by Dacre Stoker
“The castle has been so cold without you, so lonely. I had to dispatch the servants after you took leave, and I have yet to replace them.”
“You killed the servants, every last one of them. Do you think I would not learn of this?”
“Their blood is on your hands, my dear.”
“My God in Heaven,” Vambéry breathes.
Bram turns to find him staring down at the body of Deaglan O’Cuiv on the table, now saturated in blood from the Szgany lying atop him. Ellen is carefully circling the table, her eyes glued to them both.
Deaglan O’Cuiv, Ellen’s beloved, is somehow healing.
The tendons and veins of his severed head and limbs have been reconnected, and when Bram inspects them closely he can see blood pulsing through the repaired appendages. Far from whole, to be sure, but they are regenerating.
The Szgany is clearly dead at this point, the last of his life drained. Maggie yanks his remains from the table and discards the body in the corner of the room much as one would discard trash. “He needs more.”
It is then that Deaglan’s hand flies out from his side and snatches Bram by the wrist.
* * *
• • •
DEAGLAN’S FINGERS SQUEEZE Bram’s wrist with such strength that his long nails dig into the skin and draw blood. He pulls Bram close to the table, tugging him down with unnatural force until Bram’s neck is at his mouth. “I have died a thousand deaths, felt the pain of each and every one of them, yet the only thought to have passed through my mind every second of every minute, every day of every year, was of this hunger . . . the sweet blood that would satisfy it and the wonder of whose it would be.”
Bram feels a sharp sting at his neck, and the dry, chapped lips of this former man, this undead, as he sucks the blood from his vein. He tries to pull away, he tries to beat his fists against Deaglan’s chest. His empty hand, longing for the wooden stake he held just moments earlier but is now gone. There is nothing he can do, though; he is held fast in Deaglan’s merciless embrace, his body paralyzed, his mind swimming in a daze.
From the corner of his eye, he sees Maggie O’Cuiv, first at his side, then behind Matilda. It is as if she has traveled there in a blur, and when she falls still she is standing behind his sister with Matilda’s arms clamped behind her back, held fast in Maggie’s vice-like grip. Maggie is shrieking with laughter, knowing this was the plan all along, and she grins at Bram before biting down on Matilda’s neck.
Bram watches helplessly as Matilda’s shoulder and dress grow red with blood, as it drips from the wound and out from between Maggie’s hungry lips to the floor at their feet. Matilda tries to scream. Bram sees the pain and fear in his sister’s eyes and knows it wants to escape in a loud fury, but instead only a whimper leaves her mouth, followed by a gasp as the air leaves her lungs. He can do nothing as his sister grows deathly faint and collapses into Maggie’s arms where Maggie drinks still. She drinks until not a drop remains, she drinks until his sister is nothing more than this dead thing she cradles.
Behind him, Thornley cries out, and Bram is able to twist his head just enough to witness Patrick O’Cuiv snapping Vambéry’s neck and tossing his spent body aside. It strikes the floor with a hideous thud. Patrick is on Thornley then, his terrible teeth tearing through Bram’s brother’s neck, spraying the room with hot blood even as Thornley screams—not the screams of a grown man but the screams of a child. All goes silent then but for the sound of Patrick O’Cuiv quaffing down every remaining drop.
All the while, Ellen stands in the corner of the room, lifeless, watching. A thin smile across her ruby lips.
Bram breaks free from Deaglan’s hold, feeling a great pain as his flesh is torn away, and dives for Vambéry’s sword, glimmering on the ground alongside its owner’s lifeless body. With every ounce of energy in his body fighting the desire to pass out from his loss of blood, he comes up with the blade, the sharp edge finding Ellen’s neck—
“Bram, no!” Ellen shouts. She wraps her arms around him and pulls him to the corner of the room, away from the table, away from her beloved. “It was a vision! Only a vision!”
The silver blade burns against her skin; Bram hears it, smells it, tastes it in the air.
Bram’s eyes dart frantically around the room. He sees Matilda standing opposite him, her eyes locked on him. Maggie beside her. Thornley, Vambéry, and Patrick O’Cuiv standing motionless on the other side of the table, all watching him.
He sucks in a deep breath and releases the sword. It falls to the floor with a clatter and slides under the table. Vambéry snatches it back up.
Alive.
All alive.
It was like back in the room at the abbey, the visions from behind the door. Only now the body is right here, right next to them, in the same room—
“Dracul’s blood flows through him still; he can use that,” Ellen whispers at his ear. “He will use that until Deaglan is free. It is all right now, you are safe. It was not real. You are stronger than he.”
“He is strong, my countess!” Dracul’s voice rings out over the churning storm. “The strongest yet! How kind of you to bring him to me! Him and the others!”
Bram shakes off the remains of Ellen’s loose hold and goes to the window. The undead are all around, their fiery eyes watching the house with unfettered lust. Above them, something runs across the remains of the roof, tiny little footsteps, quick and fast, followed by another pair. Others scratch at the walls. At the foundation, he can hear them digging, slowly digging under. Awful sounds, the undead everywhere.
“They cannot get in, not without being invited,” he hears Ellen say. “Bram was right about that.” The others hear her, too, but that does not put an end to their uneasy stares.
Dracul moves closer, only twenty feet or so from their door now, Emily at his side. “Bram, if you truly believe Ellen will spare your family and friend, you are laboring under a delusion. Why else bring you here? Someone will find your wagon in due time, but nothing else. Most likely, they will blame the wolves. How else for a group of foreigners to disappear in the woods?”
As if in response to this, Bram hears the wolves again, the howls of a dozen or more of them from amongst the trees of the forbidding forest.
Dracul waves a hand. “Some of my children have not eaten for a generation. Tonight they find joy, for a feast is at hand!”
Bram is not certain if he is making reference to the wolves, to the undead, or to both.
Emily advances to the little house, drifting down from her place next to Dracul and leaving no tracks behind in the muddy earth, the undead part for her allowing her access. She raps on the door, three slow knocks.
“A knock, a knock at my husband’s door, will he kiss me evermore?” Emily’s voice chimes out in a singsong. “A knock, a knock at my husband’s door, my wish to join him, I implore. This last knock, this final knock, at the door, will he hold me, nevermore?”
Emily giggles at this, her childish rhyme. “Join me, Thornley! It feels so lovely and free! You cannot imagine! I want you with me so.”
Thornley has picked up one of the wooden stakes and is absentmindedly rolling it around with his fingers, his free hand scratching her bite marks on his neck. He reaches down and pulls open the door. Matilda grabs at him, her hand latching onto the collar of his shirt.
Emily stands there, her skin aglow. She looks more ghost-like than human now. Her eyes glow a deep green, and her skin is as pure as that of a newborn child. Bram had always thought of her as beautiful, but she is breathtaking now, enchanting. “We have not lived, Thornley, not yet. But we can live now. It is not too late. Let me in and I will show you, I will show you everything.”
“You cannot,” Vambéry says in a hushed tone. “And you cannot go out or we will lose you, too.”
Bram reaches down and takes the stake from his brother’s hand. “We will find anothe
r way.”
Thornley’s gaze remains fixed on his wife, his eyes lost in hers.
Behind them, the body of Deaglan O’Cuiv jerks on the table, his hand grabs at Vambéry’s arm and with a sharp spasm tightens around it.
Vambéry cries out in pain.
When Deaglan releases him, Vambéry thrashes about and stumbles back into the wall. His eyes roll back in their sockets and go white, a guttural moan crawling from his throat. Then he screams. The scream sharpens and tapers away until he falls quiet, his eyes jumping from person to person but seeing no one.
Bram is the first to get to him, catching him as his legs give out.
Vambéry turns to the now-still body of Deaglan O’Cuiv, then to Patrick, then back again, struggling the whole time to break free of Bram’s hold.
Then Bram suddenly understands. “What did he show you? It’s not true, none of it. It’s—”
When Vambéry’s glare bears down on Patrick O’Cuiv, all the muscles in his body tense. “I banish you from this house!”
“No!” Bram cries out. But there is nothing he can do.
Some unseen force reaches into the small house, takes hold of Patrick O’Cuiv, and rips him from it. The large man flies through the door and out into the night on a soundless wind. He crashes to the ground, and before he can stand, the other undead are upon him, their sharp fingernails and teeth tearing him to pieces in a feral feast.
Maggie shrieks and tries to run out the door, but Ellen catches her and pulls her back. “You can’t go out there! Not like this! He is trying to turn us all against each other. Twisted manipulations and visions, nothing more!”
Ellen holds Maggie close, the girl sobbing. She glares at Dracul through wind and rain. “Is there no end to your madness?”
“They plan to kill us all,” Vambéry tells Bram. “Do you not see? We are an offering meant to buy her freedom.” He gestures towards Ellen. “Her and the lot of them.”
Ellen takes a step back, her eyes pleading. “That is not true. I would never—”
“This is why she brought us here. Why else?” Vambéry glares at Ellen. “I banish—”
Bram punches him in the jaw, and the man crumples to the ground. “Enough! Mind games, all of it! You must be stronger!”
Maggie swipes at Vambéry with razor-sharp nails as he falls, but Ellen holds her back. The girl’s eyes burn with fire, glaring down at him with fevered anger.
Matilda, who had remained mute through most of this, aims her revolver at the head of Deaglan O’Cuiv on the table. His head and limbs are fully reattached now. Fresh skin has grown over the muscle, veins, and tendons, still raw and pink but restoring him to a whole man.
Dracul steps to the door. “Pull the trigger, and I will grant you safe passage from here; you have my word.”
“You kill him, and we are all dead,” Ellen counters, Maggie still squirming in her arms.
Matilda pulls back the Webley’s hammer. “Maybe there is no way for any of us.”
“No more.”
This came from Deaglan O’Cuiv, his eyes now open. He peers at them weakly. “No more death in my name.”
Ellen releases Maggie and is there at his side in but an instant.
Matilda takes a step back, the gun still pointing at Deaglan’s head. Then she spins around and fires at Dracul, who stands in the doorway. Round after round, she fires, then kicks the door shut when the weapon comes up empty.
And, from somewhere outside in the pelting rain, Emily laughs.
* * *
• • •
“THE BULLETS ACCOMPLISHED NOTHING,” Thornley exclaims. He is standing at the front window, looking out. “They passed right through him, unchecked.”
“We can stay in here until first light. He can do little but deliver threats as long as we remain in here,” Bram says.
Vambéry staggers to his feet, eyeing Ellen and the O’Cuivs, rubbing his jaw. “With them?”
“Yes, with them.” Bram insists.
Vambéry scoffs, braces himself against the wall, his legs uncertain.
Ellen has Deaglan’s hand in hers, holding his palm to her cheek. The wrist of her other hand is pressed to his lips, where he drinks. Words pass silently between the two. How long this has gone on, Bram is unsure.
Maggie pushes past Vambéry and takes Deaglan’s other hand.
Deaglan O’Cuiv might be awake, but he seems far from well. His skin is nearly translucent. Bram swears he sees the blood pulsing beneath the thin flesh, slowly forging new vessels where none had been only minutes earlier—regenerating, albeit very slowly—Ellen’s blood now flowing through his veins.
“Do you understand what must happen?” Ellen asks him.
Deaglan nods weakly.
Ellen draws her wrist from his mouth. “There is no other way.”
“I know.”
“Can you stand?”
Again, Deaglan nods, and together the two women help him swing his legs over the side of the table, help him to his feet, wrapping the tarpaulin around his waist. There is a ragged scar on his chest at his heart, but otherwise the wound has healed.
“We are coming out!” Ellen shouts over the rain.
Bram’s heart sinks. What is she doing?
Maggie reaches for the door and pulls it open. Just outside, Dracul stands with Emily at his side. As Thornley said, the bullets left not a single mark.
Dracul tilts his head at the sight of Deaglan O’Cuiv. “My blood has served you well. How resilient you have become!” He then turns to Ellen, displaying a crooked smile. “Are you still prepared to make the trade we discussed?”
Ellen first looks at Bram, then Matilda and Thornley. “I am.”
“You can’t do this!” Bram shouts at her.
“Fortunately for you, my friend,” Dracul says to him, “this decision does not fall to you. It was made for you some time ago.” Dracul turns to Ellen. “Shall we?”
“I have your word?”
“You do.”
Ellen takes a deep breath, then strokes Deaglan O’Cuiv’s cheek. “I love you with all my heart, and I always will. Find peace. Somehow, find peace. It is for you I do this.”
“And I you,” he said softly. “I will be with you at every moment, now and forever.”
She releases him and leans to Maggie’s ear. “Keep him safe. Always.”
Maggie says nothing, only nods, her eyes empty as she gazes upon the spot where Patrick O’Cuiv had fallen. Then she leads the limping Deaglan O’Cuiv out, past Dracul and Emily, past the undead, and, untouched by anyone, disappears into the shadows of the dark forest.
At the door of the house, Ellen watches them retreat, her eyes filling with tears of red.
Thornley slips a stake into Bram’s outstretched hand. Bram wraps his fingers around it, feeling its heft. He could not kill them all, but he is certain he can get to Dracul before—
Ellen glances down at the stake. “Leave it here, there is no need for it.” She studies the other faces in the room, particularly Matilda and Thornley, before turning back to Bram. “If you come with me, you will be safe. But the others must remain here.”
“I am not going anywhere with you.” He tightens his grip on the stake.
“Take me instead,” Thornley says. “I want to be with my wife. Even if only for a few more minutes. Take me and I promise I will not be any trouble.”
For the first time since arriving here, Dracul appears confused. Then: “Oh! You have not told them?” This seems to thrill him. “Did you believe the outcome might somehow be different? That your little group could somehow battle all my children and emerge unscathed, the heart of your paramour intact, that all would be well? Why would I stand for such an outcome? You are so naïve, the whole lot of you. The only reason any of you are still alive is because I have need of you, no other reason. T
he day that my need ends is the day you must fear most.”
Vambéry produces a bottle of holy water—from where, Bram does not know—and holds it behind his back, his fingers fiddling with the cap.
Amused, Dracul waves a hand at him, and the sacred liquid in the small vial begins to boil. Vambéry drops it at his feet, cursing.
Dracul continues. “Bring the boy and let us be on with it, before I grow bored and burn this little shack to the ground and end all of them.”
“Bram, please,” Ellen pleads. “You must come.”
He stands firm, just inside the door.
The anger within Dracul burns. “Enough of this nonsense!” He snaps his fingers, and lightning strikes a nearby cypress tree. The undead surrounding it jump back as a branch cracks and bursts into flames. Dracul retrieves the burning branch and holds it inches from the wooden beams of the tiny house.
“Don’t!” Bram cries out. Whether or not it will burn in the rain, he doesn’t know. But he can’t chance it. “I’ll go! I’ll go.”
And before the others can object, Bram drops the wooden stake at his feet. He steps through the door of the house into the raging storm.
* * *
• • •
THE UNDEAD FALL IN behind Bram, blocking any possible retreat. There is no turning back now.
Dracul drops the burning branch in a puddle, the flame fizzling out. Then he turns and starts ascending the hill, leaving the small house behind.
Bram tries not to listen to Matilda’s cries, her shouts, his name on the wind. He can only hope that Thornley will hold her and Vambéry can keep them all safe until the morning.
Ellen reaches back and takes Bram’s hand in her own. He allows her this gesture, although he is not certain why. Ellen’s skin is cool yet dry to the touch, untouched by the rain, as are Dracul and Emily. He himself feels every drop, though, icy pricks against his skin. His shoes produce a sloppy sucking sound in the mud as they climb the hill—his shoes alone, for the others make no purchase with the ground and leave behind no tracks.