Karen Essex

by Karen Essex

  He was in the room, staring at the bookshelves, when I walked in, and I was pleased to see that my shield had worked. I had surprised him.

  “You wanted to see me?” he asked as if responding to a request from a stranger.

  “I want to know what is going to happen to me, to us.”

  “By ‘us’ you mean you and the baby?”

  “I also mean you and me,” I said, trying to emulate his impersonal tone.

  “Why are you asking me? Are you not aware by now that we create our own destinies? Is this baby not what you want? What you wanted since you met Jonathan Harker?” He said that name with such disdain that it made me cringe. He must have thought that I wanted to go back to Jonathan, when I had barely considered it a possibility.

  “How do you know that the child is a boy? And human? How do you know that the fetus is not on the path to immortality like its mother?”

  He seemed utterly exasperated with me. “He carries the vibration of Jonathan Harker, which I know very well. The fetus has Harker’s frequency rather than yours, which is sharper and more intense. That is because of your immortal heritage, which you will have no use for now.”

  “What do you mean? How do you know that?” I had come to him feeling powerful, but he was quickly deflating me.

  “Because I have lived your past so many times that I can predict your future. You are incapable of change, Mina. Do you think this is the first time you have done something like this? No, you have destroyed our love time and again with your foolish choices.”

  His voice was low and steady, but the words themselves had some kind of force attached to them that made me quiver.

  “I do not know what you mean,” I said, hugging myself. “I did not choose to be pregnant.”

  For a moment, his eyes flickered, turning pale and then dark again. “Your human tendencies are tedious, Mina. They have always been so. At your level of evolution, you should be weary of feigning helplessness, when you are a master at creating and attracting the very things you most desire. Every time you come close to reclaiming your power, you do something to sabotage it.”

  “You are wrong,” I said. His words confused and offended me. I did not see how I had asked for any of the things that had happened to me, including my reunion with him. “I have barely thought of Jonathan, or anything else but making a life with you, since you took me from the asylum. I have wanted you and nothing but you. I took your blood so that nothing would ever come between us again. I did not ask for this.” I put my hands to my face, not wanting him to see my confusion.

  “I am sure that this is what you truly believe, at least at this moment. But it frustrates me that you refuse to look deeper into your memory, where you would see what happened in the first cycle of our lives together.”

  A feeling of dread began to creep over me. I knew that I was about to hear something that I would have preferred never to hear again, and I knew that I could not stop him from telling me.

  “After we met, you very quickly got with child. Surely you can imagine that having revisited our time together. It was a joyous time, but because I was just beginning my transition, and because your father was a human, the child was mortal.”

  I did not know what he would say next, only that I did not want to hear it. I waited for him to speak, but he was silent. He looked at me with the smallest hint of sadness.

  “Nous l’avons appelé Raymond.”

  When I heard the name of the baby in the language that we used in those days, I felt my body go weak.

  Ah, tu te souviens.

  “I do not remember, and I do not wish to remember,” I said. But I had begun to remember, not facts or faces but the feeling of that lifetime and of this experience that he was going to force me to relive.

  “You give me no choice but to remind you. Otherwise, you will not understand my ire at this present situation,” he said. “I am not a cruel man, but I can only endure so much, even at my advanced state of development. I must continue, Mina. Do you understand?”

  I nodded. Whatever he would say had happened in another lifetime and to another woman. How much could it hurt me now?

  I suppose that he heard that thought because he answered it with a bitter smile.

  On verra. We shall see.

  He continued: “Raymond was born healthy and strong. He resembled your father, and we had every hope that he would be as strapping as that great warrior, who, after all, had withstood mating with a fairy queen. We believed that with time, and with our guidance, our son would make the transition to immortality. But when he was three years old, a plague swept through the land, and he contracted it. Even with your superior knowledge of herbs and cures, you were not able to save him. You could not live with that, and so after one year of despair and self-recrimination, you tricked your sister into revealing the ingredients for a deadly potion that would kill one who had the blood of the immortals, and you drank it. You did not give me the option of taking it with you.”

  “And you?”

  “I was already powerful when we met. Your blood flowing through me was apparently the last component I required to live on eternally, or at least for as long as I have.”

  What good is this gift of immortality if it forces us to sit by helplessly watching those we love die?

  Those had been my words; they had tumbled from my own lips, and I could hear their echo. I started to shake, doubling over, trying to hold back the tears. I wrapped my arms around my belly as if to protect the mortal child inside, so that I would not lose him too.

  The Count, on the other hand, was unmoved. “Forgive me if I cannot share your grief, Mina. I lived it for many years, while you, with your selfish actions, escaped it rather quickly. At this point, it has been completely wrung from me. And do forgive me if I seem a little angry with both myself and with you at finding us once again faced with a similar challenge.”

  He stood in front of me and took my hands in his, exposing my face and defying my anguish with his eyes. “Mina, what do you want?” Each word felt like a blow to me. I had come here to ask him what I should—must—do, but he was not going to give me any instruction or direction or offer comfort.

  “No, I will not offer you comfort. I have offered you comfort and every other sort of gift over many lifetimes, and I have found no reward in it. It is up to you now to decide your path.”

  What do you want?

  The words were even more deafening and insistent than when he had uttered them aloud. I shut my eyes against him and reminded myself that I had power in this situation.

  “Yes, Mina, that is what I have been trying to tell you. You have all the power in this situation, so please do not play the victim with me.” A modicum of feeling crept into his voice, though I am certain that he would have preferred to hide it.

  Remember who you are, remember who you are. I repeated this over and over again. I wanted to be wise enough to know exactly what to do, but I could not access whatever knowledge I needed, particularly with him staring at me and denying my vulnerability. I closed my eyes, drawing my invisible golden cloak around me until I felt it caressing my body, buoying me.

  “You cannot shut me out,” he said, but the mere fact that he had to say it aloud made me think that, with effort, I could shield my thoughts from him and divorce myself from his influence so that I could think. I opened my eyes to see that he was searching my face with the same curiosity of any man.

  “Until yesterday, I wanted nothing but you,” I said. “But what I want is no longer as significant as what I must do for the child. I was an unusual child, a misfit rejected by my own parents. Now you tell me that though you and I are of the immortals, my son is mortal and carries the blood and the frequency of his father. What will that make him?”

  He was much quicker to know my own mind than I was. He dropped my hands. “You want to tell Harker about his child. Is that correct?”

  “I do not want to, but I believe that I must,” I said.

  There was
one moment when I felt at peace for having discerned and confessed what I felt that I must do, one moment when I believed that he understood my plight and would help me through it. But in the next instant, I saw in his face that that was not to be.

  “Well, then, let us make haste,” he said angrily. “We do not want to keep you from him. Let us settle this business once and for all.”

  He glared at me for an interminable amount of time, but even with my new confidence, I could not read him. I could feel his anger, but, because of his greater power and because he wished it so, his thoughts were his own and not to be shared.

  Without the Count uttering a word, a steward appeared with two heavy cloaks, handed them to the Count, and then left the room. The Count wrapped one around himself and tossed the other to me. I felt energy swirl around him, some force that he seemed to gather at his command. I could not see it, but I could feel it as surely as I could feel my own body, and it threw me off balance as I tried to put the cloak around me. The room and its furnishings went blurry as time seemed to speed up. In a whirl of movements, he had wrapped the cape around me and wrapped me in his arms. My body went limp, overpowered by his greater force—not any physical strength he was using but the very power of his being, that great stream of energy that he had summoned from somewhere deep in the universe.

  Quickly I succumbed to the excitement of being in this strange, overwhelming aura. I wondered if this mad energy would be harmful to the baby, and in a split second heard him answer with a resounding no. It seemed as if the walls were falling away for us, and soon we were gliding through the promenade deck, moving faster and faster toward the glass doors, which burst open in front of us. A frigid blast of sea air hit my face, but we were soon above the water out of range of its white crests and its spray. The rain had stopped, but the winds were still fierce. He flew us so fast through the air that we were not hit by the air current but somehow slinked through it. I could hear the blustery gales around us, but we slid through them like thread through a needle’s eye. I clung to him, watching the gradations of gray—the sky, the sea—blend together as we sped along going faster and faster until the blur of land appeared in the distance.

  Part Eight

  LONDON

  Chapter Seventeen

  22 November 1890

  The doors to the mansion flew open, letting us into the reception hall. No one was present, but the house was warm and light glowed from the lamps. The Count threw off his cape and flung it on the floor. “You will find that a warm bath is drawn for you and a gown laid out. Please be dressed by midnight, and I will take you to see your Jonathan. In the interim, as always, the staff is at your service.”

  Nothing in his demeanor invited questions, and, besides, he disappeared, so I did as he said, entering a steamy bath scented with lavender, and tried to let the water suppress my anxiety. I had no idea how he had arranged this midnight meeting with Jonathan, but I trusted, perhaps foolishly, that he would not let any harm come to me. Jonathan, for his part, would surely not want any harm to come to me once he knew that I carried his child, even if he was certain now that I was another of the creatures he had learned to fear. I did not welcome this mission, but I also did not think that I should keep the pregnancy from the child’s father, if only because the boy would grow up and discover his true identity, and surely hate me for it.

  The Count sent a French girl, Odette, with a tray of food, which I devoured. I suspected that my powers were heightening because this time, despite my pregnancy, flying with the Count had not exhausted me. Could I be pregnant with a mortal child and transforming all at the same time?

  I sat at the vanity and watched in the mirror as Odette swept my hair into a sophisticated twist with pinned curls at the crown, held together by bejeweled ornaments. She dressed me in a glistening emerald green taffeta gown with a matching cloak. I watched myself being transformed in the mirror, astonished at my stylish appearance. I could not imagine why the Count had selected such an extravagant and devastatingly flattering outfit for a meeting with my husband. Was he trying to get Jonathan to take me off his hands?

  Tiny gems were sewn into the binding of the neckline, throwing light onto my face, which Odette tinted with barely discernible rouge on my cheeks and lips. Thinking of the baby, I had asked her not to lace the corset ribbons too tight. Still, the bodice lifted my breasts high on my chest and made my already small waist look even more narrow. Two puckered seams ran horizontally down the length of the skirt, giving my hips the curve of a mermaid. When she finished dressing me, we both admired her handiwork in the mirror. Before I left the room, she handed me a matching mask that turned up at the ends into cats’ eyes and had a long ebony handle.

  The Count tried not to show any pleasure with the way I looked as he helped me into the carriage. We did not speak, and I tried to keep my mind blank so that he could not read my thoughts. He wore a simple black satin half mask so that his face was inscrutable. I tried to fathom the sort of gathering that demanded formal dress, which Jonathan would also be attending. I could not even imagine that Jonathan would agree to be in the presence of the Count. I could stand the suspense no longer and asked, “Is Jonathan aware that we are coming?”

  To which he replied, “In a manner of speaking.”

  Why won’t you talk to me?

  No sooner had I thought it than he answered me wearily. “What can I possibly say that you do not already know? All decisions to be made are yours. I will not interfere, Mina. I have paid the price of interfering in your life before and I will not do it again.” He turned away from me and looked out the window.

  I paid little attention to where we were going, though I was looking out the opposite window. I became vaguely aware that we were driving through Mayfair when the Count tapped on the window with his walking stick, and the coachman turned onto a narrow street and stopped. The Count exited the carriage first and helped me out. He took my arm—not lovingly and not roughly but indifferently—and led me down an alley that opened into a small square, in the center of which was a garden. Though it was late autumn, the trees retained their green finery, and heady flower bushes bloomed. I wanted to stop to examine a gaudy pink peony poking through the garden’s spiky wrought-iron fence—a miracle in November—but the Count pulled me on impatiently.

  The square was dark but for soft light coming from the windows of a three-story white Georgian mansion. We walked up the steps to an imposing portico supported by four grand Corinthian columns. He lifted a gargantuan bronze knocker with the face of an imperial lion and then smacked it down. The door opened, and we entered the foyer, a room with marble floors and a sweeping staircase with glinting rails of white and gold. Two butlers greeted us, one taking our wraps, and the other giving us long flutes of champagne.

  We entered a ballroom where a small orchestra was playing a waltz for masked dancers who filled the center of the floor with a swirl of color and motion. The masks they wore were varied and ranged from simple to severe—masks with jesters’ bells, hawks’ beaks, delicate gold wings, shiny jewels. Some had crests of feathers, and some gentlemen wore full face masks of silver or gold. An enchanting glow filled the room, but I could not find the source of light. A fire blazed in the hearth, but the great chandeliers above were unlit. Gradually, it dawned on me that the light came from the creatures in attendance, the dancers themselves, who were luminous like the Count—not enough to disturb the eye but enough to dazzle.

  “Where are we? Who is hosting this gathering?” I asked. My eyes scanned the room for Jonathan, but I saw no one who resembled him. Could he be behind one of the eerie metallic masks?

  “There is no host,” he said. “Let’s see, how shall I explain this to you? This is a collective hallucination of mass desire. We and everyone else here have had a part in its design. Many of my kind are here among us. They have come to mingle with one another, and some have brought the mortals with whom they are currently fascinated.”

  He took my arm, leading me pas
t the twirling dancers and through a labyrinthine series of rooms, littered with couples intertwined in the darkness. I saw flashes of naked skin, arms twisted around bodies like serpents, booted legs spread in the air like wings, and one bare-chested lady swinging on a velvet-roped seat hanging from the tall ceiling. In one room, a woman with hair piled high atop her head played a piano, her crinoline covering the bench, while a man in a powdered wig turned the page of music for her. With the masks and the music and the champagne, which quickly went to my head, I could not tell who was mortal and who was not.

  The Count read my thoughts. “Everyone has come seeking answers to questions and the fulfillment of desires. You want to see Jonathan. He has his own reasons for being here. All is arranged.”

  He opened double doors to a room and invited me to enter first. In this room, the candles were lit. It took me a moment for my eyes to adjust to the flickering light, but the scene before me came all too quickly into sharp focus. Three lavish gowns were strewn across a chaise—two white ones, and one of scarlet that slashed across the other two making a cross. Jonathan was lying supine on a huge bed covered in plush red velvet. Straddling him, riding him like some sort of animal, was a blond woman in a red corset that I knew must be Ursulina. Her voluptuous, scarlet lips were curled and her mouth wide-open while she took her pleasure. Two dark-haired women lay on either side of Jonathan, kissing and caressing him and each other. His eyes were shut tight, his mouth open, and his face shining with rapture as each of the women sucked the fingers of his hands. Ursulina’s head was thrown backward, exposing her long ivory white neck.