Seward didn’t come. Harker arrived at nine, springing up the steps like Sir Lancelot after dispatching a not-very-fearsome dragon. Renfield waited at the window, watching the reflected splotches of golden light from the asylum’s windows perish one by one against the night-shrouded laurels, until only one remained.
Somewhere in the darkness, a dog began to bark. Other dogs, everywhere in the neighborhood, took up the cry, and in the padded room, muffled by the coir mats of the walls, Lord Alyn howled as if in response. Like the dogs, the other patients added their voices to his, Renfield picking them out as Cockneys pick out the voices of the City’s churchbells.
Oranges and lemons,
Say the bells of St. Clemmons.
Demons scratch at my door,
Screams Emily Strathmore.
How the dark night has fall’n,
Howls Andrew, Lord Alyn.
Mist began to creep over the garden wall. In the veiled sky, the moon was barely more than a fingernail, yet Renfield saw clearly the slow seep of those winding vapors toward the house. Terror filled him. He rushed to the door, pressed his face to the judas, but Simmons was gone from the hall; it seemed every man on the wing had begun to scream and pound the walls, and Renfield’s cries were swept away in the not-uncommon torrent that Seward and Hennessey had long since ceased to hear.
“Dr. Seward!” Renfield screamed. “He is coming! He is coming! Get Mrs. Harker out of the house!”
The gas-lights showed him a hallway blank and empty as if it were a thousand feet underground.
Chill touched him, like an evil wind. Turning, Renfield saw the first curls of mist seeping under the casement, flowing down the wall.
He turned back to the window, spread out his hands. “Get out! I forbid you to enter this place!”
Outside the window, the mists congealed in the thin glow of the moon. Renfield saw the glaring red eyes, the red mouth open and laughing, a terrible laugh. Saw the sharpness of the white teeth.
“Get out, I tell you! I renounce you and all your works! Begone, and trouble this house no more!”
And in his mind, Wotan’s voice whispered against the pounding leitmotif of Wagner, It is too late for that.
The mists pooled, where the small glow of the gas-light from the hall fell through the judas. Flowed upward in a column, in which burned two crimson eyes.
Renfield shrieked, “Leave her alone, for she has never harmed you!” and threw himself at the shadow that was forming within those mists, behind the burning eyes.
CHAPTER TWENTY
In agony, Renfield dreamed.
He saw Mina Harker in her room—it had the same wallpaper as Dr. Seward’s study and the hall in the men’s wing of the house—and the sickly light of that fingernail moon barely touched the edges of the window-frame, the bedposts, the china ewer on the dresser. Jonathan Harker lay beside her, so deeply asleep that Renfield thought the Count must have broken his back, as he had broken Renfield’s…
…broken it and left him lying in agony, dying in a pool of blood on the floor of his cell.
From a great distance Renfield was aware of himself, of pain like a thousand sawing red-hot knives. He was aware, just as vividly, of the Count, standing beside the bed in the guest-room downstairs.
The Count held Mina Harker in the iron circle of his arm, the black of his clothing and his cloak like an enfolding storm-cloud around the simple white linen of her night-dress. Her head lay back against his shoulder, her black hair, escaping from its braid, a marvelous inky torrent flowing to her waist. She made no sound, raised no cry, but her dark eyes were open, staring up at the Count’s face in revulsion, horror, fear that had nothing in it of panic blankness.
She knew what was being done to her.
The Count’s head was bent over hers, his mouth pressed to her throat. Blood ran down her breast onto her night-dress.
More pain. The dream splintered as if every bone in Renfield’s body were shattering with it. Renfield opened his eyes, saw Van Helsing’s face.
He couldn’t breathe. His whole body felt as if every joint, every muscle were locked in vises of incandescent iron. Tangled memories of Dracula hurling him to the floor, beating his head on the boards.
He tasted blood in his mouth, smelled it everywhere in the room. Lamplight burned his eyes. Quincey Morris had a lamp, so did Lord Godalming, both men tousled in pyjamas, hair hanging in their eyes. Van Helsing was dressed, in shirtsleeves, Seward likewise. There was blood on their sleeves, glaringly dark in the orange light, like Mrs. Harker’s, trickling down her night-dress.
“I’ll be quiet, Doctor,” Renfield whispered. “Tell them to take off the strait-waistcoat. I have had a terrible dream.”
I dreamed I was insane.
I dreamed that I was locked in a madhouse, from April to the threshold of bitter winter, with no one to care for me, no one to love me, no one to touch me or talk to me in the deep of the night.
I dreamed of Catherine, lying asleep in the moonlight of our room…
He blinked. “It has left me so weak that I cannot move. What’s wrong with my face? It feels swollen…smarts…” He tried to move his head, and darkness came over him.
“Tell us your dream, Mr. Renfield,” said Van Helsing softly.
“Van Helsing,” Renfield whispered. “It is good of you to be here. Water…”
Darkness again. Darkness and pain, and the yawning abyss where more pain waited for him—pain and the horrors of things he could barely see and didn’t want to. Then brandy burned his lips, and he opened his eyes again. Van Helsing was still there.
“No,” Renfield whispered. “It was no dream.”
He was dying, and the knowledge gave him a kind of exhilaration, a lightness. There was nothing further that Dracula could do to him. Catherine, he thought, Catherine, I have failed you.
But Mina, at least…Mina—Mrs. Harker—could be saved.
Freed by the knowledge of coming death, he told them of Dracula’s visits, stammeringly at first, then with greater confidence. Of the flies, of Dracula’s promises; of the Count’s coming that night and of how he had tried to stop him, to save Mrs. Harker who had been so kind. Surely, he thought, as he tried to gather breath and strength to speak again, surely now one of them—Van Helsing—will understand, and will go to Catherine, will understand the danger she and Vixie are in, will save them.
But as he was trying to form the words, Van Helsing straightened up away from him: “We know the worst now,” he said to the others. “He is here, and we know his purpose! It may not be too late! Let us be armed…”
Renfield whispered desperately, “Catherine…Promise me…”
But they were already rushing to the door, crowding one another in it in their desperation to go, the lamplight jostling their shadows wildly over the walls.
“Please…” Renfield breathed.
But they were gone. He heard their footsteps thudding down the hall, felt the jarring of their race down the stairs. The gas-light of the hall fell through the open door over him, the thin distant howling of some of the women patients sweeping through the building like the whistle of wind.
He thought, despairingly, Catherine, forgive me! I’ve botched it all up! I only did it for you. It was all for you. And now I will never see you again.
He could not move, and the tears that flowed from his eyes ran down the sides of his face to the bloodied boards of the floor.
Catherine…
Mist curled before his eyes.
Dracula, he thought. Wotan. He has done with Mrs. Harker and he has come to drink my life. Come for the final insult, the final triumph…
Red eyes glowing in the mist.
Then the pale oval of a gentle face, materializing out of the reflected gas-light of the hall. Fair hair like the sunlight that beats on the yellow rocks of the Khyber Pass. The red light died, leaving the eyes that looked into his as blue as pale sapphires, like the deeps of the up-country sky above the Simla Hills.
; She asked, “Will you stay, or go?”
Renfield’s tears flowed harder, grief and guilt and pain. He managed to whisper, “…work yet to do. I must…save them. Help me.”
Without another word, Nomie bent her slim body down, and like gentle kisses drank the blood that was still trickling from the gashes Dracula’s nails had opened in Renfield’s face, from the open wound where Van Helsing had trephined the skull to relieve the haemorrhage inside. Then she undid the pearl buttons of her sleeve, pushing the fragile figured lawn up to reveal an arm no less white than the fabric, and with her long nails slit open the veins.
Somewhere in the house came the rending crash of a door being broken open, men’s voices shouting. Nomie turned her head, listening for an instant, then pressed her bleeding arm to Renfield’s lips. “Trust me,” she breathed, “and drink.”
Her blood tasted coppery on his tongue, sweet and salt at once, like the blood of the men who’d died in the Mutiny, all those years ago under the broiling Indian sun.
“He is ours,” whispered the Countess’s voice, and opening his eyes again, Renfield saw the other two standing behind her. “If he will be so, he will be of us all, my sister.” Kneeling, she ripped the black silk sleeve of her dress, and opened the flesh beneath; while Renfield drank of the blood of her arm, she pressed her lips to his throat. He felt her teeth tear into his flesh, but the sensation was distant, as all sensation was failing.
Sarike opened her bodice, tore the vein above the dusky satin of her breast; lapped the blood off his face like a greedy cat.
“You are ours now,” whispered the Countess, kneeling above him, her uncoiled black hair hanging down to brush his face. “We will carry you through the dark of death. Your soul will be cradled within ours, until such time as it returns to your death-changed flesh. But a portion of that soul will remain forever in our keeping, so long as we ourselves inhabit this world. Do you understand?”
Renfield’s lips formed the words, I understand.
Somewhere in the house a woman screamed, the frantic scream that had nothing in it of insanity, but of too-clear awareness. Mrs. Harker’s voice, thought Renfield, drifting on the borderlands of oblivion. Men’s voices clamoring, then Mrs. Harker’s crying above them, “No! No, Jonathan, you must not leave me!”
Cold began to seep into the room. At first, Renfield thought it was only his own body sinking into death, but the Countess turned her head sharply, whispered, “He is coming.” She and Sarike stood. Nomie remained kneeling beside Renfield, and the Countess reached down and dragged the girl to her feet. For a moment Nomie’s eyes met Renfield’s, before all three women faded into the thready glimmer of the moonlight.
The next moment, the Count was in the room. His face was like a steel mask, with blood smeared down his mouth and streaking the front of his shirt. Shirt and the black silk waistcoat above it were open to the waist, and a bleeding gash on the pectoral muscle showed Renfield where Mrs. Harker’s mouth must have been pressed, to drink of the vampire’s blood. In his cloak Renfield could smell the clinging remains of her dusting-powder, vanilla and sandalwood mingling with the reek of gore.
“And as for you,” Dracula whispered, standing over him, a towering shadow, like Satan rising up from the floor of Hell. “Judas. Are you like them now, who pit their puny brains against me? Who would go against me, with their weak mortality? Who would separate me from what is my own? See how I deal with those who would betray me!”
He bent down and lifted Renfield as if he were a child, raised him over his head. In final despair, Renfield blocked his lips, his mind, from screaming Catherine’s name as he was hurled down into darkness.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Catherine!
Renfield’s eyes opened in panic. He saw only darkness, felt the close bounds of the coffin against his arms and his thighs, but that didn’t trouble him. Trust, Nomie had said, and he had trusted.
It had all taken place, exactly as the Countess Elizabeth had promised: the dark terror, the horrifying agony of separating from his dying body, the dark and hideous intimacy of those three minds cradling his soul among them…
And then the dreams.
Dear God, the dreams!
Catherine…
Renfield brought up his hands to the coffin-lid just above his breast, and thrust. In life he had been a strong man. The lid gave way like cardboard, with a sound that was shocking in the deep silence.
The damp melancholy smell of dying leaves, of turned earth, came to him above the mouldy stink of mortality and wet stone and rats.
Renfield was a little surprised. He was in the family tomb at Highgate. He recognized it, from when they’d buried his parents. He’d have bet money Lady Brough and Georgina would have given instructions that he be sent to a medical college for dissection.
Or was it beneath the dignity of the Brough family to have even a disgraced in-law anatomized by such low creatures as students?
Looking back, with a sense that was not quite sight, he saw that the coffin was of cheap pine. Apparently they drew the line at putting forth a single extra penny on a mere tradesman, an India-merchant who’d had the temerity to refuse their advice about how his daughter should be brought up. As a living man he could have ripped his way out of it, never mind one of a vampire’s preternatural strength. The clothes he wore were those he’d been found in, wandering the streets of London raving last April. They hadn’t even cleared out the pockets: his handkerchief, a few bus-tickets, an old key.
The lingering smell of paraffin within the tomb, and the freshness of the tracked mud near the door, told him he’d been put there that day. Even in total darkness he knew it was sundown that had wakened him. His back no longer hurt, nor his face. He raised his hand to feel his skull above the right ear, where Van Helsing had trephined to relieve the pressure of the blood, and the skin was smooth.
Had they even noticed? he wondered. Or had Seward been so shocked and disoriented by Dracula’s assault on poor Mrs. Harker that he’d simply signed the death certificate and left that drunken imbecile Hennessey to take care of the details?
All this went through his mind in a few distracted moments, as he stood before the tomb’s marble door. None of it mattered to him, nor formed more than a candle’s weak glow against the blazing sun of the thought: I must get to Catherine.
The horror of his dream hammered in his mind.
The door of the tomb was locked. Renfield thought he could have broken it, but he’d seen the other vampires pass through tiny cracks, keyholes and slits, in the form of mist. If they could do it, surely he could, too.
It was a most curious sensation.
He was, as he’d thought, in Highgate Cemetery.
Catherine, he thought again. I must get to her. I must tell her…
He began to run.
He had dreamed about Catherine, dreamed terrible things. Georgina and Lady Brough were going to take Vixie, take her and lock her up, send her away. Teach her shame and squeamishness. Teach her that everything she loved and felt and cared about was wrong.
He had dreamed about Catherine weeping, weeping until she was ill, by the glow of the lamps in the bedroom of the house they’d taken in Kensington, under the name of Marshmire. Renfield had pleaded with her, pointed out again and again to her that they’d covered their tracks well. They’d made provisions, taken other bank accounts, established still other names, other identities…
They’ll never find us, he said to her, and she’d only shaken her head, her long red hair shining in the soft glow of the gas-lights:
They will. They will.
The dreams turned to horror after that.
He had dreamed he’d gone mad, had been locked up in an asylum full of fools, only the fools weren’t in the cells, but running the place. Drunken fools like Hennessey, or stubborn small-minded hidebound ones like Seward. Fools who couldn’t see the larger world if it loomed before them and bit them and drank their blood.
Catherine, he whispere
d, as he ran—ran lightly, half-invisible, like a great jumble of flying newspaper whipped along by the wind, as a man would run in dreams. Homebound clerks turned to stare at him as they clambered aboard omnibuses or clustered on the dark wind-swept corners; costermongers and tattered women in black shawls shrank back into the glare of lights from the public-houses and cafés. Catherine, I’m coming! He passed through the dark of Regent’s Park, the bright-lit streets of the West End, dodging hansoms and growlers, omnibuses and carriages. In Hyde Park the cats fled from him, and dogs barked wildly at his passing shadow.
Kensington. Abingdon Road. The dark brick face of the house that belonged on paper to Mr. Marshmire—“Oh, pick a gloomier name, why don’t you?” Catherine had teased, laughing. Lightless windows. Locked doors.
She was inside. Renfield knew they were both inside.
On either side the tall pleasant houses were gas-lit. The autumn evening, still early, was cold. Renfield was conscious of the chill without particularly minding it, though he remembered how cold he had found England, how bone-gnawingly damp, after the languid heat of India. He had heard it said—by the Countess?—that vampires could not enter any place unless and until they had been invited, but it was his house, he had bought it.
Was that why vampires generally started their feeding on their own families?
He stood on the steps, looking down at the windows of the kitchen areaway and up at those of the drawing-room above, dark as the eyes of a dead man. He had run from Highgate across London to Kensington, close to five miles. Yet he felt no weariness.
Only enormous hunger.
He passed into the house.
It was as he remembered it, that last night he’d been there. They’d bought it furnished from its previous owners, lest Georgina or Lady Brough grow suspicious. Vixie had whooped with laughter over the old-fashioned furniture, the stuffy Biblical oleographs on the walls. To Vixie it had all been a giant adventure, a gamine delight in outfoxing the grandmother and aunts she had always loathed.
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