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He was inside a walled court that was open to the stars. The castle rose above him, looking, he thought, more homey than foreboding, a rather comfortable, solid structure. There were flowers in the courtyard, and a tree.

  He moved cautiously forward, entering a small room that appeared to be a chapel. A basin of holy water stood by the wall, and he dipped his hand in it, flicking the water against the wall, wondering for the hundredth time why some of his kind found the substance–no different from regular water, as far as he could tell–to be so deadly.

  There were sounds coming from above. The Nazis were in the castle.

  The Rat felt suddenly uneasy, as if the presence of the Nazis, somehow, had disturbed the castle, was slowly awaking something old and rather unpleasant.

  Nonsense.

  He followed the source of the noise.

  "We must find the crypt," a voice said sharply in the dark. It was the officer.

  "We will, Herr Mengale," a second voice answered, a hint of amusement in its tone. "We will."

  Mengale. That was Mengale, the butcher of Auschwitz. The name echoed in the Rat's ears. He felt blood thirst consuming him, a burning flame of anger and hate that threatened to take control of him.

  He stilled with an effort, breathing slowly.

  "Search the castle, look for hidden pathways. Be extremely cautious. He must still be alive!" His voice shook in sudden passion. "And he killed one of you, as if Moritz was nothing but a chicken to be plucked." The staccato beat of his riding crop increased. They must think it was Tepeswho killed their boy in Brasov! The thought made him grin, and his tongue ran alongside his teeth, like a soldier checking his weapons.

  The Rat climbed cautiously up to the second floor, catching sight of the German in the distance, standing by a suit of armour. "We must find him." Mengale's eyes had an unnatural glow in the dark. "Find him, and bring him over to the Reich."

  "Do you hear that, Dracul?" he suddenly shouted. "I could make you the prince of this little land again!"

  There was no answer, yet the hairs on the Rat's arms stood suddenly, the second time in so many minutes. So this was what the Nazis were about. He should have guessed. Hitler must have found the old Impaler practically inspiring.

  Idiots.

  He slid alongside the walls, giving the German a wide berth. Only two soldiers were in the room with him, and they were occupied. He entered another chapel, a room made up in old-fashioned, gothic architecture. More holy water.

  This place, in a way, had quite high security. He wondered why.

  "Herr Mengale!" The sudden shout echoed, distorted, against the cold stone walls. "We've found a hidden staircase."

  The beat of boots against flagstones sounded rapidly. He followed at a distance. The soldiers, he saw, had hacked away at the wall, exposing a large passage lined with stairs heading upward.

  Mengale's riding crop made rapid rhythms against his boots.

  "See what's up there," he said.

  Two of the soldiers hurried into the passageway. The Rat retreated to his original position and used the stairs.

  Everything was going according to plan.

  He climbed up to the second floor. No sign of the soldiers. Third.

  Fourth.

  He paused.

  As battles went, the Rat later had to admit to himself, this one was something of a farce.

  A room.A darkness that was more than the absence of light. He stepped cautiously, sliding along the wall, his every sense alert.

  And was blinded by the sudden glare of an electric lamp, the powerful projector catching him like a stag in the glare of a jeep.

  Trapped.

  Three shadows, cornering him.

  Blurred.

  Werewolves.

  He lashed out, met no resistance, overbalanced. Blind, he was helpless. He didn't dare to change his shape.

  Not in the presence of three big fucking dogs.

  Still, he made to run.

  It could have worked. A quick dive through the window and he'd be flying down the cliff, away from the castle. It would have hurt, but he would have survived.

  It didn't happen.

  He felt a sharp jab in his back, and the world went black.

  It was some time later.

  "Tell me about...Dracula," Dr. Mengale said patiently.

  His voice was surprisingly pleasant, yet it was offset disconcertingly by the staccato sound of his riding crop tapping against the dark leather riding boots he wore.

  The Rat grinned through bloodied lips. The Nazis had strapped him into a metal chair that felt cold and strangely slimy against his skin. They had bound him meticulously. Wires, in which iron was woven with fine strands of silver and gold, held his legs and his arms. And through the wires, like a whisper of death, came the faintest touch of raw electricity. It was, for now, only a tingle in his flesh, but the implications were obvious.

  "Dracula?" Dr. Mengale prompted. The riding crop taps went just a fraction faster.

  The Rat mentally shrugged.

  "Well," he said. He adopted the didactic voice the one-before-last Allies Recon officer had often used. In guttural German it sounded strange. "It is essentially a love story, taking its cue from both the travel novel and, to an extent, the English pornographic tradition that starts with Fanny Hill..."

  FLASH.

  The Rat had known pain. Pain, after all, was a part of life, and in a life, or at least an undeath as long as his,--metaphysics wasn't really his field–there was pain in plenitude. The Rat screamed as the current shot through his bloodied body, his figure metamorphosing wildly in the agony as his mind lost control, became subsumed by the all-encompassing pain. The wires, like living, serpentine things, shrunk and expanded along with his changing body, keeping him bound.

  Then it was gone, as if someone simply pressed a button labelled pain.

  Which, he realised when his mind came back to his body, was exactly what happened. It was what he had found most scary about Mengale, he suddenly understood. Every other person would have threatened him with exposure to the sun, with holy symbols, religious iconography, even–as Tepes was fond of doing to his enemies–impaling him through the rear, a particularly unpleasant method that would have kept even a mortal man alive for several hours, and the rat undoubtedly longer. But those methods were not for Mengale. For him, the process had to be clinical and precise, a measured, scientific way of inflicting the most amount of pain with the least amount of mess and fuss.

  The Rat coughed and let blood dribble through his exposed fangs onto his shirt. As much as he wanted to, he wouldn't risk spitting at the Doctor. It was too soon after the pain, and he needed the blood.

  "I concede your point," Mengale said affably. The riding crop was again doling out measured beats. "Dracula is a literary construction. Well done." He smiled and, in the entry to the tent, the two Wolfkommando smiled as well, exposing large, sharp teeth that glinted dull in the electric light.

  "Tell me about Tepes." Mengale's voice changed when he said the name. "Did he... turn you?"

  It was eagerness, the Rat realised. Mengale was fascinated with Tepes, fascinated with the Rat. And he knew, with a cold, hard certainty, that he had to escape, escape quickly, or he would become yet another subject for Mengale's dissections, his research.

  "No," he said at last. Mengale waited. "Vlad Tepes was just a man. Honourable, as far it went, a good Christian. He was no Pricolici."

  FLASH.

  "You lie." Mengale's voice came faint through the torrents of pain racking his body. "Where is Tepes?"

  "Dead," the Rat whispered. He coughed, more blood, dirty blood, seeping into his lap. "Dead."

  FLASH.

  "Where is Tepes?" Dr. Mengale's voice was even. "Where is Herr Dracul?"

  The questioning went long into the night. At times, the Rat was lucky enough to lose consciousness. But it was never for long.

  Sunlight burned against his retinas.

  The Rat groaned, tasting crusted blood on his lip
s. His skin was burning.

  He tried to move, found himself unable. He was lying on bare earth, by the feel of it, his hands and legs tied by thick ropes.

  The heat was unbearable.

  He turned his head to the side and opened his eyes cautiously, ignoring the sudden pain that shot through his brain.

  Sunrise.

  Over MountBucegi the sun was rising, dawn breaking over the Arges valley.

  He was going to die.

  It was the cruellest way to kill a vampire. The stake, the silver bullet, the potent religious symbols (it was said truly old vampires feared the swastika most of all, the powerful old symbol corrupted by the Nazis. Of course, he thought, nowadays everyone, vampire or not, feared the swastika--with reason), all these were relatively quick means, means of fear and urgency. This, though...Mengale chose well. It was as if the Impaler had found himself a spiritual heir in this one, another man who knew how to attenuate pain, to stretch out the agony of his victims, making death seem like a blissful release when at last it came.

  He tried, desperately, to shapeshift, trying to shrink to the minute figure of a rat. It was no use. He coughed blood and felt his skin begin to blister.

  It would be a long, painful death. But then, the Rat thought, it was the way all Jews died, nowadays. Compared to Mengale's test subjects in Auschwitz, his death would be brief, merciful.

  He howled in pain and with a sudden anger that threatened to overwhelm him, coursing through his body like fire, like a keg of powder threatening to explode.

  The Rat screamed hate to the skies.

  In the bowels of Bran Castle Dr. Mengale nodded at the sound, as if acknowledging that an experiment result was satisfying. The Wolfkommando digging through the earth in the dank room around him smiled, showing white, elongated teeth.

  And in the membrane of the castle, in the old earth and the brittle bones of stone, in the deep shadows and pure, undiluted dark, something stirred, as if disturbed from slumber.

  And in the shadows of the forest the partisans heard, and at last, wary and afraid, they came to his aid.

  There was nothing, the Rat later thought--lying buried in the damp ground, surrounded by darkness and silence, recuperating--nothing to bind that group of desperate old men to him. They had no reason to feel love or kinship for him, the strigoi, yet they congregated around him, through webs of hate or desperation or shame, and at last they came to him. Those who couldn't save the lives of their loved ones saved his.

  He was burning when they reached him, the flames setting the ropes alight, still screaming defiance at the skies. They covered him in thick, heavy cloths, dampening his fire, and cut his bonds, and silenced his shrieks.

  There were some men amongst them who knew about those things. They carried him deep into the forest and buried him in a shallow grave, where the trees were thickest and let no sunlight through.

  And waited for him.

  Immortally wounded, the Rat slept in the Earth. The partisans raided the farms nearby, procuring chickens and pigs, and lay traps in the forest for hares. When the Rat rose, at last, they fed him, dribbling the blood into his gaping mouth, each drop like a precious burgundy-coloured stone falling into a chasm.

  The Rat awoke, and he wasn't alone.

  All through his journey through the castle, through his torture, pinned up in the killing sun, buried in the earth, he could feel it. Ancient, angry, not human - not strigoi, either.

  Something had awakened at Castle Bran.

  Tirgoviste, July 1944

  There were rumours of impending change. It was there in the hushed conversations of stall-holders in the market square, and in the eyes of the street children. It was there in the faint, coded radio transmissions from underground cells all across Europe. It was everywhere.

  The Red Army was coming. The tide of war was turning.

  But for the partisans, hope was something that had died long ago, burned away with their families in far away Auschwitz.

  High above the old church, the Rat crouched like a gargoyle, blanketed in darkness. Watching.

  The Butcher of Auschwitz had not yet left Romania. Radio messages insisted he was back in Poland, back at his experiments, back to supervising the ovens. But the Rat knew differently. The Nazis were still there, still searching, in a manner he could only think of as desperate, for the elusive Tepes. The Dracul.

  And they had come, finally, to Tirgoviste, the Impaler's ancient capital, for one last attempt to enlist the help of the Führer's imagined hero.

  The Rat waited.

  Below, Tirgoviste's ancient market square was abandoned. A half-moon, large and misshaped, shone high on the horizon, casting the square in a pale, unearthly light. On the old flagstones, nothing moved.

  He waited.

  Presently there was the sound of engines in the distance, growing louder. Narrow beams of light materialised as the sound intensified, moving frantically as a row of jeeps–and the now familiar truck–entered the square in formation.

  The Rat grinned, tasting the wind with his tongue, running it alongside his elongated fangs. Dogs. They had a special stench. He was looking forward to meeting them again.

  The Wolfkommando moved out of the jeeps and spread out, guns at the ready. Times were changing, and danger was more palpable now, more conceivable than when they first set out into what had been–still was, officially - friendly territory.

  Mengale stepped out of the truck. Behind him came the struggling figure of a young girl, clasped roughly by the arm and dragged along. The Rat's eyes narrowed, but he didn't move.

  She was young, he estimated, no more than fifteen. She had the stark, dark beauty of a Cigani, a gypsy, and he felt the anger rising in him again, like a tide breaking against rock. It was a miracle there were any gypsies left, any that were not incinerated in the ovens along with the Jews.

  Mengale marched her forward, towards the church. The only sound in the square was that of his boots echoing distortedly, not corresponding entirely to his steps. The girl's bare feet made no sound on the flagstones.

  She looked frightened.

  The Rat felt the hairs on his arms stand on end. It was that same feeling, that same presence he dimly felt at Bran, the one felt in his makeshift grave. Was it Tepes? he wondered. There was a lot in Transylvania that remained hidden, even from him.

  Perhaps.

  Mengale stopped in front of the church. His eyes roved over the building, then seemed to hover, almost stare directly at the point where the Rat was crouched. A smile played on his lips.

  "Impaler," Mengale said loudly into the air.

  He extracted a long, surgical blade from his jacket. Seeing this, the girl tried to wrench her arm away in panic. He hit her, a backhanded slap that sent her reeling on the flagstones.

  "I will make you this sacrifice, in the name of the Führer." He extended his arm in the air, displaying a freshly-laundered armband with a swastika on it. "Heil Dracul!" he shouted.

  On cue, the Wolfkommando all turned as one to face the church. "Heil Dracul!" they cried, extending their arms in a Nazi salute.

  The girl began to cry in loud, gasping sobs that seemed to suck in all the air around her.

  The feeling, the presence, that the Rat was feeling intensified. He shifted his gaze, scanning the rooftops, noting the position of his men. They were going to take out the Nazis, no matter what happened.

  Mengale's hand came whipping down towards the girl, the blade glinting in the moonlight.

  It only took a moment.

  The blade cut across her neck, severing her cries, sending blood spouting on to the ancient flagstones. The girl's body collapsed, crashing softly to the ground.

  She lay in a pool of blood and Mengale waited, wiping the blade thoroughly on a handkerchief before returning it to his coat pocket.

  The handkerchief he dropped, as if in distaste, on top of the body.

  In the sudden tension–the feeling of the presence was now overwhelming for the Rat–a wi
nd rose at the entrance to the church. Dust ebbed and flowed in complex patterns that floated and merged, forming eyes, mouths, liquid faces that changed and ran into each other.

  The wind formed mouths, some crooked, some bloodied, and spoke through them. It spoke in many voices: in old dialects of Romanian, of Magyar, of Mongol and German. The sound was like a shockwave, sending Mengale reeling, disturbing the corpse so that it rolled, pathetically, on its side.

  Even the Wolfkommando were affected, crouching low against the bellows of sound and wind, their faces changing, teeth lengthening, rough hair growing uncontrollably.

  "Ordög!" The sound broke windows, threw carts in the air, intensifying. "Pokol!"

  From above, the Rat watched, trying to resist the power of the wind. It was trying to force him to change, to mould himself into animal form. To revert to savagery, as it was doing to the Nazis below. His mind fought against the change, watching the metamorphosing faces, conjuring identities for them from the deepest recesses of his mind. There were Boyars there, noblemen and petty kings, princes and bloodied rulers. He saw Tepes' face there, merging into that of a Knight Templar, then into an unfamiliar face with Asiatic features.

  They were all there, these ancient men who each fought for Transylvania and for Wallachia, these elder kings who were roused at last from their slumber.

  "Ordög!" the voices screamed. "Pokol!"

  The Rat gritted his teeth. Devil, the dead kings were shouting, and Hell. It was as if they had finally encountered a kind of evil they couldn't understand, a precise and tidy kind, one that didn't gloat over its mutilated victims, but rather sat down to note the fact in volume after volume of leather-bound ledgers.

  Fighting the wind, the Rat signalled to his men.

  The volley of ancient bullets flew like drunken mosquitoes through the turbulent air, ripping bloodied gashes in the animal hides of the Wolfkommando. The Germans roared, howling anger and pain at the skies, at the partisans and the ghosts of the kings, and their howl was a thing of menace and fear intermingled. It was a tragedy, the Rat thought, that the Nazis had managed to subdue even these wild and feral creatures, and mould them in their own image. They smelled of a corruption that penetrated all the way to the soul.