by William Hill
“Thank you, boy,” he grunted. “Unnecessary of you, though. I was in no danger.”
“Of course not, sir,” replied the valet, and released his master’s arm.
You stupid old fool, Van Helsing told himself. You’re nothing more than a liability. You should have trusted this to Henry, Lord knows he’s proven himself more than capable. You proud old fool.
“Everything is fine?” called a voice from down the trail, and master and valet turned to regard the source of the question.
The man who had spoken was standing beside the low wooden cart, looking up at them with concern on his face. He was small and uncannily thin, his proportions rendered comical by the enormous fur ushanka that covered his head. His face was thin and pointed, the eyes dark, the hair of his mustache and triangular beard jet black.
“Yes, Bukharov,” snapped Van Helsing. “Everything is fine. Bring your men up to me. We should be able to see the castle once we round this bend.”
Ivan Bukharov nodded, then let loose a galloping string of Russian at the three men who sat astride aged horses before the cart. They dug their heels into the flanks of their mounts, and the wheels of the vehicle creaked into life. Bukharov swung himself nimbly up onto his own horse and clattered along the treacherous path to where Van Helsing and the valet were waiting. The two Englishmen mounted their own animals, one with significantly greater difficulty than the other, and the three men trotted slowly around an enormous outcrop of rock that caused the path to make a wickedly sharp turn to the right. They rounded it with great care and then stopped, transfixed by the sight before them.
The Borgo Pass widened and dropped before them, before rising steeply and disappearing out of sight. Above them, more than a thousand feet from the distant valley floor, perched on the very edge of the mountain like a vast bird of prey, stood Castle Dracula.
The turrets and ramparts of the ancient building were black in the cool morning light, spiked and twisted and fearsome. The central spire of the residence of the world’s first and most terrible vampire rose boldly toward the heavens, a blasphemous challenge to the authority of God, an unholy blade cutting into the pale blue sky.
Behind them came a flurry of movement and muttered Russian. The valet turned, and saw Bukharov’s men crossing themselves frantically, their eyes cast at the ground, unwilling to even look directly at the castle that loomed over them.
“So it real,” breathed Bukharov. “I was thinking legend only. But it real.”
The man’s pidgin English was a source of constant annoyance to Van Helsing, but he barely even noticed it, so lost was he in the memories of the last time he had seen this terrible place.
I was on the other side of this plain, with Mina Harker pressed into a stone crevice behind me. I drew a circle around her, and I waited. There were screams and the thundering of hooves and blood, and a friend of mine was lost.
“It’s real,” he said, composing himself. “But it is merely a building, stone and mortar. It cannot harm us; whatever malevolence it may have possessed is long gone. Now come—our destination is no more than five minutes’ ride from here.” The old man kicked his horse into life, and cantered down the shallow slope of the pass, toward the clearing where the course of his life had been forever altered.
The negotiations that had brought Van Helsing back to Transylvania—eleven years after he had sworn he would never set foot on her cursed soil again—had been long and arduous. In London, his hours were full, fuller than those of a man of his advanced years ought to have allowed, as the fledgling Blacklight began to take shape. The days were spent at the premises on Piccadilly, which Arthur Holmwood, the new Lord Godalming, had secured for them, a noble use of the section of his father’s estate that had been set aside for charitable works, planning and organizing and writing reports for the prime minister, alongside the friends with whom he had undertaken the protection of the Empire from the supernatural. The nights found him in tombs and graveyards and museums and hospitals, battling the growing number of vampires that were infecting London and its surroundings, sending them one after another to their grisly ends.
He spent precious little time in his laboratory, even though he believed that the vampire problem would ultimately be solved by science, rather than at the point of a stake. There was simply no time; it was taking all of Blacklight’s efforts merely to stem the tide of the epidemic that was washing across Europe, an epidemic that had started in the building that was casting its shadow over him as he rode down the pass. It was obvious that the four of them were going to be unable to keep the darkness at bay on their own, and tentative plans had been put in motion to increase their number. The first prospective new member was riding silently alongside the professor now, his eyes keeping a sharp watch on the treacherous terrain around them.
Henry Carpenter will do fine, perhaps even better than fine. He alone will not be enough, as my days on this earth are undoubtedly drawing to a close. But he is a start, and a good one at that.
Despite the endless demands on his attention, Van Helsing had been able to draw two reasonably firm conclusions from his study of the vampire. He was confident that the transmission of the condition occurred when saliva was introduced to the system of the victim, during the act of biting. And he was also sure that a vampire who had been incinerated to nothing more than a pile of ash could, with sufficient quantities of blood, be made whole again. This conclusion had been reached after the professor had conducted a series of experiments in a heavily fortified room beneath the cellar of his town house, experiments he had told no one he was undertaking for fear of rebuke. And it was this conclusion that had led him to the realization that a return trip to Transylvania was imperative—as the count’s remains, buried though they were under the heavy Carpathian soil, were too dangerous to leave unattended. The opportunity to bring Quincey Morris home, to give him the burial he deserved, was merely a bonus.
At Van Helsing’s request, telegrams had been sent to the heads of Russia and Germany, inviting them to send envoys to London on a matter of grave importance to the entire continent. Men from these nations had duly arrived in the summer of 1900, and, after signing declarations of utmost secrecy, had been admitted to the Blacklight headquarters and briefed on the threat that was facing the civilized world. They had been sent home with much to ponder, and in the two years that had passed, encouraging word had reached Van Helsing’s ears of equivalent organizations being birthed in Northern Europe. It had been a gamble and a dangerous political move to show their cards as plainly as they had, but without other nations joining the fight, the battle was sure to be lost.
When Van Helsing informed the prime minister of his intention to return to Transylvania, to secure the remains of Dracula and bring them home to be safely stored, a telegram had been sent to Moscow, inviting the nascent Supernatural Protection Commissariat to send a man to accompany the professor on his journey in the spirit of international cooperation that befitted the new century. And so it was that when the old man and his valet disembarked at the port of Constanţa, they were met by Ivan Bukharov, who introduced himself to the professor as special envoy to the State Council of Imperial Russia, under the authority of Czar Nicholas II himself. The six men—Van Helsing, Henry Carpenter, Ivan Bukharov, and the latter’s three Russian aides—had spent the night in Constanţa before making their way north via carriage, through Brăila and Tecuci, where they spent an agreeable evening and night in one of the town’s three inns, through Bacău and Drăgoeşti, where they again took rest, and on to Vatra Dornei, where they left the carriages and advanced on horseback, pulling with them the low wooden cart that would ferry the remains of the dead back to England.
They rode up onto the Borgo Pass at first light, the mood of the travelers and the urgency of the journey far removed from the previous time Van Helsing had stepped onto the steep ridges of the Carpathian Mountains, when he had been chasing evil with one hand, while trying to protect innocence with the other.
; Van Helsing recognized their destination when he was still more than a hundred yards away from it. A natural canopy of rock, not deep enough to be called a cave, that nonetheless offered protection from the elements to the souls sleeping eternally beneath it. He called for Bukharov to follow him, then urged his horse onward, its hooves clattering across the loose rock. He drew the animal to a halt and dismounted. His valet appeared instantly at his side but offered no assistance; the lash of his master’s tongue had taught him that it would be requested if it was needed. The old man lurched unsteadily as his feet touched the earth, but he did not fall.
Carpenter and Bukharov followed the old man at a respectful distance as he approached the rock doorway. He paused as he reached the threshold, then sank to his knees so suddenly that his valet ran forward, alarmed.
“Back,” hissed Van Helsing, waving an arm at him, and Carpenter did as he was told.
The professor knelt before the opening, his heart pounding, his throat closed by the terrible wave of grief that had driven him to the cold ground.
Beneath the canopy of rock lay the two flat stones that he and Jonathan Harker had placed there in 1891: a lifetime ago, or so it seemed. The one on the right was pale gray, and had carved upon it a simple crucifix, a narrow cross that Harker had chiseled with the end of his kukri knife, tears falling from his eyes as he did so. The one on the left was black, and it, too, bore a carved crucifix, only this one was upside down, the ancient mark of the unholy. Van Helsing had carved it himself, using Quincey Morris’s bowie knife, bitter satisfaction filling him as he did so.
“Professor?” It was Bukharov’s voice, low and full of worry. “Professor, you are being fine?”
The old man laughed, despite himself, a short bark of mirth. “Yes, Ivan, I am being fine.” He pushed himself back to his feet and turned to face the rest of the men. “It looks undisturbed. Have your men dig up the ground, but tell them to be careful. The coffin is large but it may be fragile, and it contains both sets of remains. I do not want my friend’s bones spilling out across this mountainside, is that understood?”
Bukharov nodded, then spoke a short sentence of Russian to his men and waved them forward. They set about their orders manfully, hacking at the hard ground with pickaxes and shovels, and Van Helsing retired to a flat outcropping of rock, where he sat and waited for them to complete their task. After a minute or two, his valet joined him, leaving Bukharov overseeing the excavation.
“All would appear to be going to plan, sir,” said Henry Carpenter.
Van Helsing grunted. “So far, Henry. It appears to be going to plan so far. There will no doubt be ample opportunity for the Russian half-wit to jeopardize matters before we have the remains safely on their way to London.”
Carpenter looked at Bukharov, who was encouraging his men with a steady stream of Russian.
“Do you believe the special envoy is truly slow-witted, sir? I suspect a sharp mind is at work behind his limited English.”
“Nonsense,” growled Van Helsing. “The man is a fool and a liability to this undertaking. And I shall be instructing the prime minister to convey my opinion of their man to the Russians as soon as we return.”
“I’m sure you are correct, sir.”
“As am I, Henry. As am I.”
After little more than twenty minutes, there came the heavy thud of metal on wood, and the three Russians dropped to their knees and began clearing the dirt away with their gloved hands. Van Helsing got to his feet and walked over to where Bukharov was standing, observing his men.
“Will remains be good condition still?” he asked Van Helsing, who shrugged.
“How on earth should I be able to tell you that?” the old man replied. “The elevation and the climate are certainly suitable for preservation, but I won’t know for certain until I see them.”
Under the canopy, two of the Russians inserted metal bars along the front edge of the coffin, and slowly applied their weight to them. With a long, high-pitched creak, the coffin that had carried Dracula across Europe and had become his final resting place lifted slowly into view. The men pulled it forward so its bottom edge lay on the lip of the hole they had dug around it, then joined their comrade at the rear of the canopy. Silently, they gripped the end of the box that still lay in the ground, lifted it, and pushed it forward.
The dark wooden coffin slid out of the enclave of rock like a ship being launched from a dry dock. It rolled across the loose surface with the three Russians at its rear and came to a halt before Van Helsing and Bukharov.
“Henry,” said the professor, and the valet stepped forward.
Carpenter inserted a thin metal bar under the lid of the coffin and applied pressure to the lever. There was a moment’s resistance, before the lid separated from the box and slid to one side, exposing a narrow sliver of pitch black. The Russians approached and took three corners of the lid, as Henry Carpenter took the fourth. Then slowly, taking great care as they did so, they lifted it clear of the coffin and placed it gently to the ground on one side.
Van Helsing and Bukharov looked down.
Lying in the coffin, clad in the brown jacket and trousers he had been wearing when he died, was the skeleton of Quincey Morris. His bones were bright white, and the cowboy hat resting above his skull gave the gruesome tableau a comical feel, as though his mortal remains were a stage prop in some macabre play. On his chest lay his bowie knife, where Van Helsing had placed it before they had closed the coffin lid eleven years earlier.
Beside him was a large mound of gray powder, much of it piled against the sides of the coffin and in the corner nearest the two gravedigger’s feet. This was all that remained of the first vampire, the cruel, ungodly creature that had tormented Van Helsing and his friends and had sent Lucy Westenra to damnation.
The professor crouched painfully, examining the joins between the sides of the coffin and the base. They appeared solid, as he had expected; this wooden vessel had been built to carry its occupant across much of the European continent, unharmed.
“Joins are good,” grunted Van Helsing. “That should be all of him. Put the lid back on and fetch down the canvas.”
Henry Carpenter and the Russian aides hoisted the coffin lid back into the air and carried it delicately back toward the box. At the last second, before the lid was re-sealed, Van Helsing darted a hand into the coffin and pulled the bowie knife out. He didn’t know why he did so—he just knew that it seemed important. He attached it to his belt and stood back as the Russians hammered fresh nails into the lid, sealing it tight against the elements. One of them went to the cart and came back with a thick square of folded green canvas, which he spread wide on the loose ground. The coffin was lifted and placed in the middle of the green square, which was then folded up and over the wooden box. Nails were driven in to hold it in place, then a long red candle was lit, and hot wax was applied to every open fold, sealing the parcel airtight. Finally it was lifted onto the cart and lashed down with thick lengths of rope.
The men mounted their horses, and Van Helsing walked his alongside Bukharov, who was watching his men make final preparations to leave.
“I understand you wish to accompany us back to London, to observe the examinations. Is that correct?” asked Van Helsing.
“Much correct,” replied Bukharov, a look of great excitement on his face. “Very much correct, Professor.”
“Very well. Whether I allow that will depend exclusively on the condition the remains are in when they arrive at Constanţa. You would be well advised to communicate that to your men.”
Van Helsing spurred his horse onward, and Bukharov and Carpenter followed him. Behind them, the Russians began to haul the cart back toward civilization.
The journey back to Constanţa was significantly quicker and less comfortable than the journey from the port had been. When they arrived back at the port town, shortly before dawn, men and horses alike were exhausted, but Van Helsing paid no attention to their suffering. He drove straight to the doc
ks, left Bukharov and the Russians with his valet, and boarded the ship the British government had chartered for the journey, the Indomitable. He ordered the captain to make ready for sail, then descended the gangway to instruct Carpenter to oversee the loading of the remains onto the ship. The valet was standing by the cart with the three Russian aides, but there was no sign of—
Click.
The noise came from beside Van Helsing’s head, and he slowly turned in its direction. Six inches in front of his forehead hovered a Colt 45 revolver, the silver gleaming yellow beneath the oil lamps that were suspended above the docks. The gun hung motionless in the air, and holding it at arm’s length, smiling gently, was Ivan Bukharov.
“What is the meaning of this?” growled Van Helsing.
“I’m afraid my orders regrettably contravene yours, my dear Professor,” said Bukharov, his English suddenly smooth and flawless. “They are to bring the spoils of this journey back to Moscow for inspection by the imperial czar. Which means that I cannot allow you to return the remains to London, an inconvenience for which I sincerely apologize.”
You stupid fool. You underestimated this man because his manners were rough and his English was poor. Now you stand without a single card to play. Stupid old man.
Bukharov sidestepped in a tight circle around Van Helsing, the gun never so much as flickering in his grasp. He stopped beside the cart and regarded Henry Carpenter. “Please step back alongside your master,” he said, pleasantly.
The valet did so, walking slowly backward until he was beside the old man, revealing to the professor the identical revolvers held in the hands of the three Russian men, guns that had been pointing silently at the valet while Van Helsing descended the gangway.
Bukharov said something quickly in Russian, and one of his men holstered his pistol, before climbing up into the first of the carriages that had brought them to the docks. When he emerged, he was carrying the two Englishmen’s suitcases and traveling bags, which he placed on the ground before them. As the man bent to release the bags, Carpenter flashed a glance at his master and twitched his hand toward the pocket of his waistcoat. Van Helsing shook his head, so sharply it was almost invisible; the two-barrel derringer that the valet kept upon his person at all times would not be sufficient to extricate them from this situation.