by P. N. Elrod
“Such as?”
“You will learn without doubt that your soul is still your own . . . and His,” he added, with a quirk of his heavy brows toward the sky. “You will find the truth of it when next you walk into a church, which is something you are still very much able to do.”
Well, time alone would tell on that one, if Dracula allowed me the freedom to test it.
“With some small changes you are free to live as before, but as you choose, for good or ill, as all things will be judged in the end. For me, it is not so simple.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can do that which you cannot. The wolf, the bat, the curling mist are natural forms to me, but not for you. I prefer the shadows, but may walk in the sun if necessary; you would die from it and must sleep in darkness while it rules the sky. You can influence people and to some extent certain animals to your will, which makes the hunting easier, but can no more command the weather now than you could as a human, but that is of no matter. I’ve read in your heart and by your manner that you are a man who would refuse to pay the price for such powers. Long ago I paid and still do. My body bears the signs of that payment, marking me as different from other men. And as for my soul . . . I think you would be more comfortable to remain ignorant of such fearful things.”
From the look that crossed his face I silently agreed with him. “And what of Lucy? Am I supposed to approve of what you did to her?”
“The matter of your approval is of no import to me. I did nothing with her that was not a part of my nature, a part of any man’s nature. She was beautiful and willing—no, do not gainsay me for you were not there and never knew her true heart. I loved her in the only way left to me.”
“Until she died.”
“We all die, but I will allow that her time had not yet come.”
“You kept taking her blood. I watched her weaken horribly with each passing day. You were killing her!”
“Her body was merely adjusting to what we shared. Another few nights and she would have gradually regained her strength with no harm done.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
He made a curt waving gesture, indication that my believing him on this was also of no import. “If you wish to fix a blame for her death, then you need look no farther than her attending physicians. Had they left her alone she would still be walking in the sun. ’Twas their ignorance that finished her, not my love. Doctors, bah!” His ruddy lips curled with contempt.
“And what about my own tainted blood going into her—?”
“I do not know. The seeds of becoming Un-Dead were within you, but you were not Un-Dead then. It may have helped or made no difference to her health or worsened things. That is beyond my knowledge. I have heard of such transfusion operations, though, and they fail more often than succeed. Some patients are not able to tolerate anything put into their veins and die from it. No one knows why as yet. In my own heart I believe that is what really happened to her.”
And were that to be true, then by trying to help her Jack Seward and Van Helsing had . . .
“The poor, sweet child never had a chance,” Dracula said heavily.
A painful thing it was to hear him refer to her in that manner, for I had loved her myself as truly as a man could. I could not imagine a dark creature such as he being able to love anyone. It angered and sickened me to think of her giving herself to the likes of him, of his even touching her. He must have hypnotized or forced her, though it may have been as it had with me and Nora, with her surrendering from honest innocence, unaware of the consequences. Were that the case, then I certainly had not known Lucy’s true heart. With difficulty, I pushed all my emotions to one side for later reflection. Right now I needed still more information.
“So my blood might not have changed her?”
“It is barely possible, of course. I rather think it more likely that to create your own offspring you must first take blood from your lover, then return it, just as Nora did with you.”
“As you’ve done to Mrs. Harker.”
His face went hard.
“What is to happen to her?” I demanded.
“Nothing. The miracle she prayed for” —he touched the mark on his forehead, for it nearly mirrored the one she’d carried— “came to pass. Seward and Van Helsing will not bother her now. That alone should suffice to guarantee her a long and fruitful life.”
“But what you did to her—”
“As with Lucy, that which has passed between Mrs. Harker and myself is none of your business, Mr. Morris,” he rumbled, his brows lowering.
“But that poor woman—”
“Is quite capable of making her own decisions. If you live long enough, you may come to see that women are far more formidable than you think. Like the rest of you gentlemen, I found myself quite enchanted by Madam Harker’s grace, charm, heart, and mind. Unlike you, I decided to act upon my desires. I’ve lived long enough to have certain . . . perspectives on a few things, and so took the chance, knowing I’d regret passing it by. However, I came to see that which was once acceptable—or at least ignorable—behavior in my youth, was not so for an English lady in these times. All was sealed when the lot of you burst in on us, and I knew then it must end.”
For a seducing adulterer he sounded quite smooth.
“I have since tendered my admittedly inadequate apologies to her, mind-to-mind, and severed all links between us. I would have also apologized to her husband, but given the circumstances it struck me as being inappropriate. Besides, he thinks he has killed me. That should be sufficient recompense for his wounded honor.”
“What about the blood exchange you made with her?”
“That cannot be reversed.”
“Then when she dies, she’ll become like you.”
“And to you that is yet a bad thing. Worry not. When her time comes she will have a . . . decision before her.”
“Decision?”
“It—it is not an easy thing to make into words. My own memory of it is clear, but to describe in a way that you may understand is difficult. Let it suffice that she will have the choice to live as I live or to go to God. At death, each similarly touched soul has a moment of decision. I have told her as much, so did I tell Lucy, whose choice was to tarry on the earth.”
“But I had no choice. I went to sleep and awoke to—” I spread my hands to indicate my situation.
“Another point of difference between us, between our kinds. And another question I have no adequate answer for. Why some of you rise and others do not is a mystery to me.”
“Van Helsing said nothing of this choice of yours. Neither did Mrs. Harker.”
“He may not know of it, and you can hardly blame the lady for such an omission. It is a most personal thing. But she has a noble heart, a great spirit, and her faith is so strong as to have done such to her—” again he lightly touched the scar on his forehead. “I have no doubt when her time comes she will fly to the angels to seek her rest.”
“Are you sure of that?”
“Wait twenty or thirty years and see for yourself. For now, the subject of Mrs. Harker and myself is closed.” By the finality of his tone I knew that to pursue the matter would result in unhappy consequences to myself. And he was right. It was none of my business. Besides, to be sincerely selfish about it, I had problems of my own to face. To judge by the miraculous healing of the burn she’d taken from the touch of the Host, Mina Harker was well recovered from her ordeal, and Dracula planned to leave her alone; I felt I could move forward with a fairly clear conscience.
Now that my eyes were opened a little wider than before, I looked out into the night. Though all would have been murky blacks and grays to my friends, it was as day to me. The faint moonlight put a silver gleam upon everything it touched, beautiful, but marred in my perception by my many troubling questions.
“Must I do as you—as Nora—to. . .to. . .” The words refused to emerge.
“Sustain yourself? Hardly. To drink fro
m a lover is one matter, but you’ll find that the blood of animals is your real food. One may live upon love alone for awhile, but sooner or later one must come down from the clouds and take more practical nourishment. This is as true for vampires as it is for humans.”
That was a great relief. If it was true.
“Do you hunger yet?”
I continued to stare out at nothing in particular, giving no reply.
He shrugged. “When you’re ready, then tell me. Your first feeding should be a pleasing experience.”
He’d have a hard task of proving that to me. Separated so far from memories of Nora by time and new knowledge, the idea of my drinking blood of any kind like downing a cup of coffee sickened me to the core. I tried to hide my grimace as my belly turned over. “What about my friends? When they wake—”
“They will be shocked, of course. They will eventually conclude you have been dragged off in the night by a pack of ravenous wolves and will never recover your body. So very tidy, is it not?”
“It’s monstrous!”
“Far better that than to see your footprints in the snow trailing away from the torn blanket that was your shroud. Then you would never be safe from them. I suspected you might revive and rise tonight, so I made sure my children and I were there to disguise your escape.”
“But they’re my friends. I cannot put them through such grief!”
His face went hard again, the change swift as lightning. “You will and must. It is part of my pledge of their safety to you. Leave them alone and they live.”
“But—”
“You will leave them. Better that they suffer a little distress than for you to undo all I have done. I will not be moved on this. Accept it, or they will pay.”
There would be no return to my comrades, not for the present, anyway, certainly not while his wolves were within call. “Very well,” I murmured. Perhaps later I might be able to talk to Art or Jack and persuade them to reason as I had been persuaded, but in the meantime I was feeling very lost and miserable without them. And cold. The icy November air, something I’d been able to ignore because of my changed condition, had seeped well into my bones. It would take more than the long coat I wore to dispel it. I shook out the torn blanket I still had wrapped around my arm and threw it around my shoulders.
Dracula nodded. “Yes, it is time to go inside. My castle is not far from this place. Your friends thought to seal me from it, but there are entrances that they found not.”
“What about your friends?”
“Mine?”
“Harker wrote of your three . . . companions.” I nearly said “mistresses” and diplomatically changed the word at the last moment. I wondered how they would receive me. “The ladies.”
His eyes flashed green, and his lips drew into a knife-cut of a line. He released a long hiss of breath. There was a strange blaze of madness in his stare that made me instinctively reach for my missing Colt revolver, for all the good it would have done.
Dracula rose tall and quickly turned away; one hand shot out against the stone side of the mountain as though to steady himself. I’d stabbed right into a nerve it seemed, and couldn’t guess what it might be.
With a terrible strength, his bare fingers curled right into the rock, ripping off a piece. I stood, readying myself in case he decided to make a problem, but he took no notice.
“Sir,” I ventured after some moments. “What is it?”
His shoulders sagged. He slowly turned back to me. Now his eyes had gone dark, hooded over by those heavy brows. “They are no more,” he said, his gaze dropping. “Van Helsing murdered them.”
“Murdered?” Here was a shock. I’d long known that the professor had the idea of visiting the castle during the day, but it was news to me to learn he’d actually done so. But murder—?
“He served them as he served poor Lucy,” Dracula said.
That told me all. Unbidden, the sight of her hideous second dying passed across my mind’s eye as it had every day since. I’d been told—and had been thoroughly convinced—that what we’d done had freed her sweet soul from enslavement to pure evil. Now I was not so certain. God in heaven, had I helped to murder her?
Dracula flexed his fingers enough to let the stone fall, his voice a bleak drone. “Their deaths happened because Van Helsing was more careful and they too careless. In their minds, in their dreams, I gave them warning of what I knew must be his intent, but they would not heed. They thought him to be yet only a simple peasant, easily cowed by fear or seduced by lust for their beauty. I . . . felt each of them go and could do nothing.” His face darkened, then cleared, like the shadow of a cloud running over the flanks of a mountain. He struck me as a man who felt things deep and felt things hard, but could hold control if he chose.
“What will you do to Van Helsing?”
“Nothing.”
“How can you—I mean, if you cared for them—”
“I am pledged.”
That simple statement took me aback.
He saw my disbelief. “My word, Mr. Morris, may be trusted.”
“Sir, I—”
“There is more as well. You are not so old as I or you would understand the futility of certain kinds of retribution. To avenge my dear ones would put Van Helsing where he belongs—in hell!—but bring me no gain, and only reveal my deception to the others.” He gave another shrug, this time with his hands. “What’s done is done. I have pledged the lives of your friends to you on your sensible behavior. I will not recant.”
I kept quiet, relieved, but still dealing with inner doubt. I had the suspicion that should my friends make themselves a nuisance to him again he might find a way of getting around his pledge.
He straightened, standing tall. “Come then, Quincey Morris. I will show you any number of dark places for you to shelter from the day, places much safer than that which my dear ones had.”
“Won’t I need my home earth as you do?” I suddenly felt frail and weary and very, very alone.
He turned slightly and motioned toward where the wolves had vanished, taking in the vast forest. “This land has become your home, Mr. Morris. When a brave man’s blood strikes the ground where he fights he has purchased it for his own forever. You will find rest here and may carry away as much earth as you want when you are ready to depart.”
Another surprise. Me being free to leave? I’d no notion he’d even suggest the idea that I could ever depart this oppressive place. It wouldn’t be tonight. The hour was too late, to judge by the position of the stars. Dawn was coming, but on top of all that, I needed help, which Dracula seemed willing to give. I’d be a fool not to accept, since I was still trying to get my brain to take in what had happened to me and how to deal with it. Back in Texas when a tenderfoot turned up on the ranch we’d guide him through things until he learned how to survive on his own. Now I was the tenderfoot.
“I’d appreciate that,” I said.
Dracula grunted once and continued to stare away into the distance. His gaze and his mind must have been very much elsewhere, for he remained silent and unnaturally still for quite a long time.
I tried not to shiver, waiting, reluctant to intrude on whatever dark thoughts possessed him.
“But perhaps,” he finally whispered, his voice so soft I barely heard, “perhaps you will tarry awhile? The wind breathes cold through the broken battlements and casements of my castle, but you will find more comfort there than in these wastes. We two have many griefs to settle in our hearts, and though I would be alone with my thoughts, in such a time of mourning it is better to have company.”
My answer was to follow him. As we picked our way over the rocks and up the narrow path, his children began to sing again.
* * * * * * *
__________
P.N. Elrod is best known for her ongoing urban fantasy series, The Vampire Files, and continues to write new adventures and mysteries for undead PI, Jack Fleming. In 2011 she was presented with the prestigious Romantic Times Book Rev
iews Award for VAMPIRE FICTION PIONEER, Forging the Way for Vampire Fiction Since 1990.
She’s written and edited short stories, novels, and non-fiction for Ace Science Fiction, Baen Books, Benbella Books and DarkStar Books and DAW. The paranormal and urban fantasy collections she edited for St. Martin’s Griffin have won awards and allowed her to work with the best writers in the genres.
Elrod ventures into new territory with a steampunk series for Tor Books, ON HER MAJESTY’S PSYCHIC SERVICE, and has begun her own publishing imprint, VampWriter Books, which features reprints and new novels as they come available. She is embracing digital tech to make her works instantly available for ebook readers.
For the most up-to-date information on her toothy titles, check out her FaceBook page and website at www-dot-vampwriter-dot-com.
Thank you for your purchase of this collection. She hopes you enjoyed it!
* * * * * * *
