The Nosferatu Scroll

62

Marco hadn’t finished with her. Despite his bleak statement to her that she would be dead – dying screaming in agony – within hours, there was still the final section of the text to be translated. And Angela knew she had no option but to comply.

Tears clouding her eyes, she again bent forward over the photocopied pages.

After describing in graphic detail the appalling ceremony designed to turn a human being into a vampire, and which would, almost incidentally, necessitate the rape and murder of not one but two young women, the author of the work had concluded by describing how an initiate would know if the process had been successful.

This section of the text was perhaps the least detailed of the entire corpus of work. The author admitted that there was no definitive proof, but suggested that an increasing dislike of consuming the meat of animals, of the beasts of the fields, and an aversion to daylight, were positive indicators. And if the initiate eventually found that he could only be sustained by the flesh of the recently dead, then it was certain that he would live for ever.

And now she even knew the name of the lapsed monk, as Marco had described him, and where he’d lived, because the very last section of the Latin text contained a single sentence that identified him, clearly written by the member of the society who’d copied down the words of the author. The translation read: Inscribed by my hand this fourteenth day of the month of August in the year eleven hundred and twenty-six, from the sacred words of our most sacred and illustrious Master, the noble and revered Father Amadeus of Gyor, Transdanubia.

Angela had actually heard of Gyor – it was one of the counties of what became known in the eighteenth century as the Districtus Trans-Danubianus, that part of Hungary which lay to the south and west of the River Danube. It was one of the twelve counties of Transdanubia whose boundaries had been established by Stephen I of Hungary, and which remained unchanged until 1920.

But if ever a monk – lapsed or otherwise – had been misnamed, it was Amadeus of Gyor. His name meant ‘lover of God’, and what Angela had read had convinced her that she’d rarely read anything more evil, more contrary to the essential goodness preached by most religions and especially by Christianity, than the treatise in front of her.

She shuddered slightly, and handed the page to Marco, who retreated to his chair, where he read slowly through the rest of what she had transcribed.

‘So what happens now?’ Angela asked nervously.

Marco smiled coldly at her. ‘The good news,’ he said, ‘is that you get to keep all your fingers. But you already know the bad news. You’ll take part – in fact, you’ll have a starring role – in the ceremony tonight.’

The slight smile left his face, and he nodded at her, his eyes travelling up and down her body appreciatively.

‘It would have been helpful if you’d had your passport in your handbag,’ he continued. ‘But even so, we’ve managed to initiate some enquiries in Britain, and on the Internet, into your family history, and as far as we can tell there’s no evidence that your bloodline – any of your ancestors, I mean – have ever been linked to one of the noble families of the immortals. So you’re an ideal candidate for the ceremony. You’re here on the island, and we need to dispose of you anyway, simply because you’ve seen our faces and you know too much about us. And, to look on the bright side, having you here means we don’t have to snatch another girl off the streets of Venice. So your death will actually save the life of a stranger.’

Angela felt a chill of pure terror sweep over her. She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again. Nothing she could say would make the slightest difference to her fate. She had fallen in with a group of people for whom the sanctity of human life meant absolutely nothing, and who would kill her without the faintest flicker of remorse or regret. The only thing that would concern them was whether or not her death could assist them in their pointless and horrendous activities.

Tears filled her eyes, and she dropped her head into her hands. That something like this could happen to her – to anyone – in a civilized country like Italy, in the twenty-first century, was simply appalling. She wondered where Chris was, whether he was even still alive, or if he was now lying on a slab in some mortuary in Venice. It had been a disaster and it was all her fault, she thought bitterly and inconsequentially. The holiday to Italy had been her idea. Everything had been her idea, even the visit to the Isola di San Michele, which had started everything.

‘Let’s go,’ Marco said. The door of the drawing-room now stood open and two burly figures were waiting in the hall outside.

‘Where to?’ Angela managed, her voice barely audible.

‘We have a convenient cellar. It’s where we hold our ceremonies, in fact. And until tonight you’ll have a bit of company, because the other girl is already waiting down there. But there’s no point in you trying to get friendly with her,’ he added. ‘You’ll both be dead before midnight.’

Angela snapped. She grabbed one of the pencils – the only thing she could see that even slightly resembled a weapon – and swung it as hard and as fast as she could towards Marco’s face, aiming for his eyes.

But it was as if he’d been expecting it, and he effortlessly blocked the blow with his left arm, simultaneously swinging his right hand towards her, catching her a stinging blow with his hand against her cheek.

‘You’ve got some spirit, I’ll give you that,’ he said. ‘It’s a shame you have to die tonight. If we’d had you here a little longer we could have had some fun with you. Taught you a little humility, perhaps. Take her away.’