Covenant With the Vampire Read Free Page A

Stefan’s, dark as coal - is streaked now with silver at temples and crown, and
her face is lined and gaunt. I knew grief had taken its toll upon her, and was
stricken with guilt that she had had to bear it alone.
    I rushed to her at once, crossing the very spot where Stefan's ghost had appeared
not seconds before. She managed to limp down a step before I caught and embraced
her on the stone stairs. Her attempt at cheerfulness crumbled entirely then,
and we sobbed openly in each other's arms.
    "Kasha," she repeated. "Oh, Kasha…" The sound of her pet name for me tugged
at my heart. (It was our private joke;
kasha
is a type of gruel I keenly
despised and was routinely served for breakfast by our old Russian cook. As
a boy, I had devised all manner of ingenious methods for disposing of it and
fooling Cook into thinking I had eaten it.) Zsuzsanna seemed so light in my
arms, so frail, so bloodless, that in the midst of my grief for Father, I felt
concern for her. Ever since she came into the world with twisted spine and leg
and frail constitution, she has never been strong.
    "When, Zsuzsa?" I asked, in our native tongue, without even realising that
I was no longer speaking English - as if I had never left for London, had never
forgotten for the past four years that I was Tsepesh.
    "This evening. Just after sunset," she replied, and I remembered the dream
I had had in the coach. "At noon he lapsed into unconsciousness and never woke.
But before he did, he dictated this for you…" Dabbing at her tears with her
handkerchief, she handed me a folded letter, which I slipped inside my waistcoat.
    At that moment, the Saint Bernard trotted up the stairs to stand beside his
mistress, and I involuntarily recoiled.
    Zsuzsanna understood, of course; she had been seven when the incident with
Shepherd occurred. "Do not be afraid," she reassured me, leaning down to stroke
the beast. "Brutus is purebred and very gentle." (Brutus! Has she any inkling
of the implications of that name?) She straightened and moved haltingly down
the steps towards Mary, who had been waiting at a short distance to allow us
our privacy, and said in English, "But I am being rude. Here is my beloved sister-in-law,
whom I have never seen. Welcome." Her accent seems quite thick to me now, after
years in London; I could see it took Mary slightly aback,, for she was accustomed
to reading Zsuzsanna's precise, poetic prose, and clearly assumed her spoken
English would be as perfect as her written.
    Despite my wife's awkward condition, she moved with far more ease and grace
on the stairs, and hurried towards my sister so that she would not have to struggle
far. Mary kissed her and said, "Your beautiful letters have already endeared
you to me; I feel we have been close friends for years. How glad I am to meet
you at last, and how sad of the circumstance!"
    Zsuzsanna took her hand and led us into the house, out of the chill night air.
In the main drawing room, weeping and sighing, she told us of the course of
Father's illness and his final days. We conversed for at least an hour, and
then Zsuzsanna insisted on showing us to our room - my old room - as Mary was clearly
exhausted. I saw to it that she was situated, then left with Zsuzsanna to go
see Father.
    She led me out the east end of the manor across the grassy knoll to the family
chapel - or rather, to what had been the chapel, for Father had been an outspoken
agnostic who raised his children to be skeptical of the claims of the Church.
Even before we opened the heavy wooden door, I could hear wafting out into the
cool night air the sweet, wavering voices of women singing the
Bocete,
the traditional songs of mourning:
    Father, dear, arise, arise Dry your weeping family's eyes! Waken, waken,
from your trance, Say a word, cast a glance…
    Inside, the trappings of Christianity - the icons, statuary, and crosses - had
long ago been removed from the