James Becker - The Nosferatu Scroll

EVIL IS IN THE BLOOD

BOHEMIA, 1741

On the northern banks of the Vltava River an extraordinary event is taking place. Inside a private chapel a high-born Hungarian lady is being laid to rest. But not before her heart is removed from her body and she is buried beneath a layer of heavy stones lest she rise again to prey upon her victims

VENICE, 2010

Holidaying in the worlds most beautiful city, Chris Bronson and Angela Lewis discover a desecrated tomb. Inside it is a female skeleton and an arcane diary dating back hundreds of years. Written in Latin, it refers to a lost scroll that will provide an answer to an ancient secret.

Soon corpses of young women, all killed in the same ritualistic manner, start appearing throughout the city. And when Angela disappears, Bronson knows that he must find her before she too is slaughtered.

But his hunt for Angela leads him back to the Island of the Dead, and into a conspiracy more deadly than he could ever have imagined

No book is ever the work of just the author: its invariably a team effort. In this case, the original spark came from the talented team at Transworld, and specifically from my dedicated and forceful editor there, Selina Walker. She liked the idea of Bronson and Angela mixing it with the undead, as a departure from their usual haunts of dusty caves, ancient manuscripts and clay tablets. My brilliant agent, Luigi Bonomi of LBA, liked the idea as well, and we all thought Venice was pretty much the ideal location for the story. Throughout the writing process they both offered invaluable insights and suggestions, all of which improved the book immeasurably.

10 May 1741

Krumlov Zamek, esk Krumlov, Bohemia

Open it.

The torchlight gave the priests face a haunting, almost satanic, quality, an impression reinforced by the chamber in which he was standing. It was a small underground room in the castle, located in the same part of the building as the cages that held the wolves. Four flickering torches were mounted in sconces, one on each wall, but they failed to drive away all the shadows.

A sturdy table stood in the centre of the room, and on it lay a large, ornate, black wooden coffin, the closed lid divided into two parts and hinged on one side, the other edges secured with screws. The coffin had arrived from the Schwarzenberg Palace in Vienna two days earlier and had immediately been carried into St Georges Chapel in the castle. There, the upper section of the coffin had been opened to allow the mere handful of mourners who had appeared in the building to see the thin, white face of the body inside.

The princess had come home for the last time.

Masses for the immortal soul of Princess Eleonora Elisabeth Amalia Magdalena von Schwarzenberg had been held all over Bohemia, but few people made the journey to the vast castle which wasnt a single structure at all, but a complex of huge yellow and grey stone buildings roofed with red tiles that stood on the north bank of the Vltava River.

It was here that her burial was about to take place, and there were preparations important preparations to be made.

Four servants had carried the coffin down from St Georges Chapel. Now, one of them moved forward in response to the priests instruction and removed the handmade iron screws that secured the upper part of the lid. His task done, he stepped back.

No. Take all of them out, the priest ordered.

The man looked surprised, but obediently removed the remaining fastenings that held down the lower section of the lid. As he worked, he glanced back at the priest, wondering why the man whod so publicly shunned the princess while she was alive was now so concerned with her dead body.

The priests name was Bohdan eznk, the surname meaning butcher, and in truth he looked as though he would be more at home in a bloodstained apron than in the plain, dark brown robes he habitually wore.

When the body of the Princess Eleonora Amalia had been delivered to the castle, one of the escort party had walked down into Krumlov town, found eznk at his home and handed him a single folded sheet of parchment. The document bore three separate seals, one of them the distinctive double-headed eagle mark of Karel VI, King of Bohemia, the current ruler, and a member of the Habsburg dynasty, which had governed the country since 1526.

The instructions contained on the parchment were unambiguous, and made perfect sense to eznk. Hed noted with satisfaction that his orders had been prepared by Dr Franz von Gerschstov, Eleonora Amalias preferred physician, and a man whose other, less well-known, qualities struck a chord with eznk.

The servant removed the final screw, and stepped back from the coffin once more, awaiting any further instructions the priest might issue.

Swing back the lid, the priest said, and watched as two of the servants did so, to reveal the whole interior of the coffin.

Now leave me with her. You may return in half an hour.

Only when the door of the small room had closed behind the men did the priest step forward. He walked across the flag-stoned floor to the coffin and looked down with distaste at the slight figure of Eleonora Amalia. Her hands were placed demurely on her breast, the right hand resting on the left, her wasted body clad in a long white dress, her small feet bare.

eznk felt in the pocket of his habit and pulled out a folding knife with a black wooden handle. Hed spent several minutes the previous evening putting a fine edge on the dark steel blade.

He made the sign of the cross and muttered a prayer not for the immortal soul of Eleonora, but for himself, asking for forgiveness and divine protection for the actions he now had to take. He lifted the princesss hands and lay her arms at her sides, then snapped open the knife. eznk inserted the blade under the neckline of the dress and in a single fluid movement ran the knife all the way down to Eleonoras feet, slicing through the layers of material. Then he peeled aside the two cut halves of the dress and looked down at her naked body. The skin that had been so white in life was now mottled and discoloured, with livid brown and purple marks where the initial stages of decay had taken hold.

But that wasnt the most noticeable feature. What held eznks attention was the crudely stitched cut that ran from between the princesss small, wrinkled breasts down to her pubis.

Her nakedness offended him, but he had his instructions. His expression of distaste deepened as he again used his blade, this time to slice through each of the rough stitches that held the skin and flesh of her abdomen closed. Then he put down the knife, inserted his fingers into the wide incision and with little difficulty pulled apart the two sections of dead tissue. He was looking for one thing, one single object in the chest cavity, and in seconds he knew it wasnt there which was as it should be. But eznk had been ordered to make absolutely sure before the burial took place.

He nodded in satisfaction, wiped his hands on the front of his robe and stepped back from the open coffin. Then he walked across to one corner of the chamber, where another, much smaller and very plain wooden box was propped against the wall. eznk was a strong man, and he picked up the box with little effort. He carried it across to the table, placed it next to the princesss coffin, and lifted off the lid.

Then he strode back to the wall of the chamber and picked up a leather bag, the contents of which clattered metallically as he carried it over to the table. He placed the bag on the floor, opened it and took out three substantial leather straps, which he positioned under the open box, spacing them equally along its length.