by Dacre Stoker
As Quincey raced across the moors, he became convinced that this had always been his destiny. For the first time in his life, the road he traveled was free from guilt, remorse, fear, or question. Quincey was resolute. It is said that those who deny their best destiny can never find success. He had applied this logic in his choice to become an actor. Now the consequences were much greater.
He raced on, ducking beneath a tree branch that nearly unhorsed him, so lost in thought that he hadn’t seen it coming. It was only his newly enhanced senses that saved him from having his face smashed in. What a stupid way to die that would have been! Quincey never thought much about his own death. He was young and, until a few days ago, still thought himself invincible. If only that were true. He felt his quest for blood swell with the incoming storm. He was reminded of a line from Macbeth, a role he now knew he would never have a chance to play onstage. “ Yet I will try the last. Lay on, Macduff; And damn’ d be he that first cries, hold!”
Bathory swooped down to the steps of the Basilique de Saint-Denis as the night sky began to dissolve into the translucent blue of dawn. If anyone were awake to witness her arrival, it would have appeared as if one of the stone gargoyles had fallen to the ground. The dark-hooded cloak Bathory wore to conceal her charred skin blended almost perfectly with the stone.
Bathory walked toward the entrance to the church. She was in torturous pain. The flames had burned deep into her flesh, causing her muscles to harden and constrict. With each new movement, she could feel her flesh tearing and slowly regrowing. She longed for rest, and for the loving embrace of her Women in White. They would have been eager to tend to her wounds. Bathory missed their devotion to her. They were dead now. Two more reasons for Dracula and Mina to suffer.
Her remaining eye spied the stone-carved Trinity over the entrance. Bathory could have easily walked through the door as any visitor would, but this was God’s church. She wanted to make an entrance that would remind Him of her strength. Her charred hand smashed through the heavy wood-and-iron door. Drawing back her hood, Bathory walked defiantly through the mammoth great hall of the Gothic church known as the Royal Necropolis of France, the final resting place of all the mon archs. Her eye fell on the statue of Christ dying on the cross. Even His son was weaker than she.
Vibrant colors appeared in the stained glass as the sun rose to caress the windows. She ignored the pain that enveloped her entire body as she walked past the statues of the last Bourbon kings to the tombs. The carved-stone room housed onyx grave markers on the floor. Louis XVI supposedly lay beneath the center stone on the right, and Marie Antoinette under the center stone on the left. Gold letters on the black onyx read: MARIE-ANTOINETTE D’AUTRICHE 1755-1793. Bathory knew that Antoinette wasn’t under there. Well, not all of her anyway. Bathory turned her attention to the unmarked onyx stone beyond the dead queen’s tomb. Gritting her fangs, she smashed her blackened fist through the stone, breaking a hole large enough for her arm to fit through. Her crooked hand reached beneath the floor and pulled out an ivory box with a cross on it. Bathory felt tears of blood swell in her one remaining eye, causing steam to rise from her flesh, which was still hot from the fire. The box itself was a gift from someone Bathory had once loved. Dracula had called Bathory a monster that could not love. If only he knew. In truth, she loved so deeply that she had been willing to burn down the world in revenge when she lost what she loved. The box contained what Bathory had at one time considered her greatest possession. The last time she had stood in this church, she’d lifted the onyx stone and carefully placed the box beneath it. It was her gift to her beloved, a sign that her death had been avenged. It was also a promise that the whole world—and God Himself—would pay for what they’d done.
Dismissing the agony shooting through her fingers, Bathory wrenched open the ivory box’s lid. The secret inside caught the reflection of the candles in the crypt. Bathory ran her fingers gingerly along the object within: a kukri knife, stained with dried blood. It was the same knife that she’d driven to its hilt into Dracula’s chest twenty-five years ago. To seal the promise that she now made to herself, Bathory licked the dried blood from the still-sharp blade. It was Dracula’s blood, and it was delicious. This knife would deliver the final deathblow to her enemy.
Bathory replaced the ivory box. She dwelled on the error of her last encounter with Dracula. She had miscalculated him and misjudged Mina. She would not make that mistake again. It was clear that Mina Harker had Dracula’s blood in her veins, as well as Bathory’s own. Bathory smiled to herself, this time not minding the pain in her charred face. She, too, had drunk from Dracula. She would skewer him to the wall with the kukri knife and make him watch as she ripped Mina’s head from her neck. Before Dracula died, he would see Bathory bathing in Mina’s blood.
Bathory no longer had the immortal’s luxury of time. If she were to succeed, she had to move quickly. Dracula was still weak, but she sensed that he would try to persuade Mina to join the ranks of the un-dead. To claim her prizes, Bathory needed to reach them before that happened. She needed to strike, and strike quickly.
She turned on her heels and marched toward the exit. There was one other mortal who carried Dracula’s blood: Quincey Harker. Mina’s son had to die as well. Without Mina and Dracula to protect him, the boy was no more than a gnat waiting to be swatted. When they were gone, there would be none left to challenge her. God’s world would be her plaything.
“Que faites-vous?” a male voice called. She spun to see a young monk holding a lantern. A look of horror fell across his face as he beheld what was left of Bathory. She could smell the fear in his blood from across the hall as he cried out, “C’est le Diable!”
He called her the Devil. She smiled. Not quite. Although Bathory admired Lucifer for having the courage to break with heaven, he had failed. She vowed never to be cast down.
Bathory drew closer. The monk held up his cross and cried, “Sanctuaire!”
What a fool! There was no sanctuary from Countess Elizabeth Bathory. She lunged forward.
“Antichriste!”
Her fangs sank into the monk’s throat, silencing his cry. After tasting the bouquet of Dracula’s blood, the monk’s was like a cheap altar wine. It mattered not. He would sate her thirst until she returned to England.
Upon draining the body, she cast the monk’s corpse across the nave, smashing it into the rows of votive candles. Then she pulled the hood of her velvet cloak over her bald, blackened head to protect her from the sun, left the church, and moved quickly through the streets of Paris. There were very few people out and about at this early hour, and those who saw her would see no more than a passing shadow. Before the sun’s direct rays filled the sky, Bathory would be back in England. Her feet had already left the ground. Rising through the blanket of clouds, she saw the land disappear beneath her as she soared over the English Channel. A few seconds more and she would be safe within her black carriage. While she slept, she would heal further. As she slumbered, her mares would race across the English countryside to Whitby. There, in a ruined abbey, her obsession would reach its zenith. How perfect. God’s warrior would die in a ruined cathedral. Dracula and his bloodline would come to an end. She would pick up the spark that Satan had once used in his attempt to burn down heaven, bring it to earth, and ignite the flame that would consume the world.
CHAPTER LVI.
As they passed the old Westenra summer home, Mina slowed the car to gaze back in time. She half expected Lucy to come running out the front door.
Mina remembered the day she had met Lucy, back when they were adolescents. Mina’s parents owned one of Whitby’s two shops, and Mina had been forced to work at the shop after school and all summer to help her family make ends meet. She had never known the normal childhood joys. Lucy was the rich girl on the hill, but she, too, felt isolated, though not due to lack of friends. Lucy had an insatiable curiosity and wanted to experience everything life had to offer. Sneaking away from her estate one warm summer morning, Lu
cy had traveled alone into town to investigate how what her mother called the “common” people lived. Her adventure had brought her, with a handful of coins, into Mina’s parents’ shop with the mission of gorging herself on sweets. Mina at first assumed it was pity for the sad, lonely “common” girl that had caused Lucy to offer her friendship; but Lucy’s heart was more kind than that.
As the motorcar sped on, Mina’s eyes drifted to the cliff that overshadowed the town. Upon those treacherous rocks loomed her destination, Carfax Abbey. She saw the stone seat on the cliff’s edge, where she had found Lucy sleepwalking, with what she had thought were two pinpricks in her neck, pinpricks that Mina had believed she had made while fastening Lucy’s shawl for her. That was the terrible night when the Demeter had crashed ashore and Dracula had come into their lives.
A sound of distant thunder interrupted Mina’s reflection. Dark clouds were spewing up from the south. The sea had become choppy. A storm was fast approaching. Mina needed to get to the top of the cliff before the rains swelled the river, washing out the road. The car passed the one hundred and ninety-nine steps that led up to the cliff’s summit. As children, Mina and Lucy used to race to the top, with Lucy usually getting caught up in her petticoats but still winning. At the stone seat on the summit, Lucy had told her all about her three suitors. Mina thought of Quincey Morris and Dr. Jack Seward. God rest their souls.
The motorcar passed a hotel that had once been the stately Holmwood summerhouse. As the rain began to fall, Mina maneuvered the car onto the wooden bridge that ran over the now-churning River Esk. She thought again about that first night when Dracula had arrived in Whitby, and images started to flash in her mind. He’d happened upon Lucy after having been trapped on the Demeter without any nourishment. The sailors had been besieged by plague, making their blood too poisonous for Dracula to drink. He couldn’t even feed on the rats, as they, too, carried the plague. A starving man would make a glutton of himself after fasting for so long, and Dracula should have drained Lucy to the death. Despite his hunger, he had consumed only enough to sustain himself and had left her on the stone seat for Mina to find. In Dracula’s own way, he had been merciful.
Creak. The rotting horse bridge objected to the weight of the motorcar. Mina considered reversing. The bridge protested more fiercely as it began to sway. The storm clouds had not fully obscured the sun, which meant Mina could not abandon the car and leave Dracula defenseless. The bridge was not going to hold much longer; Mina had to decide quickly. She was about to put the car in reverse, when Dracula reached out from under the blanket and slammed her hand down on the throttle, sending the car forward at top speed. The motorcar thundered across the last few feet just as support gave way. The rear wheel had barely landed when the bridge collapsed into the river. Dracula drew his hand back under the protection of the blanket.
The motorcar grumbled up the steep incline of Green Lane until the wheels started to spin uselessly on the rain-muddied road. Finally reaching the fork in the road, Mina decelerated and turned onto Abbey Lane. The familiar sight of what had once been Dr. Seward’s asylum caught her eye. Poor Jack. He had been the kindest soul.
They neared the grounds of the abbey and here she noticed anew how the trees simply disappeared, as if the land was so cursed it could not sustain life. Storm clouds smothered the sky. She drove on and suddenly there it was, their destination. Carfax Abbey sat broken, haunting the cliffs above the sleeping town of Whitby. Its Gothic towers scratched the skies and its long-empty cathedral-like windows kept a silent and solemn watch over the mist-filled graveyard next door. The last time Mina had set foot in the abbey was the night when she had come to bid farewell to her dark prince, twenty-five years ago. Now she was here to do so again.
Mina’s plan played itself out in her mind. She would leave Dracula behind to face Bathory’s wrath, buying time whilst she smuggled Quincey to safety in the New World. Mina understood that Dracula would not refuse her, but that leaving him to fight alone would mean his demise. She shuddered. Could she be that cold and calculating? For Quincey’s sake, she knew she could.
She steered the motorcar to a stop at the western gate. “We’ve arrived,” Mina said, the engine coughing into silence. “The sun’s gone.”
Dracula pulled himself onto the seat and opened the door and, slowly unfolding himself, emerged from the car, allowing the worn-out blanket to tumble from his broad shoulders onto the ground. Leaning his head back in the rain with his eyes closed, he breathed in deeply, letting the night fill him. Lightning exploded in the sky, illuminating Dracula’s strong face. He showed no signs of ever having been injured, though he had lost much blood. He seemed as Mina had always remembered him: regal and forbidding. It was as if returning to Carfax had somehow rejuvenated him.
A lonely howl—a dog or wolf?—sounded in the distance, floating on the wind. Dracula turned at the sound. Mina could not discern from his stony look whether the cry was a welcoming or a warning.
Rain pounded the ground as Dracula reached out to Mina. The moment of her dreaded decision was upon her. She took Dracula’s hand and they raced through the rain toward the shelter of the abbey.
Bathory’s black carriage raced northward. She leaned out to see that darkness now covered the land. The driving rain beat in rhythm with her mares’ thundering hooves. She had slept for hours. The flight to France and back on the night wind had taken a great amount of effort. Bathory looked in the mirror at her ravaged face. The blood of the monk had restored her strength but had not begun to heal her wounds. So much the better, she thought. Her ghastly injuries would lull Dracula into a false sense of superiority. In the battle to come, she would use this to her advantage. Oh, how she enjoyed the game!
Bathory cackled. Dracula had always thought too much of himself. Last night she had proved what she had always believed to be true. Dracula was and had always been weaker than she. By only partially draining Lucy Westenra, Dracula had left a living witness to expose himself to the band of “heroes.” A near-fatal lesson had been learned. Now he rarely allowed himself the rich nourishments of human blood. This was his greatest weakness—that he would not accept what he truly was. Dracula was a vampire, yet he continued to think of himself as human. He was more than five hundred years old, and he had still had not learned to embrace, without guilt, the powers of the un-dead.
The carriage stormed along the coastline, and Bathory dreamed of a time when she would reign without challenge. It was close: She could feel it.
CHAPTER LVII.
Surveying Carfax Abbey, Mina Harker felt that it was a reflection of her life. There had been a time when it had been grand and beautiful, full of virtue, hope, and promise. Now time had eroded it to an empty shell. Even the dust-covered cobwebs filling the corners had been abandoned by the spiders that had built them. The wind from the intensifying storm outside made the abbey’s corridors wail, as if the spirits from the past were calling out to be set free. These walls had witnessed many bloody conflicts, from the Roman-Celtic war and the invasion of the Vikings, to the Saxon-Norman wars. In her youth, Mina had been too afraid of the many phantoms said to haunt the vicinity to venture onto the abbey grounds at night. The large stone room in which she now stood had once been the library where monks would study in silence. It was the first room that Prince Dracula had attempted to make his own when he had come to Whitby twenty-five years ago. Forgotten furniture covered in dust cloths stood like forsaken ghosts around the room. Tomes written in every imaginable language filled the rotting wooden shelves. The dust upon them was so thick that Mina could hardly discern the color of the covers, let alone the titles. She glanced up at the cracked mirror hanging over the fireplace. A young woman looked back at her. Even so, Mina felt as old and hollow as this decaying abbey.
She saw the walnut linen chest she had brought back with her to Whitby in 1888, from her flat in London. She had spent that summer with Lucy while Jonathan was in Transylvania. After her adulterous liaison with Dracula, she had arrange
d for that chest to be secretly transported to Carfax Abbey, planning to flee England with her lover. Later, she had forgotten the box in her whirlwind haste to leave Dracula and put her betrayal of her marriage vows behind her. It was both sad and ironic that now she was reunited with Dracula and the chest. It was as if fate had known her destiny long before she ever had.
She opened the chest and found in it a dress that Lucy had given to her. Mina had never worn it; the style was far too provocative for her. But, twenty-five years later, it seemed to fit perfectly the woman she had become. Mina looked at the black, matronly dress she was wearing. She had dressed like a middle-aged woman for years to appease Jonathan. There was no longer a need to do so. She unbuttoned the black dress and allowed it to crumple to the rubble-strewn floor. Then she lifted the youthful garment from the chest and slipped its soft, elegant fabric over her body. It made her feel beautiful. A pang of guilt hit her: She wished she could have dressed like this for Jonathan, but it would have been pouring salt over a wound that would never heal. She looked in the mirror, and the small gold cross resting above her pale bosom caught the flickering light from the fireplace.
Unable to face her reflection any longer, Mina walked to the cathedral-like window. Her steps echoed like a slow, deliberate drum-beat. She peered into the night. Lightning flashes lit the cemetery below, casting long shadows among the gravestones. She could sense Quincey was fast approaching, and hoped he would reach the abbey before the storm unleashed its full fury. Once he arrived, Mina would confront Dracula and launch her plan.
“That dress suits you,” a voice said from behind her. She hadn’t heard him enter and was afraid to turn to him, lest she lose her resolve. Or worse, give in to her darkest desires. She could hear the hunger in his voice as he said, “You are a feast . . . for the eyes.”
