The Elixir

by George Willson

  “John, I have to trust a meeting to you. I have to return to Amsterdam, but Mrs. Mina Harker wished to meet with me tomorrow. I need for you to meet her in my stead.”

  “How am I supposed to take your place?” Seward asked. “I do not know half of what you know.”

  “Mrs. Harker entrusted me with several pieces of information related to this case in the form of the diaries of herself and her husband, Mr. Jonathan Harker. I have them in my room, and I will give them to you to study, so you will also be a master of the facts. We will meet soon to discuss these things as well as any notes you may have taken yourself to see what correlations we may find.”

  “Do you know what is going on here?” Seward asked.

  “Not all of it, but I feel as if I’m getting closer,” Van Helsing said. “There are only a few more questions that I must sort out before I can say that I am truly aware of what is happening. The time is coming where we will all get together, and I believe that will be a momentous meeting indeed.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  With David safely disposed of on the far side of the city, Karian made his way back to Lucy at Highgate. He had spent some time with her since she had come into her new life, and while she seemed to be doing well, he felt it was time for her to leave the tomb and stay with him.

  She had retained more of her inherent intelligence than any Mutation he had ever changed, and he looked forward to learning more about her, her language, and this country. More to the point, he looked forward to having a friend that he could speak to as opposed to relying on purely mental communication. Once he learned her language well, he would be able to converse with someone who was just like him.

  He never realized how much he would miss civilized communication until he found himself in the midst of a group of Mutations. There were times he had left his group to find regular humans to talk to, but in the end, he was always forced to return to his own people. He envied the regular Fempiror who had no problems with living in a civilized society as they all retained their sanity, so Lucy would be such a breath of fresh air that he ran as fast as he could to see her again.

  He entered Highgate and a smell immediately concerned him. For the first time in decades, Karian felt a real sense of panic and despair as he charged across the cemetery to the Westenra mausoleum and tore open the door.

  To anyone else, the dark room which contained the coffins of the family would seem either peaceful or ominous, but to Karian, he could smell what had happened here. With a heavy heart, he walked to Lucy’s coffin and opened it. A knife wound pierced her heart, and while she had been laid in the coffin with a measure of respect, Karian saw the true cruelty behind what he considered to be an act of violence against an innocent creature.

  He touched her face one last time and felt a rare tear drop down his cheek. Even in death, she was still beautiful, but her heartbeat had ceased. Her life was no more. He closed the lid of her coffin and leaned upon it to gather himself. Anger and frustration built within him, and he resisted the urge to destroy the mausoleum in its entirety. Such an act would accomplish nothing, however.

  He walked outside, closed the doors behind him for the last time, and sniffed the air to see if his nose could lead him in the right direction. Someone had come to this place to kill his beloved Lucy, so the problem of David was no longer his primary concern. Someone knew about her, so he was intent on hunting this person or persons down to show them what a Mutation could really do.

  In the night air, the smells of the recent visitors lingered as there was not so much as a breeze to blow them away. He caught the scents of at least three men who had been in the area recently, and a fourth scent that he could hardly believe. If the fourth scent persisted, it would certainly explain how anyone was able to defeat Lucy, as she should have been easily able to handle a group of humans.

  He followed the scent to a street where he perceived the group likely boarded a cab. From there, he was able to follow the trail of the horse that drew the cab through town around winding streets, passing the trails of other cabs and other men, but Karian never lost the scent.

  At one point, he perceived where two of the men had disembarked, but he had no way of knowing where they had gone from there since their scents mingled too heavily with the rest of the human traffic. He followed it further until another man had disembarked, but before immediately following the cab’s trail further, Karian pause and sniffed the air again.

  It was the fourth scent from the cemetery, and given how much Fempiror activity he had noted in the area previously, he had nearly dismissed it. Having caught the scent again, it confirmed his suspicion. He knew Lucy could fall to a group of humans, but it did not seem as if enough had attacked her to the point that she could not cope.

  It was definitely not David, but he caught the unmistakable smell of another Fempiror. This Fempiror, however, had set himself directly against Karian in killing Lucy, and he suspected that this person might cause even more trouble in the days to come. He was already dealing with one troublesome Fempiror; the last thing he needed was another.

  He continued to follow the path of the cab until it passed by an asylum where the smell of unbridled human filth was overwhelming. An army of Rastem could sneak up behind him next door to this place, and he would never smell them coming. He left the area as quickly as possible having fully lost the trail in the smell, and he would have no way of knowing whether the last human had disembarked at one of the two buildings in that area or had gone further to some more distant destination.

  He decided he would start by returning to where he had found the Fempiror scent, but he also knew this asylum would be worth having a look over since it was possible that one of the people who had helped to kill Lucy had come here. However, the filthy human scent would take quite a bit of getting used to, and after a night such as this, he preferred the cleaner area where the Fempiror had stopped.

  He would not allow Lucy’s murder to remain unavenged. Whoever these men were, they would pay with their lives for taking hers. There would be no mistakes in this investigation, and it would not be an unbridled massacre just to make sure he got them. He would force them to look into his eyes as he explained to them exactly what they had done before killing them painfully and mercilessly.

  * * * * * * * * * *

  David returned to Highgate Cemetery while cautiously watching for Karian to reappear. The streets were quiet with only the occasional cab clattering down the roads with its late night passengers. There was no sign of Karian anywhere along his path back to the cemetery, and he entered the property unhindered.

  He walked across the area which had no movement of any kind, so he thought that perhaps Karian had come and taken his young friend away. He approached the Westenra mausoleum and walked inside to see if the young Mutation might be staying inside. What he found was evidence of a fight.

  The signs were subtle, but after enough scuffles of his own, he was familiar with the marks on the floor as well as the unexpected appearance of blood. As he could not be certain as to its owner, he did not touch it but found the trail seemed to lead to one of the coffins.

  He opened it to find the woman had been killed, and then respectfully placed in the casket meaning that not only did someone know what they were dealing with here, but whoever did it likely knew this woman. No one else would bother returning her so neatly to what was likely her grave during the period when she was comatose.

  While it was possible for a group of humans to defeat a Mutation, depending on how violent and feral she was since she appeared unusually gentle on the occasions when he had seen her, it seemed more likely that there would be at least one Fempiror among them, if not several. Vladimir’s people were a possibility, but he doubted they would return the body to its coffin.

  With this Mutation handled, he was down to just Karian along with whomever else he might have turned since his arrival. He decided it was time to return to Carfax to rest and let Voivode know what was going on out here.<
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  Still exercising caution, he crossed London, and seeing no one along the street, he entered the house through a back door. Voivode met him in a living room upstairs where David recounted the events of the evening.

  “How went the search for a good exit in the event of trouble?” David asked. They had previously talked about creating an exit strategy in case Vladimir or Karian were to call on them.

  “I suspected a house this old might have some kind of service passage or secret exit, and I was right,” Voivode reported. “Follow me.”

  Voivode lit a lantern and led David into the largest bedroom of the house and tucked away in a corner, he revealed a small door that opened to a stairwell. He and David walked down the small, circular staircase and opened a door to a corner of the kitchen. When Voivode closed the door behind them, he found the door blended into the wall seamlessly even though it did not appear to be a true secret passage as both doors had clear handles on them.

  “That’s convenient,” David said. “Likely put in so the master of the house could have a midnight snack without walking through the house.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” Voivode said, “but that is only part one of the escape route. The midnight snack may well have been the original use of the stairwell, but seeing this, I almost missed something else in there.”

  Voivode turned back around and off to one side of the circular stairs was a small amount of floor space that held a trapdoor. He opened the trap door, and led the way down a ladder into darkness broken only by the light that Voivode carried.

  “I don’t suppose you’re going to surprise me with a brightly lit passage in a secret base,” David asked as he reached the floor level.

  “No, but we have reached the wine cellar,” Voivode said as he opened a door into a room of empty wooden racks.

  “Interesting destination,” David said. “While one could easily carry food up those stairs, I can’t imagine this was made to grab a bit of wine before bed.”

  “That I doubt,” Voivode said as he closed the door which blended perfectly into the wall with no handle at all. “This one is clearly an escape route, but having ended up down here, it took me a bit to find the next part.”

  Voivode walked to the wall opposite the stairs that led up to the kitchen, and then behind one of the wooden racks to the furthest corner of the room. The brick wall looked as normal as the rest of the room, but as he stared at it, David could see a slight difference in part of the brickwork and an indention in the wall. He doubted he would have noticed if Voivode had not walked to this part of the room, and they had not been specifically looking for an exit.

  He placed two fingers inside the indention and felt the release mechanism. He pressed it and the wall swung easily inward revealing a dark hallway.

  “Do you know where it leads?” David asked.

  “I felt it wiser to wait and allow you to explore the tunnel,” Voivode said. “I’m not as young as I used to be.”

  David agreed and once he had his own lantern, he passed into the tunnel alone. While there were the occasional spider webs here and there, the tunnel was in good shape and wholly untouched despite its apparent age. He finally reached an old wooden door that was latched from the inside and opened it.

  He placed his lantern at the base of the door to prop it open and walked out into the night air. The tunnel emerged well behind the Abbey and the asylum next door, but still on the Abbey grounds. It would allow for an escape should they be set upon by someone David could not repel. He noted that near the exit was a gate that would allow access directly onto the grounds of the asylum perhaps to allow one to walk along the fence separating the properties and escape without being directly seen by his attackers.

  He walked back into the tunnel to return to Voivode and locked the external door behind him. He hoped they would never have to use this since it would mean their home was compromised, but the way things were going, it seemed like it would be more of a “when” it would happen as opposed to an “if.” At least they were ready.

  * * * * * * * * * *

  Vladimir was incensed. The guard he had placed at the cemetery informed him the night after it happened that they had been approached by someone claiming to be a Tepish spy when Vladimir actually had no such person in his employ. George and Adelaide had always been faithful Tepish with no other slip-ups, so he decided to be merciful to this infraction, but let them know that they had met every Tepish Fempiror he had employed in London.

  He demanded a description of the intruder, since they surely would have recognized David Taylor having just seen him the previous evening. Red hair. Chiseled face. A manner of speech that was both cheerful and calm. A name immediately came to Vladimir’s mind, but the chances of running into him seemed so remote that it bordered on the impossible.

  He asked what information they had given this mystery person, and besides the Mutation problem, they had talked about where he had gotten his orders. The other man supplied Vladimir’s name, not George and Adelaide, meaning that this person knew him. Further, their mystery guest knew Vladimir as old, wise, and dangerous.

  The person in Vladimir’s mind had been at the Tepish Fortress in the Carpathian Mountains seventy years ago, but Vladimir assumed that, as with the rest of his Tepish, he had either been captured or killed in the Rastem attack. But if he were here, was he working with David? George and Adelaide both agreed that the man was alone, but this did not mean that no one was with him nearby.

  “What do you think?” Vladimir asked Lorinkis. “He knows me and claims to be a spy for us.”

  “Our position may be momentarily threatened,” Lorinkis replied. “It may be wise to disappear into the shadows for a time and let whatever this is play itself out on its own. People come and go, and as we learned, David Taylor is here on his own mission. He did not expect to find us.”

  “Perhaps not,” Vladimir said, “but what brought him here to begin with? Karian would have followed David, but it would take more than some brat to bring any Mutation to an island.”

  “You had spoken of going to Whitby to see about that cargo ship crash,” Lorinkis said.

  “Yes,” Vladimir said. “I was unable to deal with it today, but I believe I’ll head out there tomorrow. Get with George, and talk to your contacts at Scotland Yard for any information on recent deaths, especially those under mysterious circumstances. Have Adelaide go back over the papers from recent weeks for any further leads to this bloofer lady. I think I’ll take William and Karen with me to have them see about newspaper archives and general inquiries in Whitby for any mysterious deaths there while I check on this Demeter accident. I believe it is likely that the person we’re looking for had cargo on that ship, and it might just give a destination. According to the story I read in the paper, it was actually bound for London but ended up in Whitby instead.”

  With these plans in place, Vladimir was certain the next day would give them the answers they so desperately needed to bring this affair with David and this mystery Fempiror to its conclusion. A Fempiror who had given a name of sorts, but with this and his description, Vladimir had an idea. A red haired man named Abe who knew Vladimir? Could it possible that another alumnus of the late Hauginstown was in London? Could this false spy be Abraham Barber?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  John Seward waited on the train platform for the arrival of Mina Harker from Exeter. He had a place prepared for her at the asylum where she could await the arrival of Van Helsing when he returned. He was not certain how she would spend the day, since there was not much he could offer her. He had not yet reviewed the information that Van Helsing had given him the previous evening that had come from the diaries of both her and her husband.

  Then, a young woman in a green dress stepped off the train and looked around the platform. Her eyes fixed on him, and she approached.

  “Dr. Seward?” she asked.

  “You must be Mina Harker,” Seward said. “I recognize you from Lucy’s description.”
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br />   The mention of Lucy set them both into an awkward silence before he guided her to a waiting cab. During the trip, they spoke lightly over the weather and the state of the country, but nothing of any depth. Upon their arrival at the asylum, he escorted her inside and introduced her to his housekeeper who led her away to the room they had prepared.

  While he was waiting for her, he sat down in his study to record his thoughts into a phonograph which stored the sound of his voice on wax cylinders. He had been keeping this verbal diary for a few months at this point, and he had a drawer full of cylinders.

  He realized as he sat down that he had not recorded any of his thoughts beginning with the previous evening when they dealt with Lucy. He covered events all the way to the point when Mina arrived at his study.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought for a moment you might have another visitor. I did not wish to interrupt.”

  “Not at all,” he assured her. “This is my phonograph. A diary.”

  “Really?” she asked. “How does it work?”

  He demonstrated the use of the device to her in that speaking into the attached cone caused the needle to vibrate and impress the sound onto the wax cylinder which spun at a slow, uniform rate. When he desired playback, he could spin the cylinder again, and the needle would follow the sound impressions on the wax, and he could hear what he had previously said.

  “How long have you been keeping it?” she asked.

  “Early June,” he replied. “Every since I got a peculiar patient, and I wanted to recall my thoughts on him.”

  “Did you say what happened with Lucy?” she asked quietly.

  “I do not wish to speak of it,” he said sadly. “Truly, it has been one of the most dreadful things I’ve ever had the misfortune to endure.”