Anno Dracula (16 page)

A knot of three new-born youths huddled together, shivering in ladies’ night-dresses, hissing through dainty fangs. Their faces were smooth, their bodies womanish. Kostaki was reminded of Prince Dracula’s concubines.

Mackenzie got himself under control and started properly to supervise his men. He presented the captives with death warrants; already filled out, but with blanks for their names. This business had to be done legally.

‘Masterful sir,’ wheedled a voice. It was Orlando. ‘Sir, if I might make so bold as to mention, there is one who has escaped your justice. An important personage is to be found in a secret inner chamber, taking his gross pleasure with two poor lads stolen off the streets.’

Kostaki looked down on the hunched footman. Under his powder, his skin was pock-marked with disease.

‘If accommodation were to be made, sir, I might see a way to assisting you, sir, in the execution of your, if I might say, sacred duty to his worshipful highness the Prince Consort, God bless him and keep him in his palace, sir.’

The warm young man’s throat swelled with blood. Kostaki had not dealt with his own needs tonight. He grabbed Orlando by the neck and exerted pressure with his thumb.

‘Out with it, worm!’

He had to relax his grip to allow the little man to speak.

‘Behind the stairs, masterful sir, there’s a secret door. And I’m the only one as knows the secret.’

Kostaki let him go and pushed him across the road.

‘Sir, the one I speak of is a powerful individual, masterful sir, and I doubt if even you could subdue him by yourself.’

Kostaki detached Gorcha and a burly new-born police sergeant from the impaling party. The next of the inverts were being lifted up to their stakes. The dying yells must be audible throughout the city. In Buckingham Palace, Prince Dracula would be raising a goblet of virgin wine to the enforcement of his edict.

Orlando scurried ratlike in front of them and sought out his secret door. Kostaki recognised his type: there were always those among the warm eager to serve the un-dead, just as there had been Wallachs who served the Turk.

‘Remember, sir, I offered up voluntary-like the secret.’

Orlando tripped a catch and a section of wall-panel sprang out. The copper-smell of blood wafted from within, along with perfume and incense. Kostaki was first through the door. The room he entered was decorated as a bower; trees were painted on the walls, crêpe foliage hung from the ceiling, dry leaves were scattered all around. The remains of a basket of fruit were squashed into the japanwood floor. Curled up by the door was a dead youth, ragged gashes all over his nude body, face a perfect blue. He might turn, but Kostaki thought him too broken to be much use as a vampire.

‘Here, masterful sir, behold the rutting beast, indulging his disgusting pleasures!’

In the middle of the room, surrounded by oriental cushions,
churned a reptile form composed of two bodies. Underneath a writhing vampire was a squealing youth, blood slicking his back. The important personage was using the boy as a man uses a woman, simultaneously swallowing great gushing draughts from open veins. It was Count Vardalek, his back twice its normal length. Snake-teeth sprouted from the lower half of his face. His chin and lips were studded, fangs erupting through the flesh. His green-yellow eyes floated, pupils shrunk to pin-points.

The Count looked up and spat venom.

‘You see, sir,’ Orlando said, grinning, ‘a very important personage indeed, masterful sir.’

‘Kostaki,’ Vardalek said, ‘what does this damned interruption mean?’

He was still moving sinuously, his body bearing upon the boy’s like a serpent’s coils. His sides were lightly scaled, and the scales caught the light, rainbow patterns reflecting.

‘Captain Kostaki,’ said Gorcha, standing by with his heavy musket, ‘what should be done?’

‘Get out you fools,’ Vardalek shouted.

Kostaki made a decision. ‘There can be no exceptions.’

Vardalek gasped and gaped. He rose from his exhausted boy, and pulled a quilted robe about himself, spine settling as he dwindled to his usual height. His face rapidly resumed its human look. With a delicate touch, he reset his golden peruke on his sweat-slick skull.

‘Kostaki, we are both...’

Kostaki turned away from his comrade, ordering, ‘Bring him outside with the others.’

Out on the street, von Klatka’s eyes bulged to see the Count being led to the stake.

Kostaki looked up at the sky. In his mountain homelands, he was used to the bright points of the stars. Here, gaslight, fog and thick rainclouds robbed him of the night’s thousand eyes.

Gorcha and the Sergeant had to hold Vardalek steady. Kostaki and von Klatka stood close to the prisoner. He was smiling, but his eyes were afraid. He was not stupid. His long life was over. There would be no more gazelle-like lads for Count Vardalek.

‘We have to do this thing,’ Kostaki explained. ‘Vardalek, you know Prince Dracula. If you were spared, we’d be impaled.’

‘Comrades, this is absurd.’

Von Klatka was shifting from foot to foot like a warm fool. He wanted to intervene but he knew Kostaki was right. The Prince was proud to be known as harsh but just. His own regiment must be more rigid in its obedience to his rule than anyone else.

‘What are a few boys, more or less?’ Vardalek said.

‘Sir, masterful sir...’

Kostaki raised a hand. A Guardsman took hold of Orlando and quieted him.

‘I regret this deeply,’ he explained.

Vardalek shrugged, endeavouring to retain his dignity. Kostaki had known the vampire since the 1600s. He had never exactly liked the arrogant Hungarian, but respected him as brave and wilful. Vardalek’s preference for boys did not strike him as anything to fuss about, but Prince Dracula had strange prejudices.

‘One thing you must know,’ the Count said. ‘That elder bitch the other night, the Dieudonné creature: my business with her is not finished. I have taken steps to even things.’

‘That is to be expected.’

‘I have commissioned her destruction.’

Kostaki nodded. Honour required as much.

‘Masterful sir,’ whined Orlando, ‘now I have assisted the Prince Consort’s justice, might I...’

‘Your stake will be sharp, Vardalek,’ he promised. ‘And your heart will be set over its point. The end will be quick.’

‘I thank you, Captain Kostaki.’

‘On a stake set low so you can look down upon him, I shall have impaled the warm worm who betrayed you.’

‘Masterful sir,’ Orlando screeched, mouth breaking free of the Guardsman’s hand, ‘please, I, sir, I...’

Kostaki turned to the human and looked loathing at him. Orlando’s face was a wet twist of fear.

‘And the stake which spits his guts shall be blunted.’

Dr Seward’s Diary (kept in phonograph)

27 SEPTEMBER

After my Lucy, Mina. His first get disposed of, the Count turned his attention to the wife of his solicitor. I believe he fixed on Mrs Harker even as he was paying his attentions to Lucy. The two women were together in Whitby when he came ashore. He saw them as a glutton sees a pair of fat pastries. I have tried to recreate the record lost in the fire at Purfleet, now I must at last turn to the journal entry I was prevented from making. On the night of the 2nd and 3rd of October, 1885, a great stone was cast into the pond; we live now with the ripples, turned to tidal waves, of that splash.

While Van Helsing was lecturing our little circle on the habits of the common vampire, the Count was seducing Mina Harker. As with Lucy, she was to serve a double purpose, to slake his thirst and to become his get. From the first, his mission in Britain was evangelical; he was bent upon turning as many as possible, recruiting soldiers for his army. We made the asylum our fortress, and gathered behind its thick walls and iron bars as if they could keep out the vampire. In
addition to the destroyers of Lucy, we took in Mina and her husband. Van Helsing must have known the Count would pursue the woman, and dug out all the holy impedimenta that had served so little use in the earlier case.

I was first alerted to the Count’s invasion when an attendant intruded to tell me that Renfield had met with some accident. I came to his room and found the lunatic lying on his left side in a glittering pool of blood. When I went to move him, it became at once apparent that he had suffered terrible injuries; there was none of that unity of purpose between the parts of the body which marks even lethargic sanity. Van Helsing, in dressing gown and slippers, tried to save the patient’s life, but it was hopeless. Betrayed by his master, he raved and frothed. Quincey and Art arrived to get in the way. While the Professor was readying for a trephination, I attempted to administer an injection of morphia. Renfield bit my hand, deep. Months’ practice biting off the heads of birds had given him strong jaws. If I had treated myself then, my hand mightn’t have become worse than useless. But it was a crowded night, and when the sun came up, I had fled from Purfleet, no saner I fear than the poor dead man.

Renfield, babbling, told us of his attempt to defy his master. He had developed something of a crush on Mrs Harker, and anger at the Count’s treatment of her broke his loyalty to the vampire. There was something of jealousy in his stand, I feel, as if he envied Dracula the slow taking of Mina’s life. He alternated between maniacal rages and surprising courtesy. When I showed him to Quincey and Art, he recalled nominating Godalming’s father for the Windham and took time to lecture Quincey on the greatness of the state of Texas, but he was always dismissive of Harker, jealous of the solicitor too. Before any of us, including the presumed expert Van Helsing,
Renfield diagnosed Mina’s condition. ‘She wasn’t the same,’ he said, ‘it was like tea after the teapot had been watered. I don’t care for the pale people; I like them with lots of blood in them, and hers had all seemed to have run out... He had been taking the life out of her.’

Earlier that night, the Count had come to Renfield, apparently in a discarnate form resembling mist. The slave tried to throttle the master, only to be casually smashed against the wall. ‘We know the worst now,’ Van Helsing said. ‘He is here and we know his purpose. It may not be too late.’ With a more important life to save than Renfield’s – that opinion being reinforced by the patient himself – Van Helsing abandoned plans to operate. He had us gather up the weapons we had used against Lucy. Our group crept down the corridor towards the Harkers’ bedroom, for all the world like the partisans of an outraged husband in a French farce. ‘Alas, alas, that that dear Madam Mina should suffer,’ Van Helsing lamented, shifting his crucifix from hand to hand like a pagan fetish. He knew confronting an elder by night, when his powers were at the height, would be a very different matter from trapping a feeble-minded new-born by day.

We paused outside the Harkers’ door. Quincey said ‘should we disturb her?’ The Quincey Morris I remember from our Korea expedition would have shown no qualm about bursting at dead of night into a young lady’s room, although he might have given pause if, as now, he knew the lady’s husband were with her. The door was properly locked but we all put our shoulders to it. With a crash it burst open, and we almost fell headlong into the room. The Professor did actually fall, and I saw across him as he gathered himself up from hands and knees. What I saw appalled me. I felt my hair rise like bristles on the back of my neck.

The moonlight was so bright that through the thick yellow blind
the room was light enough to see. On the bed beside the window lay Jonathan Harker, his face flushed and his breath coming heavily. Kneeling on the near edge of the bed facing outwards was his wife. By her side stood a tall, thin man, clad in black. His face was turned from us, but the instant we saw, we all recognised the Count. With his left hand he held both Mrs Harker’s hands, keeping them away with her arms at full tension; his right hand gripped her by the back of the neck, forcing her face down on his bosom. Her white night-dress was smeared with blood, and a thin stream trickled down the man’s bare breast which was shown by his torn-open shirt. The attitude of the two had a terrible resemblance to a child forcing a kitten’s nose into a saucer of milk to compel it to drink.

As we burst into the room, the Count turned his face and a hellish look seemed to leap into it. With a wrench which threw his victim back upon the bed as though hurled from a height, he turned and sprang at us. By this time the Professor had gained his feet and was fumbling with one of his wafers. The Count suddenly stopped, just as Lucy had done outside the tomb. Further and further back he cowered, as we, lifting our crosses, advanced. A righteous Christian army, we would have done John Jago proud. We had the vampire in a corner and might have finished him or put him to flight but for a failure on our collective part. Before me was evidence that Dracula shared Van Helsing’s belief in the power of sacred symbols to harm him, but my own faith faltered. I would rather have had a pistol in my hand, or Quincey’s bowie knife, or one of my now-silvered scalpels. To face the Count with a penny ornament and a broken biscuit struck me then, and strikes me now, as sheer folly. As my doubt flared, I dropped my cross. And as a great black cloud passed over the moon, I heard terrible laughter in the dark. Quincey put a match
to the gas and the light sprang up. All shadows banished, the Count stood before us, blood dribbling from the shallow cut in his chest. I had expected to find Dracula drinking the blood of Mrs Harker, not vice versa.