In my sleep I could feel the Count’s approach, as once I had felt it while chained in the padded chambers of Rushbrook Asylum. He was coming, and even in his sleep, even with his mind closed against us, his wrath was like a pillar of cloud and darkness, approaching from the east and south.
“I heard the creak and gnashing of the wood, as the old man wrenched the doorways from their hinges,” whispered Nomie into my dreams. In dreaming I could see again the coffin of the Countess Elizabeth, but the blood had dried upon her white gown and her black hair. Only dust remained, and a few fragments of bone, with the stake propped upright among them. The white garlic-flowers were still fresh, spilling from the mouth of the skull.
“Elizabeth had sensed Mina’s coming from afar and said that she would be drawn to the Castle. We all thought Dr. Van Helsing was a servant she’d brought with her, or a man she’d ensorcelled to follow her, the way Elizabeth ensorcelled that poor little fool Gelhorn. When I asked why that ‘servant’ would have a consecrated Host with him—a thing not at all easy to obtain in these days—she only laughed, and said Mina would take care of that.
“‘He thinks she will freeze to death in the night, and seeks to hold her within the circle so he can kill her,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Simple man. You saw his eyes, when he looked at her and saw the vampire beauty in her face. You saw how he watched her, and watched her, hungry and terrified of the hunger within him. He will not have the heart to drive in the stake. And if he does’—and she shrugged—‘so much the worse. More kisses for the rest of us.’ She never thought, you see, that he would have the tools in the carriage, to break through the Castle doors.”
Van Helsing would be trudging back to his little camp in the Pass, where Mrs. Harker waited within the holy circle. I hoped they had armed her, and taught her to use weapons, for the wolves that would be drawn by the carcasses of the horses would have little concern for the Host, consecrated though it might be. I wondered what the Count would eat, when he returned to the Castle, for there was nothing there but bats. Even rats will not dwell where the inhabitants do not eat human food.
“To keep the Szgany loyal he never would permit us to touch them,” Nomie remarked, a gentle voice within my dreams. “The villagers were wary and cautious, and travelers are few. For months, sometimes, we would live on bats. Can you wonder we were enraged at his plan to go away and leave us here to guard this place, until it might occur to him to return? And doubly so, to learn he’d started a second harem in your land to replace us? He’ll choose another city now, another country to occupy. With you as his servant, it will probably be India.”
“He could do worse,” I said. “The governing classes all speak English, which he already knows.”
The gold that filled the chests in our little crypt—filled them and overflowed onto the floor—would guarantee his welcome anywhere, and from Nomie’s conversation while we traveled together, I knew that this was only a tithe of the treasure hidden in the castle.
“He, and you, will have access to books and to such culture as there is there,” I went on. “Not like London, I admit, but better than re-reading Davila’s histories of French insurgencies in the library here for the thousand and fifth time. And because of the European community there, neither he nor you will stand out. In fact, because the whites are perceived as superior in all ways to the natives, you will have a great deal more latitude than you would have even in London.”
In our sleep I could feel her sadness, as if she laid her palm to my cheek. “And you, sweet friend?”
I thought of Van Helsing, gathering up provisions now—bedrolls, food, blankets against the freezing snowstorm that came sweeping down the Pass. “I will do what I must, sweet friend.”
Writers—and certainly your appalling mother and your late unlamented sister, my love—speak casually and often of “a fate worse than Death,” without understanding that such a thing can actually be. I, who have passed through death, or a half-death at least, have experienced that which is worse: eternal Un-Life, with my soul, my mind, my body at the command of an entity in love with both power and the pain of others.
He was coming. I felt his wrath from afar. Van Helsing, though he’d strewn the crumbled Host in the Count’s actual tomb, had by no means “cleansed” even a quarter of the places where the Un-Dead could actually find repose, and of course the Host that he’d mortared around the broken-open Castle door would have no effect on a bat, or a trail of mist, floating in over its walls. The Castle would have had to be dynamited to render it unfit for the Count to hide in, and before that could be effected, even with Godalming’s money, Dracula’s gypsies would have dealt with the invaders.
It was indeed his Valhalla, offering both rest and the renewal of his strength.
“Why did you kiss him?” I asked her, and I felt her smile.
“Because he so much wanted it,” she said. “And maybe a little, because he killed Elizabeth and Sarike, who have made me wretched for so many decades—made me wretched in the way that only those whom we live with, whom we rub along with night in and night out, year in and year out, can do. And perhaps to show him,” she added softly, “that not all those who become Un-Dead are wholly monsters.”
“Whyever you did it,” I replied, “it was a fit revenge on the man. For you’ve given him something that doesn’t fit in with his theories. Trying to make it do so will be a torment to him for the remainder of his days.”
I asked her about her own journey, and whether the Countess and Sarike had attempted any assault on my agent Ross and his men. “Sarike tried,” she said. “But Elizabeth and I drew her away. I told Elizabeth that it might be better, if instead of killing Ross, we kept his address and goodwill, in case we should need it later.”
“And Gelhorn?”
“A truly obnoxious man,” sighed Nomie. “He was forever boring on about the superiority of the Teutonic Race and its destiny to rule the world, and he seemed to think that because I am German I would agree with him. Heaven help the world—Heaven help Germany—if this ‘Volk’ idea gets taken up by politicians! Yet even so, I’m not sure he deserved his fate.”
Knowing the Count would return in a mood of black fury, we discussed the preliminaries for the India scheme, which we knew would appease him. Which banks to use, and which of my false names would be safest for purposes of investment and transfer of another network of earth-boxes and safe-houses in Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, and Kathmandhu. I did everything I could to keep the names of my Indian friends and contacts out of it, knowing that these men and women would become the Count’s likeliest early victims. With luck, I would find some way into true death before he could prise such information out of my mind.
The snowstorm now howled around the Castle’s walls. Even in our dreams in the deep-buried crypt we could hear its cries.
“I have heard,” I said to her, “rumor and legend of Masters who dwell in the mountains of Thibet, deathless creatures who were once mortal men. I wonder how the Count will get along, in proximity to them?”
“It would be interesting,” said Nomie, “to seek them out.”
“And more interesting still,” I added, “to see if they would let you do so.”
On that we truly slept, but in visions I could see the gypsy riders lashing their horses through the swirling flakes, see the rough-coated little ponies stumbling as they hauled the heavy leiter-wagon up the road that led to the Pass. I knew—for it seemed to me that the whole of the countryside around Castle Dracula breathed and whispered its secrets up to the Castle—that Van Helsing and Mrs. Harker had taken refuge in that little bay, high in the rocks, where I had lain exhausted that morning, and from its narrow entrance looked out over the plain below.
And as if I stood at Mrs. Harker’s side—as if I rode on the wings of the snow-winds overhead—I saw the leiter-wagon’s approach, within its ring of gypsy riders, thrusting on against the tempest. The earth-box in the wagon rocked and swayed, and I wondered if the Count were conscious, and if s
o, what he thought, helpless as a mortal man and drowsy with daylight. When the winds lessened and the clouds broke through, I could see the sun sinking toward the rack of storm above the mountains. With its disappearance, he would be free, and within striking-distance of his home.
From the south I could see riders coming, Harker’s white hair like a blink of snow where his hat blew back, visible only to the far-seeing eyes of vampire dream. They must somehow have repaired the launch’s engines, to make safe landfall hot on Dracula’s trail.
Two men with six horses were galloping from the east, galloping hard: Morris and Seward, with their long hunting-rifles in their hands. In the sicklied yellow light of sinking sun and storm-wrack I saw them close on the leiter-wagon, saw the Szgany form themselves into a ring around it, knives and pistols flashing in the dying light. They were right below the rocks where Van Helsing and Mrs. Harker stood with rifle and pistol, blocking their path up to the Castle. Seward, Morris, Harker, and Godalming rode into the press of the gypsies and sprang—or were pulled—from their horses, striking and struggling where quarters were too close to shoot.
Harker and Morris sprang up onto the cart, Morris clutching his side where blood poured down. As the final rays of the sunset stabbed through the snow-clouds, they wrenched the top from the earth-box, and in that instant I could hear Dracula’s shriek, of rage and hatred and summons as the sun went down.
Then Harker’s huge Ghurka knife flashed in that last second of golden sunlight, and Morris’s bowie.
The image vanished from my mind.
Great stillness filled my heart.
Nomie and I lay awake, in one another’s arms, in the gold-stuffed crypt of the Castle Dracula.
And we both knew we were free.
We climbed to the snow-padded southern battlement of the Castle, and stood in the swift-gathering dark, looking down at the Pass.
The Szgany were riding away in all directions, leaving the leiter-wagon in the road. The wolves that the Count had summoned from all corners of the mountains trotted back to their interrupted repast on Van Helsing’s four dead horses.
I supposed Nomie and I would be having bats for dinner.
If I had dinner at all.
I could see, against the clear violet of the twilight-veiled snow, five forms gathered around the leiter-wagon, bent over the sixth that lay on a spread-out blanket on the ground. Probably only a vampire could have smelled Morris’s blood at that distance. By the stillness of the others, the lack of even the smallest attempt at aid, I could tell the Texan was dead.
And I grieved with them, Catherine. A mere five weeks ago, with the recovery of my sanity, I realized that I had lost yourself and Vixie, my only and dearest friends.
Nomie’s hand closed cold around my own. “Sweet friend,” she said, and I looked down into her blue eyes. “You can go down to them now. I will be all right.”
“What will you do?” I asked her, and she smiled.
“Exactly what you and I planned for the Count. I will contact Mr. Ross, and take over the false identities that you and your so-lovely Catherine established—and thank her for me, Ryland, thank her, and you, so much!—and travel to India, where I will live like a Queen upon men who do evil. I will never forget you, Ryland.”
I smiled, my whole soul feeling light and free, with the world and eternity opening like a night-blooming flower around me in the still iciness of the night. “Never is a long time, little Nornchen.” With the Count’s death, the winds, like the wolves, had been released from his grip. The clouds were dispersing overhead. The stars were like a thousand million lamps, each marking the start of an untrodden road to the future. In the stillness I felt that I could hear the earth breathe.
“I only wish…” she began, then stopped herself, and shook her head. She put her hand to my cheek, and whispered, “Good-by, Ryland. Kiss your Catherine for me when you see her, and your lovely daughter. One day I may meet them, by-and-by.”
“When you do,” I said, “they will welcome you with love. Until that time…”
Our eyes met in the starlight. “What is it,” I asked, “that you wish?”
She shook her head. “It’s better that you go.”
“Tell me.”
Her hands closed again around my own. Her voice was barely a murmur in the starry cold. “That you could come with me, sweet friend. That we could go to India together. That we could be friends, if not forever, at least for a very long time.”
Gently—for even as a mortal man I had been strong—I took her in my arms, and our mouths met in a kiss.
We spent the rest of the night gathering all the gold we could from the four corners of the Castle, and before dawn I went down to Bistritz, to post a letter to Ross and another to my agents in Calcutta and Delhi.
My dearest Catherine, do you understand? I love you, and have always loved you—will always love you, in living or dying or the shadow-world of Un-Death. One day, when it pleases God, you, and I, and our lovely Vixie, and my beautiful Nomie will all meet, on the other side of the Veil, and after that, who knows? Who can know?
Until that time, we can only live as well as we can, and make our choices, as the ancient Persians said, for the Light rather than the Darkness. For even those of us in the Darkness do, it appears, remember the nature of Light.
I write this to you in the train-station at Varna, whence we are about to depart for Constantinople and points east. Already I seem to hear in my ears the music of sitars, and to taste upon my tongue the heady flavor of rice-beetles and the indescribable savor of white ants!
My beloved, I will write to you when we reach Calcutta.
Until that time, and always, know me to be,
Forever, your loving husband,
Renfield
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