But the night was quiet and sweet, free from the taint of indigo; both monsters had vanished, and Arminius and I sat safe within the borders of a different reality. This filled my heart with hope. For though Arminius had taught me many things—how to protect myself from the vampire, how to weaken Vlad and myself gain power to defeat him—I had never seen him in the presence of any vampire, and thus had not known the extent of his abilities beyond what he had told me.
Clearly, he was powerful indeed, to have saved me and caused Vlad and Lucy to vanish. And for the first time in many terrible days, I began to think Vlad could be overcome after all.
He saw me staring at my three companions and said:
“Your friends are well, but they cannot see us. And if you wish, they will not remember.”
I was too curious, too exhilarated, too desperate, to respond to his statement; instead, I asked a question of my own. “What has happened to Vlad? I had done as you said—had destroyed vampire after vampire these twenty-two years, in order to weaken him. And so he did weaken—but now he has regained his strength, and more. He would have killed me—me, whose death would have brought about his own, according to the covenant. What has happened to him … and to the covenant?”
“Ah,” he said; the sound was in part a sigh. “The covenant …” Rather than look at me, he lowered his gaze to the ground, his lips still curved upward in a mysterious crescent, and began to inscribe with his finger strange legends in a patch of mud. “In order to answer your question, Abraham, I must first tell you a story.”
“A story?”
“Of a manuscript—a very special manuscript which some claim Lucifer himself wrote. It was stolen from the Scholomance, the Devil’s school for the mantic arts, by one of the sholomonari, the alchemists who studied there. Thus says the legend. Its purpose is reflected in its title: To Him Who Would Become the Eater of Souls.”
I shuddered, suddenly overwhelmed by the terrifying image from a dream: a great Darkness that engulfed me, devoured me. Clutching my upper arms, I demanded, “But is that not the Devil’s domain? To consume souls?”
He looked up, still smiling faintly, his eyes undimmed by the darkness of which he spoke. “It is, if that is the name you wish to use for the entity. And to answer your next question—yes, the manuscript does give instructions as to how others might become as he.”
“But it is insane—why would he want to share his power?”
At this, the faint grin became a full-fledged smile. “Who can say? In time, all things will become clear.” He paused. “At some point after the theft, the manuscript was acquired by one of the wickedest and most power-hungry immortals: the Countess Elisabeth of Bathory. It has gone through many hands, in part because the manuscript itself cannot be protected by even the most powerful magic—”
I interrupted. “Why not?”
Patiently, he replied, “Because the truth cannot be hidden, Abraham. Not realising this, the countess attempted to hide it with a spell—which, because of her newfound strength, she assumed would be sufficient. And because she had destroyed its previous owner, no one knew it had come into her possession, and no one attempted to take it from her. But when she went to the Castle Dracula, Vlad discovered it and stole it from her very quickly.
“As to why he has become increasingly powerful, now that it is in his possession, I must explain the manuscript itself. It is a riddle of sorts, consisting of six lines, or clues. The first line appears once the manuscript falls into someone’s possession. Other lines appear only after the owner has understood the first and followed its direction; and with each step, the owner’s power and abilities increase.
“I have done some small bit of research and discovered the first line: In the land beyond the forest, the quest for godhood begins. The lines are six; the keys are two.”
“Keys?” I asked.
“This is something of a mystery still; Elisabeth had solved only the first line, and though Vlad has gone farther, he has yet to discover the first key. No immortal ever has—except, of course, for the Dark Lord Himself.”
With fear in my heart, I asked, “How many lines has Vlad solved? Do you know what these say?”
He did. He seemed to look past me, and the ghost of a smile faded entirely, leaving him solemn for the first time since we had met. “The second: Do not linger. Cross the deep waters to the great island in the northwest. Immediately, he made plans to leave for England, at which time a third line appeared: To the east of the metropolis lies the crossroads.”
“East of London,” I murmured, calling to mind the myriad locations. “A crossroads … Is it the actual intersection of two streets, or something else? And how far east? Just outside the city, or in Purfleet or Dartford, or Grays … or as far east as Southend-on-Sea or Sheerness?”
“That I cannot tell you,” he said, with mild regret. “But I can say that after Vlad purchased properties surrounding the city, the fourth line appeared: There lies buried treasure, the first key.”
Four lines solved; a shiver passed through me as I asked, “And has he discovered it?” And the fifth line, and the sixth …
He shook his head. “But it is only a matter of time. Once he obtains the first key, he has only to find the second, and put them both in such a way as to solve the riddle. And while Elisabeth was privy only to the first line, I suspect she has found or will find a way to discover all that Vlad has learned. Then she, too, will join the search for the first key; for she is as cruel and ambitious as he—perhaps more so. At the earliest opportunity, she will seize the manuscript.”
“Why has she not done so already?” I asked. “If she had it, and knew the first line, then she must have retained some of her newfound powers—”
“No.” He tilted his head, and looked at me with utter understanding and compassion, as if he felt my sorrowful desperation as keenly as I. “When the manuscript is lost, the power is lost, only to be gained by the next owner. She is not strong enough to defeat him directly now—but if, through skill or cunning, she obtains it again, then she will be the powerful one, and he the weak. Believe me, Elisabeth is nearby, awaiting her chance—and that is something to be greatly feared, for she is one of the strongest and wickedest of all the sholomonari.”
“And what of Zsuzsanna? Does she not know of the manuscript?”
His expression became curiously veiled. “She knows. She knows almost as much as Vlad, now; and she, too, seeks the first key.”
“And if she—or Vlad, or Elisabeth—solves the sixth line, and the riddle of the first and second key …” I could not bring myself to finish the statement, for the thought was too terrible to give voice.
But Arminius did. “… she will become as the Dark Lord: omniscient and omnipresent, so powerful that she controls all evil upon the earth. And if Vlad succeeds, he will have no need of covenants to prolong his immortality—and therefore, no need of your soul to buy him another generation of life. He will be as a god, able to do whatever pleases him. But until he solves the mystery, he might lose the manuscript—just as Elisabeth lost it to him. Were that to occur, he would most assuredly depend upon the covenant, and your continued existence, so that he can corrupt you before your death, and thus buy himself life.
“What he did to you to-night, in choosing to kill you, was the most arrogant of errors. He is already coming to think of himself as an immortal, invincible … and that, I think, will lead to his failure.”
He fell silent at last, and gazed calmly at me whilst I considered his story. His last words gave me hope; but the entire tale had filled me with foreboding. My task was harder now than ever I had imagined during all those difficult years spent hunting down and destroying Vlad’s evil spawn upon the European continent. For now I had not only to kill a powerful vampire and his mate, Zsuzsanna—I had to prevent them from becoming as gods. And not only them, but the fearsome Countess of Bathory, as well.
“Arminius,” I said, “you have relayed to me a disturbing tale; my duty, it se
ems, has grown harder than ever I imagined. Will you stay with me, and help me? And not only me”—here I gestured at the three men sitting motionless outside our sphere—“but my friends, who also are sworn to destroy Vlad?”
Again, the idiot’s smile beneath the sage’s eyes. “I promise you, Abraham, that I will come when I am again needed. But not before. Remember: Your task is to redeem your family from its curse; and part of that job is the difficult journey itself.”
“Can you at least honour one request?”
He lifted his eyebrows, so thin and translucent white that the bright pink of his baby-skin showed beneath the hairs.
I stood up and held his gaze, intent on convincing him of this one thing. “Will you keep Miss Lucy in her tomb until morning? Vlad can no longer be restrained by talismans, and has removed them that we might not destroy her.”
He said nothing; only held me with that marvellous and knowing gaze, then rose in one graceful movement to stand beside me. As I looked into his eyes, the edges of his body seemed to grow indistinct, then fade away into shadows as the sphere of light containing us suddenly dimmed. Paler and paler he grew, until at last I stood staring at the great iron door of the Westenra tomb.
Beside me, the vile Lucy-creature hissed, spewing blood-flecked spittle, in the ellipse of light cast by my lantern. It sat on the ground where I had laid it an eternity—or only minutes—before. I sensed, rather than saw, my three friends standing behind me in a semicircle; John, I knew, was nearest, holding aloft his own silver crucifix to hold his undead beloved at bay.
Oddly, the sudden shift in time did not disorient me; perhaps the recollection of my tutelage under Arminius had prepared me, for it was a trick he had often used in those long-past days. I took it as silent confirmation that he would grant me my one wish, and began at once to remove chinks of Host-infused putty from the tomb door.
When I had pulled out a sufficient amount, I stepped aside and let the vampiress rush unhindered past me. Whilst the others gasped, she became two-dimensionally flat, then collapsed into a needle-thin line like a lady folding a fan. This moved through the air as an eel travels through water, though infinitely faster; in less than the blink of an eye, she had disappeared through a crack as thick as a piece of paper and no wider than my thumb.
Immediately I replaced the putty in the crevice, sealing her inside. And then I turned to my friends—all just as they had been before the Impaler’s appearance, Arthur pale and trembling at the sight of his sweet Lucy so defiled, and Quincey tight-lipped and drawn, with his big freckled hand gripping Arthur’s arm in support. Neither was in the least bit dishevelled, as if Vlad’s attack had never happened, as if my work at the tomb door had never been interrupted.
As if Arminius had never appeared.
Nor was so much as a single one of John’s hairs out of place, and his expression was darkly grim and troubled, as befitted the situation. Yet when I glanced at him, he caught my gaze, so sharply and pointedly and with such poignant confusion that I knew he recollected at least some of what had passed.
But Arthur and Quincey clearly did not. So I nodded to my companions, took my lantern, and walked over to the child she had dropped beneath the yews. He was a little street urchin, his golden hair and thin face crusted with dirt—and his neck with blood. Fortunately, we had encountered Miss Lucy just as she was beginning to drink, and so he still had some colour on his sallow little face. He had fallen from trance into a sound sleep upon the dying grass—in such cold, poor thing. I took him into my arms and said to the others, who had followed:
“Let us leave him someplace warm for the police to find. He is not badly off, and by to-morrow night will be entirely well.”
And so we went away. Arthur and Quincey were headed to the asylum with John, so I made the pretense of going to the hotel instead, for we had been keeping the lie that I was staying elsewhere. From there, I returned instead to Purfleet, and crept to my lonely cell under the guise of invisibility.
Dr. Seward’s Diary
29 SEPTEMBER, MORNING. It is aggravating to have to keep writing this by hand, as it takes forever and makes me feel like Neddy Ludd; I had thought to keep a separate cylinder with my “private” entries, but the chance is too great that I might make a mistake and let the wrong ears listen to information they ought not to know.
Still, I must unburden myself this morning, or go mad as poor Renfield. Too many revelations, too many heartrending emotions.…
It was enough, last night, to see the dead woman that I loved turned into a slavering she-devil; that alone was more than any man could bear without going insane. And then, to see Vlad himself—far younger and stronger than described, ablaze with wicked glory—hurl my beloved professor to his death—
More than I could bear, more than I could bear. And yet I bore it.
But when I saw the angelic figure save him less than a split second before his demise, I told myself: There it is, Jack; after all this time, you’ve finally achieved total lunacy. How convenient that home is already an asylum.…
And I listened to them speak together like long-lost friends, or rather, long-lost teacher and student, with Van Helsing in my role, and the shining angel in his. Oh, it is one thing to read of the occult and toy with auras and discuss theories of vampires and other noncorporeal entities and how might one deal with one, but—
Well, it is another thing altogether to see such beings. And to then find time itself interrupted, and an event dispensed with. In this case, it was as though Vlad had never appeared, and I and the professor never been endangered; worse, when we had finished at the graveyard, I knew from Art and Quincey’s expressions and speech that they had not seen the same impossible events as I. That was a dreadful instant, for I was convinced for the space of a few seconds that I had truly gone insane. Until, that is, I looked into the professor’s eyes, and saw that he knew too.
So then, it really had happened. Fortunately, neither Quince nor Art was in the mood for idle chatter after such a horribly painful evening; after I had the maid set them up in guest quarters in the private part of the house, they both went directly to their rooms.
Though by then it was almost three o’clock in the morning, I knew sleep would be quite impossible until I had answers to some troubling questions. I had no way of knowing whether the professor had returned, but I was desperate; so after a bit, when I was sure that Art, Quince, and the maid had all settled into their beds, I crept back to the asylum and went directly to the professor’s cell. I knocked softly, calling: “It’s John. I must speak to you.”
The door swung slowly open. I could see no one inside though the lamp was dimly lit, but a soft veil of blue wavered in the air just inside the threshold. Boldly, I entered and stepped through the cerulean glimmer to find the room just the same—except that now the professor was sitting cross-legged upon the floor in his stocking feet.
He had removed his spectacles and set them upon his lap, so that his dark blue eyes seemed somehow unclothed, and the greying red-gold hair was dishevelled, as if he had been worriedly running his fingers through it. At the sight of me he sighed, replaced the spectacles, and in a weary but kindly voice, said: “Hello, John. I suspected you might come.”
I could not help being somewhat cool with him, for I felt at best very awkward, and at worst, very betrayed. “And do you also suspect what I am about to ask?”
He sighed again. As the air escaped his lungs, all his cheer, all his strength, all his bravery, seemed to leave with it, until I realised, to my discomfort and dismay, that I was looking upon a frail, heartbroken man with shadows beneath his myopic eyes. “I do not suspect; I know. And the answer to your question is yes, John.”
“I am your son,” I said, my tone flat with disbelief, as I thought: Then he is mistaken; he has forgotten all about what he shouted to Vlad, and he thinks I have come to ask about something else.
“You are my son,” he said, with such quiet conviction, such tenderness, such heartfelt apology
, that I believed him at once. Conflicting emotions assailed me: doubt, rage, love, relief. It seemed horribly, horribly wrong; it seemed horribly, horribly right.
At my distress, his expression grew concerned. “You did know, John, that you were adopted?”
“Yes,” I said, my voice strained almost to breaking; to my embarrassment, I was wavering on the precipice of tears. “Yes, but that’s not it. I want to know why—” And at that point, my voice did break; I could say no more.
“Why I have been your friend and teacher all these years and have not told you.”
I nodded blindly, blinking back tears, as he motioned me to sit.
I sat upon the cold floor. And he began to tell me a story which began long ago, when a prince named Vlad, who came to be known much later as the Impaler (Tsepesh) or the son of the Dragon (Dracula), made a bargain with the Dark Lord. Every generation that his family continued, he would offer up the soul of the eldest surviving son in exchange for continued immortality. But before that soul was offered, its owner had to have been willingly corrupted. If the sacrificial lamb died a good, honest man, then Vlad himself would lose his immortality, age, and die.
“My father, Arkady, was the eldest son of his generation; he died uncorrupted, but in desperation, Vlad bit him, to trap his soul between heaven and earth. Then Arkady was destroyed … and Vlad grew weaker, and older—but for some reason, did not die.”
I stared at him as a revelatory thunderbolt struck; I knew the professor had only one sibling, a brother who had long ago died. “Then you—”
“I am Dracula’s heir,” he said bitterly. “And the eldest surviving son of my generation. You heard, I think, Arminius speak of the manuscript?”
I nodded, once again dumbstruck.
He looked away. “Only because of it did Vlad dare threaten me. John,” he said, turning back to me abruptly and seizing my arms in desperation. “I swear by everything good that I would never have come here had I known of Vlad’s increased powers. He was weak, failing; I was far more powerful than he, and believed my mission would be accomplished months before now. I would never have endangered you so …”
Lord of the Vampires Page 26
