THE CEMETERY OF STRANGERS

"Where's Francesco? I haven't seen him today," Alisa asked, as they sat together in the golden hall as usual a few evenings later.

Luciano sighed. "I allowed him to go to Teatro Argentina with me. I can manage a few hours without my shadow."

"And why do you sigh so heavily then? What kind of play is it?"

Luciano waved it off. "I have no idea. It's not about the play for me - and probably not for Francesco either. It's about the many people gathering there. It's going to be a lavish party - not just for the humans! Scantily clad, perfumed ladies, sweaty men. It must be a scent! I imagine him spying his victim and luring them into a dark corner, then sinking his teeth into their neck. Human blood! It must be simply delicious, from what others say. I'd really like to know how it tastes." Luciano ran his tongue over his lips. "It's been clear to me from the beginning that you've never tasted human blood," Franz Leopold said in that unbearably condescending tone that made Alisa clench her fists involuntarily.

"No, he hasn't, just like everyone else here," she replied sharply in place of Luciano. "Because it's forbidden, and rightly so!"

"You can speak for yourself and maybe our chubby Luciano, but not for me!" Franz Leopold retorted. "It's delicious! Take my word for it! You'll never want to drink that stinking animal blood again once you've tasted it and felt the vein pulsing under your lips!" He stared sourly into his cup and then emptied it in one gulp. "One does what one must to avoid starving."

Tammo leaned forward. His eyes sparkled. "You did it? That's insane. Come on, tell us! What was it like? How did you catch the human? Was it a man or a woman?"

Franz Leopold made a dismissive gesture. "This is not the right place or time to talk about such things." He nodded over to Zita and Raphaela, who were returning to the hall with two full pitchers.

"But later, when we're alone in one of the sleeping chambers, then you can tell us about it," Tammo persisted.

"There's nothing to tell!" Alisa scolded. "Can't you see he's just showing off? He may be a big mouth, but I still trust him to understand the purpose of this prohibition. We're not yet strong enough to control humans and cloud their memories when we take their blood. Yes, the taste must be incredible, precisely why we shouldn't taste it until we can resist the urge to drink it again and again. Because if we don't get their blood, it will drive us to madness - or at least to rash actions!"

Franz Leopold looked at her. Something like sorrow gleamed in his brown eyes for a moment. Alisa blinked. No, she must be mistaken. There was no room for such feelings beside this arrogance.

"Our headmistress has spoken," he groaned. "Forgive me, I feel nauseous. I need some fresh air!" And with that, he strutted out. Tammo watched him go disappointedly.

"Then let's hope for Tammo's sake that Franz Leopold keeps his story to himself," Ivy said softly as she left the hall with Alisa.

"His lies!" Alisa snorted.

Ivy shook her head. "No, his story!"

Alisa stopped abruptly. "You believe his boasting?"

"I know the truth, and I know that he has cursed his recklessness more than once. He suffers more from the consequences than he could have ever imagined."

Alisa whistled through her teeth. "By all demons, that's incredible." She glared at Ivy with her bright blue eyes. "Tell me how it happened."

Ivy smiled. "And even if you burst from curiosity, you won't hear anything from me. Ask him if you want to know."

"Never! I won't flatter that braggart!"

The lesson on this evening began once again with exercises in the classroom, but at midnight, Professor Ruguccio announced that they would now move the class outside. Professoressa Enrica would accompany them, and the servants Pietro, Matthias, and Hindrik would also come along as guides. To their surprise, the librarian Leandro joined them as well. He intended to copy some inscriptions on the tombstones.

The path led past the Circus Maximus and then along a street where a few carriages were still traveling at this time. However, the small groups of shadowy figures apparently went unnoticed. They had not yet fully passed the narrow side of the Circus when Alisa suddenly stopped and bent down to pick something up.

Luciano also fell back. "What do you have there?"

Wordlessly, she held out a small piece of fabric to him. Heavy, deep red velvet fabric. Luciano shrugged. "Yeah, so what? A piece of velvet torn from some clothing. What does it smell like?"

Alisa held it close to her nose. "I can smell that nun we observed at the Colosseum!"

"What?" Luciano looked at her doubtfully and took the piece of fabric from her hand. "I don't know. There are too many smells overlapping. And even if? Throw it away."

Luciano rejoined his classmates. Alisa smelled the velvet again and then put it in her pocket. Perhaps she was imagining things, but one thing she knew for sure: She had held this fabric in her hands before.

After a small piazza, the stream of nighttime travelers ebbed away, and soon the vampires were the only ones still on the street. At Piazza Porta San Paolo, where the southern side of the city wall ran along, they gathered again. San Paolo itself was fuori mura, outside the walls, but their destination was not the basilica of Saint Paul, which Emperor Constantine had built. The professor led his group past the gate to a stone monument.

"What's that?" Ivy asked, pointing to the structure made of white stone blocks embedded in the city wall. "A pyramid, in Rome?"

Alisa examined the structure. "Perhaps Cleopatra visited Caesar here in Rome and brought him a small pyramid as a gift?"

Luciano grinned. "Not quite. But the timing isn't too far off. It was erected a few years before the birth of Christ by an important popular tribune who apparently wanted to be buried according to Egyptian custom."

"All the things our chubby one knows," Franz Leopold muttered as they passed by.

"Yes, isn't it nice?" Ivy said in her soft tone. "I find it much more pleasant to listen to Luciano's stories from the past than to your baseless insults and jabs. What will it be like when we come to you in Vienna? I'm already regretting that you'll exclude us from your stories."

Franz Leopold started to respond a few times but then stopped and rejoined his own clan members, who always kept a bit apart. The Londoners also preferred to stick together, and Joanne and Fernand seemed to only truly accept Tammo. It would be a long way until distrust and prejudices among the families disappeared.

Alisa glanced at Malcolm. His face already had the sharper contours of a young man, and his posture could only be described as aristocratic. Even if he didn't possess the dark beauty that Franz Leopold and his family members had and that made every heart stumble just by looking at them, Malcolm still looked very good in his own way.

Yes, there were special candidates among the young vampires whom Alisa wouldn't have minded if they were interested in better understanding between the clans. Much better! She felt Franz Leopold's gaze and quickly turned her head away. And there were also those whom she wouldn't be sad to never see again!

As if by chance, Alisa drifted next to Malcolm. He smiled kindly when he noticed her. "Hey, do you still have the red mask you showed me once?"

Malcolm hesitated. "Yeah, I do, but not here. Why?"

Alisa showed him the piece of fabric. "I would say it's the same velvet."

"Hmm, if you say so."

"I'll compare it with the mask," said Alisa, lifting her chin challengingly. "Why? Just because someone may have torn a piece of fabric from the same material?" Alisa hesitated. "No, not because of that. You might laugh now, but I keep thinking about this mask ever since you showed it to me. It doesn't seem like a costume made for a masquerade ball." And what does a nun have to do with red velvet? she added in her mind. Helplessly, she shrugged. "It's just a strange feeling."

"Secret societies and conspiracies," said Malcolm. "You're making fun of me," she sighed. "No, I'm just wondering what to believe and what not to." Professor Ruguccio led them around a wall that connected to the city wall but was much lower. He stopped in front of a gate and put an end to their conversation.

"Behind the wall lies the 'non-Catholic cemetery of the foreigners.' Many travelers to Rome are buried here, including the son of the famous poet Goethe or the English poets Keats and Shelley. We will look at the graves." He led them up the straight path lined with old cypresses among the tombstones and monuments of different ages.

"Shelley?" Ivy asked. "The Shelley whose wife Mary wrote Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus? I've read it, and it deeply impressed me." "Yes, that's correct. He died young. Drowned, on a sailing trip. At least, that's what they say." Suddenly, the professor stopped. His booming voice and the squeaking of his shoes fell silent. "Enrica, there are visitors," he whispered to the vampire. "Would you please see what that means?"

The woman, who was exceptionally thin even for a Nosfera, nodded briefly, causing her gray bun to sway a bit, then she hurried away. "Stay hidden behind the bushes and gravestones," the professor instructed them. Alisa ducked behind a mighty gravestone and then crawled in the shadow of a bush to the next stone, crowned by an angel with outstretched arms.

"What are you up to?" Ivy murmured, who had stayed close behind her. Alisa flinched. Her friend not only moved absolutely silently, but she also knew how to conceal her aura. "I'm just curious," Alisa whispered back and continued to crawl.

She heard voices and huddled behind a wide stone block. As she stretched a bit and peered through the gap between the ledge and a laurel bush, she spotted a man. The unknown man was sitting cross-legged on a flat stone block in front of a grave, an oil lamp beside him. He had something on his lap and kept leaning down.

What was he doing? Alisa looked at Ivy questioningly. The Irish girl narrowed her eyes. "He's writing something." Now Alisa could see the quill in his hand and nodded. The man still looked quite young, his hair fell in slight waves on his neck, and he was wearing evening dress. "Oscar? Where are you? I'm tired of standing around here at night in a cemetery. What on earth are you doing?"

Three more figures came down the path and stopped next to the writing man. The middle one was an elegantly dressed woman who had linked arms with the two men. The man to her left leaned forward to decipher the inscription. "Shelley? Surely not the Shelley? The one who wrote those creepy stories and was married to Mary Wollstonecraft?" He reached out his hands like claws towards the lady's neck. "Florence, beware, I am Frankenstein, the monster, and I have come to rip out your heart!" The woman screamed and stepped back.

"Mr. Henry Irving! You may be a gifted actor, but your manners are atrocious. How dare you scare me with such gruesome things!" "That's called world literature!" "And if you would refrain from shouting here and distracting me, perhaps a piece of world literature would emerge on this stone," scolded the younger man with the quill in his hand. "But of course!" the actor exclaimed theatrically. "Our young Oscar Wilde here will surely become a famous poet, and from my friend and agent Bram Stoker here at my side, the brilliant journalist and newlywed husband of our delightful Florence, will surely also emerge a remarkable writer. But now, let our friend Oscar have his say. We want to hear what he has written here in this eerie place."

The young man hesitated. "Well, alright. But only a few lines. Then we'll return to the city. I know a small inn with wonderful specialties and even better wines!" Henry Irving and Florence agreed enthusiastically. Oscar Wilde cleared his throat and read: "And where the burning red poppies sway, There lurks perhaps within the pyramid's embrace, That never disturbed is this peace of the dead, Ancient sphinx with grim-great claws ..."

"Very nice, my friend, very nice!" exclaimed the actor, patting the man on the shoulder, even though he obviously hadn't finished yet. "But now let's leave the home of the dead. I'm craving a proper meal! How can anyone think of wandering around a cemetery at night?" "I find it fascinating," said the man named Bram Stoker, his eyes gleaming as he surveyed the tombstones hidden among old trees and bushes.

"I've read a lot about phenomena of death or rather of the undead and talked to people who claim to have actually encountered one of these undead who suck the blood and soul out of you. They are creatures of the night, fast and silent like shadows, although they have no shadow. They are the hunters, and we are their helpless prey. Look around you, behind each of these stones could be hiding a vampire, driven from its grave by its thirst for blood."

Florence let out a sharp scream and clung to her husband's arm. "Bram, I beg you, don't speak like that! You're scaring me. Do you really believe these creatures exist?" "But yes!" Her husband nodded vigorously. "There's a rumor that even Lord Byron, Shelley's old companion, still lurks among us as a bloodsucker." "Well, if that's not just the fertile imagination of a poet," the actor dismissed, urging his friends to leave for the third time. "At any rate, I will conduct further research, and then I will write a book about vampires!" announced Bram Stoker.

Oscar Wilde packed up his writing utensils and squeezed himself next to Florence's free side. "See, my dear, it would have been better if you had chosen me instead of a man who deals with bloodsuckers." His words drifted to the eavesdroppers, then the people disappeared, and the graves lay deserted again under the nighttime sky full of stars. Ivy nudged Alisa in the side. "Come on, let's turn back before someone notices our absence." Alisa nodded and crawled back with Ivy to the others, who were still hiding in the bushes and looking visibly bored.

To their surprise, the professors didn't assign any further tasks for the night but allowed the young vampires to roam the nighttime cemetery in small groups and enjoy the scent of decay. "You have worked hard and learned a lot in the past weeks," said the professor. "So go ahead! What are you waiting for?" Alisa, Ivy, and Luciano set off together. Once again, Franz Leopold joined them. They strolled among the graves when suddenly noises made them stop. The first thing they heard was a soft creaking, as if from the wheels of a cart, then they heard voices and suppressed laughter. The rusty hinges of the gate next to the church squealed as the two wings were pushed open. The vampires took cover.

Shortly after, four men appeared, carrying a handcart. Two pulled, and two pushed from behind. "What a strange place," whispered Alisa. "Is it always so lively here at night? What might these people want here at this hour?" "I think something forbidden, something they wouldn't dare do in daylight," speculated Ivy.

The cart came to a halt not far from their hiding spot. "It must be around here somewhere. I took another look at the grave in daylight," said one who seemed tall and strong. "I can't see anything," another said. "Shall we light a lantern?" "No!" the rest chorused. "Do you want to alert the gravedigger? We can't risk getting caught again, or they'll kick us out of the university!" "My father would skin me alive if I lost the scholarship," said the last one in the group.

"Really? Then he must have some medical knowledge," said the man next to him. The others chuckled. "He does," replied the previous voice grimly. They seemed to be around twenty. Students, judging by their words and clothing. Obviously, they weren't trying to secretly bury a body because the cart was empty except for a few old blankets. So what did they want?

"Here it is!" called out one of them. He had gone ahead a bit and was now waving his friends over with the cart. He was tall and thin, moving awkwardly like many adolescents among humans.

"How old is the corpse?" The others pulled out two shovels from under the blankets and approached the fresh grave their comrade was pointing to. "Two days! Not even an hour more. He was a traveler from England and died of a fever. I was with the professor at the hospital when he ordered us to bury him quickly."

"Well then, let's get to work so we can get something under our blades before the night ends," said one, his voice sounding overly cheerful. Two grabbed the shovels and began to clear away the loose soil until metal met wood. "What hard work!" complained one of the diggers, passing his shovel to another. "Mario, you can do something too. Otherwise, you won't get to join in later!"

"I want the heart and lungs!" shouted the smallest among them, who was a bit stocky. "I'll take the skull. After all, I told you about the fresh corpse!" The young vampires looked at each other. "What are they up to?" Ivy asked.

"Stealing a corpse and dissecting it," said Franz Leopold, shrugging. "Perhaps it's common here in holy Rome." "It's not!" snapped Luciano. "Maybe it's a satanic cult? There are such things in many places," Ivy suggested. "Some make human sacrifices. Perhaps it counts as sacrificing parts of someone who's already dead."

Alisa began to laugh softly to herself. "No, I don't think this has anything to do with dark religious cults. Quite the opposite! I think they are medical students!" "Yes, and?" the others asked, puzzled. "This corpse theft serves their studies! The Catholic Church prohibits dissections—cutting up corpses to study the structure and function of the human body. It's only allowed with animals. But since Leonardo da Vinci recognized that the anatomy of a pig or a dog differs from that of a human, there are clandestine dissections. Leonardo, by the way, is said to have cut up corpses for his studies." Franz Leopold's eyes sparkled.

"Actually, not a bad idea, even though it comes from humans." "What?" "Cutting up corpses and studying the body. I find it quite interesting." "You mean, it could also bring us insights…" Ivy began. "That could be helpful on the hunt. Yes, that's what I mean."

"That's crazy!" objected Alisa. "Do you want to snatch the corpse these students painstakingly dug up?" "Actually, quite an amusing thought," said Franz Leopold.

They looked over at the men, who had by now dug out the earth and were struggling to pry open the lid of the simple wooden coffin. "But no, I'm afraid that would cause too much of a commotion. I was thinking more along the lines of finding our own corpse. There are several fresh graves here." A crack broke the silence of the night as the body snatchers finally managed to lever off the lid with the help of the two shovels. The chubby one let out a sound of disgust and pressed a handkerchief to his mouth and nose. "He doesn't smell very fresh at all. I think I'm going to be sick." "Pull yourself together," said the tall one sternly. "Rather lend a hand and help put him on the cart."

"Remember, all for science," said his companion, nudging him in the ribs with a smirk. The chubby one grumbled but pitched in. The four of them managed to lay the corpse on the cart. Then they set about shoveling the grave closed again. The smell of the corpse wafted over to the young vampires.

Alisa didn't find it as unpleasant as the man's reaction would suggest. It was somewhat sweetish and spoke of the cycle of life and death. Edible blood no longer flowed in these veins, yet the smell caused a tingling in her body. Her senses were suddenly alert, her muscles tense as if ready to pounce on prey. Her nostrils quivered, her eyes narrowed to better fixate on the victim. Alisa's fingers clenched around a stone ledge. She shot the others a quick glance. The hunting instinct had awakened in them too. "Four, there are only four," murmured Franz Leopold. "That's nothing. I just need to get close enough to look them in the eyes and penetrate their thoughts. That would then be five study subjects for class. Professor Ruguccio will be pleased." In the depths of his dark eyes, a red glow glimmered.

Alisa and Ivy exchanged concerned looks. Did he just want to scare them, or did he really intend to carry out this insane idea? "Make sure the grave looks the same afterward!" the voice of the lanky one sounded. "We must not arouse any suspicion. What do you think will happen if they come to check and find the coffin empty?"

"Oh, then they'll think they're dealing with a revenant. Or even better: with a vampire who has risen from his grave and is now lurking around here sucking everyone's blood." "Very amusing!" his companion said dryly. "And who would believe such a thing?" "Many believe in vampires. Especially now, after those unexplained deaths. Bloodless bodies with bite marks? Come on, they can only be vampires," the chubby one grinned. "Yeah, yeah, the people like to cling to their ghost stories. But I reckon the gravedigger would have us in his sights. So, we should make sure no parts of our Englishman resurface." He carefully covered the dead man with the blankets and then grabbed the handles. "Come on, lend a hand!" Franz Leopold's eyes narrowed. "See, we have to free them from their misconception. They seem to take the possibility of encountering a vampire here in the cemetery as a joke. Let's convince them otherwise!" He was grabbed by three pairs of hands. "Are you crazy? You don't really mean that!" scolded Alisa.

Although he resisted, they didn't let go of him until the students were gone through the gate with their burden on the cart. Only then did they step back. Franz Leopold glared at them angrily and adjusted his tailcoat. "What cowards you are!" He turned away and walked off with his head held high. The others followed him, shaking their heads. Franz Leopold marched straight to Professor Ruguccio and told him about his idea of using human corpses as study objects.

The professor stared at him in surprise at first, but then a smile spread across his face. "Good idea, Franz Leopold, I must say! Then go find us some fresh graves so we can take them right away. Three will suffice! Have the servants dig them up and take them to the Domus Aurea." With that, he hurried off to tell Signora Enrica about the idea. Franz Leopold turned to the others. "Well, you didn't expect that," he said, smiling smugly. "No," said Alisa. "I really didn't expect that!" Luciano grinned. "I hate to say it, but thanks to Franz Leopold's idea, I think we'll have some interesting hours tomorrow night. I'm curious!" Franz Leopold placed his palm on his chest and bowed. "I thank you for this unusual praise from a Roman mouth and am pleased that my idea is so appreciated." His words sounded mocking, but Alisa felt they contained more truth than the Viennese vampire was willing to admit.