by Dacre Stoker
“You were dismissed from Vrije University for stealing bodies from their graves,” Cotford said loudly. “Those exploratory autopsies consisted of nothing more than ramming iron stakes through their hearts and mutilating the bodies.”
He could hear his voice filling the room, stirring fear in the onlookers, but he was too infuriated. He had seen at first hand how imprudent men desecrated bodies of the dead. The priest of his old village in Ireland, like Van Helsing, had thought he was doing the good work of God when he desecrated his brother’s grave, too.
“It was you,” he continued, “who lost his medical license for performing experimental blood transfusions that killed your patients. You did not know to match the blood types. You claimed they had been bitten by vampires. . . .”
“No doctor knew of blood types until 1901, you ignorant oaf. I acted in my patients’ best interests. I did everything I could to save them.”
Cotford glared at Van Helsing with contempt. If the professor had devoted his research to science instead of mythology, he could have saved lives instead of expediting deaths. He could see the look of panic in the old man’s face as he felt the verdict of the lobby’s patrons. His heart was racing. It was time to break Van Helsing.
“It was you and those poor souls you brainwashed into following you who killed those poor women twenty-five years ago. I do see evil before me, Van Helsing! I see you. I see Jack the Ripper!”
Every person in the lobby began to whisper and gossip. Gentlemen instinctively shielded their wives. Children were hurried away. They all stepped away from Van Helsing, giving the accused killer a wide berth. He stood alone, exposed, and vulnerable.
Cotford expected his pride would force Van Helsing to justify his criminal acts in front of the bystanders. Instead, the old man’s shoulders slumped. He looked upon Cotford with great compassion and pity.
“You see nothing. And what you do not see will kill you.”
There was something in the way Van Helsing spoke that chilled Cotford, and he was not easily unnerved. Van Helsing had turned the tables; it was now Cotford who was rattled. Was that a threat?
The lift door opened. Van Helsing nodded to the operator to hold the door for him. Cotford struggled to say something, but his mind was still churning over Van Helsing’s last words. Then the lift door closed and the old man was gone, leaving Cotford standing in the opulent lobby. Everyone stared at him.
“Poppycock!” Cotford exclaimed. This confrontation had been folly. He would never be able to force a confession from Van Helsing. He knew he would have to resort to other means if he was going to bring Abraham Van Helsing to justice.
CHAPTER XXVII.
The past was like a prison from which no inmate could escape. Over the last few days, Mina had felt her own personal cell close in. Her beloved Jonathan was dead, Quincey had run off. Paranoia began to set in: She found herself constantly looking out of the windows. Her warden was a cruel overseer: her fear that Cotford, that tall policeman and his subordinate wolves could be at her door any moment. She was going to need a new plan if she was to keep them at bay.
In the hours since Quincey had stormed out, she’d gone though the pages that he had left spread across the study floor. Sitting within a Stonehenge-like circle, she sifted through the ruins of her past life. She should have stopped Quincey from leaving. Now she had to deduce his next step in order to find him. He needed her protection, whether he wanted it or not. Night had fallen upon England. She was at a disadvantage, for their predator held all the cards.
Mina opened the thick folder containing the dossiers she had compiled. Arthur Holmwood’s was on top, with the address in plain sight. Going to Arthur made sense. If she were in Quincey’s place, that was where she would go first. Unfortunately, Quincey would not be aware of how much Arthur Holmwood had changed. Even if he were able to get an audience with Lord Godalming, she was certain it would not be productive. Unlike Mina and Jonathan, who’d tried to reenter public life after Transylvania, Lord Godalming had receded into his home at the Ring. As time passed, he’d become more and more withdrawn, angry, and bitter, until the Arthur Holmwood she remembered was entirely gone. He’d twisted the facts in his mind, and had come to despise the others in the brave band.
He blamed us for the death of his beloved Lucy. Didn’t he know she was beloved to me as well? More than any of the others, Mina had become the focal point of Holmwood’s anger. If Quincey did call upon Lord Godalming, he’d be fortunate if he did not find a mortal enemy.
Where would Quincey go next? Would he retrace their steps to Transylvania? Seek out Van Helsing? Mina’s mind spun around the possibilities. She couldn’t think anymore. She’d barely slept in the days since Jonathan’s death. She had lost track of time, and now time was against her.
Mina surveyed the past that surrounded her. She asked herself why she’d kept all these papers. If she had destroyed them, perhaps Quincey would be safe in her nest at this very moment. She wondered if destroying the information would have made it easier for her to also destroy the memory. Without another thought, Mina tossed the lot into the nearby fireplace and watched the pages curl in the flames.
Let Cotford come, let him bring his search warrant. He would find nothing here except bitter ash. Now no one could ever prove Stoker’s novel was anything more than a demented work of fiction.
Damn it! Who the hell was this Bram Stoker? How did he know their story? The brave band was bound by a sacred oath never to divulge the horrors that had befallen them. Could it be Jack Seward who had betrayed them to Stoker? Sadly, he was the obvious choice.
Mina was tired. Questions piled up in her mind like bricks, and her thoughts were getting walled in. She needed to sleep, if only for a few moments, just to clear her mind. She remembered that when her nightmares had started again a few months ago, Jonathan had brought her home a bottle of laudanum. He’d told her at the time that he was concerned about her lack of sleep and that the sedative would help her. She’d refused to take it, and suspected Jonathan of trying to drug her to stop her nightly longing for her dark prince.
Mina took the bottle of laudanum from the cupboard. She was so tired that her eyes could barely focus enough to read the dosage on the bottle. As she poured the liquid into a thimble, she remembered it was her refusal to take the drug that had caused Jonathan to stop sharing their bed—the first step toward the final disintegration of their marriage. She drank the laudanum quickly in the hope of washing away the painful memory.
It took effect swiftly. She stumbled back to the study, regretting how the love she and Jonathan had shared had turned so bitter at the end. Right at that moment, she didn’t care. Whether it was Jonathan in his youth, or the wretch of latter day, she just wanted to be in his arms one last time.
Mina found a framed photograph of Jonathan on the table beside the armchair, taken the day Jonathan had been called to the bar. She had been so proud of him. At last he had been his own man, full of hope and promise. A teardrop landed on the glass covering the image of Jonathan’s smiling face and gently she wiped the tear away, caressing the image beneath. She felt herself falling back into the armchair.
“Jonathan, I need you. I can’t do this alone.”
Her eyelids became increasingly heavy. In her last seconds of consciousness, she thought she saw red mist oozing from under the French doors.
Mina wasn’t sure how long she had been asleep when she felt breath blown softly on her ankle. She forced her eyelids open, but saw no one. She was in a delirium, somewhere between drug and dream. She grasped the photograph tightly against her bosom, feeling the hard edges of the picture frame and imagined herself holding Jonathan once more.
She felt the touch.
It was a caress, as if a gentle hand was sliding up from her ankle, along her calf, over her stocking. The hand turned inward, past the roll of her stocking, and touched the soft flesh of her inner thigh. Mina bit her lip, feeling her temperature rise. Please God, let it be Jonathan.
The hand on
her inner thigh parted her legs. Mina’s blood quickened. She longed to be desired, to be loved, to be a woman again. A moan passed her lips. Her breasts pulsated with the rhythm of her quickly beating heart.
The spectral hands pulled at her undergarments. Mina’s back arched as the hands touched and probed her most private place. She was about to give in to her passion, when a terrifying thought crossed her reeling mind. This couldn’t be Jonathan. He never allowed himself to learn the secrets of her body. Mina gasped. No one knew how to touch her this way. No one . . . but he. Mina cried out. She wept. No, please don’t do this. It’s Jonathan I love.
A voice came to Mina’s mind: “I have seen to Jonathan’s death. Now you are mine.”
Mina tried to scream. The clouds in her mind parted. Her dark prince had killed Jonathan and, by doing so, had betrayed the love they’d once shared. In an instant, the hands converged, simultaneously touching her in a thousand places. Mina shuddered; she couldn’t resist any longer. For the love of God, don’t do this to me! Don’t make me choose, my love! It was too late. Passionate sensations overwhelmed her. Mina’s mouth fell open, her eyes closed, and her head fell back. The hands touched and probed. Mina swooned.
Suddenly, she felt a strong, icy wind against her skin. She knew her body was prone, but she had the sensation that she was standing. The wind howled in her ears, so loud Mina thought she would go deaf. She tried to cover her ears, but she couldn’t move. It was as if her body were paralyzed but her senses electrified. She could smell the scent of evergreen, water, and mud. She felt cold.
Although she had not willed them to, her eyes sprang open. She wanted to scream at what she saw, but she had no control over her own body. She was standing upon a broken battlement, looking down at a snow-swept field. Snowflakes danced on the wind. She recognized the jagged peaks of the Carpathian Mountains.
Mina was standing in Transylvania, on top of Castle Dracula’s highest turret.
She heard approaching hooves, splashing as they raced through the slushy snow. Two dozen mounted men charged toward the castle. Gypsies. In the midst of them was a horse-drawn cart, swaying from side to side like a serpent’s tail, slithering with each bump of the icy road. The cart bore a coffin. As they neared the broken gate of the castle, the gypsies flanked the cart and drew their weapons.
This was all too familiar for Mina. She was reliving the darkest moment of her past, a moment she’d spent the last twenty-five years trying to forget.
But this was not how Mina remembered it. Again, with no control over her body, she glanced to the east and saw a woman with blond hair astride a white horse. A man riding a gray stallion raced alongside, holding her horse’s reins.
The woman below was . . . herself.
The man upon the gray stallion leading hers was Professor Van Helsing. Seeing herself from a distance was an odd sensation. Mina began to understand that she was witnessing these past events from a different vantage point. She had never been inside Dracula’s castle. Was she dead? Mina was horrified by the thought that God’s judgment should be that she be forced to relive the most horrible moment of her life, over and over again in purgatory.
A military bugle blasted in her ears. Mina instinctively turned her head, as did the gypsies. Mina recognized the men charging from the west. It was that beloved rogue, their Texan Quincey P. Morris, with Dr. Jack Seward at his side. Seeing Quincey Morris and Jack put Mina at ease. Perhaps it was true: When you died, you were reunited with your loved ones. She could sense the fear rising within the gypsies. They had never seen the likes of the Texan gunfighter before. No sooner had Quincey Morris and Seward appeared over the horizon than gunfire rang out from the south. Astride their steeds, Jonathan and Arthur fired their rifles into the gypsy band.
Mina remembered their plan to split up and take different modes of transportation through Transylvania, their plan being to converge on the gypsies at the same time, surrounding them from all directions. The idea had come from Quincey Morris, who had learned the technique as a cavalry officer during the Indian Wars.
The brave band of heroes were all together again, alive and vibrant. Their horses were bathed in sweat, nostrils flaring, hooves pounding through the blanket of snow as they raced the setting sun.
Following Jonathan and Arthur’s lead, Quincey Morris and Dr. Seward opened fire upon the gypsies. Horses leapt and wheeled as the rifle shots rang out. The gypsies returned fire.
The castle’s gate was fortuitously ruined, blocked by fallen debris. Mina saw that the fallen rubble had come from the decaying battlement where she stood. Again without willing herself to do so, Mina looked down upon the ensuing battle. She still could not wrap her mind around the idea of seeing herself approaching with the others. Her breath was momentarily taken away as the young Jonathan drew near. She had forgotten how dashing he’d looked on horseback that day. Unlike Arthur and Quincey Morris, Jonathan had never sought adventure in his life. Over the years, he had told her how terrified he had been that day, his fear almost paralyzing. He had risked his life for one reason only: to fight, and to die if need be, for the woman he loved.
The brave band of heroes converged on the cart that held the coffin, and a group of gypsies rode out to meet them. They were undisciplined, their formation disorganized. The rest of the gypsies lagged behind, surrounding the cart.
Quincey P. Morris, his fighting experience evident, clutched the reins of his horse in his teeth as he fired his Winchester rifle into the advancing gypsies. First one, then a second gypsy’s chest exploded with splashes of blood. A gypsy bullet ricocheted with a clang and there was an explosion of sparks off Dr. Seward’s rifle. Seward cried out as the rifle flew from his hands. Arthur fired again, blowing off half of a gypsy’s face. The remaining gypsies rode forward to hem in Quincey Morris and Seward. Morris, using the butt of his gun as a club, battered another gypsy to the ground as he screamed to the defenseless Seward, “Swing your goddamn sword, man!”
Watching from the battlements above, Mina was amazed at the meek Jack Seward. He wildly swung his blade, screaming like a madman as he hacked and slashed the gypsies. She could swear she could hear his galloping heart.
A gypsy’s rifle butt smashed into Seward’s face, shattering his nose into a torrent of blood. Mina could smell it.
Her head spun to see that Professor Van Helsing and her younger self had dismounted. Van Helsing raised his rifle with the aim of a hunter, calm, patient. He fired, killing the gypsy that had smashed Seward’s face. The sound of Van Helsing’s shot alerted the gypsies. A second group broke off from the cart and raced toward him. Watching from above, Mina understood Van Helsing’s strategy; he was thinning the herd around the coffin. She watched her younger self jump behind Van Helsing for protection as he drew two six-shooters.
Van Helsing fired into the gypsies, shouting, “The sun is setting. We have no time. Jonathan, Arthur, charge!”
From the top of the castle ruins, Mina watched her younger self take up Van Helsing’s discarded rifle and join the fight with him against the gypsies.
A new barrage of gunfire came to her ears. Jonathan and Arthur were upon the coffin’s defenders. Every shot Jonathan fired missed its target, but the bounding horse did not affect Arthur’s aim at all. He felled two more gypsies. The remaining defenders focused their fire on Arthur. Arthur’s head suddenly snapped back, spouting a stream of blood as he fell off his mount.
Jack Seward drew his pistol and fired point-blank. Quincey Morris dug his spurs into his horse’s sides, riding hard to collide with a gypsy’s mount. With the force of the blow, the gypsy’s horse wheeled, throwing the gypsy to the ground. Van Helsing emptied his six-shooters, then threw the pistols at the gypsies, drew a scimitar from his belt with his right hand, and brandished a short, curved blade in his left. He crossed the swords, masterfully dueling three gypsies at once.
Mina saw her younger self stiffen. Below, the commands of her dark prince entered Mina’s mind. In the present, she remembered sensing hi
s love, beckoning her to turn the rifle on Van Helsing’s back and kill him. Mina recalled her internal struggle. She tossed the rifle away, clutching her head from the searing pain that came whenever Dracula invaded her thoughts.
Van Helsing stabbed a gypsy in the chest with his scimitar and slashed the throat of another with his short sword. Mina fell behind the professor, clasping the gold cross around her neck, delirious with brain fever.
Atop the battlement, Mina saw Jack Seward jump from his horse, the bodies of slain gypsies all around him. He retrieved one of the dead gypsy’s rifles and fired across the field into those defending the crate.
Arthur staggered to his feet. Blood flowed from a deep gash where the bullet had grazed his cheek. The tip of his right ear was gone. He cocked his Winchester and joined Seward. Their covering fire cleared a path for Jonathan and Quincey Morris.
With a war cry, Quincey Morris drew his kukri knife and leapt from his steed onto the cart. For a moment, Jonathan froze, his fear evident. Mina saw him look back at her younger self, writhing in pain behind Van Helsing. From this new vantage point, she noticed something she could never have seen before. The sight of his wife suffering in pain had turned Jonathan’s fear to rage. Glaring at the coffin, Jonathan drew his sword, slashed a gypsy, and jumped onto the cart beside Quincey Morris.
Together, they tore away the wooden coffin’s lid to reveal its hideous cargo: a skeletal creature with pointed ears and razor teeth, dressed in well-tailored clothes.
“Goddamn, Harker!” Quincey Morris gasped. “What is it?”
“Pure evil.”
A gypsy had his hands around the professor’s throat. Van Helsing reached down to his boot, drew a hidden blade, and savagely stabbed the gypsy in his groin. The gypsy’s hand sprang free from Van Helsing’s neck as he cried out in pain. Van Helsing reared his head back and then butted his attacker’s skull. The gypsy’s eyes rolled back as he fell unconscious. Van Helsing turned to see Quincey Morris and Jonathan staring into the open crate.