Don’t know what’s gonna happen to this fellow yet. But how awful could it be?
“We cannot allow the creatures of the night to rule it,” Conrad Stauch said, with only a mild aura of pompousness. He was the conductor of the overnight train to Kassel, and I had struck up a conversation with him over just how safe it was to run trains at night through the German countryside. I already knew the answer, but Conrad did not know that – and he was happy to explain matters to the nice English Fraulein.
This was all to bolster my disguise. For this part of the trip I was playing the part of a daring young bluestocking on her own version of the old world’s Grand Tour. My German was carefully fluent, and hinted at a Hessian or two in my own family history; and since I was not trying to sell Conrad shares in a diamond mine, spinning a tale of financial woe, or even earnestly talking to him of Theosophy there was no reason for him to wonder at my “cover.”
Conrad was a stout fellow, in both senses. Oh, he might have been middle-aged and expansive now, but the medals on his chest hinted of a history of being a most gallant fighting-man in the Withering Wars of twenty years ago. I flicked an eye at his hands; no wedding rings. Someone to consider, I thought.
Turned into a vampire before being staked with his own shin-bone is within the realm of possibility.