“Since you have such an inquisitive mind, one more bit of superstition you should know,” Dracula told the German, blade point at the man’s throat. “The stake through the heart does not kill the vampire. It only suspends life. To kill one such as we, you must behead the beast.”
The German could only watch as Dracula’s blade rose in an arc over his shoulder.
“But I am immor—”
His head tumbled to the pile of dust and debris. Dracula kicked the headless body over the sill, and it fell lazily to the grounds below.
Then the Prince collapsed. Crawling across the floor, over the bodies and debris, he called out in a mournful plea.
“Lucille . . .”
FROM THE WAR JOURNAL OF J. HARKER
(transcribed from shorthand)
As we sought Lucy and the vampire, my thoughts swirled about my brain at the very idea that we might be able to capture Hitler himself. If not capture, then at least kill him. And end this brutal war. I could save Europe! I could save England!
In my haste I outran Professor Van Helsing and had to go back to help the old man up the stairs, as the whole engagement had exhausted his aged resources.
Room by room we searched. Then we heard a dull explosion that shook the foundation of the wing in which we were hunting. Dust drifted down from the ancient beams overhead, descending like a grey cloud.
Using this concussion as our focus, we hurried up yet another spiral stairway as fast as the Professor could manage, pausing occasionally so he could catch his breath.
The stairwell opened up onto a long room that was fogged with a haze of plaster dust.
We entered just in time to see Dracula swing a sword at a German officer, and we observed the same officer’s head roll across the floor to settle at our feet. There was an expression of surprise and dismay on the disembodied face. I could see why. Scattered around the room was a score of his fellow soldiers, all dead, many in pieces.
Dracula dropped his sword and then slowly sank to his knees. He was in terrible shape, multiple gashes across his body. He began to crawl, not toward us but toward a large pile of rubble.
He cried out in a pitiful wail, one word, a name.
“Lucille!”
And then I saw her. She was sprawled on her back, bent over a broken beam. Blood stained the mound of plaster dust she lay upon, the dark pool spreading as we rushed over. Her clothing, too, was soaked in her lifeblood from a rent in her chest so deep you could see past the sliced white bone to a throbbing organ.
Her breathing was ragged and, as Dracula bent over her, she spoke in a thin whisper.
“Did you kill the bastard who killed me?” she asked him.
“I did,” he answered. His voice, too, was but a rasp, filled with emotion.
I turned to her father, who immediately began examining his daughter, his fingers delicately probing. She gasped in pain at his touch and he muttered an apology.
“We must get her to a hospital,” Dracula said.
Van Helsing looked at him, then me, and shook his head.
“She would not survive the journey.”
“Then we must operate here,” Dracula declared.
“This is beyond my abilities,” Van Helsing said and his voice broke into a sob. “Beyond . . . any physician.”
“Father, don’t fret.” Lucille lay a comforting hand on her father’s. There were tears in his eyes.
“Do something!” I found myself shouting. “Surely you can do something!”
The Professor turned to me and gave a slight shake of his head, the saddest sight I have ever witnessed. I saw the man break down before my eyes. He raised his hands over his head in a sort of mute despair. Finally he put his hands before his face, began to wail, a cry that seemed to come from the very wracking of his heart. He raised his arms again as though appealing to the whole universe. “God! What have I done?”
But I refused to succumb to helplessness. I would not accept her death. Even if she had rejected my affections, I had fought beside her; we had shared danger and delight. I could not, would not allow her to die.
I knelt before Dracula, who had his arms around Lucy, supporting her head and shoulders.
“You can save her,” I suggested. “Do so.”
“No,” the vampire stated flatly. “No. You do not know what you ask.”
“Do it!” I screamed at him.
Dracula turned his eyes to Van Helsing. “You know.”
“I do,” Van Helsing replied with such sorrow as I have ever heard. “But—”
He left that one word hang in the air.
“DO IT!” I commanded with every particle of my being. “You can. And you will.”
The vampire regarded the dying woman.
She managed a weak smile. Dracula slowly shook his head at her.
“You always get what you desire,” he said to her. “Do you not?”
And he bent over her with all the solemnity of a priest before an altar.
EXCERPTS FROM UNIDENTIFIED DIARY
(translated from the German)
June 21
The good Lieutenant G led Herr Wolf through the musty tunnel that meandered its way beneath the castle. There was only damp and darkness, following his shaky hand-torch, no sense of direction but down. This declination ultimately took them to another thick door that opened to a copse of trees and bushes at the base of the mountain.
There was the sound of gunfire and explosions emanating from the castle above them. The noise of a fierce battle. Herr Wolf knew that he was in Grave Danger and turned to his escort.
— We must leave immediately, he ordered. — The future of the Reich depends on my survival.
The Lieutenant scouted ahead, but found no threat. He did discover a vehicle, some Italian car with exquisite lines and a luxurious interior of fine leather, wood, and chrome.
Herr Wolf paused at the car door, stared up at the castle. Yellow flashes flared behind the windows, and the interior walls were briefly illuminated, each burst of light accompanied by the crack of gunfire and the blast of grenades.
Amid that skirmishing was the promise of Immortality, God-like powers. Could he risk going back? For personal reasons, yes. But without him Germany would Fall, the Promise crushed. He could gamble with his own life but not that of the Fatherland. He climbed into the car. Maybe the Colonel would manage to escape. For some reason Herr Wolf had doubts.
The drive back to Brasov and the terminal was without complication, and Herr Wolf’s private train was waiting, engine rumbling and ready to depart as was standard procedure.
Herr Wolf had the Lieutenant stop the car some distance from the train. He thanked him for the successful rescue and then shot him in the temple with the Colonel’s pistol. Herr Wolf was surprised that he still held the gun. He put two more rounds into the man’s chest for insurance. There was a look of shock on the Lieutenant’s face, death-frozen.
The Lieutenant was a witness to events that should never be spoken of and, thusly, a Danger to the Reich. The Fortunes of War.
This may have been the first man that Herr Wolf had ever killed with his own hand. Except for maybe the Tommy back at the castle whose fate, dead or not, was unknown. Herr Wolf contemplated this act and discovered that it did not bother him. In his opinion Conscience was a Jewish invention and not an aspect of a Great Leader.
The train ride back to Berlin was uneventful, and there was time to consider what had just transpired. Herr Wolf was disappointed in his actions, or lack of them. For a moment he had an opportunity to cross the Bifrost, the bridge to Valhalla, to sit with the Gods as an Equal, to live forever, to mentor his beloved Germany until the End of Time.
And he had balked. He had passed the cup. He was a coward.
It would not happen again. This was not over. If there is one such Creature, there is another. The search will be unending.
FROM THE DESK OF ABRAHAM VAN HELSING
(Translated from the Dutch)
My worst nightm
are has become corporeal. After the ordeal at the castle my tribulations have fallen upon me like the lamentations of Job.
I also have a confession. When the Rumanian relief sped to Castle Dracula they came upon an ungodly sight. From Brasov to Bran, all alongside the road, wooden pillars had been erected, stakes driven into the ground, and upon each a Nazi soldier had been impaled. Yes, an image from five hundred years past greeted the army.
And the perpetrators of this barbaric display? Not our ancient ally but two men of this so-called civilised era—Jonathan Harker and I, with some help from the gypsies. I suppose we perpetuated this act out of our profound anger and grief. I know this is no excuse, but the deed has been done. Have I lost all of my humanity? I remember chiding the Prince for just such savagery. Now who are the monsters?
And as for my dear Lucille . . . my emotion is in such excess that I cannot bear to contemplate her future.
What have I wrought?
God help us all.
FROM THE WAR JOURNAL OF J. HARKER
(transcribed from shorthand)
June 22, 1941
We buried poor Renfield today. In the tiny graveyard next to a tiny church miles away from Brasov. He was a brave man, deranged or sane, and I will miss him. Hell’s teeth, I wish I had known him before his impairment. From the personality he exhibited when he was sound, I think he would have been a more than decent bloke and a boon companion.
I read over his grave:
“They that fought so well—in death are warriors still;
Stubborn and steadfast to the end, they could not be dishonoured.
Their bodies perished in the fight; but the magic of their souls is strong—
Captains among the ghosts, heroes among the Dead!”
“Hymn to the Fallen.” I do not remember the origin—Oriental, I think—but the translation was by Arthur Waley.
Van Helsing spoke:
“We who are pledged to set the world free salute this man. Our toil must be in silence and our efforts all in secret. We who are willing to imperil even our own souls for the safety of the ones we love—for the good of mankind, for the honor of our country and the glory of God, we treasure his sacrifice and someday will acknowledge it to the world.”
But this seemed too solemn for a man who, even in his addled state, was a man too full of life, and so I resorted to another canto, singing softly to myself:
“Fuck ’em all, fuck ’em all,
The long and the short and the tall.
Fuck all the Sergeants and their bleedin’ sons,
Fuck all the Corporals and W.O. ones,
’Cause we’re sayin’ good-bye to them all,
As back to the billet we crawl.
They’ll get no promotion this side of the ocean,
So cheer up, my lads, fuck ’em all.”
At first I sang alone, but then I found my voice joined by Maleva, a few of the gypsies doing their best with the language, and even Van Helsing for the finale. It brought tears to my eyes, I am not ashamed to say.
After the service I tried to console Van Helsing, who is as distraught over his daughter’s survival as I think he would have been at her death. I fear that the strain of the past week has broken even his iron strength.
We walked through a dismal rain across the muddy cemetery and I asked him.
“So this is the end?”
“Not so. Not so.” He shook his craggy head. “It is only the beginning.”
I told him that I was not sure of his meaning. He told me that yesterday the Germans had invaded the Soviet Union and that many more brave men such as Sergeant Renfield (I swear that when this war is over I will find out his real name) will die before this nasty business is over.
But I knew that his burden came from the state of his daughter and what was to become of her.
This and the cloud that hung over these somber times, the overriding and frightening question—was Hitler bitten?
“Friend Jon,” he said, wagging that monumental head, “there are strange and terrible days before us.”
EXCERPTED FROM THE UNPUBLISHED NOVEL THE DRAGON PRINCE AND I
by Lenore Van Muller
EPILOGUE
Standing on the balcony of a remote mountain cabin, Lucille watched the purple sky fade through the chroma of dawn, a soft magenta to a deep red and a quick blaze of vermilion. Dracula stood at her side, one comforting hand nestling her own. The once exotic coolness of his touch was gone, their temperatures now equal. She missed the difference.
Lucille knew this was the last sunrise she would ever witness.
The peaks of the Carpathians were a jagged black frame to the glorious display on the horizon. Then the sawtooth silhouette dissolved under the assault of pure fire as the sun slipped over the mountains.
Lucille felt a blast of heat upon her face. She threw a hand up to block the blaze, and her palm, too, burned as if she were standing under a midday desert sun. Then the scorching became too intense to bear anymore. She allowed the Prince to draw her back into the safety of the cabin’s shade. He closed the door and the room was thrust into darkness.
It was curious; she found that she could see as well in the pitch-dark as she could in full light. Another lesson concerning this new state. Lately there were so many.
Dracula pulled her to his chest.
“I warned you,” he said.
“I suppose I’ve always been the kind of person who had to learn the hard way,” she replied.
“I have noticed this about you.” He kissed her and she responded in kind. “Among your many remarkable qualities.”
“I’m glad you’re paying attention,” she said and returned the kiss.
Then she pulled away, frowned at him.
“I’m . . . hungry.”
THE END
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book would not have been possible without the assistance of a great many researchers and specialists in authentication and other eccentric skills. Here are a few of those dedicated souls: Dr. Milt Ford, Edward Fejedelem, Marc Leepson, Ed Cray, Denise Pantoja, David Kanter, Adam Rodman, and always Lesa Meredith Duncan.
Thanks to everyone at Inkshares. The brilliant people at Girl Friday Productions who corrected my brain farts and plain old ignorance: Devon Fredericksen, Clete Smith, Dan Stiles, Mark Steven Long, and Phyllis DeBlanche. All of you made the book better than it was written.
And a special note of gratitude to Felicia Day for the little things, the big things, and everything in between.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Patrick Sheane Duncan began his film career as the manager of a small movie theater in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He later moved to Los Angeles, California, where he pursued screenwriting and film production. He has written screenplays such as Mr. Holland’s Opus, Courage Under Fire, and Nick of Time. Duncan is also the writer/director of the critically acclaimed feature film 84 Charlie Mopic and the writer of A Painted House. He is the producer of the HBO series Vietnam War Story and the cowriter/director of the documentary series Medal of Honor. He lives in Los Angeles.
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Dracula vs. Hitler Page 49