“How did you get into my mind, human?!” she demanded. “I knew there was something different about you. Who are you? What are you? Are you a witch?”
She was not truly seeking a reply from me; I was unable to speak. She yanked me forward, sinking her fangs into my throat.
I had wanted her to drink from me, but terror coursed through me as she did so. In her enraged state, she could easily kill me before my blood affected her.
My panic did not last long. Bathory abruptly stiffened, dropping me to the ground. I landed with a thud, woozy and reeling. Bathory touched her bloodstained mouth, wildly shaking her head as she swayed on her feet.
“How can you be one of us?” she whispered in disbelief. “How…”
She stumbled to her knees. Though I had no weapon, I stumbled forward, desperate to do whatever I could to her in this weakened state. Anara, Abe, and Gabriel darted towards her as well, once again released from Bathory’s thrall.
Bathory vanished.
“No,” I rasped, stumbling to my knees. If Bathory had gone, we would lose her. She could easily get one of her followers to strengthen her with blood.
Abe, Emma, and Gabriel rushed over to me.
“I—I am slightly faint, but I can still fight,” I said, clutching my bleeding neck as they helped me to my feet. She’d not drained me to the point of weakness. “We need to find her. She—“
“She is still in the manor,” Anara whispered. “I can smell her.”
We turned. Anara had sunk to her knees opposite Seward’s still body, blood tears streaking down her face once more. Seward’s lifeless brown eyes stared at the ceiling, and grief seized my heart at the sight. Seward had once been so full of life.
“We will come back for you,” Anara whispered to him. “This is not over. I promise.”
There was no time to mourn for Seward, nor to decipher her cryptic words. Outside of the door, I heard muffled shouts and cries; bodies slamming into walls, grunts of pain. The sounds came from downstairs. Hope stirred beneath my despair. Others were here. Had the Order arrived?
We scurried to the door. Anara and Gabriel used their combined strength to barrel it open.
I turned towards Emma, whose face was pale with shock.
“Once we are out there, you need to find someplace safe to hide.”
Emma did not protest, giving me a hasty nod. Anara and Gabriel forced the door open, and we tore out into the hall.
As soon as we entered, one of Bathory’s henchmen barreled towards us from the far end of the hall. I froze with panic. We didn’t have our weapons.
I needn’t have worried; pure rage fueled Anara. She boldly charged ahead of us, dispatching both of them by snapping their necks.
We continued down the hall, making our way to the stairs. We halted when we heard multiple footsteps race up the steps towards us.
“Stay behind me and Gabriel!” Anara shouted to us.
We braced ourselves to face more of Bathory’s vampires. But it was the other members of the Order—Noelle, Nikolaus, and Kudret, along with two humans I didn’t recognize. Noelle tossed two stakes to me and Abe.
“I am sorry we did not get here sooner—there were attacks by Bathory’s ferals,” Noelle said, as we joined them to race down the stairs.
“You are here now. Please—get my cousin to safety,” I said, nodding towards Emma, who trailed behind us. “Bathory is still in the manor—we must find and kill her.”
Noelle nodded, gesturing to one of the other members to accompany Emma elsewhere as we descended the stairs.
I stilled when we arrived on the first floor. I recognized the room from the memory in Francois’ mind. It was a grand hall, filled with plush rugs and couches. Human heads were indeed mounted on the walls like prized game; I flinched at the grotesque sight. Yet I couldn’t be too focused on the sight of human heads—a battle played out before my eyes.
Two dozen members of the Order, mostly vampire, were fighting Bathory’s vampires in the expansive hall, their movements faster than my eyes could track. I saw no sign of Bathory amidst the fighting.
A group of Bathory’s vampires emerged from the fray, darting towards us. Anara and the others charged at them to fight.
Rage shot through me when I saw that one of them was Matyas, his cold eyes trained on me. He snarled, dashing towards me. Abe moved in front of me, but Matyas tossed him bodily aside and grabbed me by the throat, slamming me against the wall, his fangs bared. Both fury and fear gripped me as I started to lift my stake, but Gabriel leapt onto Matyas from behind, pulling him away.
Matyas quickly gained the upper hand, slamming Gabriel to the floor. With another ferocious snarl, he reached down to tear Gabriel’s heart from his chest.
“No!” I cried, lunging towards them. I lodged my stake into Matyas’ back from behind. I missed his heart, but wounded him. Matyas let out an agonized howl. Gabriel used his momentary distraction to roll out from beneath him, pinning him to the floor by his throat.
“For our mother!” he growled. Baring his fangs, Gabriel sunk them into Matyas’ throat, tearing out much of his flesh. Matyas struggled beneath his grip as blood gushed from his open wound.
Gabriel turned to look at me, giving me a subtle nod. I gazed down at Matyas. I thought of what I had seen of him and my mother; her pleas in her last desperate moments. A quick death would be too kind for this monster.
I surveyed his torn throat, the profuse bleeding from the wound in his back. His skin was growing even more pale, his blue eyes growing dim. He was already dying.
I kneeled, leaning in close to his ear, so that he could hear every word above the din of fighting that surrounded us.
“Know this. Isabel Ghyslaine survives through us. Her children have ended you. We will end Bathory. We will end this war.”
Matyas’ eyes flashed with defiance at my words, but there was a trace of defeat as well. Gabriel helped me to my feet. We watched as the life drained from Matyas, keeping our eyes on his until the very end.
“Mina…”
Abe rushed towards me, covered in blood, his throat and left arm bleeding from bite wounds. We quickly embraced, but there was no time to linger.
“In the back—I scent Bathory!” Anara shouted.
Anara had just dispatched the vampire she’d been fighting. She turned towards the entrance of a corridor at the back of the grand hall. Abe, Gabriel, and I trailed her out of the hall, avoiding the vampires from both sides as they fought with grunts and snarls.
We raced down the long corridor, which ended at an open door on our right. We entered. The door led to a rickety staircase that descended into a dark tunnel.
The tunnel was pitch black; we moved forward with caution. As we walked, I could barely make out grimy stone floors, empty cages splattered with blood, and fragments of bone. How many humans has she tortured here? I wondered with a shiver.
“Stay close together,” I whispered, clutching my stake. We continued forward, only the sound of our tense and ragged breaths accompanying us.
“She’s here,” Anara whispered. “Up ahead. She’s…weakened. I can smell her.”
We started to charge forward, but stilled when we heard hisses behind us. Ferals were approaching. Anara straightened.
“I will stop them—go!”
We darted forward, until we spotted a figure up ahead. Bathory. Gabriel growled and started to charge forward, but I stopped him.
“Careful,” I whispered. “This could be a trap. We approach—together. We surround her when we are close.”
Gabriel hesitated, but he nodded. We tentatively moved forward, spreading out to surround her once we were near.
Bathory was on her knees. Even in the darkness, I could see that her skin was now a sickly gray. She was struggling to breathe. I nodded at the others, and we lunged forward.
She looked up with a hiss, slamming Gabriel and Abe back against the wall, paralyzing them, as she lunged towards me. She may have been sluggish, but she managed t
o slam me to the ground, her grip firm around my throat as she squeezed. I struggled against her grip; I would soon lose consciousness. Fighting my rising panic, I found her eyes in the darkness, and the dungeon around me faded.
The young man I loved was on his knees in front of me in the forest clearing. He was pale, his face bruised, his throat bleeding. My father stood next to me, fury radiating from his entire body.
“Do it!” he shouted.
I made myself move forward. The man looked up at me, his eyes burning with hatred.
“I was wrong,” he spat. “You are a monster. You are not capable of love.”
Pain seared me at his words. Tears blurred my vision, but I smiled.
“Indeed,” I murmured. I reached out and snapped his neck, ignoring the grief that filled my heart.
“You have chosen well, daughter,” my father said.
I was once again in the dungeon. Bathory blinked in disorientation at the memory, loosening her grip on my throat.
I moved quickly. I reached for the wooden stake at my side, and sank it into her heart.
“You made the wrong choice,” I whispered. It was momentary, and perhaps I imagined it, but a tiny flicker of regret flared in her eyes, before they forever drifted shut.
26
Humanity
We were back in the room where Bathory killed Seward, standing in somber silence opposite Anara. She sat with his body cradled in her lap, her long curtain of dark hair partially concealing his face as she gazed down at him. The silence in the room was heavy with grief.
Elizabeth Bathory was dead, but there was no sense of victory within me; only a hollow emptiness.
Is this what victory feels like? I wondered. A chasm of emptiness?
At my side, Abe’s eyes were shut, as if the sight of his friend’s body was too much to bear. Next to him, Gabriel watched Seward and Anara, deep sorrow shadowing his expression. Emma hovered behind us, her head bowed and shoulders trembling.
After I staked Bathory, Anara reached us, ripping her limp body off of me. With a snarl, Anara tore Bathory’s head from her body with her bare hands.
Several other members of the Order, including Noelle, had raced into the tunnel soon after, and taken Bathory’s body away to burn it in the forest.
Noelle informed us that many of Bathory’s ferals had died with her, and the Order managed to kill her remaining vampires. The Order had scattered to check the surrounding forest to ensure there were no other vampires approaching the house, while another group searched every corner of the manor. There hadn’t been any indication of her surviving vampires; the manor was now secure, though members of the Order were posted around the house and the forest for added security.
We were reunited with Emma, who’d been hiding in a back cellar with an Order member; she wept at the sight of me and Gabriel, she feared we’d perished in the battle.
With the knowledge that Bathory was dead and the manor secure, we raced back up to the room where I’d been held captive to find Anara with Seward’s body.
Watching her with him now, I realized that what seemed like a flirtation between them had actually been love. For Anara, there seemed to be no one else in the room besides Seward.
When Anara finally spoke, her voice was tinged with sorrow.
“I know you are all surprised we cared for each other,” she said, her gaze never straying from Seward’s face. “It surprised me as well. I never imagined that I would grow to care…to love a human. But something drew me to Jack. I have known much darkness… and there was a lightness to him. An ability to find the good in everything and everyone. Somehow, he seemed to understand the pain of my past….he seemed to understand me,” she whispered. “I hoped we would have more time together. We never spoke of what would happen if he were to perish during this fight. I thought I was strong enough to keep him alive…to keep him safe.”
She drew a pained breath. She raised her wrist to her mouth, sinking her fangs into her own flesh, watching as blood dripped from the fresh wound.
Behind me, Emma gasped. Shock pulled me from my grief-stricken silence.
“What—what are you doing?”
“I cannot let him die. His body is not yet cold, there is still time,” she said, starting to lower her wrist to Seward’s mouth.
“We don’t know if he would want this,” Gabriel protested.
“I agree,” I said. “Anara, I mourn for him too, but it is not—“
“Let her do it.”
It was Abe who had spoken. He looked at me and Gabriel, conviction in his eyes.
“We have lost too many. If Anara can save him—let her. When he is revived, and he chooses not to live as vampire, it is of course his right to die. But now…let Anara do what she must.”
Anara had already pressed her wrist to Seward’s mouth, allowing her blood to flow into his throat, though she gave Abe a grateful smile.
“Leave us,” she whispered.
Though I felt conflicted about Anara’s decision to change Seward, I quietly obliged, leaving her alone and following the others out of the room.
Moments later, I stood in between Abe and Gabriel, watching as the flames of the fire consumed Bathory’s headless body, her flesh disintegrating with every lick of the flames. Nikolaus, Kudret, Noelle, and other members of the Order hovered around us. It was very much like an ancient burial ceremony, in the days when humans burned the bodies of their brethren on funeral pyres. Only Bathory was our enemy, and there was certainly no grief.
I thought of the images I’d seen when I entered her mind. Bathory as a young girl, trained to be a killer by her father. Bathory falling in love with a human and then betraying him. And then I thought of that flicker of regret in her eyes before she died. I harbored no sympathy for her, but the brief images I’d seen of her life lifted the veil of her monstrosity to reveal the damaged creature that lay beneath; the creature who’d chosen hatred over love…which consumed her in the end.
Soon Bathory's remains were nothing more than ash, and the others turned to file back towards the manor, until it was only me and Abe. He reached out to entwine his fingers through mine.
There would be more stray followers to kill, the Order would have to be formally restructured and put back into place, a system would have to be set up to prevent further attacks on humans. But the largest part of the fight was over—Vlad Draculesti, Aurel Skala, and Elizabeth Bathory were now dead.
Tears pricked at my eyes as I thought of all I had faced in the past few weeks, ever since the fateful day Abe approached me on the street to warn me of vampires in London.
“It is over, Mina,” Abe murmured. “It is over.
As if heeding his words, the breeze picked up, extinguishing the flames of the fire, and Bathory’s ashes scattered into the wind.
27
Possibility
Several weeks later, a dozen members of the Order were gathered in the drawing room of my home in London. I sat in the rear of the room next to Abe. Gabriel presided over this meeting; he stood in front of the small group as he addressed them.
I’d arranged to have the first meeting of the newly reinstated London branch of the Order in my home. Further meetings would take place at another member’s home just outside the city.
Abe, Gabriel, Anara, and I were now honorary members of the Order, but we would only be peripherally involved with the group going forward. Bathory and Skala’s surviving followers had scattered; there were now only sporadic attacks on humans throughout Europe. You all have done more than enough, Noelle had gratefully told us, before we left Transylvania.
We had returned to London several weeks earlier. I’d been reunited with a grateful and relieved Clara. She had burst into tears when I told her Abe and I were engaged. He had taken up residence with me, along with Gabriel, for whom Clara had already set up a room.
Emma had initially come with us to London and met Clara as well. To our disappointment, she had not stayed for long, returning to the Ghyslaine ho
me in France. She was eager to turn it into both an inn and a meeting place for the Parisian branch of the Order of the Dragon.
“Are you quite certain?” I asked her. “You didn’t want to be involved in the war.”
“The war is over. I can help in my own way by offering the home for the Order’s use. It is a way of honoring your mother…she would be happy to know that her home is being used as a meeting place for the Order. Promise me you will come to visit often. I will certainly visit you and Gabriel as often as I can.”
I returned my focus to the present, as my brother continued to address the group.
“Members of the Order in Prague were able to capture a group of vampires who were arranging attacks on humans. They have set up teams of patrols to work with local police. Several other police departments from other cities are working with the Order as well,” Gabriel said. “If no one has anything further, we will adjourn for the day. Thomas will lead the next meeting at his home.”
Everyone began to disperse, bidding their farewells to me and Abe as they departed. Abe left my side to chat with several departing members of the Order, and Gabriel approached me.
“I will be going away for awhile,” he quietly informed me.
“What? Where?” I asked. “A mission for the Order? I hope that—“
“No. It is…personal. One of the Order members has a close friend in Constantinople; he knows of my father’s family. He received information that revealed my father may be alive. I must see if it is true. I hope to only be gone for a fortnight.”
“Oh, Gabriel,” I said, my hand flying to my heart. “Of course you must go. But please…stay in touch via wire and send letters. If I do not hear from you, then—“
“You will come after me,” he interrupted, smiling. “I know.”
“Clara will be the most upset about your departure,” I added, returning his smile. “Even if it is only for a fortnight.”
The Mina Murray Series Bundle, A Dracula Retelling: Books 1-3 Page 50