Dracula's Demeter: The Vampire King's Stunning Sea Voyage

by Doug Lamoreux

  “Only four days?”

  How could her mother be so casual? Lucy Westenra couldn't enjoy her tea. It was all she could do to remain seated, like the young lady she was supposed to be, like the young bride she soon would be. Four days until Mina Murray, her greatest friend in the whole world arrived on the London train. Not until Saturday! Goodness, it was an eternity.

  She had so much to tell her. Yes, she'd written and Mina was already aware of some of them. But not all. She'd told her; but hadn't told her, told her. All there was to feel about that wonderful, awful 24th of May when three gallant men had asked her hand in marriage. Three – in the same day. Oh, the blow she'd been forced to deliver to the good Dr. Seward, the man who helped so many disturbed people in his sanitarium. And the heartbreak she'd had to hand the handsome American Texan, Quincey Morris. But, oh!, the joy in accepting the proposal of Arthur Holmwood! She loved him so much!

  There was more, things she'd not found the words to mention in her letters. Things she'd been forced to keep bottled up. She couldn't tell her mother, and wouldn't consider telling Arthur, but Mina – Mina would listen and help her… Help her to understand the urges, the terrifying thoughts, the strange dreams – nightmares; the dark and frightening nightmares that had haunted her restless sleep of late.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  While unsuspecting minds in England were being manipulated, the Russian schooner continued westward through the Mediterranean Sea.

  South of Demeter lay Algeria which, save for a few Tuaregs in the Sahara refusing to be conquered after seventy years of bloodshed, was now under French control. During the war, 50,000 French immigrated there, with tens of thousands from Spain, Italy, and Malta, confiscating the coastal farm lands and swarming the cities. The natives were uprooted. Poverty rose, literacy plummeted, and bloody fighting and disease erased one-third of the population. North of Demeter's course lay Majorca, the largest of Spain's Balearic Islands; a ghost of her former self. Six years since, in 1891, a blight destroyed her vineyards. Their main source of income decimated, the residents abandoned the island for Spain or the Americas. Whether God's plan or a curse of the devil, history was replete with stories of disease and death arriving by sea; shadowed by unimaginable suffering… and horror. And the Russian schooner continued her westward course through the Mediterranean.

  Aboard, the crew were kept busy with back-breaking labors and boring routines. While that Monday, 19 July, two events began to alter that cycle.

  The first, while inordinate, was in danger of becoming the usual; Georgiy Eltsin was back on his self-imposed guard duty in the forward hold.

  The second, and more surprising, took place in the passenger's cabin. Swales' patient was finally showing signs of recovery. In addition to lime juice, Ekaterina drank water, sipped broth and, at the cook's insistence, managed a bit of salt pork. She was weak, and slept more than she was awake, but without the violent pangs that had wracked her for days. Most encouraging, she had no memory of the hallucinations that had recently driven her raving from her berth.

  * * *

  Harrington's heart sang when he saw Ekaterina the following morning, Tuesday, 20 July. She was up reading at the desk. The sea was up and rain threatening, but he had the happy feeling that, had there been sunshine, she might well have been eager to bask in it. Her color had returned, rose to her cheeks, blush to her lips, and the startling green, so sadly missed, was back in her round eyes. The makeshift scarf was gone, the bruise on her throat all but faded, and the puncture wounds closed and healing nicely. Best of all, Ekaterina's gorgeous smile was back where it belonged.

  Her sweet personality, so badly affected by her illness, was back. She was treating Harrington and Swales well again. Their only bone of contention remained, and neither could blame her, her intense desire to escape the confines of the cabin and breathe fresh air.

  “Katya, I know you're feeling better. I'm delighted you're feeling better,” Harrington said, taking her hands as she danced about the room. She urged him to join her; he urged her to stop. He laid a finger to his lips to quiet her. “Your improvement in health doesn't improve your situation. You can dance quietly, but you can't sing and you cannot go on deck.”

  She pulled on her knit cap. “Not even as Rada Funar?”

  “Cor, no! You're not well enough. Besides, you're a stowaway. Having done so in the open only makes the situation worse as far as Nikilov is concerned. And the mate hasn't stopped growling yet. Believe me, you do not want to be caught up there.”

  “That can't be. I am universally loved.”

  Harrington smiled, delighted in her recovery. Still he felt a twinge of fear. Her infectious gaiety seemed forced and he couldn't shake the feeling Ekaterina was not herself; that she may not have been out of danger. “You are,” he said, remembering to smile, “most assuredly loved by me.”

  * * *

  Forward and below, there was no love lost at all.

  The second mate, whether through real perception or gross paranoia, was certain there was something wrong in the hold. He'd taken up residence among the stores the previous day, to investigate his fears and keep vigil. He anticipated spending one night among the boxes to cure his inexplicable mania but nothing could have been further from reality. The longer he was there, listening, watching, the more he felt the need to stay. He was convinced a malevolent force occupied that space.

  He was there now, fighting off the sleep he so desperately needed – and losing. He gave the gloomy hold, lit by his solitary lamp, a final look through slitted eyes, then nodded off. He was snoring immediately, oblivious to the hold, the cargo, or the scrawny gray rats that moved in from the shadows to claim the remnant of his supper.

  A scant few feet away, in his casket, Dracula was less appreciative than the rats. He was seething. He'd been listening to the ridiculous human for hours; calling out impotent threats as he hovered, tinking and clinking his tea china, chomping and grinding as he stuffed his face, and now snoring. In the Count's reckoning, these fools already owed him for their insolence, their infuriating searches. And this harassment? He would pay, this little man. They would all pay.

  Before dropping off to sleep, his irritating warder had opened the hatch. Fresh air filled the compartment. The clouds parted and blue beams of moonlight stole in through the holes in the lid. All of the elements that made it a beautiful night would, come dawn, spell his doom. Should the seaman sleep soundly, into the morning, the hold would be flooded with sunlight.

  It took all his strength to control the centuries-old instinct to murder the man and pull the doors closed. But Dracula knew better. The seas upon which the ship bore him were unfriendly waters; deadly outside his few protections. He needed this vessel, and its crew of misfits, if he was to reach England and his new life. He would bide his time with the voyage and with the humans. Still, he'd had enough intrusions. A diversion was needed to remove this parasite; something to keep him, the entire crew, busy. They needed some place to be other than the hold. He needed the hatch doors closed.

  Dracula laid his hands upon the underside of his box lid – and concentrated.

  * * *

  The second was deep in a dream, on land, under the soft moonlight, hand-in-hand with his sweet Orina. The dream played out as it had so many times before, the details no one's business but his own. The end came too quickly and, as always, in tears. Orina died, long ago. The moonlight, the sweetness, the kisses were the phantoms; the dream cut from wholecloth. Death, the impending grave, that was the only reality. The tears came…

  … in torrents, running down his cheeks, his clothes, everywhere. Drowning him…

  “Mr. Eltsin!”

  A voice, dull, insistant… beyond the wash of tears. A voice new to the dream.

  “Mr. Eltsin!”

  He struggled to the surface, to wake, to sit. He was in the hold soaked from head to foot. His hammock swung madly, the ship buffeted by heavy waves. Water poured in through the open hatchway. A silouette, so
expansive at the head, so thick at the shoulders, it could only belong to Olgaren, hung over the lip of the hatch above, pelted by rain, backlit by flashes of lightning, shouting down at him. “Mr. Eltsin! The captain's… called ship's officers… to stations! You are needed.” Out of nowhere, the sea was churning and Demeter was in what sailors euphemistically referred to as rough weather.

  Later, when the storm abated and they were able to breathe, each of the crewmen would have wild stories of how a gorgeous night erupted in blasts of lightning, wind, and rain. Of how each courageously battled to save the ship. Later. For now it was upon them.

  Eltsin scrambled up the hatch ladder and, gaining the deck with a hand from Olgaren, was awed by what he saw. The ship had not merely surged into a surprise blow. She'd entered a hell of water instead of fire. A quick look over the pitching deck showed Constantin, Amramoff and Popescu, damned as well, suffering above trying to reef the foresails. The first and the carpenter were lashing the canvas, Popescu was lashing out – cursing heaven and hell in the same stolen breath. Eltsin and Olgaren would join them but first, fighting the wind, buffeted by waves lipping the bulwark, they wrestled the hold's hatch doors closed and fitted the battens into place.

  * * *

  The head had torn loose on the square-rigged foresail and it had to be put right, rainstorm or no, to successfully shorten the sail and before the canvas was ripped to ribbons by the wind. It need not be mentioned the repair would have to be accomplished without the ship's rope and sail expert, the late Petrofsky, their marlinspike.

  “It's All hands to stations now,” a dripping Smirnov (with a drenched mustache) cried, as he called Swales, and even Harrington, up from the mess. “The captain asks you both to relieve him at the helm. He needs every man for the sails.”

  The men before the mast rode the heaving yards as if riding some fearsome beast. Eltsin had gone aloft to join them. Olgaren, with his great strength, remained on the pitching deck to work the lines at the pinrails. Nikilov stood alone at the wheel, trimming the rudder against the blow with difficulty. He was needed forward with the men and, with only an arthritic cook and a weak bookworm from which to draw, Nikilov decided to make steering a two man job. The salty Russian wondered now after his replacements. Happily, through the downpour, he made out his relief coming.

  Smirnov led Swales and Harrington up, onto the deck. The Russian and the Scot struggled abreast for the helm; the former for new orders, the latter to relieve the captain. Harrington, his heart racing, lagged behind. What the two in the lead thought or felt, he didn't know. But Harrington was terrified, entering a level of hell he'd never imagined. If there were gods or devils, both seemed in league against him.

  The ship was running downwind, driving into a trough between two massive waves. Swales took the wheel and, as Nikilov stepped away, the rudder kicked. The bow began to yaw and, turning windward, to rise up suddenly. The stern slid down the face of the wave, outrunning the bow, and the schooner broached (turning broadside into the trough). The vessel was virtually knocked down, listing well over 45 degrees, and threatening to lay on her beam ends. Water rushed over the port gunwale and Demeter came near to capsizing.

  Drenched, Harrington fell to his knees between the deckhouse and the port bulwark. With the ship on her side, he felt the spray and saw only the foaming, white horses atop the waves where the sky ought to have been. And how to describe the motion? To be in full contact with the pine deck and still feel as if he were falling through the air!

  To a chorus of terrified shouts, the main sail boom swept across the deck. Had not the massive Olgaren (and now Smirnov and the grumbling Popescu as well), been there to stop the sweep, the boom might well have plunged into the sea, main gaffe sail and all, and the schooner gone into a death roll. But the might of the straining seamen, and not a little luck, halted the event and saved the ship.

  “Hard over,” the captain was heard to yell. “Hard over! Head her off!” Nikilov and Swales, fighting together, forced the wheel over and abruptly turned the ship to the lee.

  Harrington reached for the chainplate, where the main mast shroud met the rail, in a desperate effort to prevent falling into the sea. But, as he grabbed hold, the sea dropped away – out of sight. The ship, answering the helm, pitched up in the opposite direction, as she fell off downwind and back into the trough. The water disappeared as the schooner righted herself and the whole of his vision was filled with rain coming hard at him and boiling gray-black sky. Lightning flashed!

  The ship rolled the opposite direction on her keel, the main boom swung again – threatening all on the deck coming back to the starboard – and the hands pulled for their lives.

  Harrington's knees left the deck and the deckhouse bulkhead stopped him as he fell up the other way. To his surprise, there was no pain, merely a fleeting shock at the contact and a desperate need to catch his breath. He inhaled, got a mouth full of salt water for his trouble, then (coughing and choking) was off again, sliding down the wall of the deckhouse back toward the floor. I'm trapped! was all he could think; a rider on a horse of the apocalypse!

  The ship pitched back again, picking up speed now she was running. Rain, rat lines, the raucous roll of the vessel back to the port, hurling him toward the bulwark, the pinrail through the blur, the wide, black, angry ocean – everywhere – ready to swallow him, and a monstrous gray wave hammering him on the head, driving him nearer his watery grave. The ship may have been saved but Harrington was done. He gasped and closed his eyes for the last time.

  It was a complete shock, a moment later, when the young Englishman realized he wasn't dead. He wasn't drowning either, though it felt like it. He suddenly understood he couldn't breathe because someone had hold of him, around the chest, in a bear hug. The shock continued as his rescuer dragged his limp, drenched body aft of the deckhouse, around the corner, to the hollow beside the door to the between-decks. There they dropped, exhausted, his rescuer sagged between the rum tanks and the sloshing rain barrel with Harrington in his lap.

  “Th- thank… you,” the scholar shouted over the tumult. He gasped, grateful to take in air, and shouted again, “Thank… you.”

  The ship continued to pitch beneath them, down at the head then up, down at the heel then up, rolling from side to side, threatening life and limb with each evolution. The rain poured, the thunder boomed, and the monstrous waves jumped the rails. Harrington took it in - alive. When he finally caught his breath, he turned his head to look his rescuer in the face and met the knowing blue eyes and soaked solid features of the ship's commander.

  Harrington began to shake, crying. Nikilov slapped his arm, squeezed his shoulder firmly. “Fear not, Herr Harrington,” he shouted over the din. “A character-building storm for everyone!”

  * * *

  With the compliment, captain and mates, crew and passenger, running the schooner before the wind, none were left between-decks to witness the strange gray mist pour through the cracks in the forehold door. It glided the companionway and, as it moved, took the shape of a human being. But only the shape.

  Count Dracula, an old man again, with wiry hair and a white mustache, now that their parasitic watchmen were occupied, saw no need to suppress his rising bloodlust. He strode aft, in perfect balance, oblivious to the pitching and rolling of the floor, and all but floated to the door of the passenger's cabin. Behind it, he could sense, smell, feel, Ekaterina.

  He could sense something more. She was resisting. Not, the vampire imagined, for long. Silently he called, knowing that within the cabin, within her head, his voice was booming.

  The door came open and there she stood… wearing an expression of abject terror. She stared, unblinking, breathless at first, then breathing, then panting. Invite me in, she heard him say, though his bright red lips remained unmoving. She fought to block the insistent voice, now booming, You must invite me in, like cymbals crashing within her head.

  Then he spoke, actually, in a commanding bass, “You must invite me over the
threshold.”

  Her defenses crumbled at the same instant something wild took command of her spirit. She met his stare with gleaming eyes and threw the door wide. “Please,” she said, trembling. “Come in.”

  Dracula crossed the sill and pushed the door shut behind him. He took the girl in his arm, grabbed her firm round bottom and, without waiting for an angel to pass, lifted her and bit her throat. He drank to her moans relishing her life force. Contrary to his nature, tamping his animal urge, ignoring her pitiable cries, he consumed only so much then forced himself back. Dracula sliced a razor-sharp fingernail into the flesh of his wrist, into a vein, to release a watery ooze of red-cells and separated platelets (his tainted blood resisted its own coagulation), and lifted it to her. Ekaterina pulled back but the vampire would not be denied. He grabbed the nape of her neck and pressed his wrist to her mouth. “Drink.”

  When still she hesitated, he forced her head forward, pressing her lips against his bleeding wrist until she had no choice but to suckle. A moment and holding her was no longer necessary. A moment more and she began to feed hungrily.

  * * *

  Following its initial surge, the sea calmed markedly. The crew remained busy but the threat of imminent foundering passed as the blast ebbed to governable rough weather. The operation of the vessel was gotten in hand and Demeter rode through the night.

  Swales, beaten and bruised, had been relieved several hours since and sent below to sleep. He must have done, for now something startled him awake. As consciousness returned the old Scot recognized the cause of his alarm; a slamming door. He lifted his head, ignoring a stiff neck, and saw Olgaren's hunched form coming in. A kerosene lamp burned in the companionway and, in the ambient light, he saw a deluge of water running off the seaman's gear. The exhausted Russian spoke not a word but, in his soaked kit, fell onto a bunk and began to snore.