Dracula's Child

by J. S. Barnes

  ‘Master?’ she called again.

  And at these words the man on the floor rose to his feet. He seemed different from before. His very body itself seemed to have been altered. He was taller and leaner and still more purposeful. His face was smeared with blood. But then – with a sensation of bone-deep horror – I saw the truth of it.

  With his hands, the man wiped away the blood. He was smiling now. He was laughing.

  As he cleaned his face, piece by piece, I saw a new, a different countenance revealed. An aquiline nose. Saturnine features. A high brow. Two bright eyes. A long dark moustache. Sharp white teeth.

  In seconds it was done and I saw who it was who stood before me, in the place Mr Gabriel Shone had so lately occupied.

  ‘Count…’ I breathed.

  Yet I could not say more, for in a single savage movement, and with a roar of feral appetite, the vampire was upon me, and in me, his incisors at my helpless neck.

  I tried to scream but I could not. Then, as my own blood pumped from my vein and into his mouth, I yielded entirely to sensation, feeling only the dark satisfaction of complete despair, the certain knowledge of the totality of our defeat.

  PART THREE

  THE SHADOW CLAIMS ITS OWN

  FROM THE PALL MALL GAZETTE

  1 February

  CITY SHAKEN – EMERGENCY PERSISTS – MARTIAL LAW GOES ON

  At the time of going to press, London remains in a state of the most dire emergency. Unrest amongst the criminal gangs has continued in the wake of the near-absolute destruction of Scotland Yard and the loss of numerous lives, including that of Commissioner Ambrose Quire. In necessary consequence of these extraordinary events, the Gazette has recently learned that martial law is set, for the immediate future, to endure while supreme metropolitan control remains in the hands of the Council of Athelstan.

  In addition to these horrible escalations, the city was last night assailed by what appears to have been a minor, though most disruptive, earthquake. Its effects were felt across the majority of the metropolis and even some distance beyond. It is believed that the epicentre was located somewhere upon the north bank of the Thames, in the approximate region of the Tower. Considerable damage has been reported in the Houses of Parliament and several persons have already been declared missing. There are rumours, as yet unconfirmed, that Mr Gabriel Shone, scion and heir to the late Lord Stanhope, and the current head of the Council of Athelstan, is amongst that number. If these reports are true, then a great hope for the future has been snuffed out long before its time.

  Of course, your Gazette will be the first to bring you all further news of these most disquieting developments – as well as copious judgement and sagacious conjecture upon the topic, to be supplied by the irreplaceable Mr Arnold Salter.

  JONATHAN HARKER’S JOURNAL

  2 February. I believe that a day or so has passed since his return. Only this – not more than a few dozen hours, although that time has felt to me like an eternity. Matters of chronology are so difficult now to discern. I am reminded, horribly, of those long weeks that I spent during the last century as a prisoner of the Count.

  Here in Shore Green, I am become again a captive. I write these words in a rare moment of relative liberty, by the flickering light of a candle stub.

  Sarah-Ann – or, more properly, I suppose, the creature who was once Miss Dowell – has placed me in the cellar, often chained and bound like a beast. She feeds regularly upon my blood, being careful never to transform me but only to use me to take what she needs. I have been made ragged and filthy. My body has been punctured repeatedly. My every limb and muscle aches. There is scarcely a vein within me which the vampiress has not tapped. Yet I myself – and perhaps this is some small species of victory – have drunk not a drop of anything stronger than water.

  I see little sign in her now of the sweet girl that she once was. For Sarah-Ann has become remorselessness personified and appetite incarnate. She visits only to drink and to sup. She speaks barely at all and I sense that she has been ordered here to keep me under lock and key. As to what the Count’s plans may be – the extent of them – I dare not imagine. I am a playing piece that has been taken from the board at the present moment to be held in reserve for some future piece of villainy.

  Oh Mina, my Mina – what has become of you? And Quincey? Where are you now? I pray for the wellbeing of you both. I have implored my Lord God for forgiveness, for succour and for aid. I have offered my own life in exchange for those of the two people upon this Earth whom I love more dearly than any other. Yet my prayers are left unanswered. With every passing hour that I spend in this gloom-haunted dungeon, I rot a little more and slip ever further into degradation.

  Mere hours ago, something terrible took place. Sarah-Ann was feeding upon me, astride my prone and helpless form. I was weakened almost to insensibility. Yet the earth, very faintly, did tremble and shake beneath us. I wonder now whether that was the moment at which he came back to the waking world. Certainly, I seemed to feel an alteration in the atmosphere, a sense that something material in the substance of the world had changed.

  At these sensations, the Dowell creature lifted her head from my breast. Her expression was a mixture of delight and disgust. ‘Ten days,’ said she. ‘That is all it will take. Ten days before the city belongs – body and soul – to Him.’

  ‘No,’ I protested. ‘Surely this is some manner of nightmare?’

  ‘Maybe it is, Mr Harker. Maybe it’s a nightmare which started, long ago, in Transylvania. One from which you never really woke.’

  Before I could reply, she bared her teeth and bent towards me once more. As she resumed her exsanguination, I moaned and shivered in absolute despair.

  FROM THE PRIVATE JOURNAL OF MAURICE HALLAM

  2 February. How very strange a thing it is to have established the imminence of one’s own extinction only to discover, at the very moment of one’s doom, that salvation is, in fact, to be one’s own while death has been granted to another.

  Of those minutes which followed my expulsion of that dark spirit which had been growing within me since Transylvania (since, in fact, that long and terrible night in the Castle), my memory has retained but little. I find that I am able to recollect only moments – the transformation of poor Gabriel Shone into an entirely different order of being, the approving faces of the Council at the screams of their female captive, and the thick, bright blood which poured from her, smeared, in curiously painterly fashion, across the floor of the temple.

  The human body and mind, I have concluded, is capable of experiencing only a finite quantity of horror. Soon afterwards, my own limits were reached. It is my suspicion that I fell into a deep faint. Certainly my next recollection is of waking in darkness, having been laid out upon some unfamiliar divan. I knew not where I was and I could discern nothing at all of my surroundings, uncertain as to whether I had been placed in a boudoir or a cell.

  I was capable of but a single realisation: that I was not alone in that place and that what was in there with me, watching over me, was something very far indeed from human.

  Two bright eyes. Those were all that I saw of him then – a pair of red gleams, like burning embers in the gloom.

  I struggled to sit upright, pulling the blankets to my chest with an almost comical chasteness, like a character in some popular farce.

  Still those shining orbs observed me; still I felt myself the object of their dread scrutiny.

  ‘Who’s there?’ I asked. ‘Who are you?’

  A voice issued from the blackness. It sounded deep and ancient but it was also possessed of a certain quality of creaking and wrenching, as though tongue and larynx had not been used for many years. The diction of that aged, unseen speaker was formal and quaint and there was to be found also in his language the trace of a Slavonic accent. Yet it was ever the eyes which held me. It was they which scintillated and compelled and made my senses reel.

  In all our conversation I do not think that I saw them blink
even once.

  ‘You know what I am,’ he said. ‘For it was you, Maurice Hallam, who brought me back. It was you who rendered unto me form and breath. You who first saw the outline of my design.’

  I could not bring myself to look away from his gaze. ‘I know you,’ I said, making in that moment the only choice which seemed open to me, the only sane judgement which would ensure my survival. ‘Yes, I know you well… my master.’

  ‘Name me,’ said the voice, with an awful, quiet deliberation.

  ‘You are,’ I said swiftly, ‘Count Dracula.’

  ‘You understand this land, I think, Maurice Hallam?’

  ‘Master, I was an exile from this country for more than a decade. But I do believe I know it still.’

  ‘You know its ways. Its needs and its wants. You understand how to speak to its people.’

  ‘Perhaps, yes. Perhaps I do. Why… my master… do you talk of such things?’

  Those red eyes showed no flicker of reaction. ‘I would rule this island awhile as, in times past, I have commanded nations.’

  ‘You want to rule London, Count? England?’

  ‘More.’

  ‘The Empire? This is what your resurrection has been about?’

  Those eyes observed me coldly. ‘It is but a facet of my plan. It is but an element of my revenge.’

  ‘Then what do you want of me?’

  ‘Listen well, my good and faithful servant. Attend carefully to me.’

  I breathed in, endeavouring to settle my nerves. ‘Master, I shall.’

  ‘For this now is what I would have you do…’

  And, although I could not see it for myself, I somehow knew from those crimson eyes, as he spoke the words that followed, that he had begun to smile.

  FROM THE TIMES

  3 February (early edition)

  ‘THE COUNT’ ANNOUNCED AS NEW AND RIGHTFUL HEAD OF THE COUNCIL OF ATHELSTAN

  It is the solemn duty of this newspaper to report a change in the governing structure of that Council which, at present, holds necessary control over our capital. Following the disappearance of Gabriel Shone, believed lost in the recent earthquake, the identity of his heir at the head of the Council of Athelstan was announced today. Known only as ‘the Count’, this figure, of uncertain royal extraction, is said to bring to his position considerable knowledge and expertise in the fields of statecraft and legislature. It is understood that his accession to the role has been met entirely unopposed by all other members of the group. Lord Tanglemere, head of what has been referred to colloquially as ‘the Tanglemere Faction’, is reported to have been the controlling force in the crowning of the newcomer, citing the sincerity of the personal beliefs and convictions of the Count as being the chief reason for his swift accession.

  The new Secretary to the Council of Athelstan and the personal spokesman to the Count, Mr Maurice Hallam, remarked to this reporter, at the temporary base of operations which has been established at the Tower of London that: ‘The Count is most certainly the finest individual to lead the Council at this most troubling and difficult of times. His tenacity and wisdom will see the nation safely through curfew and martial law.’

  It has been said that there are plans afoot to increase the boundaries of the state of emergency beyond the limits of the city, perhaps even to encompass the whole nation. The King has to date remained silent as to these new constitutional arrangements. Further details will be forthcoming shortly.

  MEMORANDUM BY LORD TANGLEMERE*

  3 February

  How privileged we were to witness for ourselves tonight the glorious realisation of a dream. In the secret temple beneath the Tower, the first full meeting of the Council was held since the ritual of the thirty-first, the palpable success of which the whole nation is coming now to know.

  We arrived early, properly robed according to tradition, and we waited patiently for his arrival. We gentlemen of duty and of honour. We patriots who long for order and dominion. We sat in our appointed places and in our established rows, our heads bowed, filled up with gratitude. The atmosphere in that place combined excitement with what I do believe I might most accurately characterise as a species of prayerful gratitude.

  There was little conversation. We all knew why we had gathered and what we had come to see and to achieve. Indeed, it is most striking to me how little of this affair has ever needed to be defined or expounded amongst ourselves. When one is amongst one’s peers and when one’s aspirations are in common, explanation is needed so very rarely. Posterity may be surprised at how little of those events which have led to our present state of happy restoration were set down upon paper. We gentlemen of the Council know better, however – that the wisest conspiracies are those which are, in least in part, instinctive and unspoken.

  These thoughts, or something like them, passed through my mind as I waited.

  And then, all at once, he was amongst us. Not since the age of Scripture can so many have witnessed at one time a miracle. For the Count appeared first as a column of mist, seething from the shadows and billowing in that ancient, subterranean room. Then: a weird cohesion as mist shifted into man, the impossible making of a tangible thing of what had hitherto seemed amorphous.

  There he stood, the Count, the new head of our Council. Tall, strong and saturnine, dressed in sombre black and having about him a quality of manful leadership such as the world has not known for centuries.

  ‘Welcome,’ he said, ‘my dear friends.’

  We all rose to our feet. Blood sang in my ears. I am not sure that I have ever felt so gloriously alive, nor so utterly convinced of the justice of my own actions. How much better is everything shortly to become, how much more noble and fine!

  ‘I wish to speak to you,’ he said, ‘of my strategy for this island.’

  The Count then made a gesture with his hands (what long, tapered fingers he has, what sharp blades of nails), and out of the darkness scampered his creature, Hallam. He had in his hands a sheaf of paper and hurried to one side of the Count. He spoke up, relishing his moment centre stage.

  ‘The Count has ordered me to read to you his declaration concerning his plans for the future of England.’

  For all his obvious faults and failings, the fellow has an excellent speaking voice, most pleasing to the ear. There may even be some (though I, of course, am not amongst them) who would profess it to be more euphonious than the Count’s own, admittedly accented timbre.

  ‘First,’ Hallam went on, ‘there is much to be said concerning curfews and the treatment of those who willingly and knowingly flout our rules…’

  I shall not record here the details of that speech in full. In fact, I am not certain that I could do so even if I wished it. For although I agreed with every word – the need for a universal return to a purer, simpler morality; the re-ordering of society upon approximately feudal lines; a more warlike approach to international relations – I find that I am unable now to recall the specifics of the piece.

  Once it was over, we all applauded. We pounded our hands together in feverish joy. The Count himself stepped forward.

  He smiled, lips pressed tightly together. ‘Thank you, my friends,’ he said, ‘for placing your trust in me. Keep faith. Follow orders. And all shall be given to you in time.’

  This said, he vanished again in a stream of mist.

  The Council began to leave then, one by one. There will be drinking tonight, I expect, and much celebration also. I had intended to join them, for I feel ourselves to have earned champagne. Yet I felt a soft hand upon my shoulder.

  ‘Wait here.’

  I turned, to see Hallam, grimacing up at me.

  ‘What did you say?’ I asked.

  ‘You must wait,’ he said again.

  ‘I do not take orders from an actor,’ I said.

  ‘Yet you must do so from him. And he orders you to wait.’

  Hallam turned and walked away, with altogether more alacrity than one would have expected from so corpulent a man. I do not like him
, but I respect more than anything he for whom the actor speaks.

  I waited. Until the others had left and the temple was empty, I closed my eyes as though in prayer.

  Some minutes later, as I had expected, the silence was broken by a jagged chuckle from the darkness. I got to my feet and looked about me. The temple was empty.

  ‘My Lord?’ I called. ‘You wished to speak with me?’ How he had been hidden from our sight I could not be certain, yet he emerged then out of some dark corner of the room.

  ‘Count…’

  ‘You have done well, my servant,’ said our lord and master. ‘You have done much in our name. And so you need now to receive your reward.’

  ‘But my Lord,’ I said, ‘I ask for no reward.’

  ‘Fear not,’ he said. ‘I would have you at my side. It is a place that you have earned.’

  ‘My Lord,’ I said, ‘I am more than honoured.’

  He stepped towards me and for a moment I caught a scent of something far away: the cold clean air of the Transylvanian forest.

  The Count breathed heavily. ‘I need sustenance also.’ He seemed to shake a little as he spoke. ‘I hunger.’

  ‘Of course, my Lord.’

  ‘I am not yet quite whole,’ he breathed. ‘I need what is within the boy. My vessel. I need what the Rite of Strigoi will yet prise free.’

  ‘I’m not sure that I understand,’ I said.

  The Count smiled and I saw his teeth. At their proximity, I felt both wonder and fear in equal measure.

  ‘You need not do so,’ he said. ‘You need ask no questions. You need seek no understanding. You need now only serve my will.’

  He did not hesitate then but bared his teeth, hissed and threw himself upon me. A dark and dreadful pleasure ensued. I shall never forget the first sensations: the puncture, the drawing out, the suckling…

  And now, I realise that I am changing. I am being transformed from the inside out into something so much better than ever I was before. And what is taking place within me even now is being done also unto this nation.