by Dacre Stoker
He has much to think about.
MATILDA
Matilda wakes aboard the S.S. Hero to what she thinks is someone speaking her name. It comes to her in her sleep, a whisper across some great distance. She sits up in her small berth and glances around the stateroom. She spies nothing. She had left the porthole open, but only because there is no deck nearby, the only view being the sea, but also because she welcomes the sound of the waves lapping against the hull of the ship and the equally comforting sound of the sails steadily flapping in the wind, filling the otherwise quiet void of the night.
Matilda.
This time she is certain she hears her name. From somewhere outside, as impossible as that may be.
Matilda rises and slips a cloak over her nightclothes, then goes to the cabin door. She opens it, half expecting to find someone on the other side, but there is no one, the hallway is deserted. Matilda has been aboard ships such as this before and she is aware that at this hour most of the passengers would have retired to their staterooms, leaving only the crew silently scampering about the vessel performing their duties. But the crew does not know her name, and, anyway, she sees no one, crew or otherwise.
Bram and Thornley occupy the cabin to her left, and Vambéry is on the right. She considers waking her brothers, then thinks the better of it. They both need the rest more than she does, with Bram, in particular, exhausted after his ordeal in the tower.
Matilda pulls the hood of the cloak over her head and holds the garment securely at her neck, then follows the hallway to the flight of stairs that will take her up to the main deck. There, the salt air fills her lungs, wintry and briny, and she embraces the scent. It reminds her of their home all those years ago. As she crosses the main deck, a crew member shuffles past, muttering something in a language she does not comprehend, before disappearing around a distant corner.
There is another standing on the starboard side near the forecastle—slender and still, also in a dark cloak. Matilda recognizes her immediately. She crosses the deck and goes to her, standing at her side.
“Hello, Ellen.”
Ellen continues standing stock-still, staring out at the water.
“You should not be out here alone. I fear Vambéry will not hesitate to kill each of you at the first opportunity.”
“I am not worried about Arminius Vambéry.”
Matilda knows that Ellen and the O’Cuivs were spirited aboard the ship inside wooden crates, each filled with the soil from their graves and nailed shut. Those crates had been stowed deep within the hold of the ship and surrounded by other crates on all sides. None of it would be accessible until reaching Amsterdam and the cargo was unloaded on the dock. Yet here was Ellen, standing before her now. Matilda recalled how Dracul turned himself into a swarm of bees at Thornley’s house, and how Vambéry had told them the undead also could transform themselves into mist and access the smallest of places. All of this had seemed like a fairy tale to her—until now.
“Where are Patrick and Maggie?”
“Resting. To wake aboard a ship can be frightful, surrounded by all this water. We cannot cross water on our own except when the tide is at its slackest, but, be that as it may, we still are not capable of swimming even if we could swim in life. Patrick learned this almost fatal lesson all too well in Dublin when he fell overboard and was given up for dead.”
“We saw him—his body—in the morgue in Dublin.”
Ellen nods. “I know, I read your letters.”
Matilda stares down at the water, at the waves cresting against the hull. “Did you kill the guard?”
“I would not do such a thing,” Ellen replies. “I have not taken a single human life in more than two hundred years.”
“Dracul, then?”
“Dracul,” she says. “He found Patrick O’Cuiv in much the same way you did: those hideous scars. He hoped Patrick would lead him to me. He had been following Patrick since the day he fell off the boat in Dublin. Patrick hoped to lose him by boarding a ship, but Dracul has no such fear of water. In truth, I am not sure he fears anything anymore. He gave chase. Patrick panicked and tumbled over the side. I beat Dracul to the morgue by mere minutes, was able to replace Patrick’s heart and revive him. Then we escaped, with Dracul on our heels. He killed the guard because the guard saw his face, no other reason but that.”
“Did he kill Thornley’s coachman? I thought it was Maggie.”
“Maggie has never taken a human life, and I doubt she ever would. She may possess a temper, one that sometimes gets the better of her, but a murderer she is not. I’m sure it was him.” Ellen falls silent for a moment, then goes on. “Dracul has no regard for human beings. When I escaped his castle, he killed every servant, vowing never to allow another human in his home again. Mothers, fathers, children—he killed them all out of nothing more than spite. He reveled in their suffering.”
Ellen finally turns to Matilda, who truly is able to look upon her for the first time since childhood. Her eyes burn the brightest of blues with such energy that they nearly glow. Her pale skin is perfect, free of age, much as it had been fourteen years ago. Her flowing blond hair is pulled back and hidden under her cloak, but Matilda knows it has not darkened. This is the Ellen she remembers, the Ellen she will always remember.
Ellen steps closer and places her cold hand on Matilda’s. “I cannot allow you and your brothers to continue pursuing this quest with me, it is far too dangerous. The only reason Dracul allowed you to live this long is because he knows he can use you against me, you and Thornley both. With Bram, Dracul’s reasoning is far worse. He is fascinated by Bram, by the fact that my blood healed him and gave him abilities he would not otherwise possess.”
“The way he heals?” Matilda ventures.
“Yes, the way he heals. Increased eyesight, the enhanced hearing. His strength, his energy, his mind. And his link to me. How long will he live? Longer than most? Not as long? How many of these attributes are truly his and how many are born of my blood? He was expected to die as a child, and he would have died had I not intervened. But he is living on borrowed time.”
“He owes you a debt of gratitude,” Matilda allows. “We all do,”
“You owe me nothing. I am leading you to your death. I spent so many years trying to keep you safe, keep you away from me, and yet here we are together.”
“We are all here by choice. What he did to you I find it unimaginable. If we can somehow help reunite you with your true love and repay you for all you have done for us . . . There is no question why we are here. We are here for you. You are part our family.”
Ellen considers this assertion and squeezes Matilda’s hand. “Thank you for your letters, Matilda. Thank you for keeping me in your thoughts.”
The boat rocks as the waves increase in size, and an icy wind blows in from the east. “There is a storm brewing.”
Ellen sighs at this, her mind otherwise lost to thought. “You should return to your cabin,” she finally says.
“You should rest, too.”
“I’m afraid this is the last rest I will find for a very long time.”
At one point in her life Matilda was very fond of Ellen’s smile, of the warmth it expressed. She hopes to see one of those smiles now, but it does not come. Instead, she takes both of Matilda’s hands in hers and leans in close. “When your brother awakens, tell him that what he saw in that room, the things that came from behind the door—they were not born of my beloved Deaglan O’Cuiv. It was Dracul acting through him. The fact that they share blood allows for that. My beloved would never say those things, do those things. I hope one day soon that the three of you will meet him and come to know the man I love.”
“Yes, one day very soon,” Matilda reassures her.
She leaves Ellen standing there on the deck, her cloak flapping in the sea breeze, and wonders if this is the last time she will see her alive. She wonder
s if by this time tomorrow she and her brothers will still be alive.
BRAM
Amsterdam is but a blur as they disembark from the S.S. Hero and make for the train station. Thornley attends to their luggage while Bram and Vambéry ensure the three wooden crates and the trunk in their possession are carefully extracted from the cargo hold. A customs agent approaches, but after a few words with Vambéry, and an exchange of funds, the agent waves them through. Bram secures a carriage, and the crates and trunk are loaded onto the back and transported to the station to be secured inside one of their train’s many boxcars. As the crates and trunk slip away into the murkiness of the dark car, Bram cannot help but wonder who is in each crate, there being no markings to speak of.
Within an hour of arriving in Amsterdam, they are off, as the train picks up speed and heads for Rotterdam, Düsseldorf, then Frankfurt. They arrive in Munich in the morning shortly after the clock strikes eleven. From the station, Matilda, Vambéry, and Thornley make their way to the Hotel Quatre Saisons, where rooms await them. Bram follows shortly thereafter, choosing to ride with the crates and trunk. As the heavy carriage rolls over the cobblestones, Bram places his hand on each of the three crates and closes his eyes until he determines which holds Ellen.
He arrives at the hotel to find Vambéry waiting out front. “I arranged for transport, but it was no easy feat; nobody wishes to go anywhere near this region. They have all heard stories since childhood of hauntings and the dead and they want no part of it. They say that on Walpurgisnacht you can hear the screams even here. The maître d’hôtel directed me to a gentleman from Bethany Home who was willing to rent us a suitable carriage and a team of six horses, but he could not spare a driver. He said even if he wished to do so, none of them would go. We’ll have to drive the carriage ourselves.”
Bram nods on hearing this information; he had expected as much.
“Ah, here he is.”
A rotund man with a thick gray beard pulls into the drive behind the first carriage in an open-bed wagon being drawn by six horses. The horses have all seen better days, their swayed backs and prominent withers revealing their age all too readily, the eyes of the two wheelers are cloudy, showing some degree of blindness, yet all six are animated, showing real enthusiasm for the task before them.
Bram and Vambéry glance at each other but say nothing.
The man climbs down and shuffles over to where they stand, removes his hat, and scratches at the remains of his white hair. “I know they are not much to look at, but they’re all strong and broke; they won’t give you any trouble. Some of my younger steeds are as fearful of that place as my men. My son took one out there last year, and the horse turned around at the midway point and galloped home without once breaking stride. The animal did not seem to notice that my boy nearly fell off; it didn’t stop until it was standing with its head over the stable door.”
Bram notes the man’s English is very good, although heavily accented, and comments on it.
“I went to school in New York,” the coachman says, “then came back here when my father took ill. That was thirty years ago. Always meant to go back but have never had the time.”
“What can you tell us of this place we are going?” Bram asks.
The man crosses himself. “Black plague, I think. Wiped out the entire village. Very fast. Most succumbed to sickness, others fled. From what I’ve been told, the tables of some of the houses are still set with plates and silverware for dinner. There is a cemetery, but they ran out of room, the last people to leave the village resorted to burying bodies anywhere they could find flat ground. Not sure why they didn’t burn them; from what I understand, that’s how they dealt with the plague in other parts.”
Vambéry generously tips the workers at the hotel and instructs them to transfer the crates and trunk from the carriage to the wagon.
“When can I expect you back?” the man asks, eyeing the load.
The man didn’t ask about the contents, Bram notices. He wonders what Vambéry told him.
“Hopefully, by nightfall.”
They all seem to realize this is a lie but say nothing.
The man strokes the neck of the nearest horse. “They’ve all been fed and watered. If any one of them gives you grief, it will be this young gelding. But he should be fine here in the middle of the team.”
With that, the man is off, walking back the way he came.
Matilda and Thornley appear at the hotel entrance, then the four of them climb aboard the wagon, Bram and Vambéry riding in the back with the cargo while Thornley takes the reins.
SIX HOURS UNTIL NIGHTFALL
When they leave the hotel, the sun is shining brightly, but once the town is at their backs a chilly northern wind takes hold. The blue sky disappears behind thick gray clouds, the air grows moist with an incoming storm. Bram turns his gaze from the sky back to the crates, pressing his palm to the wood and closing his eyes. When he locates the one containing Ellen, he reaches out to her with his mind. She assures him they are heading in the right direction.
They come upon a crossroad, and Vambéry asks Thornley to stop.
When Thornley pulls back on the reins, the horses obediently come to a halt, the wheelers and swing pair helping to steady the leaders, who would have been perfectly happy to keep trotting along.
Vambéry climbs down from the wagon, favoring his bad leg, and goes to a stand of cypress trees, snatches away some weeds flourishing around one of the trees’ trunks. “Here!” he says, his hands uncovering something.
Bram gets down from the wagon and approaches him. Vambéry has found a small wooden cross, once painted white but now brown and splintering. “A grave?”
“The Germans bury their suicides at crossroads.”
Bram thinks about this for a second, then retrieves a shovel from the wagon.
Vambéry places a hand on his forearm. “The ground is undisturbed here, nothing has tampered with it.”
Bram shrugs him off and plunges the blade of the shovel into the earth. “O’Cuiv’s grave didn’t seem like it had ever been touched, either, yet look what we found inside.”
“Same with the one we found at Whitby Abbey,” Matilda adds.
Bram continues digging. “It makes sense. Suicide graves are never in blessed ground, and they often remain undisturbed for hundreds of years. For their kind, they are the perfect place for storage or even rest while traveling. You yourself said the undead can become mist. Why not hide in such a place?”
The tip of the shovel’s blade strikes something, and the two men look at each other, then drop to the ground and begin digging with their hands.
The condition of the coffin is even worse than the cross, the wood so rotted that Bram’s hand punches right through the lid. He is relieved to find there is no body inside.
“Is there anything there?” Vambéry asks.
Bram has his arm inside the coffin up to his shoulder, feeling around. “No, nothing, I think it is . . . Wait, I think I’ve got something.”
He pulls his arm out of the casket, and he is clutching an envelope in his hand that is sealed with red wax. Bram dusts it off and holds it up.
“It is addressed to you,” Vambéry says under his breath.
Thornley and Matilda have climbed down from the wagon at this point and have come close as Bram tears the envelope open and unfolds the single page it contains:
I welcome you to this lovely land. Bring them to me. Bring them all to me.
—D
Bram crumples the letter up and tosses it into the bushes. “He is toying with us, trying to slow us down.”
In the distance, they hear the howl of one wolf being answered by the howl of another. The horses stomp their hooves nervously in response.
“We should keep moving,” Thornley tells them.
Bram quickly fills the grave, and they all climb back into the
wagon. Thornley urges the horses on again and they reluctantly obey, moving at a speed a little slower than earlier.
Above, dark clouds churn and roll towards them, bringing a breeze that seems to carry ice; then the sun reappears, pushing it all back. Bram fears the storm might win, though, for the light loses strength with each volley. He pictures Dracul summoning these clouds, the thunder and lightning becoming audience to what is to come.
They press on.
Every now and then, the horses toss up their heads and sniff the air, but then continue on without incident. The Isar River flows to the west, where the ground is littered with sweet chestnuts. If allowed, the horses might stop and eat the nuts, but today they show little interest. Instead, they plod along, chestnuts crunching under hoof and wheel. It is only when they are asked to stand that they paw the ground with their hooves.
They cross a small stone bridge, then continue uphill, the road narrowing as the wagon somewhat awkwardly reaches the plateau at the top. Thornley pulls back on the reins and brings the team to a halt. “Is that where we’re to go?”
He is pointing at a path that breaks away from the main road and seems to dip down into a little winding valley, the floor of which is lost in the forest.
Again, Bram places his hand on the crate containing Ellen. A moment later, he nods his head. “Not much farther now.”
Thornley maneuvers the heavy wagon onto the narrow road and drives on.
“Do you see someone?” Matilda asks nearly an hour later, breaking the silence. “Down there, near the crest of that hill. Is that a man?”
Bram follows her gaze and sees him, too. A tall thin man standing off to one side of the overgrown road. He remains perfectly still as he watches them watching him.
“Is that Dracul?” Vambéry, squinting, inquires.
Bram shakes his head. “No, I have never seen this man before.”
The man is attired in a white shirt tucked into baggy, dirty white trousers, and he is wearing a cowboy hat. There is an enormous belt cinched around his midsection studded with brass nailheads. His black boots come nearly to his knees. A thick black mustache bisects his face, and his hair is long and black.
