P N Elrod Omnibus

by P. N. Elrod

  Not sleep. Nothing so ordinary as that had taken me, changed me, turned me into . . .

  “No need for such alarm, Mr. Morris,” Dracula said, reading my face. “What you have become is not so dreadful as you’ve been led to believe.”

  Not knowing my own voice, a cry escaped me. Heedless of the wolves, I burst through their circle, running back down their trail. I crashed through snowdrifts, blundered against trees, and tripped on invisible snares, but kept going. Not far ahead would be the warm yellow light of our campfire. If I could just get there, if Van Helsing still had some of his Holy Wafer left, there might yet be some protection for us.

  For them. At least for them.

  I was close enough to make out their huddled forms far down in the clearing where they’d made camp: the Harkers lying together, Van Helsing and Seward each rolled up in their blankets, Art a little off from them by the horses, presumably taking his turn at watch. All were fast asleep, though, worn out by the hard travel and the chase, but just one shout from me would bring Art instantly awake—

  A hand, colder and heavier than the ice, clapped over my mouth just as I drew breath. As though I were a child and not a grown man topping six feet, Dracula lifted me right from my tracks, hauling me swiftly back into the cover of the forest. I lashed out with the rock still in my hand, but couldn’t connect solidly enough to slow him. He was quite indifferent to my struggles, though I managed a few solid kicks that made him grunt. Then he spun me suddenly, and cracked my head against one of the trees.

  Lights brighter than the sun blinded me. Ungodly pain robbed me of speech. I collapsed. Quite helpless to stop him, he easily hoisted me over one shoulder like an old sack and hurried back up the way I’d run. The wolves had tagged along for the brief hunt and now bounded playfully all around us. I couldn’t tell how far he went, only that it was beyond where I’d originally revived, and well out of the camp’s earshot.

  He eventually dropped me flat on my face into the snow, and all I could do was lie there for a time nearly paralyzed and miserably ill from the shock. It passed too slowly to suit, but did pass. When I felt ready for it I pushed the ground away and propped myself against a tree. Dracula loomed over me, his white face twisted with fury.

  “Fool,” he snarled. “Do you think they’ll show you mercy once they know about you?”

  “I’m counting on it,” I snapped back. “I know what to expect and shall welcome it.”

  “Well, I do not. Give yourself away to them if you must, but not me. I’ve been to enough trouble over this matter and want no more.”

  “Go to hell.”

  I didn’t think his eyes could hold more rage. I was wrong. He raised a hand as though to smash me like a fly. His anger beat against me, a physical thing like heat from a forge, but after a long and dreadful moment he lowered his arm, and visibly shook himself out of his threatening posture with a sneer.

  “You’re but an infant,” he muttered with no little disgust. “You don’t understand anything yet.”

  “I know enough.”

  “I think not. Come with me and I shall be of some help to that end.”

  “No.”

  “Stay behind and your friends will be food for my children.” He gestured meaningfully at the forest around us. No need for him to explain who his “children” were; I could still hear and occasionally see them well enough as they ghosted in and out of the surrounding trees. “Come and your friends will be safe.”

  “For how long?”

  “As long as you remain sensible. And that is entirely up to you.”

  He stepped back and waited, watching as his wolves had watched. He offered no help as I found my feet, leaning hard on the tree. Though dizzy, I was able to think straight, but no idea running through my mind could be remotely mistaken for a way out of this spot. I did not trust him, was utterly repulsed by him and all that he represented, but he was well in control of things and we both knew it.

  “Where?” I asked grimly.

  He pointed behind me. We were to go even deeper into the timber, climbing away from the camp. I didn’t like that, but followed as he led the way along what looked like a deer trail. The wolves kept pace, panting and wagging their tails like dogs out for a walk. Glancing back, I saw more than a dozen of them padding almost at my heels and realized they were obliterating my tracks in the snow. Was it accidental or intentional? I made a step off to one side as a test and went on. The wolves sniffed the spot and blotted out my boot print as they swarmed over it, tongues hanging as if from laughter.

  We began climbing in earnest. Rocks rose high on our left, forming a natural wall that cut the freezing wind. The snow underfoot thinned and vanished. Dracula waited until I was well upon this trackless surface and a little ahead. He turned toward the wolves, stretching his arms before him, then spreading them wide in a dismissive gesture. As though the pack were one animal and not many, his children silently retreated down the path into the trees below, and were lost to sight.

  “Where are they going?” I demanded.

  The question surprised him. “To hunt, to play, to run with the moon, whatever they desire. Your friends are quite safe from them, as are you. I have pledged my word.”

  “What do you want of me?”

  “Nothing more than the answers to a few questions.”

  “What questions?”

  He pointed to a knee-high boulder. “Please seat yourself, Mr. Morris.”

  He had a presence about him that could not be ignored. I sat. There was a similar rock not four feet away and he took it, facing me, and spent several minutes studying me intently.

  “With your permission,” he said, and held his hand out, palm upward, looking for all the world like some Gypsy ready to read my fortune if I but mirrored him. I hesitated only a little, for my own curiosity was awake and on the move by now. He minutely inspected my hands, finally comparing them to his own, which were broad and blunt. “Your fingers are of different lengths,” he pronounced.

  “What of it?”

  “They are also quite bare, not at all like mine, as you see.”

  From Harker’s journal I already knew about the sharp nails and the thin hair on his palms, so there was little need to gape in wonder.

  “And when you speak, your teeth appear to be perfectly normal. The same may not be said for my own.” He let them show in an almost wry smile. Not a pleasant sight.

  “Have you a purpose to this?”

  “To confirm to myself and prove to you that we are similar, but not too very alike.”

  “We are most certainly not alike!” I couldn’t control my rising voice.

  “I am so glad that we are in agreement,” he said with a calm sarcasm that took all the wind out of me. “Such differences should reassure, rather than alarm you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know the truth of that well enough for yourself.”

  Indeed, but the agonizing terror inside made me consciously obtuse. To finally face the truth, to actually speak about what I’d hidden for so long. . . .

  “As I told you,” he said with a glimmer of sympathy I would have never otherwise ascribed to that hard, cruel face, “what we are is not as bad as you have been led to believe.”

  A short laugh burst from me, a laugh that might have turned to a sob had I not forcibly swallowed it back.

  “You are Nosferatu, Mr. Morris, nothing more. I am Nosferatu, but much more, hence the visible differences.” He opened his palms again, as though that explained everything. “I know how I became as I am, but I want to know your story. Who took your blood and gave it back? Who initiated the change in you? And when?”

  I was speechless for many long moments as he waited expectantly for an answer. “Why do you want to know?”

  “Those of your kind are rare. I would know more about you. You are the first I have ever met both before and after dying. Our encounters in London and in Seward’s house were brief, but I sensed changes in you no one else could
discern—not even yourself. For that I decided to spare you and consequently your friends. For that I planned a way to rid myself of their nuisance without killing them.”

  “You spared us?”

  “Look not so surprised, Mr. Morris. At any time of my choosing I could have destroyed the lot of you. Knowing what you do about me, could you doubt my ability?”

  Van Helsing had been thorough in his lectures to us about the near-boundless powers of the Un-Dead, and of Dracula’s genius in particular. I’d held serious reservations about just how even the six of us together—three being experienced hunters—could defeat such a formidable creature. Van Helsing had assured us again and again that God was on our side, which is always a help. My faith on that never shook for a moment, for it struck me we’d need an Old Testament kind of miracle to succeed.

  “Why forbear then?” I asked.

  “Your deaths were unnecessary. I could likely disassociate myself from the demise of five respectable people in the heart of England and be safe enough, but Harker is quite the diarist. So are the others, I discovered. Despite my efforts on the one occasion in that asylum study I knew I could never be certain of destroying all evidence linking them to me. And then there was Van Helsing. His knowledge of the Nosferatu is thorough, if short on wisdom, and he is highly respected within his academic circles. His sudden and mysterious passing along with the others would not go unnoticed. I also considered your reaction. If I killed all your friends you’d not be of a mind to freely speak with me, quite the contrary. It was far better to have my hunters believe in my own destruction than for me to deal with the inconvenient consequences of theirs.”

  “But I saw you die. We all did.”

  “You saw me vanish into dust,” he corrected, “that was eventually whirled away by the wind into the darkness. A very excellent escape for me, was it not? It was a risk—things might not have gone so well had you used wood instead of metal weapons, but I am content with the results. Now you see why I had to stop you from waking your friends: to do so would have eventually meant their deaths and yours as well. You’d not let my actions pass, and I would defend myself from you. Larger parties have disappeared before in these mountains. Accidents are easily managed, and here I would not shirk the risk—but I chose to avoid such an extreme action lest you . . . take offense.”

  “You set all this to going just for a talk with me?”

  “Had I a choice and an opportunity, I’d have found some way to speak with you in England and then quietly departed. No such opportunity presented itself, so I left, thinking to return some years hence. What I did not expect was for any of you to follow me to the very threshold of my own castle. You and your friends were possessed with such a grim determination to kill me that it needed to be dealt with first before I could indulge my curiosity. You may believe or not, as you will.”

  And I did believe him. He was the unopposed master of the night with the strength of ten, able to change shape or turn into mist at will, able to beguile anyone to do his bidding. Whatever gave us the idea we could fight anything like that? Van Helsing had been so confident, though, and had a way of instilling confidence in others. But seeing things from this direction put a whole new understanding in me. We’d been like children shaking our fists at a cyclone.

  “You did all that, spared them, and yet caused my death?”

  Now he had a turn at looking surprised, and a remarkable expression it was to be sure. “On the honor of all my sires, I swear that your being killed was not part of my plan of escape. I told the Szgany to resist but a little and then depart—to make it look well. Is that the phrase?”

  I hung my head, staring at my snow-crusted boots. “Close enough.”

  “As with the others, your death was unnecessary, and not what I desired at all. Should you die, how would I then be able to speak with you?”

  “Because I’d be a vampire.” There. I managed to get the word out without choking on it.

  He was silent long enough to make me look up. He shook his head. “Your ignorance again. You don’t know?”

  “Know what?” I couldn’t keep the irritation from my voice.

  “Though you carried the blood of change within you not all who have such rise from death.”

  “Draw that out a little more slowly,” I said, giving him a narrow stare.

  He understood my meaning if not the slang itself. “Those of your kind do not always transform after dying. They remain dead. To make the change is a rare thing. That is why I did not want you killed. What happened with the Szgany was . . . an unhappy accident.”

  “Is that what you call it? My life cut off? Me turned into a devil on earth . . .”

  He assumed a look a vast patience and crossed his arms, apparently prepared to wait through a long tirade from me. I shut things down fast, scowling at him.

  “You are not a devil, Mr. Morris,” he murmured. “You will eventually come to learn that—if not from me, then from your own experiences and actions.”

  Which I did not care to consider just then. I was still mad as hell for what had happened to me, but there wasn’t much I could do with my anger except push it aside for the moment. If I’d judged things right, then we still had a mighty big piece of talking to get through. I needed his knowledge.

  “Now, as for your change . . .” Dracula prompted when he saw I’d mastered myself.

  I gave a mental shrug, deciding no harm could come from telling him. “It was a few years back, in South America,” I said. “Arthur Holmwood—Lord Godalming now—and I were at an embassy ball. I met her there. I’ve traveled a fair part of this world and seen a thing or two, but hands down she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever clapped eyes on. She and I—”

  “Her name?”

  “Nora Jones. By her accent she was English, I think, though she had dark hair and eyes and that wonderful olive skin. . . .”

  Which I’d been on fire to touch the moment I saw her. I hadn’t been the only man trying to claim her attention at that gathering, but I was the one she picked as an escort for a walk in the embassy garden. I reveled in my good fortune and hoped to give her a favorable impression of myself in the short time we had, but it was she who took the lead in things. She’d made up her mind about me fast enough, though I wouldn’t call her fast, just almighty charming and irresistible. That night, holding to a promise and plan made in the garden, she found her way to my room, and we fulfilled one another’s expectations—exceeded them, I should say.

  I’d been exhausted the next morning, of course, not from blood loss so much as the excess champagne and sheer physical activity. Her passionate biting into my throat had startled me only a little. It was different, but didn’t trouble me much. Young as I was, I’d known more than one woman in my travels and came to know that each had her own path to pleasure, and it was my privilege to assist her there. It was always to my own advantage to be ready to learn something new, and Nora was a enchanting teacher. My body’s explosive reaction to her lesson was like nothing I’d ever felt before.

  I rested throughout the day, and the next night we resumed exploring mutual pleasures with one another. It was then, caught up in the lust of the moment, that she feverishly opened a vein in her own throat and invited me to drink in turn. Brain clouded and body trembling for release, I gladly did so, taking us to a climax that left us both unconscious. I woke a little before dawn in time to see her throw on a dressing gown and leave, then dropped back into my sweet oblivion.

  The word vampire was not unfamiliar, but its context for me then had to do with a species of blood-drinking bat that plagued the livestock of the land. In our drowsy love talk during later encounters, the subject came up, but Nora told me not to worry about it, and, lost in the warmth of her dark eyes, I forgot any and all misgivings . . . until that day years later in the Westenra dining room when I volunteered my blood to save poor dear Lucy.

  I had no mind for Nora then—she was long behind me, an exquisite and happy memory—and put myse
lf forward without another thought. It was afterward, when I began to hear more from Jack and Van Helsing about Lucy’s alarming condition that the doubts crept in. The fact that her illness was so unique with her constant blood loss happening each night that gave me my first qualm. I feared Lucy had fallen victim to someone like Nora, but a ravisher rather than a lover. From that point everything Van Helsing told us confirmed my growing fears. It was only after Lucy’s death and the hideous proof of her return that I realized what horror was in store for me when I died.

  Dracula took that moment to interject. “If by that you mean being staked through the heart by your well-meaning friends, then you have every right to be horrified.”

  “If it will free me to go to God, then so be it.”

  “I doubt that He would welcome such an enthusiastic suicide,” he said dryly. “Do not look so amazed. You are still one of His children—yet another difference you may rejoice in.”

  “How is that possible? I am. . .Nosferatu, one of the Un-Dead.”

  “Exactly. Un-Dead and nothing more. Do you not see?” I didn’t, and he raised his hands in exasperation. “Your so-sweet Nora Jones has much to answer for. She should have told you all this and saved me the trouble and you your anguish. You do understand that she was, and probably still is, Nosferatu?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you must know by now that she was not as I am. Her offspring, which includes you, will be like her. I have already had much proof that my offspring, no matter how lovingly taken, will never be so tame. Mine to hers are as the wolf to the hunting hound. Now do you see?”

  “We’re two different kinds of vampire,” I whispered. “How is that possible?”

  He gave an expressive shrug. “I know not, only that it is—for here you are and here I am, both hunters in the wide world. We have similar freedoms and strengths, but there are differences. Perhaps those will come to assure you that this life—or this Un-Death, if you will—is not so terrible as you’ve been told.”