Taking this into the house she cut a small swath of the blooded cloth and laid it carefully alongside the tuft of her father’s hair. She was stymied over what to do about protecting Pavel and finally scrapped the clot that had formed on her cut finger and used a bit more of her blood to write Pavel’s real name on a scrap of paper. It would have to do. This joined the tokens of her father and the English boy.
She began the spell, muttering it in Latin and French for insurance, three times for each language, and at the end setting fire to the hair, blood, and paper. Suddenly the monkshood petals rose into the air of their own volition, swirled a moment, and dashed toward the ceiling in a violet cloud that disappeared before hitting the rafters. The spell done, she gathered up the remaining components, folded them into a sheet of clean paper, and carried it outside to bury under a yew tree.
Now all she could do was wait. Wait and fret.
She spent the rest of the night alternating between pacing and fitful sleep. She fed the Sergeant and tried to make some order of the stacks of periodicals and books strewn about the house. Dawn came, and her worry now put her in a state of numb desperation, sitting in her father’s favorite chair. As she waited for the phone to ring, she took some comfort in her father’s familiar smells still held in the chair’s leather.
It wasn’t until hours later that the phone did finally ring. She was suddenly hesitant to answer, afraid to face the possible loss of her dear father.
But when Pavel told her that everyone was well and that the vampire had been revived, she was speechless. She could hear the hesitation, even dread, in Pavel’s voice, but she did not care. The only thing of importance was that her father had survived. Pavel passed on her father’s request for an immediate meeting of the partisan leadership that evening. Happier now with something to busy herself, she made a few phone calls and went about the preparations for the trip into Brasov. She wanted to get there before dark fell and the curfew was in effect.
Travel at night would be difficult without her father’s dispensation papers, and the problem was magnified by the presence of the daft Renfield. She did not want to leave him by himself. The German raids on homes had lately become more frequent and always unannounced. She would hate for them to come across the addled man while she was away. He would be caught for what he was, a spy, and the consequences for him, not to mention the Van Helsings, would be dire. There was no one to call to baby-sit him.
The three Marx Brothers, as she called them—Horea, Closca, and Crisan—were on a sabotage mission outside Ploesti, coordinating a plot to contaminate the axle boxes of tanker cars servicing the oil fields. Harker had introduced them to a method of mixing carborundum powder into the axle grease, forcing the bearings to seize up and, therefore, totally disabling the trains. No, she would have to take Renfield with her.
Taking him upstairs, Lucille stuffed one of his cheeks with a wad of cotton until it puffed out like he was bee stung. Then she wrapped one of her scarves under the jaw and tied it at the crown of his head. A floppy hat hid his skull bandage. The man looked ludicrous, but she knew from experience that silly and weak was better than appearing suspicious.
They walked toward Brasov, soon hitching a ride with a farmer hauling a load of goats to the butcher. Approaching a German roadblock, Lucille’s hand slid into her coat pocket, the inside sliced away to allow access to the Luger stuffed through her waistband.
The roadblock was perfunctory, Lucille blathering about taking her “cousin” to the dentist for the emergency removal of an infected tooth. Of course Renfield chose that moment to render to the guards a bawdy serenade, but all that was heard out of his cotton-packed mouth was muffled noise, and the SS ignored him, taking his singing for pain-induced moans.
Brasov seemed different now. Maybe it was the swastikas festooned all about, businesses declaring their allegiances, if not in heart then for protection and lucre. She felt a foreigner in her hometown.
They were early, so she stopped at the Catholic church a few blocks from Mihaly’s. There she and Renfield supped with Father Petrescu in his office. The old priest was a garrulous sort. Everyone knew that what he heard in the confession box often leaked into his conversation. The local Catholics frowned on his lack of circumspection. But some of the German soldiers were Catholic, despite the Nazi taboo against worship of anything but Herr Hitler, thusly the priest had become a receptacle for all sorts of intelligence. Lucille hoped to glean information about what was happening in the castle and among the SS occupiers.
From what Petrescu had heard, the Germans had increased the number of prisoners in the castle and there was no room left.
“The conditions are terrible,” Petrescu lamented. “The poor people are packed together like potatoes in a bag. So crowded are they that some must sleep standing. Whole families of gypsies and Jews have been imprisoned. Children, women, living in their own filth. It is . . . a sin.”
“But I heard from a farmer just tonight that they are still rounding up people every day,” Lucille said. “Where are they going to put them all?”
Lucille let the talk wander into local gossip, the latest concerning who might be the father to poor Ecaterina’s baby. Her husband had been conscripted into the Rumanian Army and stationed on the Yugoslavian border for over a year without leave. The betting was all over the place. Ecaterina had been in possession of a woman’s body since the age of thirteen and had proudly displayed this gift from God to a wide variety of very interested fellows before and after her marriage.
Father Petrescu licked his lips and stroked his nose as he recounted Ecaterina’s exploits, and Lucille pondered what Jung would make of the priest’s physical tics.
At one point in the meal Renfield, who had been mute to this point despite the removal of the cotton wadding to facilitate his eating, burst into song.
“The object of my affection
makes my erection
turn from pink to rosy red.
Every time she touches the head
it points the way to bed.”
The priest, who was fluent in English, was flabbergasted. Renfield abruptly ceased his singing as quickly as he had begun. Lucille went on eating as if nothing had occurred, and soon the priest was back to drink and the contemplation of Ecaterina’s love life.
The clock on the wall declared with a mellow bonging that it was near time for her partisan meeting. Lucille excused herself and Renfield, cutting short any further scandalmongering. She knew that the priest was dismayed; the old Father could and would gossip until the candles guttered.
Besides, Lucille was in a hurry. During the whole scurrilous monologue her mind was elsewhere, fretting about her own father. Every time she caught a glance of the silver crucifix hanging from Petrescu’s neck, her thoughts went to the vampire legends and the accompanying banes: garlic, wild rose, hawthorn, mustard seeds, crosses, and holy water. Her father had left with none of them.
She stuffed Renfield’s cheek with the still-damp cotton wad. Soaked with saliva, it had shrunk, so she filled the lack with her handkerchief. He was as compliant as a child during this folderol, allowing her to re-tie the scarf. She made their good-byes, the priest adding his usual plaintive but vain request to see the Van Helsings at the next Sunday service.
Because of the curfew they encountered no one on the walk to Mihaly’s and, with a few changes of direction, avoided the German patrols. The tailor escorted them through the hidden entrance and down into the basement, where Anka was already waiting.
Lucille removed the cotton and handkerchief from Renfield’s mouth, unknotted the scarf. Renfield grinned at Anka like an idiot and began to sing.
“Let me ball you sweetheart,
I’m in bed with you.
Let me hear you whisper
That it’s time to screw.”
Anka was dumbfounded and turned to Lucille for an explanation.
“He has a brain injury.” Lucille lifted Renfield’s bandage to show the recent red scar where h
er father had stitched his scalp back into place.
Anka nodded. “My brother was kicked by a horse when he was eleven years old. Kicked in the forehead. Teach you to never linger behind a beast that kicks. Never tasted again. Nor smelled anything. Could not tell sweet from sour, spices had no effect. Couldn’t figure numbers, either. But has eight children, ninth on the way.”
“Obviously it did not hinder any performance below the neck,” Lucille commented.
“To his wife’s delight.” Both women laughed.
Renfield discovered the cache of land mines in the corner and went after them with the delight of a child given an alarm clock to take apart.
Anka made tea on a hot plate set up for that purpose. The two women traded what intelligence on the Germans they had gathered since the last meeting. Lucille kept glancing at the stairs, waiting for her father to step into view at any moment. Anka noticed Lucille’s preoccupation and the apprehension that accompanied that watchful look.
“I told him not to go,” Anka said. “It is a wrong thing to do.”
Finally Lucille heard heavy footsteps above their heads, the squeal of hinges as the concealed door was opened. Her attention was riveted on the old, worn, wooden stairs. But it was only Farkas descending. He greeted the women, and Anka briefed him on Renfield, who decided to serenade them.
“My bonnie lies over the ocean.
My bonnie lies over the sea.
My father lies over my mother,
And that’s how I came to be.”
Lucille was too concerned about her father to pay notice to Renfield’s duncery. Recently she had become acutely aware of the old man’s age and that she might not have many more years with him.
Not that he was fragile at all. He was as robust and intellectually vigorous as he had ever been. But she had, as her father’s nurse, witnessed a sudden turn to illness by many of his elderly patients. One day they were out pounding dust from a rug on the line, the next morning in bed after a fall from which they never recovered. So, lately she kept an eye on him, alert to every cough, pain, or tic of his daily movements—at times, much to his annoyance.
And the dangerous work in which they engaged only made things worse for her. He insisted on leading some raids himself and participated much more than was appropriate for one of his age or standing. That the same could be said of Lucille was shrugged off her young shoulders. “Like father, like daughter” was never more true.
More footsteps were heard over their heads. Lucille’s heart leapt at the sound. Farkas slid a hand down to the short-barrelled shotgun he carried by a strap slung under his long coat. The incessant SS raids had put everyone on edge. So far the leadership cell had not been penetrated, but Reikel and his interrogators were climbing the partisan vine, linking one cell to another, arresting them as they filled in the puzzle.
Lucille reached for her Luger. Once again the secret door at the top of the stairs opened. Lucille took a deep breath and then watched her father’s worn shoes descend the steps. She rushed forward to embrace him. They being not a physically demonstrative family, her father was surprised at her touching display, but hugged her back with equal enthusiasm.
“You’re safe,” she whispered.
Lucille was so caught up in the reunion that she took little notice of Pavel or the Englishman’s entrance.
But the next man to step into the basement drew her attention, as he did everyone else. They all were suddenly in thrall of his presence. Even Renfield discarded his lethal toys to stare.
The first thing she noticed was his posture. He was a tall man, three or four inches over six feet, and the top of his head was near brushing the ceiling beams. But he neither ducked nor bent as Harker, not nearly the same height, often did. He walked the room upright as if daring anything to have the temerity to knock him in the skull.
He surveyed the room, taking in everything and everyone with curious amber eyes. He seemed to have an avid interest in all that was around him, like a child in a museum. Finally his eyes fixed on Lucille and she felt a trembling begin in her chest that flowed out to her hands and knees. She backed into one of the support posts and pressed her shoulders into the wood, trying to steady herself. Four years ago Lucille had been in the States visiting the Grand Canyon with an actress friend, Daphne, who was sharing her bed with a young man who had a summer job at the Hoover Dam. The place had just opened, and they took the art deco elevator down into the concrete depths.
Lucille was already awestruck by the massive concrete edifice, but when they entered the cavernous room containing the megalithic turbines and transformers she felt the hairs on her arms rise, the down on the back of her neck tingle. The room thrummed with a life of its own, and she could feel the presence of the immense power lying in wait, the vast force being kept at bay, an energy that could light—or destroy—an entire city.
This was what she felt when Dracula entered that basement, including the risen hair, as did the others. Farkas stumbled back until a chair stopped his retreat. Anka crossed herself and made the sign of the mano cornuto, or horned one.
Renfield stood, the mines forgotten, his mouth agape, mesmerised, eyes fixated on the vampire. He muttered one word: “Master.”
“You did it.” Anka glared at Van Helsing. “You had to do it.” She spat out the words.
Farkas dug into his shirt and pulled out a tiny gold cross that hung around his neck by a thin gold chain. He brandished the small crucifix at Dracula, who merely bestowed a benign smile upon the man. It only confirmed Lucille’s concept of the absurdity of the human animal.
She had seen the same religious conversion repeatedly on the battlefield, as many of her partisan mates were Communists. Lying there, bleeding, some dying, they all seemed to fall into the same fearful state, believing that if Stalin could not save them then maybe the god they had rejected so fiercely would. Sad to say, both usually failed the doomed men.
“This is Farkas, Anka, and Sergeant Renfield, another Englishman,” her father introduced everyone. “Count Dracula.”
“Prince,” Dracula corrected, and made a slight, formal bow. At this Renfield moved forward with an alacrity that Lucille had never seen, startling everyone, and threw himself at the vampire’s feet.
“Master,” Renfield whispered in what could only be said was reverence. Harker pried the man off the floor and sat him in a corner where the Sergeant eyed Dracula’s every move.
“This is an abomination,” Anka said with a harsh tone.
“Desperate diseases require desperate remedies,” Van Helsing told her. “He has agreed to fight for us.”
“No.” Anka shook her head. “Never.”
“None of my people will fight alongside this . . . repulsive demon,” Farkas swore.
“Watch your tongue,” Dracula warned and stepped toward Farkas, who leapt away. “You are a fortunate man. I swore to Doctor Van Helsing that I would not harm any of his allies. But that does not give you the freedom to treat me with disrespect.”
“Everyone, please.” Van Helsing raised his hands for some amity. “We all agree that we need to do something to abet our cause. Does anyone have an alternative?”
No one spoke. Lucille smiled and filled the silence. “Can we just put these old superstitions aside? We need all the help we can find.”
She had been scrutinising the vampire, curious, comparing what she saw before her with the image from the sensational accounts she had heard as a child. She was confounded by the mustache. Bela Lugosi was clean-shaven. And this one did not skulk as the actor had, but held himself in a stately, regal manner.
He became aware of her inspection and she saw that he was suddenly self-conscious about the state of his garments. His knee poked through a rent in his trousers, the once-white shirt was discoloured by a meandering splotch of green-black mould, and his dinner jacket was barely hanging together by a few strained threads.
Lucille caught a glimpse of his discomfiture, a fleeting hint of his embarrassment that he
quickly covered with an imperious nonchalance. She found the reflex humanised him, a peek at the mortal who once resided inside.
The duality made him unexpectedly attractive.
Dracula was in turn examining Lucille. In his eyes she was beautiful, none of the maidenly reticence that he remembered of most women.
Van Helsing saw the silent interaction between the two. “So sorry. My manners. This is my daughter, Lucille.”
Dracula frowned at the Professor. “Your daughter?” He turned back to the young woman, perusing her features. “Ah, yes, I see the resemblance, the intelligence in the eyes.”
She smiled at him, accepting the compliment.
“May we return to the discussion at hand?” Anka demanded. “Without the presence of . . . this.” She turned a cold eye to Dracula. Lucille stepped forward, between the vampire and Anka, staring down the old woman.
“Do that,” Lucille said. “Meanwhile I’ll take the gentleman upstairs and put him in some decent clothes.”
“That would be much appreciated.” Dracula smiled at her in thanks. “If I walk around in these rags much longer I might find myself in a state of dishabille. It might shock your delicate sensibilities.”
“I doubt there are any to shock, sir,” Lucille replied.
Van Helsing was acutely aware that there was something happening between the two and was immediately afraid for his willful daughter. Harker was also aware of the subtle signals the pair was sending. But both men had more important matters on their hands and turned to deal with the recalcitrant partisans.
“Come with me.” Lucille started toward the stairs. “I’m sure Mihaly has something that will fit.”
Lucille walked up the stairs and Dracula followed her. Renfield rushed to join them and once again Harker had to restrain his demented Sergeant.
Dracula vs. Hitler Page 14
