Mina (46 page)

came on so suddenly the
evening our little band believed that Dracula had died.

"Mina.” Gance's
voice, so soft in the center of the storm.

I knelt beside him.
"I'm sorry,” I whispered.

"I saw eternity,
Mina. Just for a moment, I saw it."

"I know,
darling," I whispered. I said a prayer for his soul then held him close
while he died. As he did, the whirlwind

subsided from a storm,
to a breeze, to the misty unformed presence I knew so well.

I stood. Dracula was all around me, impossible
to see or to touch. "Tepes
!
Will you exist like this, an impotent
ghost in a deserted castle?" I asked him. "You were the servant of
God, the .savior of your people. You are a saint to them, even now. "

"Tepes
!
What is blood but life
and water? This vessel is blessed by a holy man, a priest of the Orthodox
faith. Your blood

in me is blessed as you were once blessed before you rode into
battle. Take my body. Use it to reclaim the heaven that even now you deserve.
"

The mist coalesced at my
feet. It whirled around mc, then vanished.

I felt
him move through me, felt the drain of my life, an energy pull so much like the
pull of blood I'd felt before. My
^,
body, blessed as it was, gave no
welcome, but he remained, a warrior with no fear of pain or death, a warrior
with the promise of heaven to keep his soul resolute.

"For all the years
of loneliness, of damnation, accept the sacrament I offer you, the sacrament of
my body. Take it, my

lord, my lover. Accept
the grace of this sacred vessel to redeem your soul. End the torment for both
of us. "

I expected another
whirlwind, a painful good-bye. Instead he was present in me one moment, gone
the next. I sat alone,

beside Gance's body,
crying for them both.

Karina formed in the air beside me. Though I was
astonished at her beauty, I felt no enmity. We were sisters, she and I, bound
by how we had been used. She looked at my tears as if she had never seen such a
thing before. "You grieve for him?

No, Mina, you must not. In time, Lord Gance would have had no
choice but to be as I am. No will is stronger than our power and our need.

"Still, I tried to
make him one of us,” she said in her beautiful voice. Her accent was quite
lovely, her English almost

flawless. "Tepes
and I learned the language together,” she said, reading my thoughts as Dracula
had done.

"What will you and Joanna do now?" I
asked. "Joanna." I sensed the feeling words could not convey. Joanna,
always mad, had hidden herself in the caverns below the castle. On her own,
she would never have the courage to leave this place. Instead she would
remain, company to Illona's ghost forever. The walls would one day crumble
around them, and they would haunt the land and the caves below.

Or perhaps she will eventually find the resolve
to flee far enough that no one will recognize what she is. The world is full enough
of half mad creatures, feeding off the lives of others. I can picture her
walking the nighttime streets of Paris or London, her dark eyes and red lips
luring men to the shadows and to death.

"And you?" I
repeated.

"I killed Illona, the one who made me. I am free to go
wherever I wish. " I thought of the words she had written, the end she had
asked for. "Shall I remain until dawn and give you death?"

"Death?" She shook her head. "If
only I could live.” She did not look like the others. With her golden hair,
her eyes such a brilliant blue that I could see their color even in the dim
light of the torch mounted on the wall, her tiny hands and bow-shaped mouth,
she could have been alive. Rouge would hide the whiteness of her face, gloves
the pallor of her hands. She could live anywhere now. I wanted to ask her to
return to London with me.

As what? A replacement
for Lucy? A friend for Winnie and me? An exotic animal to keep in my cellar as
the infamous

poet Rossetti had the
menagerie in his yard?

No
!
Not the last, though the
others were true enough. I held out my hand to her. She clasped it and moved
close to me.

Softly, passionlessly,
she kissed my lips, then tilted my head up and back as her maker had once done
to her.

She must have known how
Dracula had died in me. Nonetheless, I tried to warn her. "I am blessed.
My blood will

destroy you,” I said.

She nodded, lowered her
head to my neck and began to drink from the still-bleeding wound. She drank in
death as she

once had life, growing
ever weaker in my arms, until I was the strong one, able to push her away.

I sat with her as the
sun rose. It touched her flesh, and slowly she crumbled into dust as he had
done, and blew away in

the light dawn breeze.
The presence left me. She was gone, soul as well as body, truly gone.

I buried my head in
hands that until a moment ago had held her. I cried.

I had lost a great deal
of blood, enough that I could never get down those stairs alone. I sat and
waited. As I expected,

the doors had opened at
dawn. Van Helsing came to me. "It's done,” I said.

"I know. I felt him
die."

I was as surprised by
his look of triumph as Karina had been by my tears. Perhaps both our emotions
were wrong.

Perhaps this was
something that needed to be dune, nothing more.

He helped me down the
stairs. We rested together in the courtyard until I was steady enough to ride.
It was nearly

nightfall by the time we traveled the few miles to the town from
which we had set out the afternoon before. We took rooms at the inn. I needed
sleep, but I could not find it. Instead, I kept seeing Karina's face as it had
looked in the last moments of her earthly existence-transformed from its
vampiric magnificence to the charming childish beauty it had once possessed-and
I knew that in the last moments of her life, she had found redemption.

After centuries of
slavery, she had chosen peace over freedom. I sat at the table in my room and
mourned her and our

lover both.

And then, stilling my
thoughts and emotions, I contemplated my life.

The passion Dracula
awakened in me has not died. I am no different than the Mina Harker who came
here with Gance

days ago, and I must
accept this fate if I wish to find happiness in this fleeting life.

And so I have written a letter to Jonathan,
telling him all that has happened and how nothing has really changed. I told him
that I loved him, then asked him to decide if he can love me with the passion I
need. I enclosed the address of the artist in Paris and told him that I would
wait there for him to decide.

If there is justice for
both of us, I will meet him in that little garden. I will kiss him as I kissed
my other lovers, and he

will respond.

If he does not come,
there will be life and happiness without him.