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In the courtyard directly below, shouting erupted. Marching men hurried out into the night. Someone blasted a horn. Lugosi heard the sounds of a fight, swords clashing. Vlad Dracula glanced at it, dismissed the commotion for a moment, then locked his hypnotic gaze with Lugosi's again. The anguish behind the Impaler's eyes made Lugosi want to squirm.
"That is all? I have prayed repeatedly for an apparition, and you claim to have learned something from
me? About fear? All is lost. I have been abandoned. God is making a joke with me." His shoulders hunched into the fur-lined robe, and he reddened with anger.
Lugosi had the crawling feeling that if he had been corporeal to the Impaler, Vlad Dracula would have thrust him upon a vacant stake on the hillside. "I do not know what to tell you, Vlad Dracula. I am not your conscience. I have destroyed enough things in my own life by trying to do what I thought was right and best. But I can tell you what I think."
Vlad Dracula cocked an eyebrow. Below, a clattering sound signaled a portcullis opening. Booted feet charged across the flagstone floor as someone hurried into the receiving hall. "My Lord Prince!"
Lugosi spoke rapidly. "The Turks have taught you well, as your atrocities show. But you have perhaps gone too far. You ca
fear, not with death. Then your God may give your conscience some rest."
Vlad Dracula made a puzzled frown. "Perhaps we are together because I needed to learn something about fear as well." The Impaler laughed with a sound like breaking glass. "For one who has not lived even a single lifetime, you are a wise man, Bela of Lugos."
They both turned at the sound of a ru
"My Lord Prince! You did not respond!" the man cried. A crimson badge on his shoulder identified him as a retainer from one of the boyars serving Vlad Dracula.
"I have been in conversation with an important representative," Dracula said, nodding to Lugosi. Surprised, but falling back on his training, Lugosi sketched a formal bow to the messenger. But the retainer looked toward where Lugosi stood, blinked, and frowned.
"I see nothing, my Lord Prince."
In a rage, Vlad Dracula snatched out a dagger from his fur-lined robe. The messenger blanched and stumbled backward, warding off the death from the knife, but also showing a kind of sick relief that his end would be quick, not moaning and bleeding for days on a stake as the vultures circled about.
"Dracula!" Lugosi snapped, bringing to bear all the power and command he had used during his very best performances as the vampire. Vlad Dracula stopped, holding the knife poised for its strike. The retainer trembled, staring with wide blank eyes, but afraid to flee.
"Look at how terrified you have made this man. The fear you create is a powerful thing. You need not kill him to accomplish your purpose."
Vlad Dracula heard Lugosi, but kept staring at the retainer, making his eyes blaze brighter, his leer more vicious. The retainer began to sob.
"I need not explain my actions to you," he said to the man. "Your soul is mine to crush whenever I wish. Now tell me your news!"
"The sultan's army has arrived. It appears to be but a small vanguard attacking under cover of darkness, but the remaining Turks will be here by tomorrow. We can stand strong against this vanguard-many of them have already fled upon seeing their comrades impaled on this hillside, my Lord Prince. They will report back. It will enrage the sultan's army."
Vlad Dracula pinched his full lips between his fingers. He looked at Lugosi, who stood watching and waiting. The messenger seemed confused at what the Impaler thought he saw.
"Or it will strike
fear into the sultan's army. We can use this. Go out to the victims on the stakes. Cut off the heads of those dead or mortally wounded-and be quick about it!-and catapult the heads into the Turkish vanguard. They will see the faces of their comrades and know that this will happen to them if they fight me. Find those whose injuries may still allow them to live and set them free of the stakes. Send them back to the sultan to tell how monstrous I am. Then he will think twice about his aggression against me and against my land."
The retainer blinked in astonishment, still trembling from having his life returned to him, curious about these new tactics Vlad Dracula was attempting. "Yes, my Lord Prince!" He scrambled backward and ran to the stone steps.
Lugosi felt the walls around him growing softer, shimmering. His knees felt watery. His body felt empty. The morphine was wearing off.
Dracula tugged at his dark mustache. "This is interesting. The sultan will think it just as horrible, but God will know how merciful I have been. Perhaps next time I smoke the opium pipe, He will send me a true angel."
Lugosi stumbled, feeling sick and dizzy. Warm flecks of light roared through his head. Dracula seemed to loom larger and stronger.
"I ca
"But I must dress for battle! If we are to fight the sultan's vanguard, I want them to see exactly who has brought them such fear! Farewell, Bela of Lugos. I will try to do as you suggest."
Lugosi tried to shake the thickening cobwebs from his eyes. "Farewell, Vlad Dracula," he said, raising his hand. It passed through the solid stone of the balcony wall….
The lights flickered around his makeup mirror, dazzling his eyes. Lugosi drew in a deep breath and stared around his tiny dressing room. A shiver ran through him, and he pulled the black cape close around him, seeking some warmth.
Outside, Dwight Frye attempted his long Renfield laugh one more time, but sneezed at the end. Frye's dressing room door opened, and Lugosi heard him walking away across the set.
On the small table in front of him, Lugosi saw the empty hypodermic needle and the remaining vial of morphine. Fear. The silver point looked like a tiny stake to impale himself on. Morphine had always given him solace, a warm and comfortable feeling that made him forget pain, forget trouble, forget his fears.
But he had used it too much. Now it transported him to a place where he could see only the thousands of bloodied stakes and moaning victims, vultures circling, ravens pecking at living flesh. And the mad, tormented eyes of Vlad the Impaler.
He did not want to think where the morphine might take him next-the night in the Carpathians during the Great War? Or his secret flight across the Hungarian border after the overthrow of Bela Kun, knowing that his life was forfeit if he stopped? Or just the pain of learning that Ilona had abandoned him while he worked in Berlin? The possibilities filled him with fear-not the fear without consequences that sent shivers through his audiences, but a real fear that would put his sanity at risk. He had brought the fear upon himself, cultivated it by his own actions.