At last he pulled the horses to a stop in a small clearing on level ground no more than a couple of hundred yards below the castle. Having come this close, Mina was content to rest and wait; and here her guardian, moving quickly as night was coming on, established a kind of camp. With plenty of dead wood available here, he built up a roaring fire. And around this campfire Van Helsing, using crumbled holy wafers and holy water, traced a wide circle on the hard earth with its thin covering of snow.
Then, moving wearily, but still glad of the chance to keep moving in the cold, Van Helsing prepared some food; fortunately they had been able to obtain fresh supplies at several places on their journey.
Mina, meanwhile, seemed to become ever more awake and alert, obviously energized by the night. She sat on her haunches, in a pose he found disturbingly, ominously unladylike, watching Van Helsing with a look of bright anticipation. All traces of her long suffering, and of weariness, seemed to have dropped away.
When the contents of the pot resting by the fire were hot—it was leftover stew, carried frozen from the day before—Van Helsing ladled some into a bowl and brought it to Mina.
"You must eat something, child."
"Why have you now begun to call me 'child'?"
He did not answer.
She accepted the bowl from Van Helsing's hands, but then, to his silent concern, only set it down beside the fire.
"I am not hungry." The young woman's voice sounded wide-awake but quite remote.
The old man was displeased at this reaction, but he was not at all surprised. Without comment he returned to his own place on the other side of the fire—still carefully within the circle. There he sat on a piece of wood, a little warmer than sitting in the snow, eating from his own bowl and watching his young charge uneasily.
At that moment, from somewhere not very far outside the circle of firelight, there came a sound that gave him the sensation of his hair standing up; as if someone had drawn an icy finger down his spine. What he heard was the soft, silken, tingling sound of feminine laughter, almost unbearable in its exquisite sweetness…
The old man was afraid to look around. It chilled him to see the expression on Mina's face. It was a bright look, not at all fearful. Her eyes were interested—yes, even amused—as she gazed over Van Helsing's shoulder, at something—or someone—she was evidently able to see quite plainly in the snowy darkness.
just back there over his shoulder—somewhere quite nearby in the snow, and in the night—three feminine voices ceased to laugh. Now they spoke, in a language Van Helsing could understand, though he had not heard it spoken for many years:
"You, sister by the fire—you take him first—but leave some sweets for us—"
"He is old, but stout. There will be kisses for us, too—"
"We will all feast, before the Master comes—"
The professor felt quite certain that Mina in her present state, though ordinarily she did not know the ancient tongue, was quite capable of understanding what was being said to her by these women, these vampires who claimed to be her sisters. Still she did not appear to be paying them any particular attention. It was almost as if she could not hear them at all, or—ominously—was pretending she could not.
Mina's gaze, eerily cheerful but sympathetic, had come to remain fixed upon Van Helsing.
He tried to speak, but his mouth was dry, and for once he could not think of anything to say.
Now suddenly his companion bounced—there was no other word for such an animal movement—shirting her weight on the log where she was sitting. And with the movement, her fur robe opened as if by accident, and the upper part of her inner clothing parted as well. Suddenly one of her breasts had become completely revealed, but Mina seemed completely unaware that this had happened—or else she was utterly indifferent to the fact.
Her red lips parted in a smile, strongly suggested that she was not so indifferent after all. In the next moment she arose suddenly, a sinuous and graceful movement, and came around the fire to Van Helsing's side.
He did not move, he thought he dared not speak. He seemed unable to tear his eyes from the young woman's partially exposed body. With some remote portion of his mind the old professor was aware that this was very like what Jonathan Harker had experienced in the castle; this was what the vampire's victims always felt.
Mina sat down very close to him. Her attitude was not so much flirtatious as friendly, conversational.
"You are so good to me, Professor. I want to do something for you in return… something that will give you joy." After allowing him to consider that for a moment, she added: "Shall I tell you a secret?"
"What?" It required a tremendous effort to get out even a single word.
"It's about Lucy." Mina's dark eyes twinkled with silent laughter. "She harbored secret desires for you. She told me so. And you must have secret thoughts, wishes, of your own… I, too, know what men desire. "
At first Mina's touch upon Van Helsing's shoulder, his arm, his hair, was almost motherly. Gently she pulled his head down into a position where he might rest against her. How badly he needed rest! But then at once—why had he not understood, a moment ago, that this must happen?—her bare breast, the nipple erect, was pressed against his cheek, between his lips…
Perhaps it was only the mocking background laughter of the three demonic women that enabled him to break the spell. With a hoarse cry, exerting all his strength, Van Helsing managed to struggle free of Mina's embrace. With shaking hands he rumbled into an inner pocket of his coat, extracted a tin box, and from it produced a holy wafer.
Now he was free to speak, to pour out words into the night. "Domine, Christos—Lord Christ, bless this child! Deliver her from evil—"
Van Helsing's pressing of the wafer to Mina's forehead, a gesture meant as benediction, had instead an effect that caused him to instinctively recoil. Her soft skin seared at the touch, as if the Sacrament had been a red-hot iron.
Mina, her forehead now branded by a scarlet mark, reeled back screaming.
"I am his!" she cried out. And a moment later she lay on the cold ground, gasping.
Van Helsing, moving on instinct, hastened to reinforce his sacred ring with holy water that had almost frozen in its flask.
When the flask was empty, he, too, collapsed, muttering to Mina: "I have lost Lucy. I will not lose you."
Dracula's women, prowling baffled outside the circle, hissed at him: "None is safer from us than her. She is our sister now!"
Raising his head and shoulders, the professor summoned up enough energy to curse them. "Bitches of the devil! Satan's whores! Leave us, this is holy ground!"
Enraged and frustrated by his defensive measures, the three vampire women rushed at the horses. The horses whinnied and cowered, and moaned in terror and pain as humans do—but they could not escape. Van Helsing had to watch them being torn to bloody bits while all the time the women laughed. They took a long time with their sport, killing the four horses as painfully as possible, and he looked on helplessly until his senses failed him.
20
The professor awoke a little after sunrise, shivering with cold even inside his several layers of fur. For a long moment he did not know where he was, or what he had been doing; then the nightmarish reality of his position returned to him.
Mina, he saw to his vast relief, was sleeping quietly, decently and warmly wrapped in her furs, and still within the circle of protection. Slowly, stiffly, the old man got himself erect, brushing snow from his furs. Very carefully Van Helsing approached Madam Mina, bent over her as she slept, and reached out a hand to put back the fur hood, and her own dark hair, from her forehead.
Yes, it was as he had feared.
In the place where the Host had touched her skin, the devil's mark now burned, scarlet as sin itself.
The professor thought that she, contaminated with the vampire's blood, would not be able to pass out of the holy circle unaided now, any more than those three women had been able to pass in.
Those
three were out of his sight and hearing now. They had retreated, as he had expected they would have to do, with the coming of the sun. And Van Helsing knew, from Harker's account of his experiences in the castle, exactly where they must have gone. And he knew what he himself must do now—the terrible things he had come here to do.
Well, last night's perils, culminating in the sadistic slaughter of the horses, had nerved him for the effort—if indeed his determination had needed any reinforcement.
Moving on cramped limbs, slow and numb with cold, he built up the fire, which was almost dead. For once the thought of food disgusted him, but he knew that he would need his strength.
Averting his eyes from the mangled bodies of the horses, Van Helsing went to the wagon and from the wrapped-up stores it contained got bread, and dried meat, and a flask of brandy.
Mina still slept, curled in her warm wrappings. As far as the professor could see, it was a natural sleep—if it was not, well, he could do no more for her than he had done already.
Having eaten, forcing down distasteful food, and taken a little brandy as a stimulant, Van Helsing picked up his bag—the one containing the special tools that he was going to need. Then, with a trembling inner anticipation, feelings he fought against acknowledging to himself, he began the steep climb to the castle's forbidding bulk.
He glanced back only once, before he had climbed very far. Mina would be all right while he was gone; she would simply have to be. He had no choice but to leave her here, unprotected, for a daylight hour or two. Van Helsing thought the worst thing that could happen to her would be an attack by wolves—real wolves, beasts of nature. But as to that she would have to take her chances. Though there might be danger to her body, yet her soul was safe! What he had to defend against was something terribly worse.
It was an hour later, and full daylight, when Van Helsing emerged from the gloomy castle gateway. He was staggering with fresh exhaustion, barely able to move. Cradled in his hands, against the newly blood-soaked fur of his outer coat, he was carrying the three vampire women's freshly severed heads. With hoarse cries the professor hurled the grisly objects, one by one, over the nearby precipice, so that they fell into the river far below.
As sunset drew near, Van Helsing, having slept and eaten again, was somewhat restored; and so, to his great relief, was Mina, who on awakening seemed almost normal. When she stared, as if puzzled, at the blood on his coat, he muttered a few words suggesting that it had come from the dead horses. She did not pursue the matter further.
Shortly after Mina had awakened, and the professor had cajoled her into drinking some hot tea, the two of them by mutual agreement moved from their overnight campsite to a nearby promontory from which they could better overlook the nearest road. This was the way along which, if all their calculations as to routes and times were right, Dracula and his pursuers must approach.
Of course, if their calculations should be wrong… then the men Van Helsing was counting on might be already dead, and the vampire prince victorious after all.
Mina had been staring into the distance along the road for what seemed like hours. Now suddenly she announced: "He comes!"
Van Helsing squinted in the same direction, but was at first unable to discern any movement. When he took up a pair of field glasses, he was at last able to see something that made him cry out.
"They race the sunset—they may be too late—God help us!"
The howling of wolves rose from the dusky forest clothing the nearby hills and the mountains' lower slopes. In the distance, now readily visible with the glasses, a wagon and its mounted escort of Gypsies was racing closer at top speed. And—the professor's heart rose at the sight—four men on horses were in close pursuit of the wagon. A minute later Quincey Morris's unmistakable rebel yell was clearly audible on the crag where Mina and Van Helsing waited.
Puffs of smoke, followed by the faint crackle of rifle fire, announced that the Winchesters had been brought into action.
Some important idea had suddenly occurred to Mina; or perhaps she had heard a call, though her companion had heard nothing of the kind. For whatever reason, she had turned her back suddenly on the chase so plainly visible below and started to climb, with renewed energy, toward where the castle towered against a darkening sky.
The professor stared, then cried out: "Madam Mina! Wait!"
But she gave no sign that she had heard him. Van Helsing, worried anew, lumbered after her as best he could.
The wagon, following the road, traveled a longer course than the people who climbed on foot. Still, it was moving much faster than Mina and Van Helsing were able to negotiate the rough terrain between the loops of road. The vehicle went roaring and clattering past the man and woman as they climbed. Both could see it lurching on ahead of them, the driver whipping the exhausted horses, still escorted by a handful of Gypsies riding horseback.
And after them the hunters galloped.
The great leiter-wagon was almost at the castle when the four pursuing riders overtook it and did their best to force it to a halt. With gunfire, sabers, and huge knives, three Englishmen and an American fought their way through the fanatical defense put up by Dracula's remaining escort.
Harker leaped from his saddle onto the wagon, and its driver lashed at him with his whip; but Quincey Morris shot the man down.
The wagon, accompanied by its remaining escort and pursuers, all intermingled now, thundered through the tunnel and into the castle's courtyard.
Mina and Van Helsing, making the best speed afoot that they were able, followed. He could not manage to catch up with her, and lacked the breath to call to her.
Wolves were still howling all around them.
They stumbled into the courtyard only in time to see the conclusion of the fight.
Dr. Seward ran a Gypsy through with his saber, protecting Mina and Van Helsing.
Quincey, slashed in the back by another Gypsy, went down fighting.
Holmwood fired his pistol and finished off Quincey's assailant, the last of Dracula's allies.
Jonathan Harker, ignoring the fighting that still raged around him, concentrating with the intensity of a madman upon his own unshakable purpose, had just started to cut the ropes binding Dracula's box of earth to the wagon when the lid of the box exploded upward, and the pale-faced, white-haired figure inside burst out with a roar, grabbing for Harker's throat. Both men, struggling, fell to the ground.
Mina screamed in horror, as her husband, swinging his great, curved kukri knife, slashed his enemy's throat almost from ear to ear. Dracula's blood gushed out.
And at that moment Quincey, calling on his last reserves of strength, regained his feet and came forward in a diving lunge, to plunge his bowie knife into Dracula's heart.
The vampire's life was ebbing swiftly, yet he still had enough strength left to fling the Texan aside into the snow. Then Dracula, still proudly erect, eyes glaring as if into a distance only he could see, legs staggering, pouring gore from heart and throat, turned away from his enemies to begin a tottering retreat toward the door of the old chapel.
Mina moved quickly to grab up Quincey's Winchester. Then she rushed to take a stance between the dying monster and her victorious friends. To their vast astonishment, she leveled the rifle straight at her husband as he stood in their midst.
For the first time in hours—perhaps in days—Harker's murderous expression softened.
"Mina!"
Dracula, his face now horribly transformed, becoming a very countenance of death, turned to her also.
"Mina?" His tone was tender and loving.
For an agonizing moment she held the dying man's gaze. Then, when Dracula averted his face and resumed his dragging progress toward the chapel, Mina backed slowly after him. Still she held the Winchester resolutely leveled at the men.
Speaking into a taut silence, she demanded of the four still on their feet: "When my time comes, will you do the same to me? Will you?"
Holmwood would have rushed at her a
nd tried to grab the weapon away, but Harker, understanding now, put out an arm to hold him back.
"No, let them go. Let her go."
Van Helsing nodded knowingly.
Mina backed slowly after Dracula into the dark doorway of the chapel. She never wavered in her determination to keep the men away from him, until what was about to happen could be concluded.
From inside, she pushed the massive door shut in their faces.
Outside, Van Helsing let the weapon he had picked up fall to the ground. Facing the chapel, swaying on his feet in weariness, he bowed his head, praying intensely.
Suddenly Harker cried out: "What is in there?"
Van Helsing looked up once. "It is the chapel."
No one asked him how he knew that, any more than they had asked him how all the dried blood came on his furs; but Harker accepted the answer as reassuring.
Once more the old man bowed his head and prayed: "Rest him… let him sleep in peace. We have all become God's madmen."
Meanwhile Dr. Seward was cradling the dying Quincey; there was nothing more that any physician or surgeon could do for him.
Inside the chapel, Mina and Dracula had both come to rest upon the very altar steps where, more than four centuries earlier, Elisabeth's dead body had lain.
She said now: "You cannot leave me. I want to be with you—always." And she gripped the handle of the bowie knife still protruding from his chest, and nerved herself for the effort to pull it out.
Dracula's own fingers, already wasted, as if by magic, to little more than bone, crept up the shaft to prevent her. His voice was only a rattling among dried bones and leaves.
He said: "You must let me die."
She stared down into his eyes; cradled him, kissed him, tenderly smoothed his white, matted hair. "No, please. I love you."
He shook his head, very slightly. "Mortal love can have no hold—on us. Our love will last for all eternity. Release me. Give me peace."
Outside the chapel door, Harker was pacing nervously. Arthur Holmwood, pacing, too, stopped suddenly to pound a futile fist against the wood.
Bram Stoker's Dracula Page 20
