Genevieve Undead Part 19

Pintaldi threw himself into a chair, and started binding his hand with a scarf.

'I recognized you from the portrait in the gallery, grandfather. You haven't changed that much in sixty years. Still the same Montoni.'

The merchant was confused. He knew he was not this Montoni, and yet, there was something 'The fortune, you say?'

Pintaldi nodded. 'It's vast, by now, the interest compounded since the time of Smarra's father. Unimaginably vast.'

D'Amato tried to imagine an unimaginably vast fortune. He tried to see it in coins. A pile of moneybags the size and shape of a city, or a mountain.

'And, grandfather, I still have my half of the map. It's tattooed on the backs of my children. With your half, the pirate's treasure shall be ours! And d.a.m.n these silly stories about the Black Cygnet's curse!'

Treasure! D'Amato's p.r.i.c.k hardened. Treasure! He looked at the paper from his valise, casually cast aside, and back at Pintaldi. Alert now, he listened. But he didn't mention the half-map he'd found.

'They're plotting all the time. Flaminea, Ravaglioli, Schedoni, all of them. Plotting to cut us out. Vathek is with us, but Valdemar isn't. I can win Christabel round. She likes a handsome face. But Genevieve is a witch. We'll have to kill her.'

He was beginning to follow. 'A witch, yes. A witch.'

'Ambrosio is the real problem. Your brother. Zschokke knows you were exchanged in infancy, and that he is really Montoni and you Ambrosio. But that can be dealt with. You were Montoni when you ran off, when you fathered my father with that bandit queen, when you slew the wood elf who could have given testimony against us.'

Montoni remembered. He had only been using the name of d'Amato as a disguise. He had forgotten, but returning home had brought it all back. The fortune was rightfully his. The treasure was rightfully his. Schedoni and Flaminea were usurpers. Not a coin would go to them.

'Pintaldi, my beloved grandson,' he said, embracing the youth. 'Our cause will prevail.'

Pintaldi cringed, binding his hand tighter.

'We must kill Genevieve. And Ambrosio.'

'Yes,' he said. 'Indeed we must.'

'Tonight.'

'Yes, tonight.'

XX.

The s.p.a.ce was barely two feet high. They were pressed against the floor, and tangled together, their limbs sticking out the wrong way. The ceiling was still coming down.

Kloszowski couldn't take this seriously. It was such a stupid way to die.

'Antonia,' he said, 'I should tell you that I'm a notorious revolutionist, condemned to death throughout the Old World. I'm Prince Kloszowski.'

Her face, near his, smiled feebly.

'I don't care,' she said.

They tried to kiss, but his knee got in the way. Eighteen inches. This was worse than the corpse-cart. The floor was wet. Water was leaking in from somewhere.

He thought of all the things he could have had if he hadn't devoted his life to the cause of the revolution. The approval of the dowager princess, a fine house, quality clothes, a large estate, a pretty wife and wonderful children, accommodating mistresses, an easy life 'If we ever get out of this,' he said, 'I'd like to ask you to'

There was an inrush of air, and the ceiling was withdrawn, hurtling upwards. The wall slid into a slot onto the floor, and there was a clear pa.s.sage ahead.

'Yes?'

Kloszowski couldn't finish his sentence.

'Yes?' said Antonia, her eyes heavy with happy tears.

'I'd like to ask you to to'

The pretty girl's lower lip trembled.

'to get me a couple of complimentary tickets next time you dance. I'm sure you're a wonderful performer.'

Antonia swallowed her evident disappointment, and smiled with her mouth, shrugging her shoulders. She hugged him.

'Yes,' she said, 'sure. Come on, let's get out of these tunnels before anything more happens.'

XXI.

Ravaglioli's stomach felt empty, as if he hadn't eaten for months.

He struggled out of the thick material in which he had been wrapped, and straightened up. Ulric, but his stomach hurt!

He was laid out on a stone table in one of the vaults. He tried to remember what had happened. There had been something in his gruel. He had swallowed something. It was Flaminea, he was sure. She was the poisoner. Pintaldi would have used fire, Christabel her hands.

He staggered across the flagstones, and collapsed against the doorslab. He would have to use all his strength to push it out of the way. Then, he'd find Flaminea and have his revenge.

His wife hated insects, and Ravaglioli knew where he could find a nest of young lashworms. He would take their eggs and force them down her throat, letting them hatch inside her, and eat their way out. That would pay her back.

He pushed against the stone, straining hard. He thought of revenge.

XXII.

In the great hall, lying on a hog-length platter, she found Schedoni. He had a skewer in his chest, but he was still alive and bleeding.

The blood excited Genevieve. Something in her stirred.

Lightning struck, and shadows darted across the hall. She saw Zschokke standing by the window, blood on his hands. He had been drinking, and was a stupefied statue. One of the maids was with him. It was Tanja, naked and oiled, on all fours like an animal. She wasn't fully human, staring eyes where her nipples should be, and a tiny, scaled tail poking from her b.u.t.tocks.

Schedoni was breathing irregularly, his blood spreading in a puddle around him.

Genevieve ran across the room, to the table. Tanja hissed, but Zschokke held her back.

Was Schedoni her grandfather, or her great-grandfather? She couldn't remember.

The old man's shirt was torn open, and the skewer rose and fell with each gasp of his ribcage. Genevieve's mouth was full of blood. Her eyeteeth slid out of sheaths. An ancient instinct took over. She pulled the skewer and threw it away, then fixed her mouth to Schedoni's wound. She sucked, and the old man's blood was pumped into her.

Her mind cleared, and she swallowed.

These people were nothing to her. She was a visitor, like Aleksandr and d'Amato and the girl. They had made her play her part, but it wasn't her. She wasn't Genevieve Udolpho. She was Genevieve Dieudonne. She wasn't sixteen, she was six hundred and sixty-nine. She wasn't even human. She was a vampire.

Genevieve drank, and became stronger.

Rough hands took her by the back of the neck, and pulled her off Schedoni. Her teeth came out of the wound, and blood bubbled free from her mouth.

Zschokke threw her across the room. She landed like a cat, and rolled upright.

The steward roared through his ravaged throat, and Tanja leaped at her.

She made a fist, and punched the animal girl's face. Tanja bounced away, nose pushed in.

It had been a subtle trap, she remembered. She'd been running, and that was part of it. She had wanted to change her life, and that had been her weakness. She could no longer live with Detlef, no longer be domesticated in Altdorf. Travelling to Tilea, she had been caught in a storm, and been forced to take refuge in the House of Udolpho. Then, she had been sucked into their game Zschokke had a pike, taken down from the wall. Twenty feet long, it looked manageable in his hands. He prodded at her. Its tip was silver. She stepped back. He was trying for her heart.

Schedoni was sitting up now, wound scabbing over. That was part of the spell. Now she was out of its influence, and she suspected it wouldn't work for her. A thrust of silver and wood through her heart, and she'd be as dead as anyone.

Zschokke came for her.

XXIII.

In his bed, Old Melmoth smiled, weak muscles pulling at his much-lined skin. As a boy, he had loved to read melodramas, to see them on the stage. As a young man, he had been the foremost collector of sensational literature in the Old World. Now, on his deathbed, thanks to the magic spells his pirate forefather had brought back from the Spice Islands, he was at the centre of the greatest melodrama the world had ever seen. He pulled the strings, and his puppets schemed, murdered, loved and prowled Vathek sat by his bedside with his head in his lap, another draft of the will laid out on the clothes. Dr. Valdemar, pulling himself around by his hands, was in the corner, preparing the next infusion.

Outside, it was a dark and stormy night

XXIV.

They came out through a door in the fireplace of the grand hall. There was a fight going on. Genevieve, her eyes red and her teeth sharp, was backing around the long table, and Zschokke, the steward, was after her with a pike.

'Do something,' Antonia suggested.

Kloszowski didn't know. He wasn't sure whether Genevieve stood between him and the fortune of Udolpho or not. Maybe her death would take him one step nearer to the mastery of this pile, to the fulfilment of his destiny.

He stepped into the room.

'I am Montoni,' he announced. 'Come back from the sea to claim my birthright!'

Everyone paused, and looked at him.

He stood tall, determined to show through his bearing that he was indeed the rightful heir. His years of wandering were forgotten. Now, he was home, and prepared to fight for what was his 'No,' said another voice, 'I am Montoni, come to claim my birthright.'

It was d'Amato, dressed up as a ridiculous comic bandit, with sashes and a c.u.mmerbund, and a sword he could hardly lift.

'Are you crazed?' asked Antonia. 'First you're a revolutionist, now you're the missing heir.'

'It just came to me. I must have had amnesia. But now I remember. I am the true Montoni.'

D'Amato was affronted, and waved his sword. 'You'll never cheat me out of my inheritance, swine. Out of my treasure! It's mine, you understand, mine. All the coins, the mountains of coins. Mine, mine, mine!'

The merchant was a pathetic madman.

D'Amato's sword wobbled in the air. Kloszowski had no weapon.

'Mine, you hear, all mine!'

Antonia handed him a three foot long poker with a forked end. He remembered how d'Amato had abused his beloved. Antonia was a gypsy princess, sold in infancy to the vile Water Wizard, and mistreated daily. Kloszowski held up the poker, and d'Amato's sword clanged against it.

'Fight it, you fools,' Genevieve shouted. 'It's not real. It's Old Melmoth's spell.'

The merchant slashed wildly, and Kloszowski barely avoided taking a cut. He got a double-handed grip on the poker, and brought it down heavily on d'Amato's head, knocking him against a heavy chair.