Malcolm did not respond, for at last he understood everything. He understood exactly what had happened and exactly why it had happened. He realized that he had not only lost: he had never had a chance to win.
He can turn himself into dust.
The words reverberated in Malcolm's mind as if they were the denouement of a black comedy.
He can turn himself into dust.
That was the risk, that was the chance, that was the gamble which the Voivode of Wallachia had taken on that Carpathian road a hundred years ago. He was being pursued, his enemies had reached him just as the sun was setting, armed with their puny knives and foolish rifles. He could have killed them all then and there; but his identity was known, and his castle's location was known. He had no way of knowing who else knew about him, who else might have been waiting until the next sunrise before stealing into his crypt and pounding a wooden stake into his heart.
But there were some things that he did know. He knew that his blood flowed in the body of a young woman, recently married, likely to have children. He knew that as long as his blood lived, he could not be truly dead. He knew that his demonic consciousness, transcending life and death and form and being and time itself, would continue to exist for as long as his infernal blood continued to flow in Mina Harker and in her descendants down through the ages. But the mind of the Voivode was not tied to his blood; it was tied to his unnatural physical body, and it would be in his body that his mind would live on.
No matter what form his body took!
It was indeed a gamble, for he would have to surrender his Satanic blood to the air and the earth, surrender his physical form in so extreme a manner that even he would not be able to reconstitute it at will. But he took the risk, for only by providing an unquestionable and absolute semblance of his own destruction could he be confident of his survival.
Malcolm looked at his sister, and as their eyes met, each knew that the other was being struck by the same numbing realizations. It was as if the scales had fallen and they could see clearly, understand fully, for the first time in months.
He was a gambler, this Vlad the Impaler, he had always been a gambler. He had gambled against the Turks, he had gambled against the Hungarians, he had gambled against his own Wallachian subjects; and he had dared to hope that in this last, final game, the Devil would load the dice.
And thus it was that at that cold Carpathian twilight of 1889, as Jonathan Harker stabbed impotently at his throat and Quincey Morris stabbed impotently at his heart, the Voivode of Wallachia turned himself into dust, gave them the illusion, the false belief that they had destroyed him.
And then he waited as the years passed into decades and the decades passed into a century, his being trapped in a pile of dust and bone in a silent coffin in a ruined castle in the mountains of Transylvania. He waited, and he listened to the distant sounds that echoed to him through the blood, the sounds that drifted to him over the thousands of miles and the long years. He sent out the tendrils of his mind and felt and touched and knew the hearts and minds and souls of those whose veins carried his foul legacy. He was looking for weakness, for the absence of God's grace. He sensed it first in little Quincy Harker a scant seven years later, and he sent the little boy to seek out the grave of Lucy Westenra; but Abraham Van Helsing was wise enough to figure out at least a part of the truth, enough to protect the child and frustrate the plan for a time. He sensed it next in Malcolm's father, who died before he could be used, and then he sensed it again in Malcolm, Malcolm the intellectual, Malcolm the rationalist, to whom the undead vampire and the resurrected Christ were but two sides of the same myth, rather than two sides of the same reality.
And then the Voivode of Wallachia threw his ancient powers behind the plan which he had been contemplating through all the long years of imprisonment in his own dust.
Malcolm did not know whether to laugh or cry. He felt an alien mentality alive in his own body, a mentality now so certain of victory that it had removed the few remaining barriers to Malcolm's ability to understand what had happened to him.
Such a fool, he thought. I've been such a fool.
From the very beginning, from the absolute very beginning, he had been manipulated. His ideas, his intentions, his reasoning, had not been his own. He had been nothing more than a puppet of that patient, powerful, evil undead mind.
There had never been any need to go to England. Jerry and Holly had told him that, and they had also told him that pouring his blood on Lucy Westenra's skeleton was an absurd idea. But the Impaler needed his Lucy resurrected to further the plan, and so Malcolm had gone to England and had restored her to undeath.
Malcolm felt tears trickling from his eyes as he remembered the sudden change that had come over Lucy while he was speaking to her in the sepulcher, the sudden blankness of her expression, her sudden willingness to help him. It had been at that moment that her ancient lord had spoken to her through her blood and had told her what needed to be done.
And everything had proceeded according to plan.
He went to Rumania, gathered up the dust, brought it back to America where Rachel Rowland and Quincy Harker were waiting like innocent lambs in a slaughterhouse pen; and not once did Malcolm or his sister or his grandfather make the simple, logical connection between the dust and their own blood. Not once did they see that Lucy intended to mingle their blood with the remains of her lord and thus restore him as Malcolm had restored her. And why did they never realize this? Because the mentality that was connected to them through their blood would not allow them to realize it.
And Jerry Herman had drunk the same tainted blood from Lucy Westenra's breast, and so he, too, was being manipulated. He, too, never drew the simple, obvious, logical conclusion from the facts. And Holly and Quincy had been taken over to the other side and thus were being more than manipulated.
And while all of this was happening, the demonic mentality resting in the dust in the silent coffin was slowly awakening his own slumbering blood, readying it for the hellish reunion that would restore him to prey upon an unsuspecting world.
"Do you finally understand, my little marionettes?" Lucy asked with a cold smile. "Do you finally feel the puppet master's strings?"
"I've been such a fool," Malcolm said, shaking his head sadly, "such a fool."
"Don't be too hard on yourself, boy," Quincy said. "The Master won this game long ago."
Malcolm looked at Lucy. "I stabbed you in the chest with a knife," he said miserably, "and you just pulled it out and tossed it away, and I never made the connection."
"No, you didn't," Lucy agreed. "You see, it is just as I told you on that very same night. Van Helsing wouldn't have believed the things I had told you. He wouldn't even have spoken to me."
"Of course not," Malcolm sighed. "He wasn't cursed with the blood."
"Not yet, anyway," Lucy added, laughing dreadfully.
Malcolm looked up. "What do you mean?"
"Look around you, foolish boy!" Lucy replied. "What do you think we've been doing for the past few months—Holly, Quincy, and I, with Daniel's kind assistance? What do you think would happen if the Master were to spill his blood on the remains of the truly dead? What do you think these coffins are here for?"
"Daniel . . . Daniel said . . ." Malcolm stammered.
"Oh, I know what Daniel said," Lucy interrupted. "And you believed him, just as you believed me. Oh, Malcolm, you're disappointing me again."
Malcolm's eyes moved from old rotten casket to old rotten casket. "Van Helsing?" he whispered, horrified at the thought.
"Yes," Lucy said, and nodded. "And Mina Harker and Jonathan Harker and Quincey Morris and John Stewart and Arthur Wellesley. The new coffin, of course, we have procured for the Master himself. We've already covered the interior with Rumanian earth. He shall be resurrected, and then my old friends shall drink of the Master's blood, and then we shall have a reunion!" Her mocking voice grew suddenly dark and malevolent. "Many years ago, the Master told these peopl
e that he spreads his vengeance over centuries. He intends to prove it to them."
Malcolm swallowed hard. "He's going to . . . he's . . ."
"Precisely," Lucy said. "A rather definitive victory, don't you think?"
Malcolm looked at her, shocked and disgusted. "Arthur Wellesley loved you so much, and you're going to help that monster do this to him?"
The red glow in Lucy's eyes dimmed for an instant and something vaguely human infused her features, just as it had months before in the crypt in Hempstead, England; but now as then, the instant passed almost immediately. "You never learn, little Malcolm, you never learn. I am not Lucy Westenra, any more than that is Holly Larsen over there with Rachel, any more than it is your grandfather holding your wrists. We are vampires, we are the undead, we are nosferatu. We do not love, we do not pity. We hate and we curse and we kill." Lucy paused and then said, "But we've waited long enough." She nodded to Quincy and Holly. "Now," she whispered.
Quincy Harker was still holding his grandsons wrists, keeping his hands well away from the shirt pocket that contained the consecrated host, and at Lucy's nod he dragged Malcolm toward the pile of dust on the floor in the center of the room. Holly did the same with Rachel, and when they met by the dust they took the right hands of their respective captives and brought them to their mouths. Quincy bit deeply into Malcolm's wrist as Holly's fangs sank into Rachel's. The two mortals cried out from the pain of the bites, but their cries were drowned out by the laughter of the vampires as the blood began to spurt from the torn flesh and fall onto the dust.
The vampires held the bleeding wrists out over the pile, and the dust was becoming thick and muddy as it absorbed the blood. "Enough," Lucy said at last, walking forward and wrapping strips of cloth first around Rachel's wrist and then around Malcolm's. "We don't want you to die, not yet." She smiled. "During the reunion, before dawn, but not now. I think we'll have Mina and Jonathan do the honors. That would be rather poetic, don't you think?"
Quincy dragged Malcolm back toward the base of the stairs as Holly pulled Rachel back to the corner. Jerry Herman was still sitting up against the wall in mute terror, and Daniel Rowland stood quietly aside, hands folded in front of him, looking down at his feet. He alone was not staring at red mud in the center of the room. Six pairs of eyes were riveted on the blood-soaked remains, three of them glowing red with anticipation, and three of them filled with despair and dread.
A few long, silent moments passed.
And then, just as months before in the crypt in England, a fine red mist began to seep up from the remains; but as Malcolm watched the mud churn and move and begin to boil, he felt a charge in the atmosphere, an invisible power moving through the dark and silent basement. This had not happened when he restored Lucy Westenra. There had not been the sensation of invisible presence, the feeling of an unearthly intelligence moving around them, upon them, within them. Malcolm's skin tingled and he felt something brush his face.
The red mud churned and hissed and changed, and then it began to glow so brightly that it was painful to watch. Licks of black fire began to shoot upward from the mud, and then the fire became bloodred and at last a blinding yellow. The mortals squinted their eyes against the flaming light, and from the midst of the brilliance came peals of ear-rending, screaming laughter as the flames shot upward and became a virtual pillar of fire. A crack of deafening thunder smote the walls of the basement as the flames flew outward in all directions and then dissipated with a startling immediacy that left Malcolm momentarily blinded.
He was still blinking his eyes as he heard the shuffling of feet and then Daniel screaming, "No . . . no . . . you promised . . ." as he heard Lucy's unearthly laughter mingle with a hungry, inhuman snarl from the center of the room. When his vision returned, he saw Daniel Rowland's throat being ripped open by the tall man who was embracing him. He watched the greedy, frenzied attack, watched as blood and vein and artery were torn out and devoured to quench the thirst and appease the hunger which had been growing for a hundred years.
Malcolm's gaze followed Daniel's corpse as it dropped heavily to the floor, and then he looked up into the mad eyes which were blazing with cold triumph.
Here was no black-caped caricature, no Hollywood villain, no cinema monster. Here was Vlad the Impaler, the Voivode of Wallachia, a medieval warrior prince, caftan-clad and bedecked with jewels, his long black hair slightly white at the temples, his drooping mustache as gray as iron, his skin as pale as death itself, his eyes as red as Hell.
He ignored the others in the room with him, for he had been brooding about his enemies for a hundred years, and he began to take his revenge upon them as soon as his maddening hunger had been assuaged. He went from aged coffin to aged coffin, ripping open the lids with his mighty hands, laughing loudly and vindictively, plunging his sharp teeth into his own wrists and pouring his infernal blood upon the piles of dust and bones and decaying cloth. He paid no attention to the three other vampires or the three captive mortals as the red mists began to fill the basement and the boiling, churning, hissing sounds arose from each trembling casket.
Then he turned his eyes to the others. He walked forward to Lucy Westenra and kissed her hand lightly, needing to say nothing, for they had been communicating with each other for months. Holly Larsen and Quincy Harker bowed their heads when he looked at them, and with a curt nod he acknowledged them as his creatures and accepted them as his own. He glanced at Rachel and Jerry with cold amusement, and then he looked over at Malcolm.
The lord of the vampires walked slowly over to the base of the stairway. He placed his balled fists upon his hips imperiously, and then he smiled.
"Malcolm Harker, my dear boy," Dracula said. "At last we meet."
Chapter Twenty-Two
He stood at the foyer window of the Harker house on Granville Place in Forest Hills Gardens, looking out at this strange new world into which he had awakened an hour before. He pressed his rough tongue against the tip of one of his fangs, and then he closed his eyes and whispered in his ancient Balkan tongue, "Ordogh! Come to me!"
There was silence for a moment, and then the soft voice answered him, the voice that he had known for so many centuries, that had kept him company through the long years of imprisonment in his own dust. "I am here, Little Dragon."
"How many people, Ordogh? How many did you say?"
"Legion, Little Dragon, legion. Millions upon millions in this city alone, hundreds of millions in this country, billions upon the face of the earth in this time."
The Voivode laughed. "Truly, Ordogh, this is a pleasant awakening."
"Yes, Little Dragon."
"And I am not known in this time?"
"Ah, but you are famous, Little Dragon. Yours is one of the most famous names in all the world. Every detail of your conflict in England a century ago is known."
A smug smile curled upon the Voivode's dead lips. "And it is all mythology."
"Yes, Little Dragon."
"And I am a hobgoblin, a fairy tale with which to frighten children."
"Yes, Little Dragon."
"And the nosferatu is dismissed as nonsense."
"Less than nonsense, Little Dragon. This is an age when men hide their deepest fears and instincts behind a mask of rationality. Mankind has become a herd of sheep which does not believe in the existence of wolves."
The Voivode laughed louder. "A wonderful age for one such as I, Ordogh."
"Yes, Little Dragon," the voice said. "Even Christians who believe in my Enemy and in Heaven tend not to believe in me or in Hell. And it is a violent age, Little Dragon. Men slaughter each other by the tens of million in wars and in death camps and upon city streets, and they have weapons so destructive that by comparison a cannon is but a stone knife."
The Voivode gazed again out at the street. "So I can kill as I please, torture as I choose, and no one will suspect."
"As I have said, it is a violent age, Little Dragon. It is not likely that anyone will notice."
He s
miled, again flicking his tongue against his sharp teeth. "In this as in all things, you have been a faithful ally, Ordogh. I thank you."
The soft voice seemed almost to laugh as it said, "I assure you, Little Dragon, that the pleasure is all mine."
The voice faded away into nothing, and then Vlad Dracula turned and went back to the stairs that led down to the basement.
They were all still there, just as he had left them a short time before when he went to commune with his dark mentor. Quincy Harker stood at the foot of the stairs, holding his grandson Malcolm by the wrists. Jerry Herman was on the floor, sitting up against the wall, and Holly Larsen stood beside him, Rachel Harker firmly in her grasp. Lucy Westenra stood in the center of the room, near the spot where the pile of dust had once lain. All around her were open coffins.
Open, empty coffins.
Lucy was conversing in low, amicable tones with her three onetime suitors: John Stewart, Quincey Morris, and Arthur Wellesley. Wilhelmina Harker was standing beside her husband, Jonathan, their flings dinting their lower lips as they smiled at their great-grandchildren in a perverse parody. A familial affection, their eyes alive with appetite and the lust for blood. Professor Abraham Van Helsing was staring down at Jerry Herman, his pudgy dead fingers stroking his beard contemplatively. His aged eyes, though as red as those of the other nosferatu, burned as much with curiosity as hunger. But the hunger was there, too, and Jerry was shaking violently in his terror.
The Voivode descended the stairs and laughed softly as he said in thickly accented English, "And so, my old friends. Together again, after all these years." The six creatures whose dust and bones he had soaked with his own demonic blood an hour before now echoed his laughter. They had lost and the Voivode had won; but his greatest victory, his most exquisite triumph, was that they now were beings like himself, that they thus were joyful in their own horrible fates.
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