Slave Of Dracula (27 page)

And that morning, too, in the dark of his coffin, Renfield dreamed again of the dark gloating, the
burning stench of the Count’s delight in the anticipation of his vengeance.

When they see what I shall make of her, my bride, my slave, and my winepress, then shall their
hearts weep beneath my heel. Even death will to them bring no comfort.

Destroy them! Destroy them all, except for Van Helsing. -Him you let live, to see their deaths.

His words, his thoughts, crushed Renfield with terror, and it seemed to him that he knelt again in the
hold of the doomed ship Demeter, confronting that column of shadow, those red, burning eyes.

But in his dream, this time, Nomie was with him. Nomie slim and beautiful, standing at his side.

Lord, we cannot, she said, and Dracula struck her, with ca-sual violence that threw her back against
the slimy dark wall of the ship’s bulkhead.

Cannot? You say “cannot” to me?

They never go out alone! protested Renfield, springing to his feet. They are armed, they cannot be
finished off all together. -He broke off with a gasp, the grip of Dracula’s mind on his like a band of
heated iron crushing his skull. Renfield sank to the deck-boards, the pain of his own death at Dracula’s
hands–bones breaking, flesh battered-returning to the reality of the dream.

You will find a way, said the Count, the voice in Renfield’s mind deadly soft. You will find a way, or
it will go the worse with you.

Then he was gone, and far off, deep in shattered sleep, Ren-field heard Nomie weep. The morning sun
climbed over the blue–black sparkle of the Black Sea, the strange southerly wind flicked foam from its
waves. Far out over the water, Renfield was con-scious of unseasonal banks of drifting fog, and in the
dark of his dream, of Mina Harker dreaming about chasing Lucy as she sleep-walked down the halls of
the school where they’d met.

***

Letter, R. M. R enfield to his wife

25 October

My beloved, my beloved, he is gone!

At noon I felt it, noon being the single period of the daylight hours when we of the vampire kind have
the powers that the darkness gives us: to change our form, to utilize the strength of our Un-Dead state.

He has closed his mind against Mina Harker’s probing, but in so doing, also against us!

Once when he turned away from me I wept, and ranted, and fought like the madman I then was.
Today in my coffined sleep I could almost have cried like a child with relief. When sunset freed me of the
daylight’s thick thrall, I sat up shivering with dread that it was only a dream, but no! For Nomie sat up in
the same moment, her golden hair hanging thick about her shoul-ders, and stared at me with huge eyes.

“Is it true?” she whispered. And scrambling from our coffins, we clung to each other in the narrow
space between them, not daring to believe.

“I’m taking you back to the Castle,” I said, and she shook her head.

“Ryland, you cannot. I cannot. He will know. When he comes there, he will know. And he will punish.”

“I will return here and deal with the pursuit,” I said firmly. “I will tell him that because of the Slovaks you
had become a lia-bility, and it is only a matter of time before Van Helsing-who speaks Slovak, and like
all men of science is a natural-born snoop whose inquisitiveness rivals the worst grandmother in the
world-hears of a fair-haired German girl whom the boatmen call vrolak, and puts two and two together.
You must go back, little Norn. I will come to you when I can.”

It was a lie, Catherine, and I knew it was a lie as the words came out of my mouth. She flung her arms
around me and kissed me like a schoolgirl, and the lie burned me as if she had pressed a crucifix, or Van
Helsing’s Host, into the living flesh of my heart.

All this evening I have made preparations, visiting the ship-ping offices of Hapgood Company, in which
as you recall I own considerable stock, and under my own name hiring a reliable agent, an expatriate
Virginian named Ross who has spent over two decades in this part of the world. For his assistants I hired
two Germans, Berliners who don’t believe in anything. In this far corner of Europe, no one had yet heard
of the incarceration or death of one of Hapgood’s leading shareholders, and one of the office clerks, who
had formerly worked in Calcutta, knew me well by sight. Tomorrow morning we take the 6:30 train to
Veresti, where it will be possible to hire wagons to deliver Nomie, boxed within the coffin of her native
earth, to the Castle Dracula above the Borgo Pass.

For my own coffin the instructions were more complex. Hav-ing brought five boxes of earth from
Highgate Cemetery on the Orient Express, I rented space in Hapgood’s Varna warehouse to store three
of them until sent for by either myself or by the ficti-tious Mr. Marshmire. One earth-box I emptied,
dividing the earth therein into four parts. Three of these I used to line, much more shallowly, boxes large
enough to shelter me, which were to be stored until sent for in Veresti and in Bistritz, guaranteeing me a
place of shelter near-by the Castle, should I require one. ‘The fourth portion of my native earth I loosely
stored in a fine cotton casing three layers thick, in fact, the emptied bags of three child-sized eiderdowns,
which may be spread out in case of emergency and give me some semblence of rest, at least for the time
that remains to me.

The remainder of the night, my dearest Catherine, I have spent in drawing up the various legal
documents that will serve to transfer our money, and ownership of our secret accounts, into Nomie’s
hands. At some time in the future she may succeed in breaking free of Dracula’s hold; the greatest gift I
can offer her, who has been my friend in this terrible halfway house of Un-Death, is the freedom that
money can bring.

For I do not mean to return to her, after I send her on her way from Veresti. Before I can return to
Varna, the Czarina Cather-ine will make port in Galatz, where the shipping agents will duly wire news

of her arrival to Lord Godalming, and thither Van Helsing and the others shall go. I will do what I can to
delay pur-suit, lest Nomie suffer punishment for my negligence. Yet I shall make sure that in so doing, I
meet at last the joy of my own end, to be with you, however briefly, before a merciful God releases me
to whatever Eternity He shall in His wisdom choose.

Yet just as poor little Nomie once said she would happily share eternity in Hell with the man she loved,
so will I accept it with equanamity, if before I enter its gates I may see you and our lovely Vixie one last
time.

Until then, I am,

Forever, your husband,

R.M.R.

CHAPTER TWENTY -EIGHT

“What is it that you hear, Madame Mina?”

Under the closed lids, Van Helsing saw the young woman’s eyes move, as subjects’ often did under
hypnosis. As if they looked around them, seeing who knew what? The soft flesh be-neath the eyes drew
up a little, the dark brows, fine as the strokes of Japanese penmanship, drew down.

In a more commanding voice, he repeated, “What is it that you hear? Tell me.”

She turned her head, like a fretful child avoiding the medicine–spoon. Harker, kneeling at the head of
the sofa in the suite’s pink-and-gold parlor, gave his wife’s hand a gentle pressure, and glanced up into
Van Helsing’s eyes.

“Tell me what you hear, Madame Mina. This I command.” She brought in her breath, let it go in a sigh.
Van Helsing leaned forward a little, to study, without seeming to-without letting Harker guess the
direction of his eyes-the teeth set in those colorless gums.

When she lay dying, struggling against the changes that Dracula’s contaminating blood wrought in her
flesh, Lucy West-enra’s teeth had lengthened to the sharp canines of the vampire, even before death had
fully claimed her. Remembering that flaxen girl’s struggle, Van Helsing could not repress a shiver, nor
could he put aside, or pretend to himself that he did not feel, the traitorous stir in his loins.

Vile, he thought, shameful and vile. Yet how beautiful Lucy Westenra had been, how exquisite,
the beauty of life mingling with the cold wonder of death’s threshold.

And though her teeth had not yet begun to grow, nor her gums to shrink back, he thought he saw that
unearthly vampire loveliness reflected now in Mina Harker’s too-thin face.

“Water,” she whispered. “Rushing waves … masts creak-ing.” She moved her head again, her hair like
sable velvet against the pale linen of the sheets and pillows they’d brought in, every night, from her
bedroom. Against the dark of her hair, the wax-white of her skin, the round scar left by the consecrated
Host on her forehead seemed lividly red, almost like raw flesh. Yet even that, to his own disgust, the old
man found deeply erotic.

Dear God, what kind of man am I to look upon her who fights so bravely for her
own soul-and she the wife of a man who loves her like the breath of his lungs!-and to
think such thoughts as this? It had been twenty-five years since his own wife, his own beautiful
Elaine, had disappeared into the terrible labyrinths of madness, leaving only a frightened, raving creature
who bore little resemblance to the girl he had loved. In the first few years he had been driven to the
prostitutes of Amsterdam, but shame had blunted his manhood without in the tiniest de-gree decreasing
his aching need.

For two decades the life of the mind-and certain disciplines of the flesh-had proved a distraction. But
like the physician of the Bible, he had never been able to heal himself. Nor could he now.

“Sleep now,” he said gently, and passed his hand above her face. “Sleep now and dream, and when
you wake, you shall be refresh, and full of hope.”

The morning sunlight that filled the room, as Quincey Mor-ris parted its curtains, had a chilly cast to it,
grayed with the fogs that had for two days drifted over Varna’s harbor. Jonathan Harker, haggard still but
curiously ebullient since word had come, the day before yesterday, that the Czarina Catherine had
been sighted in the Dardanelles, lifted his wife in his arms and bore her into their bedroom. Despite the
morning’s coolness Morris opened the window, for the parlor smelled of lamp-oil and too many people
sleeping on its chairs and floor. John Sew-ard, rumpled and reminding Van Helsing very much of the thin,
earnest young student he’d known in Leyden thirteen years ago, began rolling up the blankets on which
he and the other three men had slept, turn and turn about, for eleven nights now.

In those eleven days, no sign, no whisper of any paid agent of the vampire Count had so much as cast
a shadow on their tracks. But Morris was right. Van Helsing knew this in his bones. It was not the time to
take the slightest chance. Seward, Harker, and young Lord Godalming would all cat-nap during the day,
as Van Helsing did himself, but for them all the main business of the day would be waiting.

Waiting for a telegram from the shipping agent, that would tell them that the Czarina Catherine was
in port.

“It has to be today.” Godalming emerged from his room in a fresh jacket and tie, on his way downstairs
to the barber’s and the baths. Morris, who’d proceeded laconically to his own morning routine of
checking, cleaning, and loading every piece of the considerable arsenal they’d brought from London, only
glanced up at his friend and scratched a corner of his long mus-tache.

Seward remarked, “I’m a little surprised it’s taking this long. They may have had to lay by because of
the fog. You go on ahead, Art. I shall join you in a moment.” His brown glance touched Van Helsing’s as
he gathered up the bedding. Van Hel-sing rose, and followed him to the door of Mina’s room, as Harker
came out.

“She’s sleeping well,” the young solicitor said. “Better I think than she has in some time. Her color’s
better, too, don’t you think?”

Van Helsing replied softly, “Even so.” The curtains of the bedroom were drawn; he could see the young
schoolmistress sleeping in the gloom, dark braids laid gently on either side of her face.

Was she more beautiful than she had been yesterday? Pinker and healthier-looking, as Lucy had
become when the vampire death stole over her? Harker hadn’t seen his wife’s dear friend succumb to
Dracula’s curse: he would not know what her live-lier demeanor, her brighter spirits yesterday might
mean. Van Helsing was conscious of the young man’s dark gaze resting on his face, questioning, before
Harker turned away.

But Seward knew. And Seward was watching him, too, as he looked at Mrs. Harker in the bedroom’s
dusk.

How can you think such thought as this? he asked himself again, hating what he felt. Hating the
image that seemed to burn itself into his brain, of kissing those vampire lips, of holding that coldly perfect
flesh in crushing embrace against his own. This woman, so clever and so logical and so good in her
heart, she is fighting for her own soul, and for her husband’s happiness and perhaps his very life
as well, for it is certain that if she die, he will not leave her long alone in her grave.

Yet the flesh, like the heart, has reasons of its own, of which the reason knows nothing and cares less.

And as he saw the unearthly beauty of the vampire make its first inroads on that lively, lovely woman,
that kind-hearted per-son whom he had come to love as a daughter, he felt the insane whisper of lust

chew at the inner corners of his brain.

Before they had left London, Mina Harker had made them read over her the Service for the Dead.
Had made each man swear that before they would let her become vampire, they would stake her through
the heart and cut off her head, as they had done with Lucy, and this oath Van Helsing knew he would
force himself to honor, out of the love he bore her. The most he could do for her was that, and to
dissemble his private madness so that she would continue to trust him as a friend. They were like a band
of brothers to her, among whom she could sleep without a second thought; her only comfort, Van
Helsing knew, in a time when she must have been living in a nightmare of hard–hidden terror.