Blood to Blood (16 page)

"I will take referrals from two people I trust: my friend Winnie Beason, whom you've met, and Dr. Felix Chandra Rhys, who recently opened a charity practice here."

"Dr. Rhys. I know of him. I've had a professional acquaintance speak highly of his skill even though he is Hindu. I should like an introduction if possible," Van Helsing said.

"Hardly difficult. I'm meeting him tomorrow afternoon. You may join us if you wish."

"Good. Now, you will excuse an old man who needs his sleep. Jonathan, I need to know my room."

The question should have been a simple one, yet Jonathan hesitated and glanced at Mina before replying, "The guest room. I'll show you the way." He left with the professor's bag while Van Helsing stopped for a moment to kiss Mina on the cheek and wish her a good night.

Once she was alone, she poured herself a sherry and a second glass for Jonathan. When he returned, she was sitting near the window, both hands cupping her glass and staring out at the stormy night. He glanced at her, then took the second glass from the butler's table and sat in the place where Van Helsing had been.

"There are things we need to discuss," she said.

"It doesn't need to be now," he replied.

"One thing must be settled. Jonathan, do you wish to be married to me?"

"I don't know. Sometimes I think it would be best to part. But then… I, I only wish I weren't so certain that when you are with me you aren't thinking of me."

A memory from the recent past surfaced in her. Without a word, she went to Jonathan's desk and opened a drawer. As she expected, his sketchpad was still in its usual place. When she laid it on edge on the desktop, it fell open to the drawing he had made of a naked Illona Tepes, the one she had caught him studying some months before. His face was red with embarrassment even before she held it up for him to see.

"Fantasies aren't sins, Jonathan. We all have them. But what's past is in the past. I think of him more often than I might have if I weren't living in his house, but I do not dwell on his memory any more than you do on the memory of this creature."

He took in her words, considered. "I want you to give it up," he finally said. "The house. The funds. All of it. I want you to come home and be my wife and live with me as we had planned."

Planned, she thought. When had they ever had time to plan? He proposed. She accepted. Then he was gone, off to a strange, foreign land to meet with creatures no one could have imagined existed.

And even when they returned as husband and wife, they'd planned nothing. They were to live instead as society demanded. Yes, it would have been a safe life, secure and empty until the children came to occupy her time. Emptier still when they abandoned her, as children must.

Once she had begged Jonathan to let her work at his firm. But he had placed others' notions of respectability above her wishes. Would he have done so if the vampire had not intruded on their lives? Would he have listened if he had not thought her tainted?

No matter. What was past, was past. Gance had given her freedom.

"I can't," she said. "I won't."

He gripped his glass so hard, she was certain it would break. "Nothing's changed then. Perhaps we both need time."

She finished her brandy in one quick gulp. "Where would you like me to sleep?"

"In
our
room," he said. "I'll take Aunt Millicent's in the attic. She would prefer me there, I think."

Millicent. One more reminder of why Mina could not stay. As she left the room, she saw him walk toward the sideboard where the decanter of brandy was kept.

Since she hadn't brought a change of clothes, she put on one of Jonathan's nightshirts, slipped into the familiar softness of their bed, and blew out the candle. The window had been shuttered through the day and could not be opened now because of the rain. The room's damp, warm air felt stifling. She lay beneath a thin sheet, but every time she began to drift off to sleep, a flash of lighting or roll of thunder would startle her awake. She waited until the rain beating on the roof subsided to a soft whisper, then slipped out of bed and opened the window that looked out on the walled rear garden. The cooler night air fell against her. A distant flash of lightning silhouetted the nearby houses. She thought of how Dracula had first come to her on a night such as this, and how Jonathan had once spoken of the vampire women and how storms made them restless.

No wonder. Even the most protected chamber could be invaded by a downward stroke of lightning, flooded by the rains, ripped apart by the winds. God's judgment, she'd heard a minister call it. She'd been a little girl then, experiencing her first twinges of conscience, and every small misdeed had convinced her that she was deserving of that judgment. She had been terrified of storms for years. She'd eventually outgrown the terror, come to love the wild nights.

As to God's judgment. He had reserved it until much later. He took her father to Him when she was only twelve, her mother some years later. The only things they had left her was the house she'd been raised in and a small sum of money, enough to see her through school and into marriage.

And it could have been such a good one if God's judgment, or Rhys' notion of Fate, or her own too-strong will had not intervened.

The thunder cracked, closer now, as if the heavens were in agreement.

"Are you thinking of him now?" Jonathan asked.

She whirled and saw him standing in the doorway, his hair all rumpled, his nightshirt damp against his skin. "I thought I'd come and open your window, but you got there first," he said.

He'd come to this room for other reasons, though he might not know them. And if she had been sleeping, would he have stood in the darkness, watching her? Watching but afraid to touch?

She bit back the words that came unbidden to her mind, saying instead, "I couldn't sleep. It seemed so strange being here alone."

She lit the candle and looked at him with concern. "Are you ill?" she asked. "Or did you have another dream?"

"It's just the heat. It's even worse in the attic rooms."

"Come here, then. There's a cool breeze coming through the window."

He moved beside her and, more by instinct than plan, she took his hand.

A draft of air slipped under her nightshirt, sending a shiver down her spine. She felt her nipples harden beneath the thin white cotton. Another flash of lightning made his face seem stark and white. He looked at her then, as if possessed, and kissed her for the first time since she'd left him.

She responded, and as they embraced, by some wordless agreement, they moved toward the bed. As they fell on it, she felt a cold moment of calm and sanity. Tonight would complicate things between them. He would expect concessions, agreements she could not make.

But she had agreed to nothing, she reminded herself. And this was too right to resist.

Take the moment and be thankful for it, she thought, then realized it was the sort of advice Gance would have given.

Her hands undid the buttons of his nightshirt as he raised hers up to her breasts, his hands moving over them, his lips following. She responded, being careful to do only the things that would seem natural to him, things they had done together before.

Later, Jonathan lay beside her, sleeping so deeply that she knew he must have been exhausting himself for days. Were the dreams so terrible? More likely troublesome, she thought.

As for herself, sleep came harder. She watched the window, the glass flashing white in the occasional burst of lightning. When it began to rain again, she got up to close it. As she moved toward it, another flash left a shadowy, almost human image on the wall above their bed. Was it a trick of light and rain on the glass? A dream? An illusion created by her mind? If the last, was it Gance or Joanna? She waited, peering in that direction, but in the next flash the image was gone.

"Mina," Jonathan called softly from the bed.

"I'm here. I closed the window." She walked back to the bed and lay behind him, pressed close, and wrapped an arm around his chest.

Outside, the rain came down hard.

She did not envy anyone without shelter tonight.

While the Harkers were meeting the train, Arthur Holmwood took possession of the addresses of Dracula's holdings in the London area. He studied the list, crossing off those he and the others had already invaded and made useless for the vampire's rest. After mapping a course that would allow him to see as many of the sites as possible in the daylight, he put the list away and spent of the rest of the evening reading. His choice was deliberate—"A Scandal in Bohemia" by Doyle, which had just been published in
The Strand
.

The next morning, he rose far earlier than his usual custom. He dug in the back of his closet and found a dated black chesterfield and derby he hadn't worn since his uncle's funeral some three years earlier. He put it on, stood in front of a full-length mirror and studied the effect. Yes, he decided, he did look much like a businessman; prosperous, but hardly likely to attract attention in even the worst of the areas he intended to visit.

He rummaged through his desk and pulled out a number of cards that belonged to Derrick Smythe, a young and not particularly ethical accountant he'd had the misfortune of meeting once too often. Their brief association had cost him dearly, but at least all the damn cards Smythe had stuffed in his pocket would serve a purpose. He placed them in his inside breast pocket—ready to be handed out should someone inquire who he was.

As to what he was doing in a place that did not belong to him, if he were asked, he would say he was inspecting the property for the owner, whom he represented.

And if he were questioned too harshly, he would simply leave his card and ask the questioning party to contact his employer. Smythe, who looked a bit like him, might have an alibi or might not. Arthur really didn't care.

He wondered if there were others who read Doyle's work for education rather than entertainment. If so, the world was bound to become a far more deceitful place soon enough.

He thought of riding but decided a horse would attract too much attention. So he hailed a hansom instead.

His search began in the East End—not in the roughest part, but farther out. The count had, as in many cases, leased two properties close together. The creature was clever, Arthur gave him credit for that. If the vampire were tracked to one and daylight was upon him, he could easily reach another and take shelter. Both of them were single-story places with cellars. Heartened, he asked the hansom to wait and boldly went up to the door of one of them and pounded on it. When no one answered, he made a show of putting a key in the lock and jiggling it for a time. When it would not open, he signaled the driver to wait and moved to the back. There, out of sight of the driver, he broke in.

The interior of the building was musty, the floor covered with dust, the windows with cobwebs and the yellow patina of age. There was no sign that anyone had lived there in the past few months, which surprised him. Given the poverty he saw in the streets, Arthur had fully expected to have to evict a squatter from every property.

Though he already knew Dracula had never been here, he checked the cellar. It was empty except for a rotting board that had fallen in from the outer trapdoor, small bones of birds and rodents scattered around and the reek of a cat.

The second house, some three blocks away, was empty even of feline squatters. Arthur moved on.

By midafternoon he'd seen eight properties in varying states of repair, but only two squatters, a young sister and brother who were using one of the smaller places as a shelter.

The boy, no more than ten or so, tried to duck under his arm and out the door. Arthur grabbed him by the collar and jerked him back, ordering the older girl to remain where she was as well.

The boy rubbed his neck as he stammered some boldface lie about his parents having leased the place. Arthur admired his cheek and handed him ten bob and one of Smythe's cards. "Since you're here and you've done no damage, feel free to stay. Watch the place for me and the other one as well." He provided a description of Dracula's other holding in the area. "I'll check on you from time to time. If you notice anything out of the ordinary here or there, I'll pay for the information. But just you and your sister stay here, understand?"

The boy broke into a grin and nodded. Arthur studied the pair. Beneath the grime, they had good color and healthy teeth. Through theft or begging, they were at least eating well.

When he left, it occurred to him that if Joanna came to this place, they would be in some danger. "Not half of what they'd have on an average street in that part of town," he decided. Besides, they'd be his eyes and ears—his own Baker Street Irregulars, wasn't that what Holmes called them?

It was nearly dusk when he found what he'd been seeking—in a house on a quiet street near St. Giles Church. The moment the hansom pulled up in front of it, he sensed it. The house was in good repair, as were most of the homes around it, so it was unlikely to attract intruders. It also had long, narrow windows of thick leaded glass, far more difficult to break and enter. Most interesting were the basement windows, boarded up from the inside.

As he'd done before, he asked the driver to wait. This time he didn't even bother to try the front door. Instead, he went around back and knocked as always. To his surprise, the door was opened by a young woman. Clean and well dressed, she could hardly be a squatter. But she was nervous, terribly so. When he looked past her, he saw only a table and two chairs in the kitchen, and an empty pantry beyond. Since she looked ready to slam the door on him, he decided to put her at ease as best he could. "I am Mr. Smythe," he said. "I represent the gentleman who leased this house. He's out of the country for some weeks and asked me to check up on his properties."

She stepped away from the door, and the frantic look on her face made him add, "Not that there have been any complaints, of course. But I do wonder who you might be."

"Stella Cunningham. My father owned this house until he died two years ago. My husband and I had a… disagreement. I had heard the place was empty and tried my key. I don't think he will look for me here."

She hid her emotions well, but Arthur sensed that she was desperate. He could well guess what sort of disagreement could send a woman into hiding. "Did you plan to remain here long?" he asked.

"I've sent word to my sister in Leeds. As soon as I receive her reply, I'll be leaving."

He already knew what he would do, but for effect considered the matter. "I suppose that since you've done no damage, it would be all right if you stayed for a few more days. He'll never even know you were here. I do need to inspect the house, however… check for water leaks, that sort of thing." He walked past her, his black hat in his hand. The pantry was empty, the rooms beyond it as well. In what would be the bedroom, he found a pile of blankets serving as a bed, and a bag full of clothing, apparently quickly packed.

Returning to the kitchen, he opened the cellar door and saw dust on the damp and narrow steps leading to the basement. Could his instincts be so wrong?

"There's an outside door on the north side that might be easier than this," the woman told him.

And he'd walked right past it! Buried in the bushes, no doubt. "I prefer to try the stairs," he said. He pulled a candle and light from his pocket. A draft from below blew out the light before he reached the third step down.

"Wait! I have a lamp," Stella suggested, and brought it from the bedroom.

He went down, gripping the rickety railing. Below it was a small room, separated from the main room beyond. In it, he found the box.

It was much like the ones that he and the others had blessed in the area around Purfleet—long and narrow and plain enough to escape any attention. The hinges looked sturdy, the lock less so. He pulled out a screwdriver and broke the hasp easily.

With his heart pounding from too many memories, he lifted the lid. But this box was empty, blessedly so, for he had no desire to come upon his quarry too early in the hunt. But it did have earth beneath the false floor. He suspected that it would be heavy, but not impossible, for two people to carry. He checked the outside door. As he'd expected, it was barred on the inside. Vampires had no need for doors, no concern for locks, but they did know the value of keeping the curious well away from their lairs.

The woman was waiting for him at the top of the stairs. "Will you be here another day or so, Mrs. Cunningham?"

"I believe so."

"Good. My employer has a trunk in the basement that he wishes moved. I'll be coming by tomorrow with some movers. I wanted to tell you so that you wouldn't be alarmed when we arrived."

She smiled, and nervously brushed a stray lock of hair off her forehead. "Thank you for being so understanding," she said.

"No thanks are needed. I wish you the best," he said and left, feeling more than a little pleased with himself. Not only had the search been a success, but also he'd done a pair of good deeds. And tomorrow when he came, he'd do a third and bring a bit of food for the woman just in case she was too frightened or too poor to shop for herself.

"You were gone so long, I thought you'd left," the hansom driver grumbled when he saw Arthur. "Then I remembered that you hadn't paid me fare."

"I'll pay more than that if you can get a cart and a couple of strong fellows for tomorrow morning. I need a trunk moved."

"That's all. You and me could handle it, if you don't mind getting your suit a bit dirty."

"It can wait until tomorrow."

"Well, it won't be hard to get fellows to help on the Sabbath these days," the driver commented. "Too many hungry to observe the Lord's demands. Where to now?"

Arthur glanced at his pocket watch. "Take me to Cheyne Walk."

"Another stop?" the driver asked. "Me horse has to eat sometime."

"This time I'll be getting out. But you can meet me tomorrow at ten at Grosvenor Square."

He sat back and shut his eyes. In spite of the lurch of the hansom, he dozed off until the driver called that they'd reached his stop. He left the man with a generous payment for the day's work and reminded him of tomorrow's meeting.

He had accomplished the first of his goals, and was convinced that the second would soon follow. He should have been excited, even elated. But as he started across the bridge, a terrible sense of doom pressed down on him. The course he would follow went against every piece of advice he'd been given. But he had no choice. He needed answers, and the only one who could provide them was the vampire.

He sat on the same bench in the center of the park and waited as the mists closed in. As always, he saw nothing, and sensed nothing but the feeling that someone was watching him with great and terrible interest.

"Soon enough," he whispered, and with a resigned shrug, headed back across the bridge toward Hyde Park and home.

The following morning, the hansom driver met him as arranged. He'd brought an open cart and a pair of young Irishmen to help them. More coins than words were exchanged before Arthur took a seat in the back, as far away from his companions as possible. Did the poor of London ever bathe? he wondered while the cart alternately lurched forward, then stopped with little warning, throwing him against one of the dirty creatures as the driver tried to avoid hitting anyone in the early-morning throng.

Arthur had brought a round of cheese and some biscuits for the woman, but when they arrived, they found her gone. So his reassurance had no effect on her. In her position, he wouldn't have trusted a stranger either. But she had done him one good turn. She'd left the back door open, saving him an explanation of why he was breaking into the place.

The box was heaver than he'd expected—"lead bricks," one of the men called it—while another was sure he'd committed murder and they were carrying out the body.

"No body weighs this much unless it's made of stone," the driver said. The others laughed, but the mirth was shortlived. With much swearing, the four of them maneuvered it out of the cellar and onto the cart. Arthur and the driver got in the front, the Irishmen in the back to watch the box so it wouldn't break loose of the rope holding it.

"Where we be taking it?" the driver asked once they were settled in.

Arthur gave his Kensington address.

"That's a damn fine distance in this traffic," the driver grumbled.

"And well worth your while," Arthur reminded him.

The Kensington estate had come to Arthur through his uncle. In the past, Arthur had used it rarely, much preferring the trio of rooms he kept in Mayfair for his forays into London society. Since his tastes lay with the theater crowd and their late-night hours, so long a drive would have run counter to common sense as well as inclination. He left the estate in the hands of its gardener, who regarded the acre around it as his personal Eden, and his wife, who acted as maid and cook.