NOTE: I wrote this for a anthology of stories based on the 1970s Marvel monster comics. The project fell through and I now have the rights back to my story, which pits Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster against Nazi golems in 1970s New York City. You’re welcome.
Golems of New York
Starring
Dracula and Frankenstein’s Monster
By James Palmer
New York City, Night
It was close to midnight, and dark, but the man who had once been known as Count Dracula could see as well as if it had been early afternoon. His dark eyes carefully took in the scene. A building. Stark, white, impossibly tall to his standards. A long platform Moira had called a loading dock, and a large transport truck idling in front of it. Three large brutes were busy loading heavy-looking boxes onto it, while three smaller men oversaw the operation, one of them with a clipboard in his hands, the orange glow of a cigarette dangling from his mouth. Vlad Dracul could hear the blood coursing through their veins, could smell their evil intentions. It was marvelous.
The three brutes in their employ were a different matter. Dracula couldn’t read them at all. He knew what that meant. They were golems, like the clay fiends they had fought in Prague.
Beside him, crouched in the bushes as much as his more than seven foot frame would allow, was a being of a very different sort, with less pleasant smells. For flowing through his veins was something other than life-giving blood. His wrists were marred by scar tissue, and his face was dotted by the yellow of old bruises. He had sad, deep set eyes, one blue, one brown, and thin, cadaver-colored lips.
Next to the giant was a woman Dracula hated almost as much as he admired and feared her. She was Moira Harker, last descendant of Jonathan and Mina Harker and member of the Order of Van Helsing. She was tall and lithe, with high, angular cheekbones. Her jet hair was close cropped to fall just above her shoulders. Dracula found her look severe, yet nonetheless beautiful. Her smoldering dark eyes reminded him so much of Mina. She wore a black leather trench coat, black top and slacks, and black, steel-toed boots, suitable for the occasion. “This is it,” she whispered. “Get ready. On my mark.”
Dracula—he had taken to calling himself Alex Lucard these days—steeled himself, his vampiric senses sharpened to a keen edge. It was midnight, and he was at the peak of his powers. He would never be more stronger than he was right at this moment, and he was about to let loose. It would feel good. It had been so long, since that night in Prague.
“OK,” said Moira Harker, their employer, their savior, his jailer. “Now!”
She was gone in a flash, bounding down the dark hill toward the wan light of the loading dock and the idling truck. The vampire watched as she leaped downward off the steep hill, landing on the cab of the truck before bounding up and over it onto the trailer. The men turned at the sound, but it was too late.
Moira Harker came down atop the man holding the clipboard first, knocking his cigarette from his mouth. She punched him once, twice, across the face. He did not get up. Her sword was in her hand as one of the golems dropped his heavy burden and came loping toward her.
The sword—a katana—flashed in the light of the loading dock, and the golem fell to the ground in four smaller, still quivering pieces, its clay hands still trying to reach for her pale throat.
Dracula moved then, grinning as he pushed off down the hill at a speed impossible for any human, arriving scant seconds later, grabbing one of the men by the throat and slamming him against the side of the trailer.
The man’s partner lashed out with a crow bar, striking Dracula in the right arm, but he might as well have struck a steel post for all the damage he inflicted. Dracula turned to the crow bar man and grinned, showing him a mouthful of sharp fangs.
The other two brutes had entered the fray then, the closest one driving a powerful clay fist into the vampire’s stomach, causing him to release his prey. Dracula stepped back, more amazed at the fiend’s strength than injured by it. Were he still among the living, he knew he would have suffered multiple broken ribs and other injuries from the assault. Dracula smiled up at the clay brute, whose own brown face betrayed no emotion.
Before the golem could attack again, the giant appeared. Dracula called him that because he had no name, not really. The giant, for his part, didn’t seem to object, even though he had started calling himself Henry Clerval for some reason. Clerval pummeled the thing of clay with blows at least as powerful as the one it had delivered to Dracula, his fists pumping like pile drivers, pounding dents in the golem’s clay body. Then Henry reached up and grabbed both sides of the golem’s squarish head, rubbing his thumb slowly along the strange mark carved there. The golem fell to the ground in an earthy heap, a pile of damp, lifeless clay once more.
The third golem wrapped its powerful arms around Henry, lifting him off the ground. Dracula hissed, rushing around behind the clay figure and reaching up to rake his suddenly long fingernails across the clay fiend’s forehead, reducing him to a lifeless lump of dirt. The supernatural construct fell apart as it splattered heavily onto the pavement.
“Thank you,” said Hank.
“We are not finished yet, my enormous friend,” Dracula said as he turned toward the remaining men, who had stepped back along the loading dock, weapons drawn.
Moira was already making short work of one of them, delivering a devastating roundhouse kick to his face. He fell senseless to the pavement.
Dracula interposed himself between the men and Henry and Moira as the remaining thug opened fire, the bullets bouncing harmlessly off his undead frame, though they were damaging his brand new Versace, which irritated the vampire to no end.
Dracula reached out and grabbed the hot pistol, bending the barrel as if it were made of rubber. Then he opened his mouth and hissed at the man, showing his fangs. The man screamed in terror.
Dracula grabbed him, pulled him in close. He could hear the man’s jugular pounding with blood. His stomach rumbled. It had been so long since he’d hunted. He opened his mouth wide and leaned in for a bite.
“No,” Moira said. “We need him.”
Dracula scowled. He was hungry. This man deserved it; Dracula could all but taste the sin in his veins. “Fine,” he said.
The man glared at Moira, hate and contempt in his eyes. “You will learn nothing from me,” he said in a thick German accent. “For the Reich!”
Dracula watched as the man bit down on something hard. The vampire heard something break in the back of his mouth, which quickly filled with foaming spittle. The man quivered and fell to the pavement.
“Just like in Prague,” said the vampire.
Henry checked the other two men. They had recovered from their injuries enough to do the same thing their associate had just done.
“Cyanide,” said the giant grimly.
“The Last Reich has instilled the utmost loyalty in its members,” said Moira.
The Last Reich. Dracula had been hearing that name since Moira had awoken him from his century-long slumber. The name had been meaningless at first. It had taken the Count a lot of catchup reading to learn the bizarre implications of such a group, none of them good. The Last Reich was a small splinter group that had survived after World War II and had devoted itself to acquiring and using various occult artifacts in an attempt to succeed where Hitler had failed. They had come to Moira’s attention when they broke into one of her company’s bio labs and stole a small sample of Dracula’s own dried blood, which they hoped to use to create an army of vampires. As the last surviving member of the Order of Van Helsing, a famed group of monster hunters, she took it upon herself to find and stop the Reich. But to do so, she needed some help. So she violated her sacred oath by releasing Dracula to join her in the chase. That chase had lead them to Henry, and to Prague, where the Last Reich was making an army of golems, mindless clay brutes of immense power.
Moira consulted the clipboard of the first man she bested. “According to this shipping manifest, these medical supplies are bound for something called Lawson Labs, but there’s no address.”
Dracula sliced open one of the boxes with a long fingernail. It was full of smaller boxes labeled gauze. Another box was full of syringes. “Seems innocuous enough,” he said.
“Nothing is innocuous where the Reich is concerned,” said Moira. “Whatever they’re up to now, it can’t be good.”
“Perhaps they have perfected their vampire serum,” Henry suggested.
Moira and the vampire exchanged cold looks. “We need to find out where this lab of theirs is located,” she said.
“What is our next move?” asked Henry.
Moira looked up at him. “In the morning, I’m going to pay my managing director here a surprise visit.”
***
The creature who called himself Henry Clerval was still uncomfortable among crowds, and New York City was to date the most crowded place he had ever been, even at this time of night. As the nondescript black van pulled up in front of a glittering glass and metal building on Fifth Avenue, he felt very self-conscious as he tugged on the sliding door and climbed out. He tugged at his shirt collar as a couple walked by in evening finery, staring up at him as they passed.
Dracula stared up at him as he too alighted from the van, bemused. “Problem, old friend?”
“I still feel like I am being stared at,” said the giant quietly.
Moira stepped around them, heaving an exasperated sigh. “Look” she said, pointing to a newspaper rack sitting on the corner and stuffed to capacity with that morning’s New York Times. She inserted some coins into the slot, opened it, and yanked out a paper. She held it up to Henry, who took it slowly in his large, pale hands.
Dracula caught a glimpse of the headline. He had become quite adept at reading English since his awakening. The headline read:
MYSTERIOUS “MOON CHOPPER” TERRORIZES NYC GANGS
“See?” said Moira, annoyance in her voice. “They have a werewolf who rides a motorcycle. You’ll blend in just fine.” With that she turned and strode up the steps of the building.
“And you were worried about fitting in,” Dracula added, dryly, following after her.
The giant scowled at him, folded the paper under his right arm, and followed the vampire and vampire hunter into the building.
As the three of them entered the penthouse apartment Moira had set up for them, Dracula was struck by just how right Moira was. Henry did get a few stares wherever they went, but that was all. The world had moved on. No one cared. One hundred years ago, Dracula’s name alone was enough to strike fear into the heart of anyone who heard it. Now, that name was little more than a myth, and dismissed just as easily. One hundred years ago, America had not been a thing Dracula had overly concerned himself with. It was a mindless backwater, filled with people like that silly cowboy Quincey Morris, who had helped Van Helsing hunt him. Now America was what was known as a superpower, a world leader in both economic and military might. Now kids dressed like Dracula for Halloween, a bizarre, Americanized pagan ritual that the vampire found both amusing and terrifying in its implications. Principle among them being: No one was scared of him anymore. He and the monster made from dead body parts had been pushed to the sidelines by a werewolf who rides a motorcycle.
Moira removed her sword from her back as she walked toward the rear of the apartment. It was a large, lavish affair. Gold shag carpeting covered the entirety of the terraced, sunken living room. To Dracula’s right was a golden kitchenette. This would only be their second night here, and already the vampire was starting to think of it as home.
“I need to feed,” he said.
“There’s fresh blood in the fridge,” said Moira as she headed for her room.
Dracula scowled. “That’s not what I meant,” he whispered, and went to the fridge. He opened it, pulled out a clear plastic IV bag labeled A Negative and ripped off one end. He made a repulsive face as he drank it. The blood was cold. He needed it warm. He missed the hot sensation it made on his fangs when he first pierced a young neck. This was stale, the life force of the person who gave it no longer evident within it. Nonetheless he drained the bag, and his demonic hunger pangs ceased. He listened as Moira closed her door and turned the many locks that kept her safe inside. The door was also affixed with a large silver cross, but there was also some kind of invisible ward or geas protecting the portal, for the one time Dracula approached it he felt sick and had a taste in his mouth like burnt metal.
Dracula looked about the place, sneering at the large bronze emblem of the Order of Van Helsing affixed over the door. He still marveled at the fact that the crazy old man could develop such a rabid following.
Henry looked down at him. “You look perplexed.”
The vampire shrugged. “Just wondering what to do with myself. She won’t let me hunt. There’s wards on the doors and windows, and you two are down for the night.”
“There’s always TV,” said the giant as he loped off to his own room. “Good night.”
“Good morning,” the vampire corrected, and stepped down into the bottom of the living room area and flicked on the television. A strange, cacophonous device, Dracula was amazed at the television’s importance in everyday existence. As the picture tube warmed up, a familiar image appeared. It was a program he had watched several times and was secretly starting to enjoy. Soul Train. Dracula admired the program’s deep-voiced, charismatic host, and the simple act of watching these people dance gave the vampire an oddly voyeuristic sensation. He also reasoned that learning the peculiar rhythmic gyrations of these people would help him blend in when he finally got the opportunity to hunt. He watched until the horizon blazed with the approach of the morning sun, then went to bed, which was in a small, windowless room tucked between those occupied by Moira and the giant.
***
Morning
Moira Harker put on her best suit and icy stare and entered Harker Industries’ American headquarters at nine forty-five the next morning, her heels clacking loudly on the marble floor. It took the front desk receptionist several seconds before she recognized Mina from the picture hanging on the wall behind her. “I want to speak to the managing director,” she said in an even tone that told the receptionist on no uncertain terms that she was in no mood to play games or worry about protocol. When your name was on the building outside, you got whatever you want.
“Y-yes,” said the woman. “R-right away, ma’am.”
The receptionist picked up the phone and pressed a button. After being passed through a short series of intermediaries the receptionist finally said, “Yes, sir. I understand that, sir. But it’s her. Miss Harker, sir.”
She hung up the phone. “Mr. Bennett will see you now. Go up the elevator to the fifteenth floor. He’ll be waiting for you.”
“Thank you,” said Moira haughtily as she headed for the elevator bank. The receptionist stared after her, no doubt wondering what the president of the company was doing here without notice. Could it have something to do with whatever had happened on the loading docks that night?
Roger Bennett was indeed waiting for her when she stepped off the elevator. He was buttoning his suit jacket as she approached, pale, mid-forties. Dark hair. Moira had never met him before, had never laid eyes on him in fact, but she immediately knew his type. He was king of his proverbial castle, and while fearful of the implications of her visit, he clearly did not like this interruption to his day.
Moira smiled icily as she stopped in front of him.
“Miss Harker, to what do we owe this unexpected…pleasure?”
“Is there a place where we can talk?” she said. “In private?”
Bennett gestured to a conference room across the hall. “After you.”
Moira stepped inside, Bennett following her and closing the door behind them. “What is this about, Miss Harker? I’ve already told the police everything. Someone was stealing one of our trucks. The police believe the thieves got into some altercation with one another and—”
“Cut the crap, Bennett,” said Moira, staring him down with her intense dark eyes. She held up a slip of paper. “This is the shipping manifest from that truck last night.”
“H-how did you get that?”
“There is a name on here but no address. I want to know the truck’s intended destination and I want to know right now. Or I’m going to do a full audit of this branch’s operations. I’m sure the police would be very interested in knowing the full import of what went down last night.”
“Now wait, Miss Harker. Let’s not get crazy here.”
“The only thing that’s crazy is why I let this go on under my nose for so long. Tell me where to find the Last Reich.”
“Uh, uh.”
“Now, Mr. Bennett. While I still have a modicum of patience.”
“Here,” said Bennett, grabbing up a piece of Harker Industries stationery and scrawling an address. “It’s on the Lower East Side. But that’s all I know. I swear.”
“Thank you,” she said, taking the paper. “Now pack up your things. You’re fired.”
Moira calmly left the conference room and walked toward the elevator.
Bennett waited until she got on the elevator before picking up the phone in the conference room and dialing for an outside line. “It’s me,” he said after a long moment. “The Van Helsing broad is coming for you. I did all I could. You’ll have to find someone else to cover for your group’s…activities. I’ve just been terminated. I understand.”
Bennett returned to his office, walking past his secretary, who had just watched the whole muffled exchange through the windows of the conference room. She stared after him, her eyes full of questions. He went into his office and sat behind his desk. Taking a deep breath, he bit down hard on the hollow molar. The brittle porcelain of the tooth cracked, filling his mouth with a horrible taste. “For the Reich,” he said as he frothed and died.
***
Moira watched the place, a crumbling industrial building in a crime-ridden slum, for over an hour before making her move. She knew she should have waited until nightfall, when Dracula would be at full strength, but patience wasn’t one of her strong suits. She just wanted to look around. She couldn’t tell what the Last Reich was up to, sitting across the street in the van.
Twisting in the driver’s seat, Moira moved into the rear of the van. Along the left wall was a rack of weapons—conventional firearms, a crossbow, and other lethal implements. She studied them carefully, then selected a short, carbon steel blade and tucked it under her coat. It was a modernized version of a Roman Gladius, perfect for close quarters. She alighted from the van and watched the building some more. All day people had been wandering in and out of the structure, mostly kids, street toughs who should have been in school at this time of day. What were they doing in there?
She moved around the front of the van and waited. Two kids, one black, the other Latino, came traipsing out of the building and across the garbage littered street toward her, laughing at some secret joke.
“Hey,” Moira said as they neared her.
They froze in their tracks, eying her suspiciously.
“What are you doing in there?” she asked.
“What’s it to you, cop?” said the black boy.
“I’m not a cop.”
“Yeah, right,” said the Latino. To his friend he whispered, “Let’s get out of here.”
The two of them took off, but the Latino kid was a little slower than his friend. Moira grabbed him by his jacket and swung him into the front of the van.
“Hey, efa!”
“I’m not a cop,” said Moira evenly. “I just have a few questions.”
The kid glared at her, a reddish, alien glint in his eye. He hissed at her like a snake about to strike. Moira reached under her coat for the Gladius, but the kid lashed out, shoving her hard. Moira flew backwards into a set of overstuffed garbage cans.
Moira leapt to her feet, the Gladius in her hands and ready for whatever came next, but the kid was gone. Moira watched in amazement as he ran easily up the side of the nearest building and disappeared onto the roof. He called down to her from the roof before disappearing. “It’s called Vamp, chica. You can’t stop it. Nothing can stop it!”
Moira concealed the sword and glanced toward the address Bennett had given her.
“My God,” she breathed. “They’ve done it. They’ve finally done it.”
She had failed in her quest. The Last Reich had finally perfected the serum they created from a drop of Dracula’s blood. She had tracked them halfway across the world for nothing.
“But why street urchins?” she asked aloud. In a moment she had it. They were testing it out. What better way to study potency and side effects than on a bunch of innocent children? That way they didn’t waste any of their own foot soliders. Did these monsters know no bounds?
The golems, it seemed, were simply being used as muscle. The Last Reich’s real purpose in New York was to give a bunch of kids all the powers of a vampire.
“They must be stopped,” said Moira as she walked purposefully across the street. Some small part of her knew she should wait, come back after nightfall with Henry and Dracula. But she was seething mad. She would check the place out as quickly as she could, then leave.
There was a single person guarding the front door, huge, made to pass for human, but obviously a golem. She drew her Gladius and hacked him down to her size, then rubbed the faint symbol etched into his forehead, that gave it life, into oblivion.
Moira was through the rusted metal door before the golem fell, and in a dimly lit hallway made of nailed together plywood. Long plastic sheets covered the broken windows high above, moving faintly in the cool breeze blowing in from outside. In the distance she could hear voices. Kids’ nervous laughter. And someone clearly speaking in German.
She stowed her Gladius, thinking she might be able to blend in just long enough to take a quick look around, then leave and come back with her monsters. She had long thought of them that way. More so in Dracula’s case than poor Henry’s, but the name had stuck in her consciousness. The three of them would come back and put an end to the Last Reich’s madness forever.
Large hands suddenly seized her shoulders, pinning her arms to her sides. Then the pair of enormous clay hands lifted her off the ground and began walking her towards a large central area. There was a section curtained off and filled with medical supplies, her company’s medical supplies. A young man was being injected with something by a dark-haired woman.
“Put me down, you artificial oaf,” said Moira. But the big golem ignored her and continued walking toward another wall of plywood, this one with a door set in the middle of it. Moira kicked out, and the door flew open, revealing a familiar, startled face sitting behind a desk and wearing a crisp black military uniform, a red swastika emblazoned on the front.
“Eckhardt!” Moira spat.
“Miss Harker. I’ve been expecting you, but I must say I am surprised you were introduced in such a manner. Forgive my golems. I’m afraid subtlety is not among their skills. Golem 7, put her down.”
The golem did so, remaining right behind her. She could smell the damp earth that made up his huge, cumbersome form.
“You didn’t stop at the golems, did you?” said Moira Harker. “The vampire serum. You’ve perfected it.”
Eckhardt held his right hand up, fingers out, and rocked it back and forth. “Almost. There have been…complications. We only started human trials this week.”
“On subjects no one will miss, I’m sure,” said Moira.
Eckhardt grinned. Quite right. Sure, they’ll feel as if they’re on top of the world for a few hours, and then. Well, we are trying to make the effects more permanent. Imagine an army with the invincible powers of a vampire, yet none of the side effects. Not even your friend the Count will be able to stop us, and finally, the world will be ours.”
“You’re crazy, Eckhardt.”
The Nazi placed his elbows on the desk and steepled his fingers. “No, the Fuhrer was crazy. So shortsighted. Great at making his little speeches and organizing parades, but clueless as to how true power is amassed and utilized. True power that was right under his nose the whole time.”
“Oh, but you do.”
Eckhardt grinned. “Of course, Fraulein. Now, when can we expect your associates?”
“When you least expect it.”
Eckhardt laughed. “I always expect the unexpected, Miss Harker. And I expect your friends to come to your rescue. When they do they will face a true army of the night.” He looked at the golem behind her and nodded, and a damp, sickly-smelling cloth was clamped over her face.
The last thing Moira saw before chemical oblivion claimed her was Eckhardt leering at her demoniacally.
***
The creature who called himself Henry Clerval was worried. Moira should have returned by now, or at the very least checked in. He stood before the apartment’s long wall of windows, watching as the sun began to dip below the Manhattan skyline. Ever since that day years ago, when they had found the giant wandering the German countryside, still in the hypnotic throes of that depraved mentalist Dr. Prospero, he had sworn his eternal allegiance to Moira Harker and her cause. After Dracula freed him from Prospero’s mesmerizing glare, Henry had fought by their side, and it was the first time in his long, lonely life he had ever felt at peace. At peace with the world and with himself. A worthy penance, he had told himself, for the crimes he had committed. The crimes he had committed against his creator, Victor Frankenstein, and the crimes he committed while under the mental control of Dr. Prospero.
He still remembered that day, the day of his ultimate liberation, like it had just transpired. He had wandered the world for a century, undying, immune to the vicissitudes of aging and disease. It was a lonely existence, but he passed the time as best he could. After he burned his creator’s body on a funeral pyre in the Arctic, he wandered the snow and ice for a time, eventually taken in by a group of Eskimo. They did not seem to fear him, but instead marveled at his strength, which there was much opportunity to show off in such a remote and dangerous environment. Their faithful sled dogs refused to have anything to do with him, but he made do by pulling sleds himself, once even while hefting another one onto his shoulders and moving them two miles between camps. He also saved a young girl by fending off a hungry polar bear with nothing more than his naked fists.
But soon he tired of the frigid climes, and longed to be around his father’s people. He was nearing his second decade on the ice, and though the Eskimo people had taken him in, he was still forever alone, an outsider. Especially since so many of them had grown old and died, while he showed no signs of doing the same. Whatever Victor Frankenstein had done to make him, a living thing from dead tissue, he had surpassed even that grisly goal. Whatever his father had done was apparently, cruelly, permanent.
He wanted to learn, about the world and about his origins. So he left the ice and headed southward, then hopped a tramp steamer bound for Europe, working for his passage. Again his great size and brute strength were a great help aboard the ship, and the men welcomed him as much as they would, teaching him how to drink and sing their bawdy songs. But he felt more lonely aboard that crowded ship than he had all by himself on the ice. When the ship arrived in Dover, England, the giant walked down its gangplank with only a small duffel and was never seen by the crew again. He worked in menial odd jobs and stayed in hostels, spending what free time he had in libraries, educating himself about the world and expanding his knowledge. He consulted medical texts for some clue to his origins, but Frankenstein’s work was never spoken of, and to his knowledge had never been repeated. But his real interests leaned toward poetry, philosophy, and literature.
And so he tramped around Europe for decades more, never staying in one place long enough to attract too much attention, or watch the few people he had grown close to wither and eventually die. And so he made it to central Europe, where he wandered the beautiful countryside for most of a century, and eventually ran afoul of Professor Prospero’s loathsome Carnival of Wonders.
Prospero was a tall man with dark eyes and dark hair, shot with white at the temples. He commanded a pair of wagons pulled in tandem by a set of hulking yet tired-looking drays, driven by a pitiful hunchbacked old dwarf he called Zebulon, whom he treated with cruel ferocity.
Prospero took one look at the creature that by now called itself Henry Clerval and knew him to be a lonely, tortured soul. A soul no one would miss. And so he invited the giant to come sit by his fire and rest himself for a time. The unsuspecting Henry did so, unaware that he was in the presence of a master manipulator. Prospero stared into his eyes, working his way into the depths of Henry’s mind as easily as a hand reaches into a pumpkin to pull out the pulp within. He saw Henry’s horrible origin, saw Victor Frankenstein standing over the thing he had made while it writhed and jumped in the galvanic throes of electric fire. He saw the intervening years, decade stacked upon decade. And the malevolent mentalist knew what he had. He knew what he must do.
Prospero walled off the rational, feeling, thinking part of Henry’s borrowed brain. He augmented his brutish nature. He numbed the intellect until there was barely enough left to obey his orders. Then he turned him loose on village after village. He pillaged and ransacked and frightened, stealing anything of value. He was shot at, chased, and almost killed. Then Prospero would swoop in, charge an exorbitant fee, and pretend to banish the creature with his powers of mentalism.
How long this went on, Henry can’t remember. All he can remember of that dark time is Prospero’s eyes drilling into his soul. But Henry’s hell on earth ended the day Professor Prospero met the vampire.
It was a purely chance encounter, to be sure, but important nonetheless. The Count and Moira had been following some clue in their quest to stop the Last Reich, when their car broke down outside a tiny Czech village. Prospero’s wagons came clomping and rolling by. Prospero looked upon Moira with lust in his heart, and wonderment as to the pale, well-dressed stranger wearing sunglasses even though the day was quite overcast. They marveled at the anachronistic nature of the tandem wagons, but most of all at the tall, scarred creature who walked along behind, lashed to the rear wagon with thick chains.
Upon Prospero’s urging, Zebulon called the horses to a stop, and Prospero alighted from the wagon and approached the two strangers. “Car trouble?” he said, with a smile that was more like a sneer.
“So it would appear,” said Moira, feeling a cloying sense of revulsion toward the dark-eyed man.
Prospero turned his attention to the tall gentleman to her left. “Fellow travelers, no doubt. I am Professor Prospero, proprietor of this humble carnival.” He gestured behind him before continuing. “You have the bearing of a regent, if you don’t mind my saying, sir. May I have the benefit of your name?”
“Lucard,” said Dracula with a chuckle.
“Ah,” said Prospero, peering deep into his eyes. He only needed a glance to establish mental contact. Then he would entrance this one and make his move on the beauty by his side.
One glance was indeed all it took, but not the way Prospero had envisioned. What he saw behind the vampire’s eyes froze him to the marrow. Darkness and chaos and blood, centuries of it. He saw a thing of glaring red eyes, sharp teeth and leathern wings, masquerading as a man.
Professor Prospero opened his mouth to scream, but nothing came out. He backed away from Dracula slowly. “Mein Gott!” he said in German. My God.
“No,” the vampire corrected, removing his sunglasses. “I am a dragon. You may call me Dracul.”
Dracula grabbed Prospero by his outstretched arms, pulling him close. “You see, Professor,” said the vampire, “when you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you.”
Moira went for the sword tucked inside her coat, but Dracula mentally stayed her hand, un-spooling for her everything he had gleaned from the Professor’s mind. She saw the filth and depravity that made up his very nature, witnessed the countless women he had turned into mindless playthings for his dark appetites. She saw too how Prospero had enslaved the mysterious giant. And for once she let Dracula have his fun.
It was over in an instant, with nothing but a short, blood-choked scream to mark its passing. Henry shook himself out of his mentally induced stupor just in time to see Moira step toward Zebulon the dwarf, who had already alighted from the wagon and was loping across to the opposite side of the road. He disappeared into the tall, thick grass there and was never seen by them again.
Henry had traveled with them ever since. Their quest had become his quest. He figured he owed them that much, and more. If something had happened to Moira…
Dracula emerged from his room, wearing a silk robe and sunglasses. He yawned and stretched luxuriously.
“Why the grim face, my stitched-together friend?” said the vampire as he stepped down into the sunken living room and sat on the sofa, picking up a newspaper waiting for him there. “Thinking of your friend the rabbi again?”
The rabbi had been captured by the Nazis in Prague, for reasons unknown to them, until the golems started appearing. He was probably still with them even now, constructing legions of the dull creatures. But the rabbi was not what was concerning him at present.
“Moira should have returned by now.”
“Well,” said Dracula, “she’s always been impetuous. You know that.”
“I fear this is something else.”
Dracula fanned out the paper, scanning the headlines. Such a remarkable instrument, the written word. He had seen one book as a young man. Now they were everywhere. But the newspaper he now held in his pale hands was the same death, murder, and destruction he had come to expect from this age, and it was even worse here in the United States.
“I tell you,” said the vampire. “I’ve caught up on the world’s history since my internment, and the march of time continues to amaze me. These Nazis we are chasing killed millions of innocent men, women and children. Those who came after have weapons capable of killing millions more with just the push of a button. Every day people slaughter one another in the streets for a few coins. And they have the temerity to call us monsters.”
“May you live in interesting times,” said Henry, recalling the famous Chinese proverb. His pale gaze never strayed from the wall of windows. The sun had now dipped below the horizon, leaving only a pink band to paint the city skyline.
The vampire chuckled and flung the paper aside. “Indeed. Now, what do we do about our mutual benefactor?” In truth, Dracula had hoped to have the night all to himself. He longed to explore this new world city’s nighttime streets. He found the loose morals of this age much to his liking. But he supposed, deep down at least, he was just as worried about Moira as Henry was.
As the darkness outside slowly deepened, Dracula removed his sunglasses. He could feel his powers increasing and smiled. In another hour he would be at full strength. He stared out the windows. “You want to go look for her? Where do we start? We do not know our way around this impossibly huge city.”
“She phoned this morning and gave me the address where they were taking the medical supplies,” said the giant. While you were sleeping I’ve been pouring over city maps. I believe I have pinpointed the location. We must go to this place and see if she needs assistance.”
Dracula scowled. “They will no doubt be ready for us.”
“And yet go we must.”
The vampire nodded.
“And if they have perfected the serum.”
Dracula’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Those fiends! They could unleash hell on earth.” He turned to Henry and smiled. “That’s my job.”
“This is no time to be flippant,” said the giant.
“Poor Henry,” said Dracula, rising. “Always so dour and serious. Come, my morose friend. Let us go and rescue our mutual benefactor. As much as I’d like to leave Moira Harker to her fate, and expand my unholy dominion in this morally lax age, I like the thought of a legion of unscrupulous sorts with all of my vampiric abilities even less. Come! We will show these evil Nazis what true monsters can do!”
***
Night
It took three taxi rides and the subway to get the vampire and the creature to their destination. By now it was full dark, and the night was alive with the sounds and smells of the city. Sirens wailed in the distance, a gunshot rang out, and Dracula could smell blood in the air. He should be out there somewhere, feeding. Instead, he was helping a patchwork creature rescue the woman whose infernal order had imprisoned him. The building was in a part of New York that Dracula could tell had seen better days. Garbage littered the streets, and people in threadbare clothing wandered the nighttime alleys aimlessly, tottering and mumbling to themselves as if in the throes of drugs or alcohol.
They found the van and entered it, the giant cranking the driver’s seat back as far as it would go. Dracula inspected the back, noting the rack of weapons. There was one missing, but he couldn’t remember which. He hadn’t picked up a sword in ages.
“I don’t smell any blood. There’s no sign of a struggle. So now what?”
“Now we wait,” said Henry Clerval. “We watch. Like Moira taught us to do.”
Dracula sighed. “Nonsense. We might lose the element of surprise. That building is teeming with corruption. I can smell it from here. Let’s cleanse it.”
“Your blood lust knows no bounds.”
“It takes monsters to fight monsters, remember? Now stop wasting time. Let’s go in and rescue the fair damsel.”
They alighted once more from the vehicle, the giant causing it to groan under his shifting weight, and moved across the street toward the derelict building, the giant loping across the pavement in gigantic strides, the vampire gliding smooth as a shadow across the distance. Their only light came from a single street lamp above and behind them, but Dracula didn’t need it. For him, perfect darkness was as the brightness of midday.
“Wait,” Henry whispered. “You can’t come in uninvited.”
Dracula thought for a moment, then smiled. Rapping loudly on the metal door he said in a serviceable German accent. “It’s Johan. May I come in?”
A gravely voice behind the door said, “Yes.”
Before the bolt could be thrown, Henry kicked out hard with his right foot, wrenching the heavy door off its hinges. It toppled onto the golem standing guard on the other side, pinning the clay construct to the floor as Henry and the vampire calmly stepped over the door to enter. Dracula reached down to rub out the sigil on the golem’s forehead, returning him to lifeless muck once more.
The vampire could sense them coming, could hear the blood pounding in their veins behind the makeshift plywood wall to he and the giant’s left. He leaned against it and pushed, toppling the whole thing over on top of them, pinning the soldiers of the Last Reich—and a few golems—underneath.
“That should even the odds,” said Dracula appraisingly, clapping sawdust from his hands.
The giant scanned the suddenly revealed space. It was vast maze of plywood barricades and curtained areas that looked like medical examination bays in a hospital emergency room. Dozens of frightened faces looked toward them, a few of them young men wearing the gray paramilitary uniforms of the Last Reich. Several more were even younger, common street toughs from the looks on their faces. Wary lab-coated men stood by them, empty syringes in their hands. They were too late. The vampire serum had been administered.
“Where is Moira Harker?” the giant boomed, loping forward.
“You two make quite an entrance,” said an older man as he stepped out of the shadows, clapping slowly with leather-gloved hands. He wore a crisp black uniform with a lurid red swastika emblazoned on the front. His face was hard set. His hair had once been blond, but was now turning to gray at the temples. “I’ve been expecting you, and still you got the better of my men.” The vampire recognized him immediately.
“Hello, Eckhardt,” said Dracula. “Where is Miss Harker?”
Eckhardt grinned. “Right here.” He gestured with his left hand, and a big golem hove into view, gripping Moira tightly by the shoulders. She did not look happy to be in its grip.
“You can have her,” said Eckhardt. “If you come and get her. Your monster legion against mine.” He looked toward the med bays. “Are you ready, gentlemen?”
“Oh yeah,” said a half dozen young voices, no doubt feeling the effects of the serum made from Dracula’s blood that was no coursing through their veins. A serum that would give them all the strength and power of a vampire. They exited the med bays where they had received their injections and moved toward the vampire and the giant, a sinister glint in their eyes.
Dracula could smell a strange quality in their blood. Something familiar. Something he did not like at all.
“The serum has been perfected,” said Eckhardt. “The kids call it Vamp. Catchy, no? With it we will build an army to rival any the world has ever seen. And you creatures shall be the first to fall. Attack!”
The kids leaped impossibly high into the air, two descending on Dracula, while the giant was able to deflect another. “Pull your punches,” said Henry. “Remember, these are just children.”
“Children with the power of the gods,” countered Dracula as two of them pummeled him, their newly imbued vampiric strength bringing him low. The piled on top of him, slamming fists into him that currently held enough strength to dent steel plate. For the first time in centuries, the creature history called Count Dracula knew real physical pain.
Finally, the vampire had had enough. He bared his protruding fangs, and in a final effort, flung them off his back. “You whelps no nothing of true power,” said Dracula, spearing one of them with his hypnotic gaze. The boy was down on the floor within seconds, curled into a fetal position and whimpering.
“You should not send children to do a man’s job, Eckhardt.”
“They are merely test subjects,” said the Nazi. “When the Vamp serum is perfected, it will be administered to some of our greatest German stock.”
“So you’ve improved on the master race,” said Moira. “You’re a sick man, Eckhardt.”
The giant was having slightly less success, though he was keeping the vamped up youth at bay. But unlike Dracula, he did not wish to harm them, a fact they used to their advantage, leaping atop his giant form and landing blows that would stun a rhino. Henry wondered how much more he could take, and how long the effects of the Vamp serum would last.
Once Dracula was free, he went to Henry’s side, pulling the punching and clawing children off his giant form and tossing them aside like sacks of garbage. The giant stood and glared at Eckhardt. He would pay for putting these innocents in harm’s way.
“Your ersatz vampires are no match for the real thing,” said Dracula, baring his sharp teeth with a hiss.
“Golems,” said the Nazi, “attack.”
The clay forms moved toward them, flexing earthen fists. These were tall and stolid, their torsos smooth and embossed with the swastika. Their faces were expressionless. They reminded Henry of himself while he was in Prospero’s hypnotic throes. Henry had felt a peculiar kinship with them during their first encounter in Prague. For wasn’t he just a golem of a different sort? A thing stitched together from dead tissue and made to live again through a galvanic process? He felt sorry for them, at first. But now he realized that, while they may have the divine spark of life, they all lacked what truly made a man; the light of sentience, a soul. The golems were not life, just a pale imitation of it. And the Nazis had turned them into an abomination. Henry gritted his teeth and charged.
With a savage roar he hurled his large form toward these mockeries of men, his fingers gouging and ripping clay flesh. He tore at their faces, clawing the symbols on their foreheads that gave them life, reducing them to clods of dirt once more. They came apart in his hands, crumbling to the floor in wet thuds.
The few men that Eckhardt had guarding the place began punching and kicking the giant, but Henry flung them aside like tinker toys.
Eckhardt looked on this violent tableau nervously, taking a cautious step backward.
“You will not win this battle,” said Moira, struggling in the golem’s grip. “See your great, unstoppable army laid to waste.”
Eckhardt moved to strike her, but her right leg came up, kicking him in the chest. The momentum drove the golem holding her backward and caused it to loosen its grip. This was all she needed to spin free, catching Eckhardt on the chin with her boot before ripping a knife from his belt and jamming it into the golem’s forehead, obliterating the Hebrew word for life and causing the creature to collapse into an earthen heap on the dirty concrete floor.
Her Gladius was lying on a gurney behind her, and she took it up again, holding it at Eckhardt’s throat just as he rose, clutching at his bloody chin.
“Kill her!” Eckhardt ordered his men. The remaining Nazi soldiers swarmed toward her, but she lashed out in a flash, using her sword and her fists with amazing ferocity. Before they could overwhelm her with their numbers, the giant had joined her, using his large size and preternatural strength to subdue them. They were under strict orders not to fire their weapons, because that would alert the authorities. Their need for secrecy would prove their undoing.
“Allow me to assist,” said Dracula, spreading his lean arms wide. He began to dissipate into a thick, roiling fog that curled around their feet. The young men under Eckhardt’s command looked around fearfully as the smoke concentrated toward them, obscuring them from view. They began to cough and choke, pummeled to the floor by unseen fists. The fog spread throughout the large structure, finding anyone hiding or lying in wait. The fog curled back into a dense solidity, becoming Count Dracula once more.
“It’s over,” said Moira Harker once the dust had settled. A half dozen Last Reich soldiers lay unconscious all around them.
Eckhardt glared at her, his right hand poised over his holstered revolver before the giant reached down and ripped it from his belt, bending the barrel before tossing the now useless weapon into a far corner.
The vamped up kids began going into convulsions. They frothed, writhed, and lay still, bringing to mind the men they had encountered at the Harker Industries loading dock the previous evening..
“If you have harmed them,” Henry began, a jagged edge to his voice.
“They will recover,” said Eckhardt. “A side effect of the serum, nothing more. Unfortunately the effects are…temporary. Even more so thanks to their exertions against you two freaks.”
“But they survived,” said Moira, “so you were going to test it on your own men soon.”
“We already have many volunteers,” said Eckhardt with a smile. “There are many who would be gods, even if only for a short while.”
“Is that what you think I am?” said Dracula. “I am flattered, but that could not be further from the case. I think Herr Eckhardt needs to know of the vampire’s true power.”
“What are you saying?” said Moira, cautiously.
“Stand aside, and I will give our friend what he craves.”
“No,” said Moira. “You can’t.”
Dracula strode toward them, pushing past Moira Harker and yanking Eckhardt to his feet. “W-What are you doing?”
“You want to be lord of all men? You want to be a god? Your wish is hereby granted. Now you will see what it truly means to be Vampyre Nosferatu,” said Dracula. “To be constantly hunted, to be as one with the insects and the vermin. Look into my eyes!”
The vampire stared, dark eyes wide, seeing into Eckhardt’s very soul. Eckhardt tried to look away, to close his eyes, but he could not. The mesmeric power of Count Dracula, Lord of the Vampires, was much too strong. The Nazi screamed, struggling in Dracula’s iron grip, but his eyes remained wide open and staring, a slave under the mesmeric gaze of the creature who hid behind a man’s face.
Eckhardt had no choice but to watch, helpless, as Dracula’s life un-spooled before him, as real as if Eckhardt himself had lived it, for he was living it. He saw chaos from centuries of war and blood. He saw a walking death. He felt the bitter sting of love denied. He knew the fear of being hunted by Van Helsing and his followers. He railed against the cosmic injustice of having so many powers at his disposal, yet being hampered by the myriad rules that governed their use. He was a god, and yet a prisoner of his own dark appetites. He was immortal, yet denied the pleasures and fruits of the flesh. At last, Eckhardt screamed as he was sealed inside a coffin, seemingly for all eternity.
“No!” Eckhardt shouted. “Stop! I beg of you!”
“He begs,” said Dracula, breaking the mental connection. “The Nazis are human after all.”
“Enough,” said Moira. “The authorities will have many questions for him.”
“I am afraid Colonel Eckhardt no longer has the capacity to answer them,” said Henry, staring down at him. Klaus Eckhardt was down on his knees, his eyes staring blankly ahead, his mouth agape. A stream of spittle had collected at the left corner of his mouth, threatening to run down his cleft, still bleeding chin. Remembering his time as Professor Prospero’s prisoner, Henry couldn’t help but feel a frisson of sympathy for the evil little man.
“He is trapped in my personal hell,” said Dracula. “The hell that Van Helsing put me in.” He looked at Moira and smiled. “He shall experience enough suffering for a thousand lifetimes. I don’t need it anymore.” He regarded her, and a curious thing happened. All the enmity he had felt for Moira Harker and her blasted Order of Van Helsing was gone, as if he really had transferred all of it into the Nazi’s now shattered mind. It wasn’t entirely Moira’s fault anyway, he reasoned. She hadn’t been present one hundred years before, when her brotherhood had chained him in a coffin and buried him in a remote mountain. She had no control over the dark legacy she had been born into, the great-great granddaughter of Mina Harker, the woman who had ultimately proved Dracula’s undoing. And in the end, Moira had freed him, had freed both him and the patchwork giant. He had never realized the weight of his many grudges lay so heavy on his breast until that very moment.
“I thought you were going to turn him,” Moira said.
“I thought you knew me better than that by now.” He winked at her. “He is a fiend and a scoundrel, unworthy of becoming vampire.”
Moira cracked a rare smile in spite of herself. “You both did very well. You saved me.”
“It was our pleasure,” said Henry, bowing.
“I wouldn’t go that far,” said the vampire with a thin smile.
Moira sheathed her Gladius. “I guess we should alert the police.”
“Wait,” said Henry. “There should be one other person here, a prisoner, an innocent.”
“He’s hiding in a cupboard in the back,” said Dracula, pointing. “I saw him when I became the fog.”
Henry nodded. “I’ll be right back.”
He strode toward the right rear of the building. He opened a large cabinet, where an old man cowered inside. He had a bald head and a thick, curly dark beard, and was wearing ceremonial robes.
“Rabbi Zimmerman, I presume.”
The old man nodded, fearful. “Y-yes. I-is it…over?”
The giant nodded and extended his hand. The rabbi took it and emerged from his hiding place.
“Thank you,” he said in heavily accented English. “Oy, you’re as big as a golem. What’s your name?”
The giant considered him for a long moment, deciding how best to answer. Finally, he said, “Adam.”
The old holy man stared up at him. He looked him over from head to foot, taking in the numerous scars and yellowish skin, titanic bruises that never seemed to fully heal. Realization dawned on his round face. “You…you are a golem.”
Henry smiled down at the man. “Come. We will see to it that you are returned to your home. No one will make you create golems anymore.”
“They said they’d kill my family if I didn’t cooperate. I wasn’t even sure I could do it. But…” His voice trailed off, and he followed the giant toward the center of the room, where Moira and Dracula stood over a drooling Eckhardt.
“I don’t know what you did to him,” said the rabbi, staring down at the Nazi soldier. “But it is probably better than he deserves. I will say a prayer for all your souls, just the same.”
“Save your breath, holy man,” said Dracula. “I am beyond all hope.” To Moira he said, “The night is waning. I need to feed.” He stared at the rabbi as he said this last, causing the man to blanch, even though the poor fellow didn’t know why. The vampire calmly walked outside to the distant wail of police sirens.
“Feed?” said Rabbi Zimmerman.
“You don’t want to know,” said the giant.
“Time to go,” said Moira. She had learned from bitter experience that she would never be able to explain this to the authorities. It was best to be far away when they arrived. She wondered after Dracula. Perhaps she had misjudged him. Perhaps there was a modicum of good in the diabolical villain after all. Though she was certain she would still sleep with her door locked and the wards in place.
Maybe their time chasing the Last Reich had changed them, had changed all of them.
The Next Day
“I put the rabbi on the next flight bound for Prague,” said Moira as she stepped into the apartment the next morning. “First class. My associates in the Czech Republic will see to it that he returns to his village safely.”
“Good,” said Henry from the kitchen. “I should like to visit him. When all of this is over.”
“Isn’t it over?” said Dracula. “We destroyed all the vampire serum, and the police arrested Eckhardt and his men, and Eckhardt himself will live out the rest of his days as a vegetable in a sanitarium somewhere, believing himself to be buried alive.”
“The Last Reich is still out there,” said Moira. “Still searching for items of power that will help them take over the world. Eckhardt was not their leader, just a low level officiant.”
“And they know how to make golems,” Henry added. “They can raise an army in days.”
“So this isn’t over,” said Dracula, frowning.
Moira looked at him. “Not by a long shot.”
“I suppose I would go back to my coffin in that mountainside if it was,” observed the vampire.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Moira. “You have shown remarkable humanity of late.”
The vampire scowled. “Don’t tell anyone. You’ll tarnish my reputation.”
Moira allowed another wan smile to crack her stern, facade. Henry stood in the kitchen eating scrambled eggs he had just made, watching the two of them thoughtfully. The three of them made a strange trio, but he felt closer to them than he ever had anyone else. Other people had taken him in over the years, either out of pity or because of a morbid sense of curiosity, but he had never felt a kinship with them as he did with these two broken creatures. Perhaps it was their unusual origins. Perhaps it was because he and Dracula were monsters. Or maybe it was because, for the first time, he felt like part of a family.
The End?