“Ready?” Van Helsing asked the vampire.
Lucille offered her hand to Dracula, who took it in his own. Dracula nodded to the doctor.
Van Helsing took up a pair of forceps and inserted the tip into the wound, probed. Dracula set his jaw and did not protest, though he was in obvious pain. Lucille marvelled at how steady her father’s hands were, even at his advanced age.
“Got it,” Van Helsing announced and withdrew a small triangular bit of white metal. He dropped it onto the tray and picked up the scalpel.
“Now, excise the dead tissue, you say?” he asked the vampire.
“The necrosis, if you please. The dead tissue is me.” Dracula managed a smile.
The scalpel slid into the skin around the wound where the black had not reached yet. Dracula’s face contorted with pain.
TO: CSS REINHARD HEYDRICH, RSHA, REICHSFUHRER-SS
FROM: SS MAJOR WALTRAUD REIKEL
CC: HEINRICH HIMMLER, REICHSFUHRER-SS
(via diplomatic pouch)
TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW (01/06/41)
INTERVIEW CONDUCTED BY MAJOR W. REIKEL AND INTERVIEW SPECIALIST CORPORAL SCHRECK. Also present is your Company scribe.
Subject is restrained in the Corporal’s specially designed interrogation chair. Subject bears bruises and abrasions received in capture and earlier undocumented interview.
MAJOR R.: Who do you work with?
SUBJECT: Caviar comes from virgin sturgeon / Virgin sturgeon’s a very fine dish. / Very few sturgeon are ever virgin, / That’s why caviar’s a very rare dish.
Corporal S. gathers up his tools: mallet and nails.
MAJOR R.: We could save us all a lot of uncomfortable time if you would just give me one name. Just one. That’s not so difficult, is it?
SUBJECT: Oysters they are fleshy bivalves / They have youngsters in their shell. / How they diddle is a riddle, / But they do, so what the hell.
MAJOR R.: You ARE going to tell me who you are collaborating with.
Corporal S. was commanded to remove a tarpaulin in the corner of the interrogation room. Under it is a body, badly burnt. Even though the remains are charred, it is discernible that the throat of the corpse has been torn out as if by an animal. (The scribe had to remove himself for a brief moment to take advantage of the facilities.)
SUBJECT: The other night, dear, as we lay sleeping. / I could not help it, I lost control./ And now you wonder, just why I’m leaving; / You will find out in nine months or so.
Corporal S. is given a nod by the Commander. A small nail (30 millimetres) is inserted between the Subject’s middle knuckles of the first finger on the left hand. The Subject responded vocally, none of it transcribable.
MAJOR R.: A name. One name.
SUBJECT: R. M. Renfield, Sergeant, Royal Engineers.
Major R. gives another nod. Another nail is inserted and secured in the same manner, this time in the second finger of the same hand.
SUBJECT: They shan’t murder me by inches! Ah’ll fight for my Lord and Master!
FROM THE WAR JOURNAL OF J. HARKER
(transcribed from shorthand)
After hearing the order to search the floors, I sprinted down the hallway, frantically testing every door. I behaved much as a rat does in a trap, desperately searching for a way out of my predicament. Left and right, every door to every office was locked. I now wished I had paid more attention to the lock-picking course at Beaulieu Manor, but I happened to be hungover that day after a post-cricket celebration.
I thought of breaking a window in one door, but soon dismissed the idea; the broken glass would be a definite red flag for anyone searching, as it had been for me at the entrance.
Finally a door gave way to my panicked push. As soon as I entered I knew, by the pungent effluvium, that I was in the loo. I soon deduced that it was not even the men’s water closet, this conclusion reached by the absence of any urinal and the presence of a dainty rattan settee painted white with faded, stained pink cushions. The toilets were stained yellow with age, and the once-white octagonal tiles that lined the floor were cracked in a variety of places, each irregular cleft blackened with years of grime. The air was heavy with dank moisture, redolent with the musk of stale cigarettes and sickening-sweet perfume.
Frantically I looked everywhere, desperate for a place to hide. But there was nothing, not a vent or crawl space. The lone window was high off the floor and decidedly too small for me to get through. It looked as if it had not been opened since Napoleon’s time. The place was sealed as tight as a submarine, which probably had something to do with the smell.
I pressed my back against the door and could hear the rattling of doorknobs and shaking of doors in the hallway, the same procedure that had led me here. I peeked out into the corridor and saw a lone soldier checking the offices one by one.
This Nazi bastard was about to discover the same thing that I had found. Only one door would open. The one I was huddled behind. I had seconds until I was discovered. The beating of my own heart and the blood surging through my temples pounded like blows from a hammer, so loud that I was sure my pursuer would be able to hear.
Setting aside the Thompson—one burst from the machine gun would alert the whole building—I withdrew the .32-calibre silenced Welrod that I had carried for much of the southern campaign. I had found no reason to use it then, only fired it a few times. It was not very accurate beyond five paces, but the loo was a tiny room. This kill would be close. Thank the Lord, as I have proved to be a terrible shot with the pistol, not able to hit an elephant in the ass if I was holding his tail.
My fingers curled around the pistol grip, squeezing much too hard, the long tube that covered the barrel resting against my leg.
The door eased open. A German soldier wearing the ubiquitous muted grey tunic stepped inside.
The curious paradox of war that I had never dwelt upon was the fine line between killing and murder. How a civilised man, a religious man taught to abhor homicide, intellectually and morally, indoctrinated by our laws, religion, and family mores that it is resolutely wrong to kill another human being, can, abruptly, with the flip of a mental switch, rationalize that the assassination of his enemy is not only required, but proper. And often glorified.
Up to this time I had indeed killed my enemy, in our southern actions, at the railway car, in fact, had slaughtered more than my share at the munitions factory less than an hour before. But they were all at a distance, just targets that fell; their ultimate terminus noted but not dwelt upon. Once removed in deed and mental rationalization, shall we say. In a kill-or-be-killed situation, the act was performed and all other thoughts became muted by the sheer relief that one was still alive.
But the most salient quality of this orthodox murder was the remove from the target.
This man who stepped through the door was instantly close enough for me to detect the onion and paprika on his breath. Close enough to see the pinkeye that had swollen one lid, making it appear as if he were winking at me. Close enough for me to see the sunburnt skin and abnormally low widow’s peak plunging down from the brim of his cap. He reminded me of my uncle Clive.
It was not the memory of my uncle that gave me pause (he was a prat), so I suppose it was the proximity of the soldier and, there is no other word that serves, his human-ness that caused me to hold back my murderous impulse.
I reversed my grip on the Welrod, grasping the fat barrel instead, and clubbed him on the head. The blow knocked his field cap askew and he looked nothing if not startled. But, unlike Bulldog Drummond’s opponents, he did not fall to my feet unconscious.
I responded to his lack of pulp novel cooperation by pounding on his skull a few more times. This still did not produce the hoped-for outcome. In fact, one of his hands darted toward the Schmeisser machine gun slung over his shoulder. The other arm shot out and grabbed me about the waist to steady himself, I suppose, as my repeated pummeling began to have some effect.
He sagged to one knee and pulled me down wi
th him. We tumbled to the floor; the Welrod flew from my hand and skidded across the tiles with the grinding sound of steel against stone. We rolled across the floor, grappling at each other, me trying to keep him close so he could not wield the Schmeisser, and he attempting to drive me away. The odour of violet brilliantine from his hair tonic was strong enough to make me cough.
Again, during my warcraft training, besides the use of the pistol, rifle, and other killing instruments, I was given some lessons in hand-to-hand combat by a little Welsh fellow, Sergeant Charlie Hall, who edified us college boys with constant thrashings. He had a variety of techniques, from back-alley fisticuffs to an oriental pugilistic approach of throws and counter-throws. These were taught us in a ritualistic fashion of poses and attacks, more ballet than brawl.
In no manner did the soldier I wrestled in that ladies’ loo attend to any of Charlie’s choreography. He gouged at my eyes, bit, clawed, and kicked. I responded in kind, fighting as a berserker. It was a barbaric struggle, both of us subsumed to our bestial antecedents. Holding him close, I was subject to a vicious pounding upon my back. He also kneed me in the groin. I let go of his torso and wrapped my hands about his throat, drove my thumbs into his larynx until I felt the cartilage break like chicken bones. After that his breath came in wheezing gasps. But he persisted in his assault with even more vigor. And I held my own and more, I must admit.
I kicked, I clawed, I used my teeth, battling for survival like a beast in the wild. Finally I was able to place a knee into his chest—or was it his knee in mine, I do not know, being caught up in the frenzy of the melee—but suddenly one of us kicked off and we were flung apart. He stood and scrambled for his machine gun, heretofore pushed to the small of his back. I crawled to my pistol.
I aimed as he aimed. I fired. The pistol spat and the Nazi flinched, a hole appearing above his right eyebrow, not a bad shot considering the circumstances and my heavy breathing. I think I was as astonished as he. The rise of his Schmeisser paused. The Welrod being a single-shot weapon, I prepared to bludgeon him again.
The man sighed deeply, and his shoulders shrugged as if he were at the end of a long day. Then he found a residue of strength and raised the gun barrel toward my face. I watched the slow rise, knowing that just a faint pressure on the trigger would send a fusillade of bullets my way.
Then he stopped, raised his other hand to his sweaty forehead as if to scratch the itch the .32-calibre bullet had caused.
He fell, a slow sideways subsidence, like that of a great, cut tree.
I fell back against the wall and slid to the floor, trying to get my breathing under control, gulping great swallows of air, waiting for the rest of the Germans to burst through the door at any second.
EXCERPTED FROM THE UNPUBLISHED NOVEL THE DRAGON PRINCE AND I
by Lenore Van Muller
Lucille was coming back to the clinic with a fresh bottle of carbolic when she heard voices inside. Her father and the vampire were conversing. Something made her stop outside the door to listen.
“You must understand this, Prince,” her father was saying. “My daughter is God’s gift to me.”
She heard Dracula moan as the doctor cut the damaged tissue from around the wound.
“Do you cause me pain to warn me away?” Dracula asked.
“I can give you more than pain. I can cease it altogether. Forever,” Van Helsing warned. “I conquered you once before. But I appeal to you, gentleman to gentleman. When I settled here in Transylvania, after our encounter, I was already an old man. I met a woman, a blessing, and then we had a child. It was beyond me why I should deserve such happiness.”
“A karmic reward for defeating me, perhaps?” The question was followed by a hiss of pain.
“You could look at it like that. I worshipped my wife, my child. I lost my wife, God rest her tender soul. Then Lucille became my all. Sad to say, as she grew into a woman I still treated her like a child, hence the rebellious streak.”
Another muted moan of pain from Dracula.
“What I am trying to say is that I would gladly lay down my life to keep her from harm. Do you understand?”
“I do,” Dracula replied. “And you should be aware that in the short time I have been of her acquaintance, I feel the same, would do the same.”
Lucille felt her heart stop beating and she caught her breath, still as death for a brief moment. The irony did not escape her.
There was quiet in the room, and Lucille chose that moment to enter. She poured the carbolic into a basin, soaking the needle and suture in the chemical. The silence continued as her father proceeded to sew up the gaping wound.
When he was finished, Lucille daubed the stitching and the area around it with iodine and helped her father bandage the vampire. She carefully avoided both men’s eyes.
Her father spoke first. “I think I have excised all of the tainted flesh. I have no idea regarding your recuperative faculties, so I suppose we shall just have to wait and see. Now to bed.” He turned to Lucille. “Both of you.”
“The doctor should take his own prescription,” Lucille said. His eyes were heavy and the lines of his face drawn long.
Dracula swung off the lounge, then staggered. Lucille was immediately at his side.
“I’ll help you to your room.” And she supported him out of the clinic as her father began to clean up. “I’ll tend to that later, Father. Please,” she begged.
“First I’m going to check to see if the two Englishmen have arrived back,” her father said. “I will make some inquiries.”
“Where would they come but here?” she asked. “Go to bed and we will deal with them after we have rested. Until then there is nothing we can do. If they are here when we wake, then it is a moot point.”
Her father agreed and followed her and Dracula up the stairs, the old man’s tread slow, weary. She paused to make sure he entered his own bedroom and then helped the vampire into his, assisting him to bed. She had to remove a pile of books to make room for his legs.
He eased himself back onto the pillow and she fussed with the covers a moment.
“I have no further need of your ministrations,” he told her.
“I know,” she replied. “You are the fearless monster.”
He smiled, emitted a short laugh that caused him some pain, and he involuntarily clutched at his wound.
And at that moment, upon this most vulnerable moment, Lucille saw not a myth, not a historical figure, but a man. The man that he was before he was a vampire, even before he was a Prince. Maybe she even saw a hint of the boy before he became a man.
And she was struck with a profound empathy for him. A sense of his loneliness, an isolation forced upon him by his singularity. He was a being set apart from the rest of the world and had no companion, no equal, no one who understood, no one with whom to share this uncommon life.
Lucille felt an acute affinity with the Prince, this creature, this man. She was him and he was her.
FROM THE WAR JOURNAL OF J. HARKER
(transcribed from shorthand)
After the brutal and exhausting battle in the ladies’ loo, my escape from the building itself was relatively simple. I wrestled the dead man out of his uniform and slipped it over my own hobo mufti. Conveniently, he was a large man, so the fit was passable.
Discarding the Thompson was a difficult decision, but I did so, slipping it under the settee, taking my late opponent’s Schmeisser instead. The spoils of war and all that. The body I left where it lay, not knowing how or where to hide the bloody thing. Actually there was little blood, the hole in his head leaking but a dribble.
From then on I just walked out of the loo, that first step a chill-inducing move. But the hall was empty. I had another moment of pause at the door to the stairwell, checking my disguise one more time. Pulling the cap further down my forehead, I opened the door and walked into the chaos of soldiers hurrying down the steps.
“All clear.” I heard this call repeated up and down the stairs by a va
riety of voices. Taking my cue, I repeated the phrase in my best Low German to the SS Sergeant at the landing above and joined the exodus of descending Nazis.
Outside the German troops were milling along the kerb, muttering and smoking, laughing in the manner of all soldiers given a brief respite between orders. I mingled, but slowly made my way to the periphery of the crowd, desperately trying to fight the rising urge to flee from this smoky pit of enmity.
Here, thank the Lord, my training took over as I heard the voices of my instructors at the school of dirty tricks. They had drummed into my brain that only a guilty man runs; an innocent man acts naturally, blends with his surroundings. Under this dictum, I bummed a cigarette from one Nazi, a light from another, who used the ember from his own ciggie to fire mine. It was a chore to keep my hands from trembling. I admit I had to stifle my cough as the harsh tobacco scoured my throat like sandpaper. During this masquerade, I sought about me for a sign of my Sergeant. To no avail, as Renfield was nowhere in sight.
By this time I had made my way to the fringe of the group and found myself only three steps from the corner of the building under assault. With some sly back-stepping while facing the gaggle of Germans, I was soon there and, when I thought no one was observing, I took the paramount final step around the corner and out of sight.
Glancing down this new street I saw no Germans and began to walk as casually as I could manage, just a lone soldier taking a smoke and a stroll. If confronted I would plead the woolgathering of a typical dunderhead. My ears were attuned to any shouts behind me. It was a tense walk but my ruse went undetected.
Halfway down the block, I spotted a car at the kerb. Checking for any observers, I tried the door. Locked. I could see why. This was a Lagonda Le Mans Coupe, a marvelous streamlined triumph of car craft. Hating myself as I did it, I used the Schmeisser to smash the side window. There was no notice of this sacrilegious vandalism, so I reached inside and unlocked the door, slipped into the seat, and climbed over into the driver’s side.
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