“My country is but a lump of bread to be shared at the table of my enemies, a piece torn off here, another there?”
Pavel was called and passed a wine bag and victuals through the window. Van Helsing and I supped, and I even offered some to the vampire to see if he would accept. He declined.
“The nourishment I need flows through your veins,” he said and leaned toward me, inhaling through his nose. “It was your blood that revived me, yes?”
I could only nod, chilled to the core of my being. Suddenly my hunger faded, and I went back to my history and the expansion of the American sphere of influence.
When the light from the small window finally failed, the Professor nodded to me and I put my shoulder to the crypt door and hollered for Pavel to assist me. We were able to leverage the door open and the three of us stepped out into the night air.
Oh! But the world seemed fresh and pure after the terror of that vault. How sweet it was to see the clouds race by and the passing gleams of the moonlight between the scudding clouds—like the gladness and sorrow of a man’s life; how sweet it was to breathe the fresh air that had no taint of death and decay.
Pavel stumbled backwards at the sight of the vampire, muttering a prayer, “In manus tuas Domine commendo spiritum meum,” clutching his rosary with one hand while making the sign against the evil eye with the other.
Dracula was oblivious to the man. Instead he tried to adjust his tattered apparel, a black suit and white shirt that had not withstood the years as well as their wearer. The cape fell to the ground, and his shirt showed through gaps in his coat where the material or stitches had rotted. Dracula appeared disgusted, even a bit embarrassed, at the state of his attire.
He glanced at the night sky, at the moon beginning its climb.
“The skies have not altered,” he said as Van Helsing led us out of the graveyard. “Are you going to shoot me or not?”
Van Helsing and I turned to see Pavel pointing a large revolver at the vampire’s back.
“Pavel, please,” Van Helsing pleaded, and Pavel pocketed the weapon. We trudged on, past the other cemetery, the ruins of the old church.
“I do not know this place,” Dracula observed.
“Few do,” Van Helsing replied. “I made use of a tomb built for one of your ancestors who died in Istanbul. His body was lost in the Black Sea, hence the sarcophagus was left empty. I thought it best not to draw attention to your resting place.”
“Resting.” Another enigmatic smile flickered across Dracula’s face.
When we reached the automobile Dracula insisted on examining the Bentley. He was keenly interested in the vehicle’s workings, especially the instrument panel and the function of every switch and toggle. He was stunned when I told him that there were millions of such machines all over the earth, most not so fine, of course. And he was even more surprised when I informed him that in some countries even the common man, the peasant, owned such a luxury.
Then he turned to me and reached out a hand. Surprised, I took it in my own, and he shook it.
“Thank you for rescuing me from that interminable state,” he said with some formality and a slight bow. His clasp of my hand was with a strength which made me wince, not lessened by the fact that the flesh was as cold as ice.
“You are, uh, welcome,” I replied trying to recover.
Pavel would not sit with the vampire. The Professor instructed him to instead drive. I assumed that this was to keep the obviously frightened man busy with something physical. Van Helsing sat up front with Pavel, to give instructions, thus leaving me to ride in the back seat next to my grandfather’s greatest foe, what he had called “the epitome of evil.”
I found myself struck dumb, awed at being in the presence of this creature of myth and imagination. My befuddlement was a bit mollified by the fact that Dracula stank of mould and decay. I did not know if this was inherent in the vampire’s very essence or his clothes, which kept falling to pieces and littering the floorboards. But the odour was enough to prod me into opening my window. When I did so, Dracula turned to his own window lever, inspected the chrome knob, and wound down the glass.
Poking his head out and into the drafting wind stream like a spaniel on a Sunday outing, Dracula inquired, “At what speed are we proceeding?”
Van Helsing leaned over to glance at the speedometer. “Forty-seven kilometres per hour.”
“Most impressive,” Dracula said to himself as he popped his head back inside. A phrase came to me, “A stranger in a strange land”—a line from Exodus, I think.
This childish delight displayed by the heinous monster was enough of a tonic for me to ready one of the thousand questions flitting about my brain like sparrows trapped in a house. Trying to be nonchalant, I began inspecting the vampire, searching for the pointed ear tips described in The Book, and I was disappointed to see that his ears were as characterless as my own. Examining his hands, I could see that there was no hair on his palms, nor did the fingernails match the description I had memorised; they were not cut to sharp points. Sigh. And I leaned forward one time to catch a whiff of his breath, expecting the foul stench of the grave, as per The Book, but this, too, did disappoint. There was no demonstrative exhalation to be seen. None. I chastised the novelist for his fictional exaggerations and turned to what I knew to be fact, history.
“Uh, the impaling of your enemies,” I asked. “Uh, exactly how was that accomplished?”
“Simple, actually.” Dracula shrugged. “The stake was laid upon the ground, a post prevented the base from sliding, the pointed end of the stake aimed at the . . . how do you say . . . anus, the legs of the person each tied to a horse, a flick of the whip, the horse charges away, and . . . impaled. Then you lift and plant the stake into the ground for display to all.”
My own sphincter involuntarily tightened at the thought.
“Did, uh, many survive the, uh, initial impalement?” I figured, in for a penny in for a pound.
“A surprising number did. Some would live for days.”
“It must have been agony,” I said.
“Of course. But that was the point, yes?”
The disgust must have been evident on my face.
“The times when I was voivode, as ruler, were, how you say, primitive. For a primitive people one must be crude, obvious. For theft in one village I would have the thief’s feet skinned, then salted. Sometimes my more enthusiastic and creative followers would gather goats to lick the salt. Very painful. The thief’s screams would be heard throughout the village. Even better, the story would travel to other villages, the punishment becoming worse with each telling. The people begin to understand. Stealing will not be tolerated. No exceptions to the law. I punish all men, women, I punish old, the young, the rich and poor, no exception for class, religion. And soon, thievery begins to decline. You see my point.”
“I do.”
“Then you see the importance of impaling my enemies.”
“I guess.”
“I learned this from the Turks. They held me prisoner for a time. A most dispiriting time. They whipped and beat me for days until I could stand no more. Later, after I was free and became ruler of my country, the Ottomans sent Turkish envoys to demand tribute of my people. I had their turbans nailed to their skulls.”
“Message sent and received.”
“You understand. My older brother . . . they blinded him, buried him alive at Targoviste. When I had the opportunity I impaled twenty thousand Turks outside Targoviste. As you say, ‘Message sent, message received.’ No?”
“No. Yes. I mean, I, uh, understand.”
Van Helsing turned in his seat to face us. “Now you see why he is the perfect match to send against the Nazis. It is a kindred barbarism with which we will fight them.”
“Barbaric acts that were for barbaric times,” Dracula said.
“Welcome to our times,” Van Helsing said and turned back to the front. He was quiet for the rest of the drive. As was I, thinking about what we
were about to unleash upon the world.
We stopped at a village to allow Pavel to use a phone and call the council to a meeting at the tailor shop.
As we entered Brasov, the vampire sat up and peered out the windows, intent on the passing landscape, his head swiveling from side to side, examining the buildings. He stared at Tampa Mountain, and I remembered from my studies that he had impaled forty merchants on that peak. He showed particular interest as we passed Catherine’s Gate, and he seemed excited when he spotted the Black Tower and then the White Tower.
Pavel parked the Bentley, and the four of us walked through Brasov proper, the vampire hunched over like an old man, his steps unsteady, even feeble at times. I offered a shoulder for him to lean on but he imperiously brushed me away. The streets were deserted, the curfew obviously being obeyed. As we walked the silent streets I began to hear the howling of dogs, at first one or two, and then they were joined by others until there was a canine chorus all about us. It seemed as if every cur in town had chosen this moment to cry at the night sky, and I could not help but wonder if the presence of the vampire was the cause of this unnerving choir.
Dracula gazed at the buildings as if he were a traveller who had been away for a long spell, which I guess was closer to the truth.
“Brasov has changed,” he remarked. “Grown. A multitude of buildings. Which is only expected, yes? These lamps do not flicker.”
He was staring at a streetlight and then the shaded lamp hanging over a storefront.
“They are electric,” I explained and was well into a lecture on Edison, the lightbulb, and the results of the industrial revolution when I was suddenly interrupted.
“Halt!” Two SS soldiers stepped into the narrow alley to block our path. They were the same Germans who had intercepted me and the Van Helsings on my first trip to meet with the council.
Their weapons were pointed at us.
“Doctor,” the Corporal addressed Van Helsing. “On your rounds again? Where is your pretty nurse? I have something only she can treat.”
“My daughter, you mean?” Van Helsing asked, not hiding his indignation. “I would appreciate it, sir, if you would speak of her with respect. If you must speak of her at all.”
“Watch your mouth or you’ll be setting your own bones,” the Sergeant snarled. “Who are these people? Papers.”
Pavel handed his to the German. The soldier examined the document, then reached into a jacket pocket and produced a sheet of paper that he held up to read by the streetlight.
I paid little attention to the sentries and instead watched the vampire, who seemed to be fixated on the death’s head symbol on the SS uniform. Thusly I was caught by surprise when the Corporal announced, “You are under arrest,”and pointed his weapon at Pavel’s face.
The Nazi Sergeant was regarding Dracula with some suspicion. He reached out and curiously fingered the vampire’s shoddy attire, the remnants of the cape. A bit of cloth came away in the German’s hand.
“And who might you be, beggar man? Identification,” he demanded.
“I am called Wladislaus Drakwlya, Prince of Wallachi, Vlad the Third.”
Both SS soldiers frowned. Dracula ignored them and turned to Van Helsing. “These, I assume, are our enemies.”
“They are,” Van Helsing confirmed.
“Then with your permission . . .” And with supernatural speed the vampire seized the Sergeant by the back of his head, yanked it to one side to bare the man’s neck, and sank his suddenly elongated fangs into the soldier’s throat.
And he fed.
The Corporal turned his gun away from Pavel and aimed the muzzle at Dracula. Before I or Van Helsing could react, the vampire moved. With his mouth still feeding on the Sergeant, Dracula’s arm shot out and gripped the other German’s helmet and crushed it, steel helmet and the skull inside cracking like an egg in a fist.
The Corporal’s body went limp instantly but hung suspended by Dracula’s extended arm, while the vampire’s mouth remained sucking at the other soldier’s neck. The demonstration of strength astounded me.
The soldier under Dracula’s feeding tried to scream, but no words came. His face, turned red at first from the exertion of his struggle, paled and then went completely white with blue tinges. In mere seconds he was drained of blood.
Dracula’s eyes became red around the amber, almost glowing, the veins in the whites of his eyes becoming engorged as he drank.
Finished with his feasting, Dracula snapped his victim’s neck and dropped both bodies. So fast was this action that by the time Van Helsing, Pavel, and I had recovered from the spectacle, Dracula was already striding away. I paused in the narrow street and found myself fixated on the crushed helmet that lay upon the cobblestone. There were indentations in the grey steel, in the shape of a hand, the four fingers and thumb as clear as if pressed into mud, all in all a remarkable artefact.
The difference in the vampire was astonishing. He now walked tall, full of power.
“I feel much better now,” he casually remarked, as if after an aperitif, which, I suppose, this was for him.
“What about the German?” I asked, hurrying to catch up. “Will he not become a vampire now?”
“Not if I kill them before the transformation,” Dracula said. “It is a beautiful night, is it not? Late spring, if I am not misled.”
I noticed that the man’s mustache had gone from white to a dark grey, black hairs now intermingling with the white, and his hair had undergone the same change. There was also a flush to his cheeks, the waxen appearance now disappeared.
He paused to let Van Helsing and Pavel catch up; they had lingered behind to drag the bodies into a shadowed recess. I waited, still attempting to absorb what I had just witnessed. What manner of man was this, or what manner of creature was it in the semblance of a man?
I remembered a phrase oft repeated by my grandfather: “Hell has its price.”
EXCERPTED FROM THE UNPUBLISHED NOVEL THE DRAGON PRINCE AND I
by Lenore Van Muller
While her father was away confronting his ancient enemy, Lucille spent that entire night and the following day on edge, trying to read, needlessly cleaning. She had not the temperament to be a fastidious housekeeper, but her father, except for his stacks of reading material piled willy-nilly about the house, was an orderly man, so she only had to clean up after herself.
After the bout of tidiness, she went into the basement and tried to chat up the British Sergeant, but it was like attempting to converse with an organ grinder’s monkey. He was in one of his fugue moments. Until she innocently asked about one of his devilish devices.
“This is a fuse?” she asked, prodding him into some kind of interaction. “It is longer than the usual blasting cap.”
“Aye, that’s ’cause ’tis a time fuse.” Renfield’s usual dim appearance took on a canny intelligence. “We call them ‘time pencils,’ or ‘switch number ten.’ Mind you, originally a German device, developed further by the Poles. Coded for the time delay: black, ten minutes; red, thirty; green, five and a half hours; yellow, twelve; and blue, twenty-four hours. Exact timing dependent on temperature.”
He went on about the components of the fuses, “steel wire tension springs,” “glass ampules of copper chloride,” and how an “addition of glycerol, because of its higher viscosity and anti-freeze qualities” led to a considerable increase in delay time.
Then he went on to other devices. His lucid lecture was for the most part informative and interesting to Lucille, who was a woman who cherished learning anything new. But as Renfield’s discourse wandered into the proper formulation of a foaming agent called Vulcastab, used to sabotage locomotive boilers, Lucille’s mind began to wander back to her father and the perilous task he had set upon.
Her mind kept dwelling upon the more violent aspects of the vampire tales that she had heard as a child. Growing up, it seemed that every Rumanian adult and child could vividly recall some chilling story of the un-dead. The gory details
that had once thrilled a little girl now became her most horrid nightmare.
She fretted and paced and tried to engage Renfield in a discussion of his past, his family, but his damaged brain was like an old radio; even when the tubes warmed up, he could dial in only the one frequency. After a while the channel faded and he was back to his mute self, interrupted by some occasional dirty doggerel. Lucille gave up and went back upstairs.
After a long bout of internal argument she finally succumbed to temptation. Going to her father’s bedroom, she collected a small tangle of his white hair from his brush. She fingered the fine, silken hairs as she tied them into a bundle with one of his shoelaces. He would be upset later when he found one of his shoes disabled by her pilferage—if there was a later for him. Outside she plucked five blue monkshoods from the garden. Her mother had planted them, hopefully giving them more power.
In the kitchen she created a salt circle on the table. Stripping the leaves from the monkshood stem and decapitating the flowers, she cut the stems to length and built a five-pointed star within the salt circle. The flower petals were piled in the centre of this pentangle and the bundle of hair placed upon the blue bed.
Pricking her finger with the point of a paring knife she let a drop of blood fall into each of the five points of the star. The protection spell was one she had learned in Paris from a warlock under the tutelage of Maria de Naglowska, a renowned Luciferian. But before she uttered a word, she was reminded of the spell that she had cast for her father at the Black Church—and the omission of the rest of the men in the Mayor’s office and the consequences of that omission.
Hurrying to the basement she searched the Englishman’s cot for hairs left behind, and was dismayed to find only three meager tendrils. Not enough, she thought, to have any power over the individual. Then she remembered the wound on his knee and rushed back outside to the refuse barrel. The contents had not been burned yet and she rummaged through the debris until she found a discarded bandage that her father had removed. She was delighted to see that there remained a brown patch of blood on the gauze.
Dracula vs. Hitler Page 13
