The Vile, the Violent and the Vein

'This is absolutely intolerable,' ranted Ewers. 'We were to be met at the station. A car was to be provided for us. This delay was not to happen.'

Poe dumped his carpet-bag on the platform as gloomy soldiers clumped around him. It was just past sunset. His red thirst was roused, an exquisite torture.

'Stakes will be hoist,' Ewers vowed. 'Guts will be spitted for this!'

Small irritations were disproportionately infuriating to Hanns Heinz Ewers. As his sense of self-importance was sorely exaggerated, so was his wrath when others refused to credit him with the inflated position to which he laid claim. Were he a subscriber to the theories of Sigmund Freud, Poe would be forced to conclude that Ewers's phallus was remarkably tiny.

Actually, he felt the Viennese Jew said much of interest. Also, he deserved his place in history. Franz Joseph has been on the point of acceding to a petition underwritten by the House of Rothschild and rescinding the Edict of Graz when Freud published The Oral-Sadistic Impulse. With its especial relevance to the undead, the book was evidence that the Hebrew race was so morally degraded, not to mention dangerously supportive of subversive notions, that the Edict should not only remain in force but be considerably strengthened.

'There should be no place for inefficiency in the German soul,' Ewers continued. 'It should be burned out with blood and iron.'

The station was Peronne, near Cappy. They were in France, only a few miles from the lines. This was the Somme. In Berlin, Poe had heard the bombardment as a tiny echo. The audibility grew as the train neared the war. Even Ewers heard it well before the French border. The noise wore on Poe's thin nerves; if he stayed too long near the front, he might go mad.

'Do they expect me to walk?'

In Ewers's tirade, 'us* had been replaced by 'me'. It was no feat of ratiocination to deduce that Ewers felt his was the important mission at Chateau du Malinbois, and Edgar Poe merely the hanger-on. If Ewers were such a magnificent wielder of the mighty pen, why had not he been engaged to create this marvellous book?

Ewers had two heavy trunks to Poe's one travelling bag and was unused to arriving at a station without exciting a swarm of gaudy-uniformed porters eager to serve his purpose to the death. Peronne was given over entirely to the military. Any Frenchmen normally employed as attendants were either dead or a few miles off, pointing rifles at the German lines.

Having borne its latest cargo of grey-clad bodies to the altar of war, the locomotive breathed angry dragon-steam. The huge, black engine had a smokestack to shame a paddle-steamer. The crest of Dracula was picked out in gilt on the boiler, somewhat obscured by mud and soot.

The Graf's first appointment in the Kaiser's service was as Director of Imperial Railways. Deviation from the timetable by more than five minutes was punishable by three strokes across the back with the flat of a heated sword. If a miscreant engineer committed a second offence, he was thrown alive into his own furnace. The Graf s foresight became evident in the first hours of the war: eleven thousand individual trains were diverted from civilian service to convey several million reservists from their homes to regimental depots and then to the front. The Schlieffen Plan, devised under the Graf s patronage, was less a campaign strategy in the nineteenth-century sense than a colossal railway timetable.

'Hoy,' Ewers shouted, 'my luggage.'

Vast wheels ground as the train readied to move on. Ewers ran up and down, coat-tails flapping in scalding steam. Brass-bound trunks were tossed out of a carriage on to the platform. Good German workmanship showed as the sturdy cases buckled but did not break. Ewers shouted threats at the departing train, promising numbers and names had been noted down and that steps would be taken to ensure swift dismissal and punitive treatment.

There was a bad smell in the air. Poe recognised it from his last war. The war for Southern Independence. The one they had lost. He had never really purged the taste from his spittle. Mud, gunpowder, human waste, fire and blood. There were new ingredients, petrol and cordite, but the underlying stench was the same on the Somme as at Antietam. For a moment, he was overcome. Death crowded in on his brain, a black flag wrapped around his head, suffocating, blinding, choking.

'What arc you standing there for?' Ewers snapped. 'You look like a scarecrow. *

Ewers did not feel anything. That said much about him.

'Pah,' Ewers spat, waving a dismissive arm.

Poe calmed. He must feed, soon. As always when at the lip of exhaustion and starvation, his senses were more acute. To feel too much is to be mad.

It was little wonder no car waited for them. Beyond the shuttered ticket office and a shelled-out waiting room was military chaos. Soldiers arriving at or returning to the front were sorted into divisions and found places on carts and lorries that took them to where the fighting was done. Sergeants shouted, with the universal bark of sergeants all through history. Men jumped, rifles and kit tangled.

Ewers reluctantly abandoned his trunks into the care of a fire-eyed little corporal with a dash of moustache and a stiff-armed salute. Poe saw in the man the makings of a martinet. They went out on to the station forecourt.

The wall of the ticket office was bullet-pocked at chest height. Rough wooden caskets were stacked to the height of a telegraph pole. An open coffin by the pile was filled to the depth of an inch with undisturbed snow, as if awaiting an Eskimo vampire who slept on a layer of his native ice. Peronne had been extensively bombarded several times and few buildings were undisturbed.

Windows were blown out, roofs sundered, doors burned through, chimneys toppled.

'You there,' Ewers shouted at a sergeant, 'which way to the Chateau du Malinbois?'

The sergeant, a burly and moustachioed warmfellow, cringed at the sound of the name and shook his head, muttering darkly.

'You don't want to go to the castle, sir,' he said.

'Quite the contrary. We do the business of the Kaiser.'

Ewers was exasperated but Poe was struck by the sergeant's evident fear and disgust. Malinbois was obviously a house of unhappy and frightful repute.

'The castle is a bad place,' the sergeant explained. 'Dead things live there. Things that should be walled up and forgotten.'

Ewers snarled, showing fangs. The soldier was not troubled by the vampire display. So, worse things waited at the chateau. Poe's interest was almost excited. The sergeant tottered off, leaving Ewers exhaling steam like a train.

'Superstitious peasant,' Ewers spat.

Poe's fangs ached and his heart burned. He needed to drink. Ewers promised luxuries at Malinbois but this fabled castle seemed ever more remote. Official posters warned against fraternisation and disease. It was forbidden to drink the blood of French civilians. It might just as well be forbidden to breathe French air.

A child stood under a street-lamp watching the soldiers, a girl of eleven or twelve. Dressed in a clean pinafore, she had very white skin. In the fall of light, she shone. She was warm. Poe heard her heart beat, heard every rustle of her clothes. Through the fug of war, he tasted the sweetness of her breath.

She looked at him with old eyes. For an instant, she was Virginia. They all looked like Virginia, no matter the colour of their eyes or the style of their hair. There was always a touch of Virginia. He was drawn to the child, pulled across the cratered street, There was already an understanding between them.

'Herr Poe,' Ewers called, distant and irritated.

Reaching the light, he hesitated. The girl's face glowed with life. He was not sure he could touch her without being burned.!

Caution fought his impulses. She was not Virginia. This was a practised French flirt. She was here for someone like him. He saw scabs on her throat, healed bite-marks spreading like a rash from just under her tiny ear down to her collar. She smiled. Her teeth were not good.

Ewers, who had caught up with Poe, voiced exasperation, but did not get between them. He recognised Poe's need.

'If you must,' Ewers said. 'But be quick about it. We are expected at the chateau.'

Poe imagined Ewers was in another country. His voice was faint, the girl's heartbeat loud. With practised ease, she took his hand and tugged him past the light, towards an alley.

'This is what the posters warn against,' Ewers complained.

Ewers could not spoil the moment. There was already a perfect love. Poe could not close his mouth over his incisors. He cooed, trying to soothe the child. She was not disturbed by his fierce expression.

'Hurry up, Poe. Bite the whore and be done with it.'

Poe waved his hand to silence Ewers and was drawn into the dark, pulled down to his knees. He felt cobbles through his thin trousers. Rinds of hard ice lodged between the stones. The girl slipped into his arms and kissed him gently on the cheek and lips. Her taste was fire. Overpowered, he forced her head back and clamped his mouth to her pulsing neck. Old wounds opened as his teeth slid through her skin. Sweet blood seeped into his mouth, covering his tongue.

He drank, greedily, impassioned. The child writhed in his embrace. As he drank, he knew her. Her name was Gilberte, but her family called her Gigi. He saw her father shot, her mother run off. He saw her in other embraces, suckling other vampires. Her short life was beautiful tragedy. Her blood was poetry.

'Careful, you'll kill the little beast,' Ewers said, hands on Poe's shoulder, wrenching him away.

With a great effort, Poe left the flowing wound. The child's blood warmed and delighted him still, but he was overcome with regret and shame. His face was wet with tears.

'There'll be hell if she dies,' Ewers said.

Poe looked into the girl's face. It was a blank but he tasted her hate, her contempt. Gigi was cold in his arms, not dead but her mind flown for the moment, hidden deep inside as her body suffered this unpleasant transaction.

'Damn,' Ewers breathed. 'Poe, this is all your fault.'

Ewers was in the grip of sudden bloodlust. Poe had forgotten that the German was a vampire too. His eyes flushed red, his face roughened. Blunt fangs grew out of his unsmiling face.

'The least you can do is watch the alley,' Ewers ordered.

Gigi was not even afraid. It was only by force of will, compounded by Ewers's nagging, that Poe had resisted draining the child completely. He was not sure Ewers could exert as much self-control. His own past was not innocent of unwilled tragedies. With time, all vampires become killers. With more time, Poe feared, all vampires come to delight in killing.

Ewers fell on the shrinking child, ripping the collar from her bloody neck. He was a savage, brutally forcing her to yield what Poe had coaxed from her.

The German drank from the feebly struggling girl. His whole weight was on her. His back heaved. Two buttons above his coat-tails caught stray light, flashing like blind eyes. Poe imagined himself driving a length of sharpened wood into Ewers's back, piercing his dead heart.

This girl, tonight, would survive. Poe would see to that. But other girls, other nights, would not.

As he glutted himself, Ewers made noises like a pig. His face was bloodied. The red was black in the dark. Gigi was in a merciful swoon, great gashes in her neck and chest still leaking.

He took Ewers's arms and tried to lift him away. Ewers spasmed and was insensate in Poe's grip. He was easily rolled off Gigi. Poe ignored him and saw to the child. Her heartbeat was faint but strong. She would recover. He cradled the girl, not wanting to drink further. Their link faded, memories passing from his mind, but he wished to treasure her a few moments more. Only in these brief moments could he be calm in himself, at peace.

Cold doubts nibbled around the edges of his momentary contentment. Ewers, wiping his face, stood. He rearranged his clothes huffily, with pointed little gestures. He was angry, but smug.

'You are just like me, Poe. In us, desire runs strong. It is why we create.'

The child moaned, swimming from the pool of sleep towards the surface of consciousness.

*We are not alike at all,' Poe said, coldly.

Ewers brushed the thought aside and summoned concentration. He was unsteady. Gigi's blood was rich. Poe too felt added senses, a dangerous exhilaration coupled with awareness of the yawning abyss below. Scarlet sparks danced in the corners of his vision.

'We are expected at the chateau,' Ewers insisted. 'We must commandeer transport.'

Poe laid down the girl. She curled up like a cat. He rearranged her collar. Ewers had torn off too many buttons. Poe could not refasten her chemise and pinafore but made sure she was decently covered.

'Ewers, we have an obligation. To the child.'

Exasperated, Ewers fished in his waistcoat. He tossed a coin to the cobbles. Poe scooped it up and slipped it into the girl's hand. In half-sleep, she made a fist about the treasure.

They left Gigi and returned to the station. A car stood outside, driver at the wheel, officer standing by. When the officer saw Poe and Ewers, he snapped off a straight-backed salute.

'I am Oberst Theo von Kretschmar-Schuldorff. I have looked forwards immensely to meeting the great writer, Mr Edgar Allan Poe.'

The officer spoke in clear English. He was a sharp new-born.

'Well, this is him,' Ewers said, in German.

Poe shook the officer's hand. Kretschmar-Schuldorff's eyes swivelled sideways tinily, taking in the condition of the new arrivals. Poe had wiped himself with a handkerchief but Ewers's clothes and face were spotted with drying blood. The officer had formed an opinion but would do his duty and keep it to himself.

Ewers stormed off to reclaim his trunks from the martinet-in-the-making. Poe was helped into the car by Kretschmar-Schuldorff. The Oberst treated him with the deference due a very old lady whose dreadful smell must never be mentioned.

What Poe had taken from Gigi was gone completely. His red thirst was abated but fearful realities returned. The noise of shelling and the stench of death were again paramount.

'I no longer use my stepfather's name,' Poe told the officer. '1 am simply Edgar Poe.'

Kretschmar-Schuldorff took mental note. Names and ranks were as important as uniforms and decorations to his class. He was a Uhlan, attached to the Air Service. Many gallant cavalrymen traded steeds for wings in this war.

Ewers returned with his serf, each dragging a trunk. The corporal's black olive eyes were alive with resentment.

'We thought ourselves abandoned,' Ewers said, brusquely. 'What kept you?'

Oberst von Kretschmar-Schuldorff did not shrug, but his eyes narrowed minutely. Hanns Heinz Ewers was not making a comrade of this man.

The war,' he said, explaining everything.

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