“Oh, shit. Sorry. I don’t know what I’m saying. Shock and all that. I mean, thank you for saving me. I should have said that first and then not said anything else.”
“You’re welcome. What’s your name?”
“Andrzej Kasprowicz.”
“Nice to meet you, Andrzej. Can you tell me anything about that last room back there?”
“That’s where they sleep.”
“How do they get in?”
“Oh, the scary one uses his thumbprint on the little pad thingie on the side.”
“Describe the scary one for me,” I say, thinking of an idea.
“He’s short and pale and ugly, but he dresses better than anyone else. Expensive shoes. Actually wears a waistcoat and keeps a gold pocket watch in there.”
“And none of the other vampires dress this way?”
“No—well, wait, his girlfriend does. Or wife or whatever she is. And some of the rest are hip but not like him. I think all his clothes are custom jobs. Bespoke, you know.”
“So you’ve been here for how long?”
“I honestly don’t know.” His mouth dropped open in horror and he shook his head in an attempt to clear it. “Time kind of muddles together when you never see the sun.”
“Fine. But in all that time, did you ever see any of the vampires pick their nose?”
“What? No. Why?”
“I’m just curious if vampires have boogers.”
“I…I don’t think so?”
“I bet they do, but they go to extraordinary measures to hide it.”
“Is this…real? Am I dreaming right now? This conversation doesn’t seem right.”
“Yeah, it’s the shock. Nobody would ever be interested in that, right? You just relax and recuperate and forget all about vampire boogers and we’ll get you out of here safely, don’t worry.” I pat his arm a couple of times for comfort and rejoin Flidais, running my plan by her. She agrees that it should work and starts tearing up the carpet in the anteroom. I leave and wind my way through the bloodstained mausoleum we swept through to get back to the entrance. The sanctum door doesn’t require a thumbprint to exit but rather operates on a simple push button. I walk around back to the security station and check the feed coming from that final, armored chamber. There are eight figures inside, all well dressed, but one of them has a telltale chain on a waistcoat leading to a pocket watch. That’s the one Andrzej described.
I flick the intercom switch and speak into the microphone. “Kacper? I have a message for you, sir.” The short, well-dressed man snarls and glares at the speaker mounted by the door.
“Who is this?”
“You wrote me a note. A rather unkind one. Sent your boy Bartosz down to my pub to get himself unbound.”
“The Druid bitch.”
“Ah, there’s the unkindness I was talking about. I’ve been perfectly reasonable and generous with you. Gave you a month to leave Poland and live in peace, and you not only refused to take the offer, you taunted and threatened me. Said none of your vampires would leave Poland. Well, they all have now, excepting the ones cowering in that room with you right now. I just unbound the lot of them, and you’re trapped. You’re next, in fact.”
“Come and get me, then!” he shouts. “Come in here and see what happens!”
“Oh, I will, Kacper. You’ve seen your last moonrise. Just wanted you to know, before I unbind you, that neither hell nor earth has fury like a Druid scorned. Because I am quite literally a force of nature, you know. You have precisely zero chance of survival. So make what peace you can with whatever gods you worshipped when you were alive, or just scream at the door. I don’t care. Your end, and the end of all the vampires in your company, has come tonight.”
I leave the intercom on and hear some inchoate screaming along with some choice curses as I employ the guard’s thumbprint to open the SANCTUM door again. I leave the security station and jog back through the warren to the anteroom, waving at Andrzej as I pass. Flidais had, in my absence, torn through the carpet and unbound the cement foundation to get to raw, native earth.
“How goes it?”
“She will be here momentarily.”
“Does she have a name?”
“I have never given her one. She seems content without it.”
“Oh.” I wonder what it would be like to have so little sense of self that one doesn’t care for a name. Perhaps she has one and simply hasn’t shared it with Flidais. But I will not interfere. Though it’s my idea, it’s Flidais’s contact.
A few minutes of silence pass and then a dark, roiling mass comes bubbling out of the hole in which Flidais stands. It’s a colony of dark furry whiskers made of iron. It undulates immediately for the armored door and, once it reaches it, slithers up the side, creates an eye slot in the middle of the door where there wasn’t one before, and pours through into the room. We can clearly hear exclamations of surprise and dismay and some angry shouted questions.
“What is that thing?”
“Kill it!”
“Where do I shoot? Gaah!”
Shots are fired and there’s more panic, but it doesn’t matter; it’s an iron elemental that Flidais has summoned, and she sent it into that room with the mission of eating up all the firearms and turning them into small, inert components of carbon and copper and anything that isn’t iron. And while the vampires are busy dealing with the elemental—or utterly failing to deal with it—Flidais and I place our eyes to the slot and establish line of sight. We confirm that these are all vampires by checking out their auras and seeing the gray surrounding them with dull red pinpoints over the heart and head. And then we unbind them, mercilessly, preying upon these predators that had feasted on the people of Krakow for hundreds of years. Kacper Glowa’s rebellion against the signatories of the Treaty of Rome ends in a messy splash of fluids, a ruined waistcoat, and a satiated iron elemental. I take some pictures of the gory aftermath to send to Leif Helgarson. He’ll spread around what happens to vampires who violate the treaty and hopefully that will deter others from thinking they can ignore it.
Flidais remains behind to thank the elemental and dismiss it while I fetch the taciturn blonde, who I think might be a thrall. I show her the carnage in the sanctum, prove that Kacper’s really gone, and she finally shows some emotion. She weeps.
“What am I supposed to do now?” she says through a sob.
“Be content with being human. Or become a thrall in some other country, because all the vampires in Poland are now wiped out.”
I lead her and Andrzej out to ground level and let them go. “Go see a doctor and don’t come back here,” I tell them. Then I give Leif a call.
“Yes?” His stiff, cultured voice always amuses me.
“Guess where our man was hiding? Underneath his house! The business is done. I’m going to send you some pictures to spread around, but you should come here to take his records and whatnot.”
“I should. I will be there shortly,” he says. “Thank you, Granuaile.”
I can’t leave fast enough; I don’t need to wait for him. I just head back down once more to liberate the signed copy of Chłopi and tell Flidais I’ll meet her in Taiwan the next day, after I go home to clean up and get some sleep. Then I head up the hill, shift out of Krakow, and arrive home to six more hounds than I was ready for.
It’s the mental chatter between the hounds that tells me what’s happened. Orlaith! You had your puppies! I say through our mental link.
<I did! You’re home now! I wished you were here.>
Oh, me too! I’m so sorry I missed it!
<It was legendary. Earnest said most wolfhounds only have two or three puppies, but I have six! Did you know that’s five plus one?>
Six perfect puppies! Oh, my goodness! May I come say hello? I promise not to touch them until you say it’s okay.
<Yes, we are in a corner of the living room. Oberon and Starbuck are keeping watch.>
Everybody’s helping—that’s great!
When I enter the cabin, there is much attention to be paid to the men. Oberon and Starbuck, and Earnest as well, are very excited to tell me what I already know, and they are all as proud of announcing it as if they’d somehow managed to give birth themselves.