“When was this meeting?” Lucy asked. “And why was I not told?”
“We knew you would object,” Anka replied. “It is final. We will not associate with this beast.” She gave Dracula her baleful best.
“Even if it means the Germans win?” Lucy asked. “Don’t be childish.”
“This is unholy!” Anka spat.
“Superstitious claptrap,” I said, surprising myself by again defending the Prince.
Anka shot me that same baleful glare. “It would be best for you to remember this, young Englishman,” she said with some vehemence. “We are in Transylvania, and Transylvania is not England. Our ways are not your ways.”
I withdrew from the circle for the moment, properly chastised, knowing I had stepped outside my bailiwick.
“What happens when the Nazis are defeated?” Farkas asked. “Then he will turn on us for his abominable desires.”
“A bit melodramatic, don’t you think?” Dracula commented drily. “Are you sure you know me well enough to predict my behaviour?”
“We all saw your behaviour on the train,” Pavel murmured.
“My grandmother knew you well enough to have a stake driven through her heart,” Anka said through gritted teeth. “My grandfather was the one to cut off her head. He never recovered from that dreadful act. The stories he told . . . This monster took our children; babies were lost to the godless beast.”
“Babies?” Dracula’s brow furrowed. “Where did this nonsense originate?”
Anka stood up and stepped toward the vampire, her face twisted with vehemence. “We will not abide you, demon!”
“Father.” Lucy turned to her father to intercede. He was closest to the stout woman. But Van Helsing shook his head.
“I’ve argued myself hoarse,” he said. “I am but one vote. I cannot force anyone to do anything, as much as I think they are wrong. So very wrong. “
“We will manage,” Anka said. With that Anka requested that Dracula leave the meeting.
The Van Helsings, Renfield, and I left with him. On the street, walking to the car, the silence was broken by the vampire.
“They will be slaughtered if they attack the munitions factory, will they not?” He addressed me.
“I am afraid so,” I told him. “It is heavily fortified. And the only tactic I have ever heard from any of them is the frontal attack.”
“They will have the element of surprise,” Lucy offered.
“Surprise is of little advantage if you are outnumbered,” Van Helsing countered. “Plus, the enemy is firmly ensconced. Lives will certainly be lost.”
“Perhaps an intercession on my part might save their lives,” Dracula said.
“You alone?” I asked.
“I’ll help you,” Lucy responded immediately.
“And me, Master,” Renfield chimed in.
“I will, of course, assist in any manner possible,” I told them. Surely if a woman and a mental defective could enlist in this suicide mission, I had no choice but to throw my hat into the ring.
“But just the five of us?” Van Helsing frowned. “Impossible.”
“I have an intimate acquaintance with impossibilities.” Dracula smiled.
EXCERPTED FROM THE UNPUBLISHED NOVEL THE DRAGON PRINCE AND I
by Lenore Van Muller
Lucille and Dracula strolled alongside the wall that surrounded the munitions factory. It was a long walk. The facility occupied four large blocks of the neighbourhood. The neighbouring structures were mostly other, smaller industries and office buildings.
The night was quiet, the other businesses closed, even the clothing factories. Only the muted rumble and clatter of the machines beyond the wall accompanied Lucille’s footsteps upon the concrete walkway. The vampire’s tread was as silent as a cat’s.
Lucille could almost pretend that rather than conducting a reconnaissance, she and the Prince were on a lover’s amble under the half moonlight. They even held hands to maintain the romantic masquerade for any observers, casual or otherwise. His hand was cool in hers, but she was now accustomed to the chill of his touch, even welcomed it. The contact gave her a sublime sense of intimacy with him.
Dark, rolling clouds overhead gave the air the oppressive sense of incipient thunder.
They completed one circuit of the entire complex, finally meeting young Harker waiting where they had started their walk. He was leaning against the wall smoking his pipe, dressed as a hobo.
“All quiet?” Harker asked.
Lucille nodded.
“Same here,” he said.
“Well, this seems to be as good a spot and time as any,” Dracula said, eyeing the top of the wall eight feet above their heads.
“Shall we commence with some mayhem?” Lucille asked. “Here, boost me up.”
“Boost?” Dracula looked puzzled.
“Help me over the wall,” she explained.
“The plan, as articulated by your father,” Dracula said, “is for you to attack from the outside.”
“It’s not a wise idea,” Harker chimed in. “To deviate from the mission plan at the last minute.”
“As usual, it appears that I am outnumbered,” she replied. “Three men against one woman.”
“Equal odds,” Dracula said with a smile. “If you are that woman.”
“I’ll give you a hand up,” Lucille offered with her own wry grin and cupped her entwined fingers. The vampire ignored the offered assist, flexed his knees, and leapt straight up to land deftly atop the wall, standing on the narrow support post as easily as a squirrel on a telephone wire.
Lucille stared up at him. Then she and Harker shared a sigh. She turned her head back to Dracula.
“Show-off,” she said.
The vampire reached down and stretched a hand toward Harker.
“You can change your mind,” Dracula offered the Englishman.
“A Harker never shrinks from duty,” the young man said and nodded to Lucille. She again cupped her hands and he put his foot in the maiden-made stirrup. With a heft from her and a leap of his own, Harker was lifted high enough for Dracula to grab his outflung hand.
Dracula pulled the young man to the top of the wall as easily as hoisting a baby. Harker’s pant leg caught on the barbed wire and tore, but he was otherwise unharmed.
The vampire turned to nod and smile at Lucille, then leapt to the other side and out of sight. Harker followed.
Her part finished, Lucille hurried away from the wall, remembering that smile.
FROM THE WAR JOURNAL OF J. HARKER
(transcribed from shorthand)
Dracula swooped down from the wall, landing as gracefully as a ballet dancer after a majestic leap. He held his arms up to me, and I bounded down from my precarious perch. He caught me easily, like a fireman catches a baby, and set me onto my feet. For a moment I felt the steel-like sinews of his arms. It was as if the man were made of cast iron.
We started for the factory. To get there we had to pass the quarters for the workers and security personnel. The eight barracks were of wooden slat construction, built a foot or two above the ground. There were gaps in the siding where the wood had warped, probably green when they built the structure, revealing a cheap and hasty construction. The factory and the various outbuildings were comprised of brick and cement block; the smaller structures, ugly utilitarian rectangles, mostly single-storey. The plant itself was three storeys at least, a quarter of a mile in length. The peaked roof had a line of windows running down the centre, some of the panes hinged open to vent the fetid air that accumulated inside. The glass was grimy to near opacity. In fact, everything about us was coated with a century of soot and grime that painted the whole landscape with a drab greyness. Under the pale moon, the world resembled a black-and-white photograph. Even the newer barracks were already dusted black, making them appear as old as the rest. A heavy rain had fallen a few hours before, turning the ground into a muddy wallow, but the buildings looked as if they had never been washed by anything
but a chimney sweep’s broom.
My relief at the ease of our intrusion into the enemy’s perimeter was precipitously interrupted with the sudden appearance of two sentries. They were being towed by a pair of giant Rottweilers as they emerged from around the corner of one of the barracks.
At seeing us, the dogs immediately began to whine and snarl, straining at their leashes, giving the handlers almost more than they could manage.
“Bismarck!” shouted one sentry, calming his instantly obedient beast.
“Krupt!” yelled the other to the same effect.
I then realised that the guards were wearing German uniforms. My previous reconnaissance had revealed only a Rumanian guard detail. And no canine patrols.
“You there!” one of the Nazis bellowed at us in German. “Halt! Now!”
I stopped in my tracks. But Dracula kept walking, nonchalantly striding across the grounds as casually as if taking a Sunday stroll. I guess you can maintain that kind of attitude if you are immortal. I, on the other hand, mere mortal, paused. Dracula, though, walked directly toward the pair of dogs and men.
“Halt!” The order came again, directly aimed at the vampire, as both guards unslung their rifles.
My hand slipped to the sling of my own sub-machine gun, a Thompson that I had acquired by airdrop. American-made, the .45-calibre weapon favored by gangsters and FBI agents. A fine gun that did me no good hanging on my back and under my coat. An unconscionable blunder. I knew I could not bring it to bear before one of the guards fired.
Dracula ignored the command and waved at the men. The dogs were in a restrained frenzy now, fangs bared, spittle flying from growling muzzles.
The sentries reached down and let loose their hounds from the leashes. The two animals sprung forward, a few hundred pounds of teeth and claws launched directly at Dracula. I reached behind me for the Thompson, but the two guards raised their rifles to their shoulders and put me in their sights. I froze my hand.
The Rottweilers were only a few metres from Dracula when he raised one hand, palm toward the beasts.
And the canines stopped dead, paws skidding in the mud, eyes fixed upon the vampire.
Dracula pointed his index finger to the sky and gave it a slight twirl. I was astonished to witness the slavering curs make an obedient about-face as if they were on a stage in Picadilly. And then I was even more dumbfounded—as were their masters, I assume—as the animals charged their handlers.
The two guards abruptly had to turn the aim of their rifles from me to their own dogs.
“Bismarck! Halt!”
“Krupt! Halt!”
The animals ignored the order. They pounced on the men, tearing at their throats in a mad mutilation. There was a ghastly sound of men wailing, a gnashing of teeth. I heard a wet tearing, guttural howls, and screams so animalistic that it was difficult to tell if the origin was man or beast.
Dracula paid little mind to the mayhem and continued on his original path to the factory. I followed. Glancing back at the two sentries, I saw that the men’s bodies were still and the beasts were feasting, their muzzles bloody with gore. I was suddenly reminded of Dracula, covered in Nazi blood. I shook my head, dismissing the vile picture, and hurried after the vampire, glad that he was on my side.
Our path took us between the shoddy barracks. I trotted past the windows, mostly broken, some stuffed with newspapers or rags. An odour wafted from these sad domiciles, a distinct tang of sweat and misery.
We crossed the open field that separated the barracks from the immense manufacturing building, the black mud sucking at our boots, a wet gasp with every sticky release. There were no more encounters with any guards.
When we made it to the factory wall, Dracula once again crouched and jumped. This flight sent him up onto the roof. I sprinted along the wall, bent down to keep my head below the windows, until I found a door. It hung open, and I was able to peer through the gap between the hinges and observe the factory proper.
A great din rolled into the night air, metal against metal, the clatter and clang of hammer and anvil, the thunderous boom of the gargantuan presses and every clangorous racket in between. There was a keening cry of the lathes peeling steel, the occasional great bellow of a furnace belching flaming gouts of fire into the air. Steam billowed under ochre lights, and the labourers toiled over their oily, glinting machines. Some of the men were stripped to the waist because of the wet heat, their bodies shiny with sweat.
Overhead, two guards patrolled the catwalk thirty feet above the assembly line. The moon was barely perceptible through the dirty strip of windows that ran across the ceiling. Looking up, I thought I saw a shadow flit across the sulphured panes.
The catwalk ended at an office with a stairway to the floor below. Large windows lined the office to allow the occupants easy viewing of the workers. Situated below the office was a tool room, labelled as such with a sign over the half door. There labourers had their drill bits sharpened, tools supplied or replaced.
Upstairs, the office lights were on and I could see four men playing cards at a desk, smoking and laughing. Two wore the distinctive uniform of the Gestapo.
On ground level, four guards ambled among the workers. They, like the catwalk soldiers, were Rumanian Army.
I stole inside, backed into a deep shadow behind a huge chunk of iron and steel, what appeared to be an abandoned piece of equipment. I brought up my Thompson and followed the catwalk sentries with my front sight. I had fired the Thompson once, as part of my weapon familiarization training in England. It was not an accurate gun, but what it lacked there it made up for in volume, spitting out bullets at a rate of 720 to 850 rounds per minute, depending on the model. And the bullets were of the formidable .45-calibre, powerful enough to knock down an ox.
One of the catwalk sentries reached the far end of his scaffolding and was about to turn around and repeat his route when Dracula slipped down through the canted window like he had been poured through it. The sentry stared for a moment, most likely briefly stunned by the apparition. From what Dracula told me later, the guard was even more astonished than I supposed. The vampire had mesmerised the man into believing that it was not a man but a mist that floated through the window opening.
The guard peered through the roof window aperture into the clear night. There was no fog out there. Where did this crawling mist come from?
He approached the cloud with a tentative step, bent his neck, and squinted his eyes to inspect the phenomenon a bit closer.
Totally in the grip of the hypnotic spell, the guard stared in amazement at what he, in his mesmerised state, saw as mist formed into foggy hands. One floated toward his groin while the other wrapped misty fingers around the guard’s neck. Both vaporous hands suddenly gripped crotch and throat, and miraculously lifted him into the air.
At this point he awakened enough to scream.
Too late. The man’s body was brought down sharply, slamming his back onto the catwalk railing. I could hear the crack clearly, even above the mechanical cacophony. The dead guard was flung over the side and landed in the maw of one of the growling machines below, and was subsequently chopped into stew meat.
Dracula started down the catwalk toward the second guard, who turned in time to see the vampire and aim his weapon.
A certain Sergeant Major Sadler taught me how to be effective with a sub-machine gun given its poor accuracy and limited range. “Pretend it’s a bleeding garden hose, aim low, and walk the stream of rounds up into your target. Not very efficient, but bloody effective.” To achieve this he taught me to load a tracer round every third shell in the magazine, then one could watch the trajectory as an orange trail arcing toward the target. So, being the proper pupil, I now aimed at the catwalk below the sentry. The first bullet struck the wooden planking, sending a shower of slivers into the air. As I elevated the muzzle, the bullets climbed and the fifth or sixth round hit the guard in the chest. The big slug blew the man right off his feet, and he plummeted to the floor below. Ther
e was no notice of this on the ground floor or in the office. Thankfully, the scream and machine-gun fire were lost in the din of factory noise.
It was at this time that I heard a tremendous crash and felt the floor jolt under my feet. I turned to see a great steel plow blade come to a shuddering stop inside the factory, the remains of the wall cascading around the steaming grill of a lorry. Van Helsing and Lucy had arrived.
Dracula nodded a thanks to me and began striding to the office. But a floor guard below had nearly been crushed by his fallen comrade and was instantly alerted to something amiss above him. He looked up and aimed his shotgun at the vampire. He fired. The shotgun pellets splattered against the steel catwalk supports, blowing a hole through the wooden planking and shredding the hem of Dracula’s cape.
I searched for the shooter, but he had ducked to safety behind a lathe.
EXCERPTED FROM THE UNPUBLISHED NOVEL THE DRAGON PRINCE AND I
by Lenore Van Muller
Lucille hurried from the wall, sprinting down the street to where her father waited behind the wheel of a stolen truck. They had parked a long block away from the factory. She climbed into the cab. Her stomach was churning with worry for the two men she had just helped step into the mouth of the beast. She checked her Luger, confirming that a round was chambered.
Renfield sat next to Van Helsing, the English soldier’s knees nervously vibrating up and down like pistons. He clutched a large satchel in his lap, knuckles white and eyes wide with excitement.
Her father kept his gaze on the factory gate some two hundred metres ahead of them. The road where they had parked the truck led directly to the factory entrance. The kerb was lined with a few other trucks, so their vehicle did not draw any untoward attention, just another hauler.
“They are over the wall,” Lucille informed them. “Anything here?”
“Still much the same,” Van Helsing told her. “But don’t those guards seem to be preternaturally alert for such a late hour?”
Dracula vs. Hitler Page 33
