“Has he spoken to you of this?” Elisabeth stepped behind me and put a comforting hand upon my shoulder.
I shook my head, and she sighed. “My darling Zsuzsanna … I think he means to abandon you here.”
“The bastard!” I swore, seething. “He means to leave us here to starve! He means to destroy us—we who have only helped him!”
She knelt beside me, her expression one of utter sympathy, and wound an arm about my knees, as if to comfort me. “Zsuzsanna, I swear to you that he will not succeed! I have expected this all along, and made plans for it.”
“Then why did you come here, if you knew he would betray you?”
“He told me of you in his letter. I did not come to help him. I came to free you.”
At that, I leaned down and embraced her, pressing her face to my shoulder, and felt hot tears sting my eyes. “My sweet Elisabeth, you have been so good to me!”
She held me so tightly, and I her, that when we let go, we both gasped. “I shall be even better,” she said, with a look of infinite resolve. “I only ask that you trust me.”
“There is no question of that. But what shall we do? We cannot leave the castle.”
“Wait, my sweet. Only wait. When the time is right, we shall leave.”
“I cannot wait!” I cried, and struck my heel against the floor like an angry child. “Why can we not kill him now? You are so powerful, Elisabeth. Why haven’t you yet destroyed him, and freed us from this castle?”
At that she sighed and remained quiet a time, staring beyond me at some distant, invisible sight. Finally, she met my gaze again. “When another century, perhaps two, have passed, Zsuzsanna, then you will understand. Immortality carries with it one unavoidable burden, that of ennui. It pleases me to have a new sport—to avenge your suffering by destroying Vlad.
“But it would be far too simple to destroy him here; and, I confess, it would be difficult, because his power is greater here than anywhere. And it would be far too swift—for he has inflicted far too much suffering in both life and undeath to die quickly, without anguish.” She straightened, suddenly infused with excitement. “Let us give chase! Let us pursue him to London and torment him there, unravel his plans. And when he is utterly confounded, only then we will reveal that we are the source of his suffering.”
She clasped my waist and drew me closer to her, then planted upon my lips a fervent kiss. “Let me take you to London, Zsuzsanna! Let us conquer both Vlad and the city. I will dress you in the finest satins and silks, and adorn you with jewels; you will be so beautiful that the entire country will fall at your feet and worship you.” And she stroked my cheek with her hand and gazed so lovingly at me that I was mollified.
In silence, she rose and drew me to my feet, then led me over to the young man. It pleased me to let him sleep this time. I ever so delicately pierced the unblemished skin of his throat, and just as delicately drank.
And when, lips smeared with Mr. Harker’s dark blood, I lifted my face, there was Elisabeth beside me—gasping with lust, her eyes as desirous as those of any man who has gazed upon my beauty. At once she lunged against me, tore open my robe, and licked clean my lips. And again she dipped her fingers in his wound—small this time and not so bloody—and smeared the blood upon my bared breasts.
I yielded, giggling as I fell backward on the bed, against Harker’s legs (who, because of my doing, never woke nor even stirred). There I let her take me as she had before, licking away the blood and applying more to the most tender area until I again fell screaming into the blissful void.…
I did the same for her, although I confess it was not entirely to my taste. Nor did she seem to enjoy it as much as I; she clearly preferred to be the one giving rather than receiving, and once the Englishman’s small wound ceased bleeding, her desire appeared to ebb. Yet I managed to bring her into the void, and afterwards, we lay flushed and warm in each other’s arms atop the snoring solicitor.
“Now,” she said softly, “come with me to my room. I will have Dorka tailor some of my dresses for you, so that you can wear them when we go to London. And when we are there, you shall buy all the new frocks and jewelry you desire, and then you shall buy more.”
I went with her to her chambers, and tried on frock after frock, peering into a larger mirror which Dorka held. Such delight! The gowns were all brand-new, the latest fashion with a “bustle” in the back, and all exquisite (although they were slightly too long, and too generous in the bosom and waist). Dorka is taking them all in now.
And then Elisabeth took me into her bedchambers, where I slipped naked between the most marvellously fine cotton sheets, and pulled the great down comforter, covered in satin, up to my neck. (Now I see the reason for all the trunks: There are no such elegant bedclothes in all of Roumania! She has brought her own linens.)
She lay down beside me, and I quickly fell into a marvellous cosy sleep.
When I woke, it was sunset again, and Elisabeth was gone, no doubt in Vlad’s company. I had slept most of the day, but was not disappointed, as I felt greatly refreshed. So I returned to the chambers I share with Dunya—had shared with Dunya—and gathered my diary and portrait and brought them back here, to Elisabeth’s room. I shall never sleep in that casket again.
And now, as I write this, nestled again in Elisabeth’s sumptuous, comfortable bed, my thoughts return to Vlad’s betrayal and Elisabeth’s insistence that we should not harm him now, but follow him to England.
In truth, the thought of going with her to London—to London at last!—thrilled me beyond words, and to take revenge upon Vlad with her by my side seemed sweet. But how long must I wait? How long?
5
The Diary of
Abraham Van Helsing
9 MAY. Gerda has become more animated during both day and night. I have shifted my routine to accommodate her, rising shortly after noon rather than the hour before sunset. To my surprise, she is hypnotisable most often during the late afternoon-but at times, the hour of her vulnerability shifts. Some days, she will not enter trance at all.
To-day when I rose and unlocked the door to her room (poor thing, I am forced now to keep her under lock and chain, lest Zsuzsanna at a distance bid her to harm herself or, God forbid, Mama), she was amazingly animated. She sat cross-legged on her bed, long white nightgown carelessly bunched about her upper thighs as she gestured smiling at an invisible visitor and chattered away like a little girl at an imaginary tea party. I could not decipher what she was saying, though the lilting cadence and whistling sibilants clearly marked the language as Roumanian—a language which she does not speak, and with which I have some limited facility. But the words were not completely formed, so that the effect was rather like listening to a young parrot who has captured the rhythm and intonation of his master’s speech, but is yet unable to enunciate clearly.
For the space of a minute, perhaps two, I stood in silence observing this odd babbling pantomime. Gerda gave me no notice—until, abruptly, she turned to cast me a sidelong glance, snorting to her invisible companion: “Him!” This time she enunciated the word in clear, precise Roumanian.
But as she peered at me from beneath half-lowered lids, her eyes widened slowly, and both smile and derisiveness faded from her face. For the most fleeting of seconds, she knew me and I her. For I beheld the face of my tortured beloved, my wife, a prisoner held not by locks and bars but by that infinitely cruder jailor, madness. This was Gerda as she had appeared almost a quarter century ago, with the pale, dainty face of a gentlewoman and the dark suffering eyes of a lunatic—eyes so troubled and despairing that, when they looked out at me from behind a dishevelled curtain of long sable hair (Katya had washed and brushed it out), tears of compassion filled my own.
“Gerda,” I whispered longingly, and reached to touch her hand. But she turned away, slack-faced, all animation and expression just as swiftly gone, replaced by the blank-ness that I have come to despise so.
Nothing I said could rouse her, so I surrendered and
tended to Mama a few hours before checking on Gerda again.
This time, my efforts came to fruition. Gerda quite easily and naturally slipped into hypnotic trance, though at some points she fell stubbornly silent (most notably at the questions “How is Vlad? Is he strong or weak?” and “Are you and he still trapped within the castle?”).
Yet while she would not divulge information about Vlad, at the query “And how are you? Are you strong?,” she cried out with girlish enthusiasm: “Ever so strong, and happier than I have ever been in my life!” At this, my heart sank; yet my dismay was quickly submerged by curiosity when she added, “It is all because of Elisabeth.…”
“Elisabeth? Who is she?” No doubt, she of she who has come, but I waited for a more specific description.
She grew silent and pressed her lips together, as if resolved not to answer; I feared our session had come to a premature halt. But then she replied softly, “My dearest friend.…” And would say no more on the subject, not even whether Elisabeth was mortal or no. (She cannot be, of course, if she is capable of so easily restoring Zsuzsanna’s strength. In all frankness, this terrifies me. What manner of immortal is this, who is more powerful than even the Impaler? And how could I ever hope to defeat such a creature?)
I pressed further. “And are you able now to leave the castle?”
At once—to my relief—her expression darkened. “No,” she said, with clear anger. “But I shall soon, when we go to London.”
London! My heart began to pound against my breastbone as if fervently demanding escape. My father, Arkady, had told me that Vlad had expressed a desire to go to England as long as fifty years ago—to London, where he is unknown and unfeared, and has vastly greater numbers of potential victims.
I asked a few other questions, but in truth, I do not remember the answers she gave, for I was too shaken by the knowledge that Vlad and Zsuzsanna—and whoever this Elisabeth might be—would soon make their escape.
Thus to-night I performed a formal ritual for guidance and aid and, for the first time, attempted to evoke Arminius as one might a god or demon. To my disappointment, he failed to appear, and so I performed in Circle a divination to guide me.
Clearly, I am intended to leave for London—but not at once. I shall wait and watch alertly for the signal to go.
But two cards from the reading trouble me still: the Devil and the High Priestess. Meditation instructs me that they speak somehow of this mysterious Elisabeth.
My anxious mind was focussed on these symbols as I dozed at Mama’s bedside, where the dream of the Dark Creature in the woods betook me. Once again, there stood my teacher, Arminius, gleaming and white in his purity and kindness, attended by his familiar, Archangel the wolf. Again I screamed, and again, no reply, no comfort, from him who had so helped me in the past.
Then came the time when the Great Darkness loomed nearer, and began to change shape.…
But no more did it shift from wolf to child to man. No, this time it transformed directly from animal to woman. And the darkness brightened slowly until the black silhouette had become instead filled with colour.
Speechless, I stared at the vision before me—that of an impossibly beautiful woman, her long waving hair catching the daylight like spun gold, her eyes the deep, deep blue of the sea. Her skin was alabaster kissed with the delicate pink of eternal youth—the preternatural glow so often seen upon the countenances of vampires eager to lure prey. Yes, hers was a loveliness to make the beholder weep in admiration at such glory, yet I felt no such joy, only the purest dread.
At my terror, she laughed, throwing her head back and tossing the golden waves so that they sparkled in the sun—sparkled like her small, unnaturally white teeth. The canines were not sharp, as I had expected, but of perfectly ordinary size; that realisation served only to heighten my fear until, overwhelmed, I cried out.
I woke perspiring to the sight of Mama watching me, and feebly picking at the covers as if in a confused effort to reach out and comfort me.
“Bram?” Her voice, frail and broken, seemed a parody of what it had been before her illness, but I was touched to see the look of recognition and worry in her exhausted eyes. Such radiant, gentle, loving orbs they are, the colour of cornflowers—the absolute moral opposite of those belonging to the woman in my dream, for Mama’s shine with pure goodness. But lately, it has grown difficult for me to gaze long into them, for they look at me and do not see me, as though they are looking beyond at Infinity.
“Child, are you all right?” She spoke in her native English, for in recent months she seems to find it difficult to recall her Dutch.
I took her cold, thin hand and pressed it between mine to warm it, answering also in English. “I’m fine, Mama. I was just dreaming.”
Her face suddenly contorted with pain, and beneath the covers, her legs writhed; though she bit her lip in an effort to keep from crying out, a groan escaped her nonetheless. I realised then that it had been her cry, not my own, that had wakened me. Yet she was more concerned about my mental distress than her own physical anguish.
Another round of morphia would have been dangerous; I had dosed her only an hour before. So, with profuse apologies, I followed the wise old medical adage concerning the elderly and the dying: When in doubt, check bowels and bladder. I did so quickly, grateful for the fact that both illness and sedation eased any overt sense of embarrassment—for her (she was quite too exhausted to care), if not for me. Examining a patient is one thing; examining one’s mother is quite another.
What I found made my heart sink, for I knew I should have to cause her further agony. “Mama,” I said gently, “I’m afraid I will have to help you again. There is a great deal of stool lodged here against your bedsores; I shall have to extract it for you.”
With almost lucid resignation, she released a disappointed breath, then made a pitiful effort to roll onto one hip. “Do what you must.”
So I fetched bedpan and salve, and helped her to turn onto her side—that alone was excruciating for her. Then I performed what was necessary, praying the whole time that God or whoever had the power would see fit to make my thick fingers as thin and small as Katya’s. Mama screamed in a way that broke my heart, and struggled feebly to push me away. Fighting tears, I said, “I am so sorry to inflict this indignity, Mama; but you will become terribly infected if I do not remove this stool.”
At once she cried out, “No, no! Don’t remove it, dear, or you shall certainly fall!”
For one moment, I was confused; the next, I struggled to contain sad laughter at her darkly comical and entirely unwitting remark. “Don’t worry, I shan’t fall,” I soothed her. “It is quite steady.”
She seemed to take some comfort from that, and cried out only twice afterwards. Soon I was done, and elected to give her a very small extra dose of morphia; now she sleeps soundly and well, her expression the lax, unfurrowed one of deep, painless sleep.
I checked on Gerda quickly—no change—then returned to Mama’s bedside to watch that her breathing remained strong and steady.
And here I sit again in the rocking-chair at Mama’s bedside, listening to her soft snoring and knowing that the familiar sound is one I soon will never hear again. Yet I feel as though I have always sat here and always will, and that her suffering will never end.
Clearly, I must go to London soon and take Gerda with me, so that I will be waiting there when the vampires arrive. They cannot be permitted free rein in England—dear God, victims are so plentiful there that they would never be detected … not until the whole country was changed into vampires! My responsibility there outweighs all others, even that to my family. This I know in my brain; but my heart knows that it would be a crime to leave Mama alone in this house to die in the presence of strangers.
Golden Elisabeth, what are you?
And what chance do I have against one so powerful, without Arminius’ intervention?
Zsuzsanna Tsepesh’s Dairy
16 MAY. No entry for a time; things ha
d settled into a pleasurable enough monotony—but a monotony all the same. Day after day, our routine has been to enjoy ourselves freely during the sun’s heavenly reign, nibbling upon the Englishman at our leisure, then straightway enjoying a sensual interlude. Afterwards, Elisabeth takes me back to her chambers and picks clothing from her numerous trunks and suitcases, and Dorka alters it for me; or Dorka grooms my hair in a fashionable style (though my poor locks refuse to hold the slightest curl, despite her heroic efforts); or Elisabeth educates me in the cosmetic arts. Lipstick, powder, kohl—I would never have thought these silly things could enhance even further my immortal glory, but they do indeed. I am not only more beautiful than ever, I look like what the British call the New Woman: sophisticated, modern, fashionable … and soon, I pray, independent.
In the afternoon, we sleep together beneath Elisabeth’s sumptuous linens for a handful of hours, then rise again at sunset. Elisabeth dutifully repairs to Vlad’s chambers to “visit,” for apparently he wants to be sure that she spends little time with me (although he sometimes releases her a few hours before the dawn). No doubt he fears that she will tell me too much of the truth—little does he know that it is too late!
Nights are the hardest time, for without Elisabeth or our Englishman, little awaits me save boredom—and poor Dunya, who is not returned to full vigour. She sleeps all day still, and clearly needs to feed. But each time I broach the topic, Elisabeth tells me that it is better to simply let the poor girl rest until the time comes for us all to leave the castle. I suspect that restoring Dunya would tax Elisabeth’s powers too greatly, though she will not admit to it. She likes to maintain an aura of omnipotence—and indeed, she very nearly is omnipotent.
And if she is, why can we not leave? It is anguish to remain here upon this ruined, deserted estate, thinking of the glories of London! Each dawn, I go to the open window and stretch my arm forth, yearning for the warm, delicious kiss of sunlight upon it.