Mina (3 page)

"It is nearly sunset, Madam
Mina," Van Helsing said softly as I hid my book in my pocket. He entered
the compartment followed by Seward. Without waiting for my assent, he folded
his glasses and put them in his pocket then took out the watch he used to hypnotize
me. Behind him, Seward stood ready with the pad and pen he used to record my
thoughts.

As always, Van Helsing could barely
contain his excitement. For a moment at dawn and dusk, he can use me to touch
the mind of the vampire. It thrills him to be able to use science against such
evil, and it somehow thrills him even more that I have been able to form the
idea of attempting this contact on my own. As he reminds me and the others far
too often, I have Dracula's blood in my veins, which makes me a most
unpredictable ally.

Going to Dracula with my mind is
always strange. In the beginning, the mental journey frightened me and made me
dizzy, as if I were actually flying across land and water to meet him, with
only the tenuous tie to Van Helsing's mind keeping me aloft. Now I am more
used to it, but as always, I have nothing new to report. Dracula is still at
sea, still in a state of half sleep, using what power he dares expend to order
the storm that sweeps the boat, the
Czarina Catherine,
swiftly
toward the Black Sea.

The bond
broke quickly this time. "Do you suppose his power is growing now that he
is so close to home?" Van Helsing asked

me.

I nodded.
"I feel his mind close to mine so often now," I told him.

"And
how do you feel? Does he try to control you?"

"No."
I hesitated, weighed my words carefully and decided to tell the truth. "I
believe that he knows that to make me truly his ally,

he must allow me some
independence. He is testing my resolve. So far, at least, I am up to it."

Van Helsing knelt in front of me. He
studied my color, took my pulse. Afterward, I opened my mouth so he could part
my lips and examine my teeth. I wonder what he would think if I bit him at
that moment. Would he be concerned about being infected? More likely, he would
question my misplaced sense of humor, or my sanity. He would be right to do so.
So much that is tragic strikes me as humorous. So much I used to ignore seems
tragic.

"You
should join us for dinner," Van Helsing said with an uneasy smile as he
patted my hand.

"In a
moment," I replied, closing the compartment behind them.

Soon after,
I tiptoed down the dark and narrow hallway to the door where Seward and Van
Helsing had paused. I smelled the

smoke of Seward's meerschaum pipe, Van Helsing's cigar. Just out
of sight of them, I stopped, leaned against the wall and eavesdropped on their
conversation. "How is she?" Seward whispered.

"Worse."
Van Helsing's voice became even softer. The noise of the train made hearing
nearly impossible, but I believe he said,

"You are prepared to do
what must be done?"

"If it
comes to that." Grief made Seward's reply much louder, and I had no
difficulty hearing his words.

"I fear
it will be soon."

Soon. I backed up a few feet then
strolled down the hall toward them, bumping into Dr. Seward. He started as if
he expected me to suddenly turn into a wolf and lunge for his throat. I felt a
pang of pity that would have brought tears to my eyes had I not fought them
down. Seward was a reclusive man. Like so many others, he had found his love
late in life. Though Lucy chose another, he loved her still and had been
horrified by the creature she later became. If "true death" would
save my poor soul from her fate, he would gladly help deliver it.

I find
myself pitying Jack for his loss, all the more because it would be impolite for
him to mourn openly as Arthur does.

What is stranger
yet is that I do not fear Van Helsing. I have always trusted my intuition, and
it rarely fails me. It is a good sign

for the future!

Exhausted by the constant focus on their enemy, the men discussed
their work over dinner. While he is away, Arthur has placed his affairs in the
hands of a trusted friend. Seward has able assistants at the asylum. Quincey,
of course, is touring Europe and can go where he wishes.

During the
discussion, I noticed that Jonathan had become quite withdrawn. Van Helsing did
as well and laid a sympathetic hand

on my husband's arm. "I
too left my work suddenly," Van Helsing said. "We will be back to it
much sooner than you think."

"The
Hawkins staff has a reputation for dependability," Arthur added and
instantly regretted his choice of words. "Mina is more

important than the firm of
Hawkins and Harker," Jonathan said softly.

"I
meant that they will manage well in your absence," Arthur replied.

"Of
course they will, darling," I said and impulsively kissed his cheek. As I
did, I noticed Seward lean forward in alarm.

If I had any desire to devour my
husband, did he think I would do it in the dining car? The thought of such an
act struck me as hilarious. I hid my smile behind my napkin, my laughter
behind a feigned cough. Quincey seemed to have shared my thought, but his reaction
was concern not amusement.

When dinner was over, Jonathan decided to join the other men in
the smoking car for a game of cards. Quincey offered to see me back to my
room. When we arrived there, he paused then asked awkwardly if he could come in
for a moment and speak to me. Once inside, he came directly to the point.

"On the frontier in America,
women have to be armed just like, the men. I have something for you." He
reached into his coat and pulled out a short-barreled pistol with a tooled
leather handle. Without asking whether I wanted it or not, he proceeded to show
me how it loaded. "It doesn't have the distance of
the rifles,
but if it comes to using it, the bullets are as lethal at close range as those
from a Winchester." He handed the pistol and a box of bullets to me.
"Take these," he said.

He was not suggesting the pistol as
a defense against vampires, for, as had already been demonstrated, bullets had
no effect on them. I knew whom he feared, and I had a perverse desire to force
him to give a name. Instead, polite as the Mina I had been only days before, I
merely said, "Thank you."

"It
will be our secret," he replied.

I took
Quincey's hand in one of mine and saw him looking down at my fingers with a
sense of wonder. Had he expected them to

feel something other than alive? "I am quite all right and
fully intend to remain that way," I told him as brightly as I could and warmed
to his smile. Quincey is so honest, so much more open-minded than the others. I
imagine that the American frontier must be a wild place filled with all sorts
of rare and exotic creatures. If so, it would be quite unlike England, where
everything is so static that it is a wander that only the houses are covered
with ivy and moss. "Why did you come with the others?" I asked him.

"To
avenge Lucy. To see the last European frontier." He smiled sadly.
"And, forgive me, I mean nothing but respect when I say,

for you."

I kissed his
cheek and whispered, "Lucy loved you so much. I understand why. Your
nature is like hers. You give so much."

I felt his unease, his uncertainty
about what my words meant. Not wishing to embarrass him, I pulled away too
quickly then realized it must look as if I were indeed doing something
improper. He glanced over his shoulder at the door, and I saw the pulse quicken
in the vein in his neck. Dear Quincey. For all his rough edges, he is as
civilized as the rest. I wonder what he would have said had he known that my
only desire at that moment was to lock the door and taste of him. I would have
been chaste, gentle, but no less insistent than Dracula had been with me.

I wrapped
the gun and bullets in a scarf and put them in my traveling bag. As I did,
Quincey retreated toward the door and I told

him good night.

Afterward, I recorded these
thoughts. My odd fantasies. I would
never
act on them, yet the very fact that
I have them at all fills me with shame and dread. My future is in such
turmoil, my soul in such peril, yet as I write these words, I feel nothing
except a vague affection for my companions and curiosity about my fate.

October 14.
This morning, Dracula woke as
I touched his mind. I saw his eyes open to the blackness of the box in which
he rests, smelled the dry earth on which he lies, felt his terrible hunger as
if it were my own. The strength of it, and the pain, forced my immediate
withdrawal, and I found myself suddenly staring, dizzy and disoriented, into
Van Helsing's piercing eyes.

"What
has happened?" he asked.

I lied and told him that I did not
know. However, I am certain that at the time my mind touches Dracula's, my
thoughts are known to him. I find this consoling. I still hope that I can
somehow be free of his control without causing his death or the deaths of the
men who travel with me. Though I have never confessed this to the others, Van
Helsing guesses my feelings and reminds me often that my soul depends on our
destroying the vampire. I disagree. My soul is mine to save or destroy. To say
that its fate depends on another's death means that there is no justice to be
had from God. Such blasphemy!

During the
journey, I find myself thinking too often of Lucy’s true death. When I first
read Dr. Seward's account of
her last days,

I thought that if she had
known the exact nature of the creature that preyed on her, she might have had
the strength to fight back.

Now I am not so certain. Lucy was
always
frivolous.
She would have been easier to seduce than
I was
than I am. And yet there was
strength to her as well,
a
strength born of knowing she could defy convention and
survive
the
consequences with her reputation only slightly besmirched and her virtue
securely intact.

Think
of
it! She
received three marriage proposals in one day from some of
the finest
men I have ever met. Not since Queen

Bess has anyone been so
sought after. And when she made her choice, she let the others down so gently
that they loved her still.

When I consider this, I wonder about poor Lucy's freedom once the
count claimed her for his own. Though she drank the blood of children, she did
not kill any of them. Had she some choice in the matter? On one hand, it
comforts me to think she did. But if so, then what a terrible thing the men did
to her out of ignorance.

My thoughts were fixed on this throughout our evening meal. I
scarcely heard the men's plans, or even noticed the taste of the food I ate.
As always, the men urged me to eat more. I did as they asked until I could
scarcely breathe, yet I felt terribly unsatisfied and strangely sleepy.
Nonetheless, when we stopped at the train station in Hungary to take on coal
and water, I got out with the others to stretch my legs. While standing on the
platform, I noticed a pair of passengers saying good-bye to their families.
They

were young men in simple woolen coats and pants. From the looks of
them, I would say they are peasants. Perhaps they have been conscripted or are
going to sea, for everyone was crying openly as if the separation may be
permanent.

A woman kissed one of the passengers
in a way I would have blushed to kiss Jonathan in the privacy of our bedroom. I
saw the man's hand slide beneath her heavy coat to brush against her breast,
watched her press close to him and kiss him again. As they parted, the woman
noticed me staring and smiled as she wiped away a tear. The gulf between our
worlds is so wide, yet I feel a longing for her freedom, her passion. I am so
constrained-my emotions as contained as my body is beneath the bone corset
correct civilization demands that I wear even in a land that would not notice
its lack.

I don't feel
"correct" any longer, and the farther we get from home, the wilder my
thoughts become. It is his blood in me that

makes it so. How will I
control my thoughts when I finally walk on the soil of his native land?

The
following morning on the way to the dining car, I saw the two peasants sitting
in the nearly empty coach sharing bread and

sausage, laughing heartily as
they did. I would have asked where they were going, but I did not know their
language.

On our travel through the night, the
land had become wilder, the mountains more craggy. As I sat with the others,
eating slices of fine white bread that had all the dry taste of flour in my
mouth, I looked down at drop-offs to swift cataracts in the valleys below.

Wild. Barely settled. His country. I would have known it even if I
had not been told that we would be transferring in Bucharest within the hour
and arriving in Varna by evening.

As I sat
listening to the others conversing as if our journey were no more than a
pleasant adventure, I listened to the wheels of the

train rolling over the
tracks, pounding like a pulse. . . blood and blood and blood.

My
expression must have given me away. Van Helsing took my hand and looked
carefully into my eyes.

I gazed back at him as innocently as
I could. As I did, I found myself wondering what would have happened if Dr.
Seward had never written him. Would I have woke one night to find Lucy sitting
beside me on my bed? Would she have killed me then? Would she have loved me
with the dark passion I had always sensed just beneath the veneer of her
aristocracy? Would I have been able to resist her charm-the charm of my only
close friend?

"Are
you all right?" It was Jonathan speaking, his voice full of love and
concern.

"It's
the height. It makes me uneasy," I replied, pulling my hand away from the
professor's and leaning against Jonathan.

"Perhaps
Dr. Seward should see you back to your room?" Van Helsing suggested.

My hand
squeezed Jonathan's more tightly. "I will," he said.

"I'll
come as well," Jack suggested, resting a hand on Van Helsing's shoulder as
he stood.

I knew what
they were doing. They meant to keep us apart because they do not trust me. This
makes me furious, yet they are

right to do so.

Blood ...
and blood ... and blood.

October 25, Varna.
This
afternoon,
Dracula came to me, his presence so real that for a moment I was certain that
his body

actually stood before me.

We have been
staying for the last ten days at a hotel in one of the finest sections of
Varna. The rooms are spacious and clean and

always warm. The food served here, the men tell me, is exquisite,
though I can scarcely taste it anymore and eat only to please them. The leaded
glass windows that cover the entire east wall of the dining room overlook the
harbor. Jonathan and the others often stand by them watching boats sailing in
and out. The
Czarina Catherine
is expected soon, and they all hope
the struggle will then be over. After his visit, I knew otherwise.

By noon, the strange lethargy
smothered me completely, reminding me most unpleasantly how often I had claimed
exhaustion to the men throughout the journey. I retired to my room and did not
even try to write in my journal. In truth, little had happened and so I did
not feel uneasy when I slipped into bed and, I think, immediately fell into a
deep sleep.

I dreamed of the water, the reeking
hold of the ship that carries him here. Then he was with me, rising from the
mist in the center of my mind. A moment later, I joined him and willingly
clasped his outstretched hands. I sensed no uneasiness in my actions, as if this
dream foreshadowed that change in me that he expects will soon come. I spoke.
Though I could not hear my words, I know I told him every part of the men's
plans. I sensed his thanks, and recall the words of his reply as clearly as if
I had written them down.

"I will
travel on alone for a while longer," he said. "When the men face me,
it must be on my own land, where I am most powerful.

I promise on the honor I once
possessed as a prince and general that I will do my best to end this chase
without them coming to