Dracula's Child

by J. S. Barnes

  ‘You don’t sound sure, Mr Salter.’

  The location of our conversation was, once again, that drab little tea-room in the shadow of the Museum on Russell Street. The place was deserted. It was almost twilight and the drapes were pulled, yet even in the gloom my companion seemed ill at ease. He winced often, as though it were high summer and bright light was streaming in, and not the depths of winter at all. Perhaps he is unwell. Certainly, he looked more drawn and haggard than I had ever seen him before. There was an unhealthy pallor to his skin. Whatever the nature of his malady, it seems in some fashion also to have affected his dog. For the animal lay at some distance from its master, shivering and fretful.

  These things I noticed anew as I thought about how best to answer the man’s accusation.

  ‘I am,’ I said at last, ‘very happy to think that this country might at long last be returning to its proper course.’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ Lord Tanglemere drawled. ‘We have all heard that from you before. But what are your doubts? I know that you have them.’

  ‘My lord,’ I said, ‘I have no doubts whatever concerning the direction of our new government’s policies. But it seems to me that there has been a great deal of pain. A fair amount of death. And there is – is there not? – an awful kind of fear abroad at the present hour?’

  Tanglemere smiled a tight-lipped smile. ‘Such things did not appear to concern you in any of our previous tête-à-têtes. Nor have any such matters arisen in your public writings. It is a little late now – do you not think? – for such moral palpitations?’

  ‘You are right, of course, my lord.’ Somewhere in the kitchens a kettle whistled and sang. ‘I meant only to acknowledge the cost of all of this. The sacrifice in blood and treasure.’

  Tanglemere seemed unmoved. ‘Such things,’ he sniffed, ‘would not be necessary had our recent leaders only possessed better judgement. The blood is on their hands, not ours.’

  ‘Quite so, my lord. Well said.’

  The wolfhound made a thin, keening, whimpering sound. Tanglemere hissed through clenched teeth, and at this instruction the animal fell silent.

  ‘I trust, Mr Salter, that you are not in any way losing your nerve?’ There was clear contempt in every syllable.

  ‘No, sir,’ I replied, at military speed.

  The door to the café was opened and the bell above it jingled. The newcomer was revealed to be a florid-faced yeoman sort who stamped over to a table at the far side of the room. Within moments, a bustling maid was at his side. At all this commotion, Tanglemere glowered, as though he found such disturbances almost painful.

  Once the stranger was settled, the nobleman leaned across the table. ‘Your work is not yet done.’

  ‘I should hope not, my lord.’ I tried to smile but failed.

  ‘The new order is in place but it is not yet entrenched. The people, Mr Salter, must be reassured. And, like you, they must not be permitted to harbour any room for doubt.’

  ‘I understand. I can write more. I can explain to them. I can urge them to keep the faith.’

  ‘Of course you shall. But you will do even more than that. Mr Salter, the time is almost upon you.’

  ‘Time?’ I said. ‘The time for what?’

  ‘Why, the time for your interview. The time for you to meet him, face to face. The time when you must confront the nature of that which you have helped to bring back into the world.’

  ‘Truly?’ I said. My voice quivered. ‘Is that time truly come?’

  ‘Oh, it surely is,’ said Lord Tanglemere. ‘And it is an experience from which you will not walk away unchanged. Indeed, the encounter will likely prove… transformative.’

  He smiled then. The light in that place was bad. The other customer called out. The dog whimpered and cried. I was distracted. I must have been mistaken. Surely? Surely I cannot have seen what I thought I saw.

  His teeth. D—n me – his teeth!

  FROM THE PALL MALL GAZETTE

  8 February

  SALTER SAYS: JUST WHO IS OUR NEW FRIEND, THE COUNT?

  The decent, honest, God-fearing people of this nation have for some time found themselves to be profoundly disappointed in the quality of their leaders. Too often have we seen the strength and wisdom of elder days overturned in favour of policies which have done nothing to elevate the common man and have instead laid us all open to threats of the most horrendous kind. The recent upheavals in London have been more than proof enough of that. Now, however, and at long last, things seem to be changing. The issuing of martial law, the ascension of the Council of Athelstan and the instatement of that figure known as ‘the Count’ seem to have brought about the beginnings of a new golden age.

  Speaking as a Londoner, I have never felt safer or more content in the metropolis. Speaking as a man who has been alive long enough to see things in this country go from bad to worse, I feel instinctively pleased at the news – and the evidence – that a gentleman of such substance stands now at the head of state.

  Yet who is this enigmatic figure who has captured our attention and our good wishes? Who is he who has come to set this country aright, with assistance, of course, from certain decent Englishmen – the nobleman Lord Tanglemere, the young heir Mr Shone and his amusing friend, Mr Maurice Hallam? What is his own history, and how does he see so clearly the faults and failings of the apparatus of the Empire?

  It would seem that I shall soon be able to provide you with answers not only to these but to a plethora of other questions. For who do you think has received his invitation to the White Tower, and to an audience with this remarkable figure, but your own humble correspondent?

  Having been brought up to remain modest, no matter the circumstances, I take this not as any reflection upon my own writings but rather upon the wisdom of the Gazette itself – the only periodical in Britain to have seen to the heart of this situation right from the start. I have been but the mouthpiece of the ordinary fellow on the street. My friends, it would seem that at last our words have been heard and our prayers answered.

  The Count is waiting to give me whatever knowledge I desire. It is an opportunity I mean to seize. Yet I wish you all to appreciate this fact: that I shall be entering his presence not as an individual but as a representative of us all. You will hear from me again very soon, at which time I shall be the bringer of all sorts of marvellous truths.

  JONATHAN HARKER’S JOURNAL

  8 February. Today, at last, I seized my opportunity.

  As has been, since his return, the pattern of my life, I woke upon the floor of my own cellar, ragged, ill-used and debilitated. Yet I soon became aware that I did not appear to feel altogether as drained as I have in recent days. Indeed, I even felt something like my old vigour rising once again within me. At first, this was to me a source of puzzlement. Then I saw the reason why.

  The vampiress, poor Sarah-Ann, lay in the corner of the room. She was not as she has been.

  This house is an old one and I fear that in recent years I have rather neglected its maintenance and upkeep. For such slovenly disregard I was now unexpectedly proud. Due to the crumbling nature of the place, and thanks to the quirks of providence, a shaft of sunlight had found its way into that place of shadows, clear, bright and unforgiving.

  Sarah-Ann lay beneath and seemed almost pinioned by it. I would not go so far as to say that it caused her pain, yet she was evidently rendered most uncomfortable by its proximity. The un-dead care not for any evidence of the day. The Count was ever able to walk about in it unscathed; newer, younger vampires are, I have come to believe, very much more sensitive to the light. She moaned softly, and murmured some words which were unfamiliar to me.

  I rose, feeling stronger than before, and hurried to her side. She did not stir herself at my approach, but only whispered.

  I reached her. I stretched out my arms towards her.

  ‘It has me,’ she said, and then again: ‘It has me. And so I could not feed.’

  I felt pity for her then, but al
so a chill determination to do what was necessary. I grabbed her shoulders and wrenched her upright. As I did so, she made lunges, all of which I was able to parry, for the lack of sustenance had weakened her as much as that abstinence had fortified me. She moaned as I dragged her towards the steps of the cellar. In this, I may have been brutal. I dragged her up towards the main body of the house. She fought me but I held her back.

  Daylight streamed towards us as I swung open the door into the hallway. She screamed, not only at the sunshine but also at the realisation of what had to happen next.

  I hurled her to the floor. I cast around for something which might be used to despatch the creature, finding in the end a stick by the doorway. In the time that it took to achieve this, she scrambled to her feet and charged towards me. We fell together upon the floor and tussled. She hissed and bared her fangs, but she never made a mark upon me. Sensing victory, I fought back as fiercely as I have ever fought, giving her no quarter.

  There was a kind of battle going on within her. For, after several minutes of this inconclusive combat, she loosed a madwoman’s giggle.

  I took up the stick and plunged it down towards her.

  My days in the cellar had made me weak, however, and my first blow went wild. It grazed her but did not penetrate the skin.

  She screeched in rage and frustration.

  ‘Wait!’ she called out. ‘Wait!’

  ‘Sarah-Ann,’ I said thickly. ‘I have to do this. I have to set you free.’

  ‘Jonathan,’ she said, and I saw that there was blood trickling between her teeth. ‘He is coming through now.’

  She screamed once more, went limp again, and then her very countenance seemed to take on a different shape before my eyes. Her features had not been changed in themselves but there was a marked alteration in her demeanour, as though another intelligence spoke through her.

  ‘Mr Harker.’ The voice that emerged from the ruby lips of sweet Sarah-Ann was one which was familiar to me, for all that I had not heard it in years. There was no forgetting its European sibilance, its angular vowels and brisk consonants.

  I held my nerve. With one hand I pushed down Miss Dowell and with the other I kept tight hold of the stake. The old devil, that quintessence of wickedness, spoke blasphemously to me through the mouth of the woman.

  ‘Mr Harker, it has been too long since last we met.’

  ‘Count,’ I replied, as levelly as I was able. ‘I am afraid that I cannot say the same.’

  ‘I found, Mr Harker, that I did not care for the manner of our parting so many years ago.’

  ‘On the contrary, I thought it altogether just.’

  The girl’s face was contorted in a trice into a mask of rage. ‘You fool! You dared to pit yourselves against me! Yet did I not say – did I not promise you all? – that I would take my revenge?’

  I could not bring myself to look away. ‘You said a lot of things, Count. I can hardly be expected to remember them all.’

  The old man laughed with Sarah-Ann’s larynx, the effect of it disgusting. ‘Now your Professor is dead. Your alienist is mad. Your woman whom you love is by my side. Your country has delivered itself willingly to my command. And the child – my son! – shall stand soon at my right hand.’

  I could bear this no longer. ‘I am coming for you,’ I said. ‘I shall kill you again, Count. I shall kill you just as many times as it takes!’

  With this, I brought the stake down hard upon Sarah-Ann’s breast. She cried out, convulsed once, sighed and passed beyond this world. As she died the true death, her features arranged themselves again into those of that sweet innocent of whom I had thought so very highly.

  I kissed her once. Just once, I swear. Upon her beautiful red lips.

  This done, and without compunction, I severed her head from her body. It took considerable effort and a succession of five separate blows. Yet these things were necessary. More than necessary. Sacred.

  She is free now. She is with the angels.

  There is much I have to do. I must find my son. I must rescue my wife. And I must do all that is in my power to wipe that vile abhorrence from the face of this earth.

  FROM THE PRIVATE JOURNAL OF MAURICE HALLAM

  9 February. I have found myself in the past few days thinking often of seduction. Not that any carnal pleasure has of late been mine – not, indeed, since long before the familiar form of Gabriel Shone was eclipsed by that of the Transylvanian. Rather, such a line of thought has been in me inspired by the plentiful victories of the Count.

  As any successful lothario well knows (and there was a time, at the dawn of the ’90s, when I might justifiably have been considered a pre-eminent example of the breed), one always proceeds upon the assumption that one’s quarry wants, in truth, to succumb, for all that he might protest to the contrary. Something in his soul cries out to be conquered; something within him pines to yield up its sovereignty to another. Indeed, this secret trait, this yearning for capitulation, is at its most pronounced in those who affect an outward display of robust independence, in those who declare themselves most adamantly to be inviolate.

  Given certain recent miracles and reversals, I have come now to believe that cities – even the greatest of them – harbour this same furtive desire. How else to explain the Count’s remarkable success? The people of the metropolis must, in some dark, untended quarters of their hearts, have craved his dominion.

  London is almost entirely under his control. The country shall surely follow, as, in time, must the Empire. And after that? Well, it seems to me that death has only honed the Count’s ambition.

  * * *

  Later. My master is nothing if not cunning. He has arranged for himself an ideal manner of existence, almost a simulacrum of his old life in the easternmost region of our continent. He lies in state in this tower’s crypt, like a spider – as the old saying goes – at the centre of a web. His power grows daily – hourly! The government has fallen. The King is silent. And there is nothing that anyone can do to staunch his rise.

  Yet how does he feed himself? How does he live? This it has taken me some time to deduce, for he has confided in me not at all concerning that aspect of his strange existence, believing, rightly enough, that I still possess a modicum of squeamishness. The truth I discovered shortly after twilight.

  Was I meant to see it? I think, perhaps, that I was. To witness the spectacle, and to understand in full the nature of that enterprise to which I am now inextricably secured.

  My own quarters have been placed at the very top of the White Tower, as far away as might be possible from those of my master. Much of my work is daylight work and so it has been easy enough to turn my face away from the excesses of his authority.

  I was attending to some business in my room and wondering if I might not justify retiring early for the night with the great oak door bolted securely behind me, when I caught from the hallway beyond the same sound that I had heard four nights before – high, gay female laughter. There seemed, however, to reside within it no genuine mirth. I found myself instead riveted to my chair in an aggregate of curiosity and fear. Laughter came again, followed by the sound of its maker moving away from my threshold. Driven onwards by some unhappy desire, I crept to the door, opened it silently and stepped out into the corridor. There, just ahead of me, I saw, disappearing around the corner, the figure of a woman in a long dark gown: Ileana, queen of the Transylvanian forest. Curious, I followed.

  We descended to the next level of the tower. She was sufficiently slow as to allow me to keep pace with her, but just swift enough to stay at the periphery of my vision. It was a pageant, artfully arranged. Once again, as I followed, I found myself considering the question of seduction.

  Down and down we went, farther from the light and into the lower reaches of the tower. At length, we came to a door that was locked and bolted, the shuttered gateway to a cell.

  I paused at the edges of the corridor and peered around the wall to see how Ileana would proceed.

&nb
sp; From around her neck she pulled a single iron key with which she unlocked the door. It opened with a creak. The silence that followed was horrible. She gave an odd, soft cry, something like a bird call. This she did three times.

  Out of the shadows, three men stepped. I knew none of them as individuals yet I felt certain that I knew the type all too well – low and vulgar men who loiter outside the law, survivors, I supposed, from that triumvirate of gangs which for so long, before the coming of the Count, had ruled over the city.

  They were evidently not in their perfect mind. Lulled and silent, they walked with stilted, trance-like motions. These beguiled men followed Ileana as, having taken care to lock the door behind her, she led them away. I could guess well enough where it was that they were bound.

  I walked a few more steps. I hesitated. I walked on. I came to the door that led to the crypt, and there I paused awhile. For I heard from beneath me precisely what I had expected: the frantic screams of those men who, awaking at the last moment from their trance, did so to realise that they faced the murderous eyes of one who stands far above them in the great chain of predation. I felt at that moment, for all that I knew them to be low men, a twinge of sympathy that their lives should be ended with such a flourish of horror.

  More screams came, a terrible quiet, and then something unexpected, the laughter not only of Ileana and the Count but of another – another woman, the sound of her mirth, laced, I thought, with madness.

  I fled, unable to listen to the inevitable sounds of feeding. These words I write barricaded again in my own apartment. I have thought much concerning what I saw and heard tonight. I have issued to myself many justifications, rationales and vindications.

  Certainly, none of those men will be missed. If – as I suspect – my master has turned the criminals of the city into a larder, London will surely be only the better for their absence. In serving his own appetite, he may also have drained the metropolis of its most visible manifestation of sin.