Lord of the Vampires

by Jeanne Kalogridis

  Beyond that, I remember virtually nothing of the exchange, except that it seemed over almost instantly, and the professor was directing me to the couch in the next room. I slept a time, then had a hearty breakfast; even so, the experience left me noticeably weakened.

  As for poor Lucy, she was improved, though not as much as she had been by the “operation” with Arthur. When I returned to the professor, who was himself resting in the sitting-room, he confessed that he had not taken so much “life-force,” or prana, from me. “After all,” he said, “Mr. Holmwood is not attempting to fight the vampire, and you are.”

  Then he sighed, and stared disconsolately into the cold fireplace which faced the sofa; in his blue eyes was a deep anguish that was painful to see. “I am wrong, I think, to involve you in this any further, John. I thought I knew the danger we faced—but now I realise I know nothing at all. Until now, Vlad has been limited in how and where he can work his evil; yet in Miss Lucy’s case, the talismans which once repelled him now slow him not at all. And if he can come and go as he pleases, then Miss Lucy—and all else whom he wishes—have no hope. Nor you and I, John. You, the one person on earth whom I had wanted to protect from him.…”

  An abrupt spasm of grief crossed his features; he carelessly tore off his spectacles and tossed them aside, then put his great square face into his hands and wept hoarsely.

  The sight of his despair pulled at my heart as much as the sight of Lucy had, as did his profession of concern for my sake (though I wondered why he should feel more protective of me than of his own wife). I set a comforting hand upon his thick shoulder. “Professor,” I said gently. “You are yourself exhausted, and the whole situation seems to you quite hopeless. But you have again saved Lucy today. Remember that, then sleep and eat well yourself, for neither one of us is any use if we do not tend ourselves.”

  At that, he looked up and said haggardly, “I will rest and eat to-day, John. And this evening I will come and sit with Miss Lucy myself during the night while you go home.” When I began to protest, he raised a hand. “No—no objections. Remember, you have been weakened in a most dangerous manner; by to-morrow, though, you will be fit again for duty, and then I will rest.”

  “Very well,” I agreed, and rose to go. But before I could take a step towards the door, he added softly:

  “In the country and at the asylum, I have sent out urgent call after urgent call for help—this even before I knew how desperate was our case. Now I know that all the knowledge, all the power, I have acquired over the past quarter-century has been in vain. If that help does not come soon, my son, then you and I both are lost.”

  The Diary of

  Abraham Van Helsing

  18 SEPTEMBER. Miss Lucy will soon leave us. This I know from looking down at her sweet face, still pale and drawn after the “emergency transfusion” Jack and I performed with an American, Mr. Quincey Morris, as donor. It is not so much the physical signs of anaemia—her bloodless complexion, the terrible blue-grey of her lips and gums, her weak, rapid breath—that convince me of her impending death. These alone are painful enough to see, but far worse are the signs of an imminent, insidious transformation: the elongated canines, the look of sinister voluptuousness which comes over her in sleep, and the subtle gleam of indigo I see behind her green gaze.

  After last night’s events, I am shaken to the core. I, who arrogantly believed myself powerful enough to take on the Impaler—I have learned that I am nothing, of no use to anyone. I, the vampire “expert,” could not even save dear Miss Lucy after weeks of effort! What advice shall I offer them all now, except to flee their native land and live the rest of their lives in dread of discovery?

  Here is the sad story: The garlic blossoms arrived on the eleventh, after which Miss Lucy seemed to rally. I dared to hope that, although my talismans had failed, the delicate white blossoms themselves possessed a natural and therefore stronger magic which would repel the Impaler. At any rate, our patient declared that they permitted her to sleep peacefully.

  For the past week, I had again closeted myself in my asylum cell during the day to repeat the Abramelin ritual—praying for a response from my mentor or indeed any quarter. As always, no reply. Hopeless as it all seems now, I would sell my soul to the vampire’s “Dark Lord” Himself if I could be guaranteed no deceit and a certain outcome of Vlad and Zsuzsanna destroyed and all mortals protected. And, of course, no transformation of myself into a vampire.…

  Most evenings I went to Hillingham and sat watch over our patient; some nights, John would relieve me after midnight. Again, I do not know what we expected to accomplish, as Vlad had already entered Lucy’s room without detection; but it is a difficult thing to give up all hope and surrender to inaction.

  Last night’s plan was for John to sit vigil; I would remain the entire day and night in my cell, trying both to elicit help and further charge a special Solomon’s Seal, which talisman represented our last hope. As I would be indisposed, John had told the Westenra ladies the day before that I had returned to Amsterdam and would be back in approximately twenty-four hours.

  But that afternoon, John suffered a rather serious cut on his wrist, courtesy of Mr. Renfield, who had escaped his cell. Vlad at work again! Clearly, the vampire was planning something nefarious at Hillingham that night and did not wish Seward’s interference; the safest thing was for John to remain at the asylum. This deduction I kept to myself, and merely told John that he was too weak to sit vigil at all, that he should go to his bed and sleep the night. I would keep watch all night at Hillingham. He had lost quite a bit of blood from the cut, and so readily agreed.

  Thus yesterday I went to the Westenra estate alone and invisible, and knocked upon the door some ten minutes before sunset. The downstairs maid (a timid brown mouse of a girl, with large, gentle eyes) opened the door a crack—then wider, wider, until she stood upon the porch hands on hips, frowning, looking all about for the prankster who had summoned her then fled. I slipped past her easily, made my examination of the windows to be sure all the little crosses were in place (instinct was at work here, not logic), and finally went upstairs to Miss Lucy’s room.

  Even before I entered, the pungent smell in the corridor told me that the blossoms were still in place. The door to the patient’s room was half-ajar. I slipped through easily—though tentatively, as I did not wish to compromise her modesty; as luck had it, she was in her night-dress, sitting in bed frowning down at Plutarch’s Lives, with a tray of half-eaten food upon the night-stand. She was still wan, but much improved after her most recent setback; there was a hint of colour in her cheeks and lips.

  I sat in the cushioned chair beside Lucy’s bed, and a terrible sense of familiarity overcame me, what the French call déjà vu. I was stricken with the same hopeless sadness I felt in the rocking-chair beside Mama’s deathbed; and even to the same degree, for though a month ago this charming young woman was a stranger to me, 1 had grown paternally fond of her. Now I could not shake the sense that she was as doomed as poor Mama—even more so, because her ultimate fate would be far more hideous than the sweet repose of death.

  With such grim thoughts circling my tired brain, I sat, fighting to maintain keen alertness for all those signs of Vlad’s approach that, the last time, I had completely missed. And I took out the Solomon’s Seal from my vest pocket and held it in my hand, contemplating its shining silver surface and the geometric designs and Hebrew letters inscribed thereon. The sight of it gave comfort and a faint hope that perhaps it and the fresh garlic blossoms, shipped daily from Haarlem, would be sufficient to repel Vlad.

  Hours passed. Lucy reached for a pear from the supper tray, took a half-hearted bite, and tossed it back; then she closed the book and set it, too, aside. I was hopeful sleep would come soon for her, but she gave another restless sigh and rummaged through the night-stand drawer for a little diary and pen. With these in hand she sat back, opened the diary, and raised the pen, poised to write.

  That inspiration, too, failed her,
and with a small noise of disgust, she replaced them, extinguished the lamp, and fell back into the bed.

  At last the shift in her breathing that signalled sleep came. I rose and went to the window ledge, and there gently placed the Seal, the most powerful of magical protections I could offer up on her behalf.

  Then I returned to my familiar post and sat in the chair watching her sleep. After a time, a soft flapping came at the window; I did not rise to peer out, for there was nothing to see—no aura, no animal disguise. But the hairs that rose, prickling, on my nape and arms told me that the vampire had indeed arrived. The flapping grew louder until it woke Lucy. Even in the dark, I could see her fearful expression, and wished that I had created a new lie saying that my Amsterdam “trip” had been cancelled, so that I might speak to her now and take her hand, and offer what paltry comfort I could. For some minutes, she clearly struggled to remain awake; at last, her anxiety grew so that she rose and opened the bedroom door, calling out:

  “Is there anybody there?”

  The hall remained dark and silent, and so she closed the door again. By this time, the sound of nearby howling accompanied the flapping, which sent her to the window. She lifted the edge of the blind and peeked out; I caught a glimpse of a black bat’s wing in the instant before she screamed softly, then ran back to the bed.

  There she huddled pitifully, eyes wide and terror-struck. My desire to comfort her grew so overwhelming that I decided to exit the room, become visible, then knock softly at her door, saying that I had returned early from Amsterdam and was overwhelmed by the sense that she needed my help.

  Indeed, I rose to do just that—but at that instant, a knock came at the door, and Mrs. Westenra appeared in her dressing-gown; apparently she had been overwhelmed by maternal instinct for her child. I was grateful, for she climbed into bed with her daughter, and the two lay in each other’s arms, and found a moment of peace.

  Yet again, the flapping sound came again at the window, alarming Mrs. Westenra; she struggled to sit, crying: “What is that?” Now it was the daughter’s turn to offer reassurance with pats and soft words. Soon the mother sighed and settled back against the pillow, and, for an all-too-fleeting moment, found rest.

  A howl—this one nearer, as if the animal responsible now stood directly below the window. If confrontation were to come, it would be soon; I calmed my mind and focussed on the Solomon’s Seal at the window, and its radiant golden “wall” of power which only god or devil could penetrate.

  The next instant: the sweet, high crescendo of breaking glass, the screams of the ladies Westenra, a shower of razor-sharp diamonds spraying forth from Solomon’s wall of gold, borne upon a gust so powerful that the blind snapped up, spinning. I squeezed my eyes tightly shut and felt the sting of tiny shards against my face and hands. Invisible or no, protected or no, I was slammed at once against the far wall.

  Abruptly, the maelstrom ceased; I opened my eyes. An inky mist a hundred, a thousand, times blacker than the night streamed slowly over the remaining jagged panes, unaffected by the Solomon’s Seal, whose golden gleam had been abruptly extinguished. I knew not then what horror Mrs. Westenra saw; she flailed in an hysterical effort to sit, pulling the wreath of blooming garlic from Lucy’s neck in the process, then pointed in stark terror at the window.

  And with a strangled gurgle, fell over dead.

  Her head struck Lucy’s full force; I struggled to rise, to help my patient, to place myself between the girl and the vampire, to offer myself up in her stead. But I could not move—could do nothing, in fact, save stare in helpless horror and fury at what transpired.

  And as I watched, the mist completed its entry and formed a tall column just inside the broken window; a blink, and the column had transformed itself into Vlad. Vlad as I had never seen him: dressed like a virile and dapper young nobleman in a tailoured black silk suit, white skin and white teeth gleaming like pearl, onyx hair aglisten with sparks of indigo. So much life seemed to emanate from him that he no longer seemed undead—only gloriously, magnificently powerful.

  Smiling, he stepped gracefully over to the night-stand, entirely ignoring the two women (one dead, one swooning), and bent down to pick up an object from the floor: the Solomon’s Seal, now dull and lifeless. This he tossed at me, sneering: “I believe this is yours, Dr. Van Helsing?”

  I could say nothing; the facility of speech had left me, and my legs and back seemed quite pinned to the glass-strewn carpet. But my hands and arms were now functional, so I caught the talisman and held it reverently. My greatest fear at that moment was not death, nor even his bite, but that I could no longer stop him from performing the blood ritual—the ritual by which he had linked my ancestors to him, the ritual by which he renewed his immortality, that he might not perish. If he performed it upon me now, he would know my every thought … and I would be his mortal slave, to accomplish the evil that he could not.

  He must have seen my thoughts in my face, for his mocking grin widened. “How you flatter yourself, sir, to think that I might need you. I need no one anymore, do you understand? The world belongs to me, not to you silly mortals. I can go wherever, do whatever, I list!” And he spread his arms in a grandiose gesture, then lowered them and raised a warning finger at me. “But you would be wise, now, to come to me of your own accord. Why struggle, when it is clear you can do nothing to stop me?”

  “Then kill me,” I said. It was not merely a dare; my grief at being unable to save Lucy left me in an agony of hopelessness. “Kill me honestly, and deliver me to Death uncorrupted, if indeed I am of no worth to you.”

  A spasm of fury contorted his features. He swept the air with his arm as though dealing a back-handed blow; my head and upper torso smashed against the floor again so violently that the air was forced from my lungs, leaving me for an agonising minute unable to draw a breath.

  In the midst of my struggle, the maids rushed in crying out as their bare feet found the scattered glass. When one of them managed to light the lamp, they began to shriek in earnest. Lucy miraculously revived and, once they had freed her from beneath her mother’s weighty body and wrapped it in a sheet, tried to calm them. When that failed, she sent them all away to have a glass of wine once Mrs. Westenra’s corpse was laid out on the bed, for they were weeping with hysterical abandon. All this took place without any of the women noticing either intruder in Miss Lucy’s bedchamber; nor did they notice when Vlad abruptly disappeared.

  Yet I know he remained nearby, I lay in anguished helplessness on the floor, unable to move, and though I could speak, my cries went unheard. Mental concentration? I had none, and therefore my own efforts to remain invisible had lapsed when Vlad appeared. Yet he had apparently power enough to spare in that regard, for poor Miss Lucy could neither see nor hear me. Weeping silently, she put on the slippers beside her bed, then gathered up all the garlic blossoms strewn upon the floor and window ledge, and even the crushed ones her mother had pulled from around her neck. These she laid with heartbreaking tenderness upon her dead mother’s shrouded bosom.

  I tried to cry out a warning to her then, but caught myself: there was no point in trying to pierce the veil Vlad had erected between us. Even if I could, what good would the blossoms do her? They had not held the vampire back any better than the Solomon’s Seal.

  This was all that was left to her now—this one moment of loving and dignified grief. Beyond that lay the grave, and even worse horrors, none of which I could help her escape.

  She stood with head bowed before her mother’s corpse for some time. Then she lifted her face and stared curiously out at the doorway, for it was clear that the maids were lingering overlong at their wine. Worse, the sound of their voices had faded away into total silence. I knew all too well what evil had befallen them, but Miss Lucy did not; even so, the look of fright in her wide eyes indicated that she had some instinctual sense of what had occurred—and was yet to come—that night.

  She stepped to the open door and called for them, only to receive no
response; thus she left the room and searched them down. I waited in the most horrid suspense, thinking that I might next hear her scream. But all without was silence until she crept back into the room, wearing a look of such helpless terror upon her pale face that I felt the sting of tears.

  She went straight to her night-stand and took out the little diary and pen; this time she wrote, swiftly and in earnest. I expected Vlad to arrive any moment and interrupt her chronicle, but it was as though he were allowing her this time as a last gift. At length she finished, and tore this final testament page from her diary; then she folded it, and slipped it between her breasts.

  Grief crushed me. For whose sake I struggled to hold back my tears, I cannot say; perhaps I did not want my enemy to gloat. I did not yield to them until I saw her final gesture of surrender: she lay down on the bed and carefully arranged her nightgown and hair, then folded her arms over her breast—as if she were already a corpse like her mother, who lay beside her.

  Thus she was when Vlad came to her. By that time, I could bear no more, but closed my eyes, and would not open them, even when he mocked me and impugned Miss Lucy’s honour in ways too vile to set down on paper. His verbal slings I could ignore, but when I heard the sounds of his suckling and poor Lucy’s sharp little cries, I understood too well why Gerda had surrendered to madness.

  In the early morning, Seward came—in quite a rush, as if he sensed that disaster had befallen us. By then, I was the only conscious soul at Hillingham; I had wakened moments before from a deep vampire-induced sleep to find Lucy near death, almost as cold and gaunt as her mother’s corpse. I attempted an emergency transfer of psychic energy from myself to her, but the previous night’s events had left me curiously drained; not only was I unable to complete the exercise, I became faint and nearly fell upon the poor child.