,” said julian. “it was damaged, and so although it was addressed to him, we took it.”

 

i raised my eyebrows.  “i think both of you had better begin at the very beginning.  somehow i think this is quite a long story.”  neither of them answered.  “isn’t it?”

 

finally emma shrugged.  “like julian said, the package was damaged.  it came in a plastic wrap – we could see through it, all the way into what was under the shredded packaging.”

 

“we could see it was a game,” said julian.  “a computer game.”

 

“so even though it was addressed to your father, you decided to appropriate it, because after all, what would your father want with a game?”

 

again the exchange of guilty glances, followed by equally guilty shrugs.  i wondered how martin had managed to instill such a sense of integrity and filial responsibility in his children but their next remarks made me rethink the whole idea. 

 

“we know he’s not what he says he is, that he doesn’t work for the ministry he says he does.” said julian.  “we’ve known for a long time our house is wired, the phones are tapped.”

 

“he doesn’t know we know,” said emma.  “at least, not yet.”

 

at that i crossed and uncrossed my legs.  i had no idea what martin may have told his children his occupation to be.  “what makes you so –“

 

“well, first of all, he knows absolutely nothing about any kind of farming.  horticulture, permaculture, aquaculture… nothing,” said julian, leaning forward.  “we figured that part out a long time ago.”

 

“but i’m the one who found the...extra lines and the other…equipment,” said emma.  “i was doing a science project in fourth form and happened to be home one holiday and started poking around in the cellar.  that’s when i found – everything.”

 

“and you neglected to tell your father?”

 

“no,” said julian. 

 

“we didn’t tell him,” put in emma.  “we tapped in.”