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slump to the floor amid stained bedding. Sniffing fastidiously, he could
easily sense the flavor and the scent of Vlad upon her. Even the two small
puncture wounds his brother had left upon her shapely neck were still
unhealed.
He tasted her in that very spot, and then, in slow succession, at several
other places on her now fully exposed body. Experimenting, to discover how
quickly he could locate the nerve centers that afforded the most exquisite
pain. This gave her remaining blood a delicate flavor, which could be
thoroughly appreciated only by the true gourmet.
To complete his enjoyment of the young peasant girl he decided to allow
himself an hour or so longer, and during that time he put aside all problems,
giving
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himself over entirely to the experience. Regretfully he concluded that he
could not spare more time than that.
Casting the still-shuddering body aside for the last time, he stretched
luxuriously, put on his clothes again, and let his mind go wandering. He had
quite forgotten about Marguerite before her last thread of life quietly
parted.
Radu, startled out a reverie by a slight noise behind him, out in the kitchen,
jumped to his feet with a pang of fear, nerves twanging like plucked catgut,
then jumped again, spinning around in his tracks.
Only a mouse. Yes, only a mouse, this time.
He stood there shivering and angry, suddenly a terrified vampire. For a moment
he was convinced that
Vlad had lured and trapped him here
&
He even feared for his life, though he knew Vlad was not going to kill him.
For
Radu the true death was always almost always a terrifying prospect.
Radu, unlike his elder brother, was not immune to fear. Far from it.
That was one reason why he hated his brother so intensely.
Reason returned, and soothed him. Yes, someday he could not escape the
thought
someday he would turn around and Vlad would be standing there, staring at him.
And there would follow another century or two of punishment, of mental and
physical torture that only one Dracula could devise for another&
Yes, someday. But just now Vlad was nowhere in sight. Gradually his pulse
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returned to normal.
Radu supposed it likely that he was never going to hear the full story of how
his brother had been speared in his earth and almost done to death.
Rather it was now up to Radu to be on guard against Vlad's inevitable
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counterattack.
Traveling most of the way on two wings, part of the way on four legs (all his
own), making faster time than on his outward journey, he was soon back in
Paris. Once there, he set someone to finding out more about the owners of the
chateau.
Shortly after Radu returned to Paris, one of his people reported to him with
great excitement a rumor racing through the vampire world that Vlad was dead;
but the younger brother was far too canny to trust to the truth of any such
tale without substantial proof.
He said: "It will take very persuasive evidence indeed to convince me that he
is truly dead. Never mind that for the moment. I want to know all there to
is discover about an American named Philip Radcliffe and a young Frenchwoman,
Melanie Remain."
Radu the Handsome considered it prudent to invent yet another new identity for
himself, to use when he chose to walk among breathers as one of them. He
changed his residence as well, moving to humbler quarters though he still
remained within the city.
And now, for the first time in several years, he seriously considered
abandoning
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France, even Europe, altogether. He pictured himself fleeing, to America, or
the
South Seas, some land in the remotest corner of the earth. Vlad would not kill
him; no, Radu felt confident of that when he thought about it calmly. But Vlad
was quite capable of inflicting truly terrible punishments, indeed was
ingenious at devising them. The thought of another century of nightmares was
enough to make Radu feel faint. Yet he never considered abandoning his schemes
against
Vlad; it was as if he really had no choice.
Then Radu heard, through one of his revolutionary contacts, that Philip
Radcliffe, an American who was supposedly of an aristocratic family, heir to
the very manor in which Vlad had taken shelter, had been arrested at the
orders of the Committee of Public Safety.
Radcliffe was being held in prison, and had already gone through a form of
trial on charges of being an aristocrat there seemed no doubt of that, given
his mother's family. He was also charged with plotting, a vague but generally
effective accusation.
Radu's informant shook her head and muttered: "They say that he is Franklin's
bastard son, but I doubt that will be enough to save him."
Radu continued to find out all he could about the condemned suspect Radcliffe.
* * *
Knowing Vlad as well as he did, Radu was not slow to assume that Vlad
considered himself bound in honor to save Radcliffe.
The younger brother thought: "Surely I can turn that to my advantage somehow."
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The more the younger vampire thought about this news, the more it seemed to
open a great opportunity. Now the scheming younger brother determined to lure
Vlad into a trap, force him to fail in something he had sworn to do, and
possibly engineer his death. He knew how his elder brother driveled on and on
about what he conceived of as his honor.
The first step was to make sure that young Radcliffe was indeed sentenced to
death, despite any connection that might be shown to exist between the young
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man and Benjamin Franklin, and/or Tom Paine.
For his activities as far back as the 10th of August of 1792, and at a number
of other times and places, Radu in one of his identities as a breathing
Frenchman had even attained some minor status as a Revolutionary hero and
leader. The hero had not been heard of for some time, and was now thought to
be dead.
That was fine with Radu. Of course no vampire wanted to be subject to the
intense scrutiny of a breathing public. More than very moderate success, in
any breathers' enterprise, could draw a dangerous amount of attention to
oneself, and awaken jealousy in potential rivals. Better to play the role of
an almost-
anonymous but recognizable and trustworthy sans-culotte
. With that goal in mind, he had arranged to be signed up by Robespierre as a
spy and special agent, reporting only to the Incorruptible himself.
Today Robespierre, cool as always, seeming impressively above most of the
concerns of lesser men, was striking a pose of symbolic significance at one
end of the green, cloth-covered table of the Revolutionary Tribunal, looming
over everyone else including the judges, who were sitting.
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