"Yes, it is," he agreed, "and we have to be ready for it and be prepared to fight it. We have to find Jerry, that's the first step. As soon as I take Holly home, I'm going to go out looking for him. We have to get him to tell us where Lucy is sleeping during the day, where she's hidden the dust of the Count. We have to find her, kill her, then scatter the remains. Once we've done all this, then the only danger remaining will be the blood in our veins. And when we die, it will die with us. But we have to be careful, we have to be ready."
Rachel absorbed all of this in silence, reflected upon it, and then nodded. "What do you want me to do?"
"You have to make the house vampire-proof. Crosses and garlic on all the doors and windows. If you can get holy water from Father Henley, get some. If you can steal some consecrated wafers and consecrated wine, steal it."
"Malcolm!"
"Rachel, we can't worry about offending religious ethics, not now. God will forgive us for any sacrilege, I'm sure He will. It's Satan we're fighting here, remember."
She seemed unconvinced, but she did not press the point. "And you? What will you do?"
"As I said, I'm going out to look for Jerry. I think he left Rome the day before Holly and I did. That means that he and Lucy have had enough time to find her a resting place where she'll be safe during the daytime. They haven't had enough time to do anything else. You have to see to the security of the house immediately, before she tries to get in; and remember, she can't enter unless someone invites her in. That's one of the barriers against them that we can exploit to our advantage."
"Where will you look for him?" Rachel asked.
"I'll start at the Strand, the bar where he and I work." Malcolm paused. "Used to work, probably. We extended our vacation so long that we've probably both been fired. If he isn't there, drowning his sorrows, I'll check his apartment, his mother's apartment, the other places where he hangs out. I can think of dozens of places to check."
"Well," Rachel rose to her feet in her customary businesslike manner. "We'd best be about it, then. Go up and visit with Grandfather for a while, Malcolm. I'm going to the vegetable store and buy some garlic."
As Rachel left the house, Malcolm walked up the stairs toward his grandfather's bedroom. If I'd only left everything alone, he thought as he pushed open the bedroom door. If only I hadn't been so damned sure of myself, so damned cocky. Jerry wouldn't be in trouble, Lucy wouldn't be here, wouldn't even be "undead" again. Gramps probably wouldn't be ill, Daniel wouldn't have left Rachel, and Holly wouldn't have left me. Great job, Malcolm. Real good work.
He entered to find Holly sitting on the side of the old man's bed, whispering to him softly. He heard Quincy's feeble voice mutter something so low as to be unintelligible, and Holly responded to the words with a soft ripple of laughter. Malcolm felt almost as if he were intruding upon something private, but he knew that much as his grandfather liked Holly, and much as she might like the old man in return, there was no future for Holly and Malcolm, no future for Malcolm and anyone.
He walked forward and sat down on the other side of the bed. "Hiya, Gramps," he said, feigning cheer.
Quincy took his hand and squeezed it weakly. "Hello, boy. I'm glad you returned in one piece."
"Just barely," he said, laughing. "How are you feeling?"
Quincy replied with a very slight shrug. "I've lived a long life. I have no complaints."
"Oh, don't talk like that, Mr. Harker," Holly said. "You're going to be fine."
"Of course you are," Malcolm hastened to agree. "My stupid little escapade has just upset you, that's all. I'm very sorry about that."
Quincy smiled and nodded, not in agreement but in dismissal. "I have to rest awhile, boy. You take your girl home, and come back to visit with me later. All right?"
"Sure, Gramps. You get some sleep. I'll see you later." Malcolm led Holly from the room and closed the door behind them. As they descended the stairs, he asked, "How do you think he is?"
She shook her head. "I wouldn't admit it to him, but he's right, Mal. I think he's reached the end of his time. My grandmother died of old age when I was a little kid, and she looked and sounded like he does now."
Malcolm shook his head. "My fault, like everything."
"Not everything," she said. "It's really Dracula's fault, just as Rachel said."
They left the house silently. Malcolm locked the door behind him. As they walked from Granville Place toward Austin Street; they did not touch. They were no longer a couple, and each self-consciously observed the proprieties of their new situation. As they drew closer to Burns Street, Holly said, "I could use a drink, Mal. How about you?"
"Sure," he said, switching her suitcase from his right hand to his left. "I was going to go to the Strand after I took you home anyway."
"Looking for Jerry?"
"Yeah. Gotta start somewhere."
"Well," she said, "I'd like a drink, whether he's there or not."
They continued on down Ascan Avenue past Burns Street and lapsed once again into silence.
When they entered the Strand, they saw Jerry Herman sitting at the end of the still-uncrowded bar, staring morosely into a half-empty glass of beer. Malcolm and Holly walked over to him and seated themselves on either side of him. He turned his head slowly from Malcolm to Holly and back again, and then he started to cry. "I'm sorry."
Malcolm nodded, placing his hand on Jerry's shoulder. "I know, Jer. I understand."
"She said she would take her blood out of me. She promised."
"Of course she did, Jerry," Holly said. "And you know she wasn't telling the truth, don't you?"
He nodded, allowing his head to sink downward toward the bar top, seeming almost to double over in his misery. "She laughed at me. After I got her here, I asked her to keep her end of the bargain, and she just laughed at me."
Malcolm sighed. "Jerry, what has happened to you is my fault, not yours. Don't reproach yourself. You can't trust these creatures. We've all learned that the hard way."
Jerry Herman grabbed Malcolm's arm and held it hard, gripped it with an intensity born of fear. "What am I gonna do, Mal? What am I gonna do?"
"The first thing we're all going to do is have a drink," Malcolm said, motioning toward the bartender—his replacement, in all likelihood, he thought glumly—who stood near the cash register. "Bourbon for me and my friend, and another beer for him. Give me a beer, too." He glanced over at Holly. "Wine?" he asked.
"Scotch on the rocks," she told the bartender. "A double shot, please."
Jerry wiped away a tear and said, "Holly, I'm sorry I left you guys like that. I mean—"
"Jerry, forget it," Holly said. "You don't owe me an apology. I'm . . . well, I'm not involved in all this anymore, anyway."
Jerry glanced from Holly to Malcolm, started to comment, thought the better of it, then turned back to the beer glass he clutched in his hand.
After a few moments, Malcolm asked, "How did she get here? I mean, how did you manage it?"
"Well," Jerry began, "it wasn't all that difficult. It was just something that she couldn't do by herself, because she realized that she didn't understand what was involved. She knew she needed a passport—"
"Sure she knew," Malcolm commented. "They used passports in the nineteenth century, too."
"—and so she got one from somebody she killed. She hung around in nightclubs and places like that around Rome, listening for American accents. Eventually she picked someone out who looked a little like her, knocked her off, and took her passport."
"Jesus, don't they check those things out?" Holly asked. "I mean, if somebody gets killed and someone with the same name shows up at the airport with a passport picture that doesn't look like them, wouldn't the police—"
"Holly," Malcolm said patiently, "do you realize how many people fly in and out of Rome every day? It's got to be tens of thousands. And they check passport photos and stuff like that much more carefully when you're entering a country than when you're leaving it."
"Well, then," she protested, "at Kennedy—"
"She didn't go through customs," Jerry said.
"Of course not." Malcolm nodded. "What did she do? Turn into mist?"
"I don't know. All I know is that she disappeared when we got off the plane and was waiting for me when I went to get the luggage."
"And the jewelry box with the remains in it?"
"With the luggage." Jerry sighed. "God knows where the boxes of dirt are."
Malcolm frowned. "For something as important to her as she seemed to think it was, she didn't seem to take any precautions. That's odd."
"No, it isn"t, Jerry said. "You don't know her, Mal. She's, I don't know, like a little kid somehow. She doesn't think too clearly, not the way a . . . a normal person would. I don't think it ever occurred to her that she had to guard the dust from anyone, as long as you were still in Rome."
"And where is it now?" Malcolm asked. "And where is she?"
Jerry sighed and shook his head. "I don't know. As soon as we got out of the airport, she took the jewelry box from me and started laughing at me, calling me a stupid fool and telling me that I'd never be free of her." He started to cry again. "She just left me standing there. I didn't know what to do, where to go. I didn't want to go back to my apartment. I just wandered around for hours, and then I came here. I've been here ever since."
Malcolm considered everything Jerry had said. "So we can make a few assumptions. The two of you got here at night. About what time?"
"Oh, two in the morning, maybe. Something like that."
"Okay, so she had to find a safe resting place immediately. She didn't have time to do anything else."
"Anything else?" Jerry asked. "What else? What do you mean?"
"I'll explain later," Malcolm replied. "The point is, if Rachel has seen to the security of the house, then we're safe from her, safe from the remains."
"Wait a minute," Holly said. "How can she find a place to sleep? Doesn't she have to sleep in her own grave, or something like that?"
"In her native soil," Jerry answered her. "She brought a knapsack filled with dirt with her. Brought it all the way from England to Rumania, before shipping the English and Rumanian dirt to New York."
Holly frowned and shook her head. "This doesn't make sense. If she could get from England to Rumania all by herself, why did she need you to get to America? And why would she need Rumanian soil?"
"We can't be all that certain of our facts," Malcolm replied. "We don't know for sure that she did get from England to Rumania all alone. Maybe she had another . . . maybe she did to someone else what she did to Jerry. Maybe she only needed him because of the luggage, because of the dust of the Count. And as for the Rumanian dirt . . ." He paused for a moment. "I don't know. Maybe the remains have to rest in their native soil for the blood in Lucy's body to remain potent. I just don't know."
"Mal, what are we gonna do?" Jerry whined.
Malcolm took hold of his friend's hands and squeezed them tightly. "We're going to find her and kill her, and then we're going to find the remains of the Count and scatter them. And then we'll he safe, all of us."
"But how can we find her?" Jerry asked. "We don't have any idea where she is!"
Malcolm nodded in agreement. "I know, but we also know that she's going to come after us, you, me, Gramps, and Rachel. We're going to have to be extremely careful and wait for her to make the first move, give us some clue as to where she's hiding. If we can find that out, we can find her during the daytime, and we can kill her."
"And the remains?"
"They won't be far from her. If we find her, we find them." Malcolm turned his attention to his drink, and his two companions did the same. There seemed, for the present at least, to be little else to say.
An hour later, Malcolm Harker and Holly Larsen stood in uneasy silence at the door to her co-op apartment. Neither of them knew what to say. This was, each knew, in all likelihood the last time they would see each other. Each loved the other, each wished that circumstances were different, and each knew that a parting of the ways was necessary; inevitable.
Malcolm coughed. "I'd better get back outside. Jerry'll be getting impatient."
"Yes," she said, and nodded.
A long silence ensued. Then Malcolm said, "I'm sorry, Holly. I'm sorry for everything."
"So am I, Mal." She unlocked her door and stepped inside, wanting to end the conversation quickly. "Good-bye."
"Good-bye." He watched the door swing shut, heard the lock click softly into place, and then he turned and walked toward the elevator.
Inside, Holly listened for the sound of the closing elevator door. As soon as she heard it, she went over to the window and looked out at the street below. Jerry Herman was standing beneath a light pole, nervously smoking a cigarette. She watched as he paced back and forth, watched as Malcolm came up to him, watched as they conversed briefly in words she could not hear, and watched as they walked away.
And so, good-bye, Malcolm, she thought sadly.
Holly turned sorrowfully away from the window and went into her bedroom. She sat down before her vanity and stared at her tired face in the mirror. Back to work tomorrow, she thought. Back to the singles' bars tomorrow night. Back to being alone, back to trying to separate the decent guys from the jerks. Back to the superficial conversations and the pathetic, posturing games. Back to wondering if there will ever be a good man, a decent man, someone to be trusted and admired and loved.
Someone other than dear, sweet, poor Malcolm.
Sighing, Holly removed her earrings and her necklace and then set about the task of removing her makeup. She was wiping off her mascara when she thought she heard a sound from the other room.
Lucy . . .
She felt a brief surge of panic, then realized that, no, it couldn't be Lucy, it's impossible. Vampires can't enter a house unless they're invited in first, and I certainly never invited her in. Imagination. All my imagination.
She was rubbing cold cream on her face when a thought occurred to her. This isn't a house, this is an apartment. And isn't an apartment just like a room in a building? When Dracula wanted to get at Mina Harker, he induced the lunatic Renfield to invite him into the asylum, and then he was able to go from room to room in the same building. And couldn't Lucy somehow get someone to invite her into the apartment building, a janitor, the superintendent, some old man who would hold the door for her and say, please, after you, or something like that. Couldn't she get in here if she wanted to?
A moment later she heard soft laughter close to her ear and she glanced up into the mirror. The only reflection she saw was her own. In that split second before Holly could turn her head, Lucy Westenra was upon her.
Chapter Fifteen
As Malcolm approached the front door of his home, the pungent aroma of freshly sliced garlic assailed his nostrils, and he smiled slightly as he examined the garlic bulbs that hung from the doorknob. Anyone else, he for example, might simply have tied the plants to any convenient protuberance without concern for appearance or regularity, but not Rachel. She had split each garlic bulb neatly in half, peeled them, and tied red string carefully about each one. Three split bulbs dangled from the doorknob. Three others hung from the windows on either side of the door, and Malcolm could see that the acrid plant had been placed both within and without the house. Shaking his head with amusement at Rachel's orderliness under even these circumstances, he unlocked the front door and entered.
He found his sister in the kitchen where she was washing off the long kitchen knife she had used to prepare the garlic bulbs. She turned as she heard him enter and said, without any further formal greeting, "I've put garlic on all the windows, inside and out, and on all the doors, including the interior doors to our bedrooms. I've also managed to rummage up more crucifixes from Mother's trunks in the basement. I've put them at strategic points about the house."
"Good." Malcolm nodded. "We're safe now, anyway. The sun has been up for at least twenty minutes."
/> "And so then, we wait." She smoothed her apron. "I've been up all night, waiting for you, tending to Grandfather, and getting the house prepared for our defense. I'm going to go and check on him now, and then I think I'll lie down for a few hours. I'm exhausted."
"Me, too," Malcolm yawned. "I've got bad jet lag. Jerry's going to come over later on this afternoon, so we'd better set some alarm clocks to wake us up. The way I feel right now, I'd sleep through the doorbell and almost anything else."
"Well, I wouldn't," Rachel said. "Don't worry, Malcolm. I'll wake you when he arrives." She frowned slightly. "I thought you had no idea where he was?"
"We found him at the Strand, Holly and I," Malcolm said as he began to walk toward the staircase. "He has no idea where Lucy is, no idea where the remains of the Count are."
"Well, then, what . . ."
"Remember in the book, the Stoker book, how Van Helsing used the psychic link between the Count and our great-grandmother to track him down? Well, we're going to try the same thing." He began to mount the stairs, and Rachel followed close behind him. "It isn't a sure thing, but it's the only thing I can think of doing."
She nodded approvingly. "It's a good idea. It might work."
"If it doesn't, I don't know what we'll do. We'll never be free of this thing until we've killed Lucy and scattered the remains of the Count."
"Trust in God, Malcolm," his sister said as she reached the door of their grandfather's room. "This is an old battle for Him. We have a potent ally." She closed the door of old Quincy's room behind her.
Malcolm gazed at the shut door for a moment, then continued on down to his bedroom. He was trying not to think about Holly.
He dropped down upon his bed and folded his hands behind his head. So beautiful, he mused as his eyelids grew heavy and a yawn forced its way from his chest. She is so beautiful, so warm, so kind, so beautiful.
"She is still a child, of course," the Gypsy said, "but you can tell, My Lord, that she will be ravishing when she comes of age."
He nodded, stroking his mustache and leering at the little girl who stood trembling before him. He dropped down upon one knee and smiled. "What is your name, little one?"
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