The Reluctant Miss Van Helsing

by Minda Webber

  Jane shook her head wearily, walking over to pick the broken porcelain up off the floor, noting that the figure's stake had been broken along with his neck. She shivered, wondering if it was a prophetic sign. Putting the pieces on the fireplace mantel, she arranged them as the raised coffin lid, the mallet, the man and the stake. The major was a stickler for order. A place for everything and everything in its place. All was in alphabetical order here, from the books in the library to the food in the pantry.

  "Then let Uncle Jakob hunt him," she said. "I haven't the experience or courage for such a task."

  "Tut, tut. Any Van Helsing alive is superior to the undead, just by degree of breathing. You simply need to try harder. Put your heart into it, Jane!"

  Just once, Jane wished her father would look upon her and see a lady of gentle breeding who loved music, dancing and bird-watching, a daughter who wished to make her father proud, to do her family duty, yet who desperately longed to be free to be who she truly was, not a reflection of what someone else saw or wanted.

  "Sir, you thrill at the hunt of the undead. I merely love to hunt rare species of birds—and just to observe them. You enjoy hanging about in mausoleums, while I prefer museums of natural history and art. You love the blood sport of staking vampires. I love walking the hills and eating blood pudding," Jane said patiently. "Although, I must say that I despise the name." Cook had been tricky when she was little and called it fairy pudding.

  The major shook his head. "I never should have married into your mother's side of the family. The Paines haven't the backbone of the Van Helsings. And your mother, God rest her soul, had her head in the clouds or the trees—wherever those bloody damn birds were nesting! Of course, it was such a pretty head and such a sweet smile she had."

  Yes, Jane's mother's smile had been sweet, and in spite of the major's gruffness and harsh ways, he had loved her deeply. Jane knew she had inherited her mother's love of bird-watching. She had spent many happy years trailing beside the woman, drawing and discussing the species in the trees. "Mother was always proud of me, despite my lack of slayer talents," she replied stiffly. Her mother had never made her feel ashamed to be herself. Rather, she had made Jane feel special, like a princess in an old story.

  Tears welled in her eyes. She missed the gentle influence of her mother, who had been dead these past twelve years. Though Jane had been made to study the vampire-slaying way before her mother's death, the road had been greatly eased by the woman's unflinching love—and there had been many fewer hours of Van Helsing lessons. After she passed away, Jane's life had become more rigid and structured, her days filled with training and more training.

  For many years, her mornings had begun with instructions on vampire etiquette. For example, they never belched in public after draining someone dry. She also learned that a seven-course meal to the Nosferatu meant seven different victims, all of various ages. That way, the vampires got a smorgasbord of flavor.

  The major ignored his daughter's furrowed brow and wounded dignity. "Do you remember any of what you were taught?" he asked.

  Jane nodded dutifully, although she could only come up with two things on such short notice. "Don't charge until you see the red in their eyes, and a rolling Van Helsing gathers no bites."

  "Quite. Rules two and five. Never forget that vampires are vile, vicious and vulgar, each dying to drain you dry. They all suck. No, never forget your lessons, Jane, for they will save your life."

  "Yes, sir." Her training was flooding back. Jane had learned how to walk among the living dead quietly and keep living. She could shoot an arrow over eighty yards and hit a target, but only if the bull's-eye was inanimate and painted yellow. If the target was alive, such as a deer, Jane always missed. Perhaps, she thought dryly, she could ask the earl to wear a yellow waistcoat and stand very still. After all, he was an inanimate object, was true dead weight.

  "Bloody gout! If only I could have gone last night, I would have struck, splashed and succeeded. I can't have my brother Jakob driving the first stake! Not this time. I would never live down the ignominy. Ever since he gave Vlad the Impaler a taste of his own medicine, he has crowed like a cock. This time, I will be the cock. Dracul, grandson to Vlad, is mine." The major stared at her, his fists striking the chair. "The earl won't escape my clutches!"

  Jane pursed her lips, her eyebrows beetling. A pox on her father and his imbecilic competition with his brother. Their sibling rivalry was a competition that had begun in their childhood. First the Van Helsing brothers had struggled against each other to see who could carry the most coffins. Next had come seeing who could lob garlic cloves the farthest. Later it had been a fierce race to see which brother could invent the newest stake technology. As they'd reached adulthood, Jakob had married Edward's childhood sweetheart. And to put the icing on the cake, he had snuffed Vlad the Impaler when only in his twenties. The heroic feat had made him the more renowned Van Helsing in supernatural circles, forever garnering Jane's father's dislike and envy.

  "It's not your clutches that hold the stake," Jane retorted incautiously. Her father's contemptuous glare caused her to wince.

  "I am ashamed of you, Jane. Deeply ashamed. You know I would proudly lead the charge if it weren't for this damn gout! As my daughter, it is your duty to do what I cannot. You have Van Helsing blood flowing through your veins. Get hold of yourself, girl!"

  Jane sniffed once and looked away. To the major, all other forms of human endeavor shrank in significance compared to war with the undead.

  "We must develop a new strategy," the major went on. "I won't let that degenerate Dracul get away. My daughter will be the one that does the demented monster in. Jane, you will just have to keep a stiff upper lip and all that. Go once more into the breach. Once more. Imitate the action of the tiger and summon up the blood."

  "Great, just great," Jane mumbled. Her father was misquoting Shakespeare again, not to mention speaking of blood. A subject that had pretty much been drained dry.

  She listened listlessly as her father formed a new plan which she would be expected to execute. In her head she objected quite loudly, but on the outside she remained the perfect picture of the well-bred lady, listening politely.

  Her dog, Spot—a cross between a mongrel and a mutt, with one black circle around his right eye—wandered into the room, sniffing at Jane's skirts. Jane tenderly patted his head. Spot loved her unconditionally, as her mother had done. There was no feeling quite like being loved like that, she realized.

  Her father went on, "This new strategy is brilliant, and you will execute it brilliantly. You will sneak up on the earl, and he will never know what struck him."

  Jane doubted that. She couldn't resist pointing out, "I imagine having a four-foot stake in the heart would be pretty obvious, most especially to the devious undead."

  Her father glared at her, and Spot laid his head on her shoe. Jane sighed. Life as a Van Helsing was never easy.

  Although, she could say, it was also never dull. Her family was the life of any party—of course, they mostly hung out with the undead.

  Sneaking a glance out the room's large bay windows, Jane noticed a skylark feeding at her brass-plated bird feeder. What a delicate little eater the bird was. Jane smiled, wondering abstractedly if man would ever fly the skies as freely. Probably not; even her ostrich, with his large feathers, couldn't get his massive weight off the ground. No, man would never fly. Only vampires who turned into bats in the dead of the night were delegated that privilege.

  More movement outside the window caught Jane's eye. "Oh my goodness," she whispered. It was the yellow-bellied sapsucker again. What a marvelous bird he was, with all his golden plumage. If only she had her drawing materials. Could she match that vivid hue? She spent hours detailing her birds.

  "Jane, pay attention," her father ordered gruffly.

  Again she sighed, and the bird flew away. Another day, another duty, another mission. She only hoped that this one she'd achieve.

  "Troop alert, Ethel
Jane! Our new strategy is a bloody fine one. Your treacherous target will never know what hit him."

  "Perfect," she agreed resolutely. Curses! What had she missed by daydreaming?

  Missing his daughter's peevish expression, the major raised his brandy glass in a regimental salute, saying brusquely, "Tally ho! Jane, you can do this. I know you can. Be all the Van Helsing you can be—and that is quite a lot. No bloodsucker will ever get the best of one of us, not even a female. Remember, the only thing you have to fear is fear itself."

  "Well… let's not forget the big bad vampire with his big white fangs," Jane muttered, resisting the urge to give a military bow. Annoyed, she cocked her head and glared at her father's back as he turned. Her faithful dog, Spot, did the same. Picking up on Jane's agitation, he growled.

  The major scowled. He had heard Jane's quietly whispered blasphemy. From leading and training men for a number of years, the major understood how bad it was when the troops were unhappy. He could tell that Jane was angry. He could hear that Spot was too. But it couldn't be helped.

  "The world must be saved, and the Van Helsings are the only ones who can accomplish that objective," he reminded his daughter gruffly, hiding his disgust. To think, the world needed saving, and all he had to offer was his angry, calamity-ridden daughter!

  "Remember, Jane, the early Van Helsing gets the vampire," he advised over his shoulder. "If only your brother, Brandon, were here, instead of off chasing vampires in Transylvania. Transylvania, of all places! I told him not to go there. No self-respecting vampire I know would be caught dead in that country. It's too backward."

  "Dead, who's dead?" Jane's grandfather shouted as he tottered into the room, a bony hand to his ear.

  Jane smiled slightly at him. He was a dear man, if a handful. "No one yet, Grandfather," she said loudly. "We were talking about the next vict—vampire to be slain."

  "Capital, capital. The only good vampire is a dead vampire," her grandfather agreed. He then went about preparing several mousetraps with cheese and blood pudding.

  Rubbing her forehead, Jane tried to ignore the insistent stirrings of a headache. Seven years ago, her grand-father had gotten it into his head that the ghost of Christmas present visited him on a regular basis, asking his advice on who was naughty and nice. But the ghost of Christmas present Jane could live with; after all, he only visited three times a year. What truly annoyed her was that four years ago Ebenezer had become fixated on the idea that vampire mice had invaded the house. It didn't matter that there wasn't any such thing: her grandfather was convinced. He had set about building a better mousetrap to catch the devious little suckers. In the country with Jane last year, he had even invented the coffin trap. A marvel of nineteenth-century ingenuity it would have been—if it had worked. Instead, the coffin lid, which was supposed to snap shut once its quarry laid down to rest, generally fired late and only caught the tail. As far as Jane knew, the Van Helsing properties had the best-fed mice in London—and they were all entailed.

  Things that Go Bump in the Night

  The purple hue of twilight filled the heavens as stars climbed higher in the sky, while Jane Van Helsing trudged sadly toward her dismal duty. The wind whipped through the trees, blowing several dead leaves westward where they caught, crackling, in the tall wrought iron fence to her right.

  "My father is having partridge pie with lemon tarts tonight, and I'm having to stake for dinner," Jane grumbled to herself. Then, rhetorically she asked, "Brandon, where are you? Oh, brother, what am I to do?"

  Despite Jane's abysmal record at staking vampires, the major felt too much was at stake for a staking to be postponed, so Jane was to strike immediately—make no mistake. In the process she'd be taking a life and breaking her friendship with Clair. All to make her father and dead ancestors proud. She'd rather jump in a lake.

  "How I hate the smell of burning vampires in the night, and the metallic smell of spilled blood," Jane muttered, recalling the earl's attractive countenance the evening before. She recalled arriving at the masquerade ball and meeting the handsome vampire, but later in the night was all blurred. Jane felt a shiver run through her—a shiver not related to fear, but to something more primal. She almost gasped aloud, finally realizing that the feeling was desire. When she and Clair were younger, they had secretly read about certain things men and women did at night. The books had been forbidden them due to their explicit nature: their use of the word leg instead of limb.

  The thought slowed Jane down, her trot subsiding to a fast walk. "No, it's too absurd. I don't desire the Prince of the Profane, the Fiend of Forever. I couldn't. Not really."

  She shuddered again as the truth bored into her. She had wanted the earl to kiss her last night. She had longed to feel his cold lips upon hers. She had longed for the touch of—"It must have been the brandy," she told herself, cutting off further thought.

  Humbug! What would her mother say about a daughter who felt desire, especially after all those lessons in ladylike constraint? Ladies didn't think about kissing or anything that went on in the dark of night. And while Van Helsings did, they were primarily concerned with four-foot pieces of wood and the hearty placement of them. Also, a true Van Helsing would never desire a creature who sucked down his food. Not only was that evil, it was bad for dinner parties! What would her ancestors say? They were probably turning over in their graves right now.

  Worse, she began to consider what her father would say. "Court-martial, definitely," Jane remarked to herself. "With no Van Helsing honors and no French horns playing taps." He had really become quite the bear after her mother died.

  Now he was autocratic, fanatical and would be permanently disturbed to know that his daughter was fantasizing about the Earl of Wolverton, aka Dracul—most especially since the major was patting himself on the back over his newest plan. He called it Out on a Limb. The point being to penetrate the six-foot-two vampire from above, in a tree. The strategy had been adopted due to Jane's being too short to stake accurately any six-foot-something creature, even standing on tiptoe. And this would give her momentum, diving down from above.

  Yes, like the name implied, to accomplish her mission Jane would have to climb a tree and go out on a limb. It was not a bad plan, really, Jane told herself halfheartedly, trying to be fair to her zealot father as she approached the large oak at the end of Berkeley Square. She'd attempted worse. She was simply branching out.

  "Maybe if I were a monkey," she mused. "Or what if I were an acrobat at the circus—or that attractive though rather apish Tars, Lord Graystroke, fellow? The major's plan might just be perfect." But Jane was all too aware that she hadn't climbed a tree since she'd left the schoolroom. This was bound to end in disaster.

  Stopping at the massive oak and glancing about, she noted that only fog filled the night. No one was around. That's one good thing, she thought as she stared up, up, up the huge trunk. But she couldn't think of any other good things.

  Jane sighed in resignation. It didn't matter that she was rusty at climbing trees; she could just as well forget her insecurities and fears. "Tonight's the night. It has just got to be all right." She had to have a reason to believe that. She knew the rules. The first cut must be the deepest, and must be true to destroy that which was forever young. Her father's vampire-assault trainer, Mr. Stewart, had cautioned her that to spare the rod was to spoil the sneak attack. Then Mr. Stewart had patiently gone over the rules again and again, despite her telling him that she didn't wish to talk about them anymore.

  "There had better not be any spiders or cobwebs in that oak tree," she called out dramatically, hoping those things would take it as a warning and flee. She could really use a nice piece of chocolate about now. That was her cure-all for feeling overwhelmed.

  "Bah! Humbug!" Disgruntled, she tucked her skirt ends under her belt. Mr. Stewart had suggested she wear breeches like a boy. Horsefeathers to that! She would be a very old maid before she let herself appear in public in pants. Vampire-hunting might be a messy, dirty
job, but she would still be the same dignified lady she'd always been. Or that she'd tried to be.

  No, just because she was a slayer, that didn't mean she had to ignore fashion. She wouldn't. Thus her silk gown of pale peach had lace at the neckline and sleeves. The dress was of the first water, meaning the design had only recently arrived off the boat from Paris. Her one concession to practicality had been to wear her hair in a single long braid, rather than atop her head as usual.

  "All dressed up and no place to go but up a tree. Humph!" she muttered.

  Checking once more to see if she was alone in the square, Jane unslung the black bag of tools on her shoulder and set it on the ground, then removed a rope. As she began fastening the rope to both her body and the bag, she pursed her lips, her expression one of supreme irritation.

  "There is another problem with being a well-dressed vampire hunter," she realized, preparing to climb the tree. "I bet I chip my nails or bark my shin."

  She stifled the mad urge to kick her black bag, for it held all of her work tools: silver crosses, chains, holy water vials, garlic, all manner of stakes. She had so many different kinds of stakes, all made by her family. Each was specialized.

  Jane began to climb the tree, her gown tucked between her knees. After several awkward starts, she finally reached a limb she felt reasonably certain would be a good perch: She would have a bird's-eye view of her hapless victim's approach. Unluckily, she not only chipped her nails in the effort, but also skinned her knees and tore her gown. Muttering unladylike curses, she vowed this time her father would outfit her with three new silk dresses for the one she'd ruined on his stupid, stupid plan.

  "That is, if I live to see the dawn and Madame Burton's dressmaking shop again," she admitted.

  Cautiously, Jane settled back against the harsh bark of the tree, wishing she was home in her big soft bed with its plump pillows. She would so much rather be there with a good novel and a nice cup of cocoa. Or she could be working on her drawings of the yellow-bellied sapsucker to add to her beloved collection.