Slave Of Dracula (19 page)

“Dr. Seward!” Renfield screamed. “He is coming! He is com-ing! Get Mrs. Harker out of the house!”

The gas-lights showed him a hallway blank and empty as if it were a thousand feet underground.

Chill touched him, like an evil wind. Turning, Renfield saw the first curls of mist seeping under the
casement, flowing down the wall.

He turned back to the window, spread out his hands. “Get out! I forbid you to enter this place!”

Outside the window, the mists congealed in the thin glow of the moon. Renfield saw the glaring red
eyes, the red mouth open and laughing, a terrible laugh. Saw the sharpness of the white teeth.

“Get out, I tell you! I renounce you and all your works! Be-gone, and trouble this house no more!”

And in his mind, Wotan’s voice whispered against the pound-ing leitmotif of Wagner, It is too late for
that.

The mists pooled, where the small glow of the gas-light from the hall fell through the Judas. Flowed
upward in a column, in which burned two crimson eyes.

Renfield shrieked, “Leave her alone, for she has never harmed you!” and threw himself at the shadow

that was forming within those mists, behind the burning eyes.

CHAPTER TWENTY

In agony, Renfield dreamed.

He saw Mina Harker in her room-it had the same wall-paper as Dr. Seward’s study and the hall in the
men’s wing of the house-and the sickly light of that fingernail moon barely touched the edges of the
window-frame, the bedposts, the china ewer on the dresser. Jonathan Harker lay beside her, so deeply
asleep that Renfield thought the Count must have broken his back, as he had broken Renfield’s …

… broken it and left him lying in agony, dying in a pool of blood on the floor of his cell.

From a great distance Renfield was aware of himself, of pain like a thousand sawing red-hot knives. He
was aware, just as vividly, of the Count, standing beside the bed in the guest-room downstairs.

The Count held Mina Harker in the iron circle of his arm, the black of his clothing and his cloak like
enfolding storm-cloud around the simple white linen of her night-dress. Her head lay back against his
shoulder, her black hair, escaping from its braid, a marvelous inky torrent flowing to her waist. She made
no sound, raised no cry, but her dark eyes were open, staring up at the Count’s face in revulsion, horror,
fear that had nothing in it of panic blankness.

She knew what was being done to her.

The Count’s head was bent over hers, his mouth pressed to her throat. Blood ran down her breast onto
her night-dress.

***

More pain. The dream splintered as if every bone in Renfield’s body were shattering with it. Renfield
opened his eyes, saw Van Helsing’s face.

He couldn’t breathe. His whole body felt as if every joint, every muscle were locked in vises of
incandescent iron. Tangled memories of Dracula hurling him to the floor, beating his head on the boards.

He tasted blood in his mouth, smelled it everywhere in the room. Lamplight burned his eyes. Quincey
Morris had a lamp, so did Lord Godalming, both men tousled in pyjamas, hair hang-ing in their eyes. Van
Helsing was dressed, in shirtsleeves, Sew-ard likewise. There was blood on their sleeves, glaringly dark
in the orange light, like Mrs. Harker’s, trickling down her night-dress.

“I’ll be quiet, Doctor,” Renfield whispered. “Tell them to take off the strait-waistcoat. I have had a
terrible dream.”

I dreamed I was insane.

I dreamed that I was locked in a madhouse, from April to the threshhold of bitter winter, with no one
to care for me, no one to love me, no one to touch me or talk to me in the deep o f the night. I dreamed
of Catherine, lying asleep in the moonlight of our room …

He blinked. “It has left me so weak that I cannot move. What’s wrong with my face? It feels swollen …
smarts . . .” He tried to move his head, and darkness came over him.

“Tell us your dream, Mr. Renfield,” said Van Helsing softly. “Van Helsing,”

Renfield whispered. “It is good of you to be here. Water . . .”

Darkness again. Darkness and pain, and the yawning abyss where more pain waited for him-pain and
the horrors of things he could barely see and didn’t want to. Then brandy burned his lips, and he opened
his eyes again. Van Helsing was still there.

“No,” Renfield whispered. “It was no dream.”

He was dying, and the knowledge gave him a kind of exhila-ration, a lightness. There was nothing
further that Dracula could do to him. Catherine, he thought, Catherine, I have failed you.

But Mina, at least … Mina-Mrs. Harker-could be saved. Freed by the knowledge of
coming death, he told them of Dracula’s visits, stammeringly at first, then with greater confi-dence. Of the
flies, of Dracula’s promises; of the Count’s coming that night and of how he had tried to stop him, to save
Mrs. Harker who had been so kind. Surely, he thought, as he tried to gather breath and strength to
speak again, surely now one of them-Van Helsing-will understand, and will go to
Catherine, will understand the danger she and Vixie are in, will save them. But as he
was trying to form the words, Van Helsing straight-ened up away from him: “We know the worst now,”
he said to the others. “He is here, and we know his purpose! It may not be too late! Let us be armed . .
.”

Renfield whispered desperately, “Catherine … Promise me…”

But they were already rushing to the door, crowding one an-other in it in their desperation to go, the
lamplight jostling their shadows wildly over the walls.

“Please . . .” Renfield breathed.

But they were gone. He heard their footsteps thudding down the hall, felt the jarring of their race down
the stairs. The gas-light of the hall fell through the open door over him, the thin distant howling of some of
the women patients sweeping through the building like the whistle of wind.

He thought, despairingly, Catherine, forgive me! I’ve botched it all up! I only did it for
you. It was all for you. And now I will never see you again.

He could not move, and the tears that flowed from his eyes ran down the sides of his face to the
bloodied boards of the floor. Catherine …

Mist curled before his eyes.

Dracula, he thought. Wotan. He has done with Mrs. Harker and he has come to drink
my life. Come for the final insult, the final triumph …

Red eyes glowing in the mist.

Then the pale oval of a gentle face, materializing out of the reflected gas-light of the hall. Fair hair like
the sunlight that beats on the yellow rocks of the Khyber Pass. The red light died, leaving the eyes that

looked into his as blue as pale sapphires, like the deeps of the up-country sky above the Simla Hills.

She asked, “Will you stay, or go?”

Renfield’s tears flowed harder, grief and guilt and pain. He managed to whisper, “. . . work yet to do. I
must … save them. Help me.”

Without another word, Nomie bent her slim body down, and like gentle kisses drank the blood that
was still trickling from the gashes Dracula’s nails had opened in Renfield’s face, from the open wound
where Van Helsing had trephined the skull to re-lieve the haemorrhage inside. Then she undid the pearl
buttons of her sleeve, pushing the fragile figured lawn up to reveal an arm no less white than the fabric,
and with her long nails slit open the veins.

Somewhere in the house came the rending crash of a door be-ing broken open, men’s voices shouting.
Nomie turned her head, listening for an instant, then pressed her bleeding arm to Ren-field’s lips. “Trust
me,” she breathed, “and drink.”

Her blood tasted coppery on his tongue, sweet and salt at once, like the blood of the men who’d died
in the Mutiny, all those years ago under the broiling Indian sun.

“He is ours,” whispered the Countess’s voice, and opening his eyes again, Renfield saw the other two
standing behind her. “If he will be so, he will be of us all, my sister.” Kneeling, she ripped the black silk
sleeve of her dress, and opened the flesh be-neath; while Renfield drank of the blood of her arm, she
pressed her lips to his throat. He felt her teeth tear into his flesh, but the sensation was distant, as all
sensation was failing.

Sarike opened her bodice, tore the vein above the dusky satin of her breast; lapped the blood off his
face like a greedy cat. “You are ours now,” whispered the Countess, kneeling above him, her uncoiled
black hair hanging down to brush his face. “We will carry you through the dark of death. Your soul will
be cradled within ours, until such time as it returns to your death–changed flesh. But a portion of that
soul will remain forever in our keeping, so long as we ourselves inhabit this world. Do you understand?”

Renfield’s lips formed the words, I understand.

Somewhere in the house a woman screamed, the frantic scream that had nothing in it of insanity, but of
too-clear aware-ness. Mrs. Harker’s voice, thought Renfield, drifting on the bor-derlands of oblivion.
Men’s voices clamoring, then Mrs. Harker’s crying above them, “No! No, Jonathan, you must not leave
me!”

Cold began to seep into the room. At first, Renfield thought it was only his own body sinking into
death, but the Countess turned her head sharply, whispered, “He is coming.” She and Sarike stood.
Nomie remained kneeling beside Renfield, and the Countess reached down and dragged the girl to her
feet. For a moment Nomie’s eyes met Renfield’s, before all three women faded into the thready glimmer
of the moonlight.

The next moment, the Count was in the room. His face was like a steel mask, with blood smeared
down his mouth and streaking the front of his shirt. Shirt and the black silk waistcoat above it were open
to the waist, and a bleeding gash on the pec-toral muscle showed Renfield where Mrs. Harker’s mouth
must have been pressed, to drink of the vampire’s blood. In his cloak Renfield could smell the clinging
remains of her dusting-powder, vanilla and sandalwood mingling with the reek of gore.

“And as for you,” Dracula whispered, standing over him, a towering shadow, like Satan rising up from

the floor of Hell. “Judas. Are you like them now, who pit their puny brains against me? Who would go
against me, with their weak mortality? Who would separate me from what is my own? See how I deal
with those who would betray me!”

He bent down and lifted Renfield as if he were a child, raised him over his head. In final despair,
Renfield blocked his lips, his mind, from screaming Catherine’s name as he was hurled down into
darkness.

CHAPTER TWENTY -ONE

Catherine!

Renfield’s eyes opened in panic. He saw only darkness, felt the close bounds of the coffin against his
arms and his thighs, but that didn’t trouble him. Trust, Nomie had said, and he had trusted.

It had all taken place, exactly as the Countess Elizabeth had promised: the dark terror, the horrifying
agony of separating from his dying body, the dark and hideous intimacy of those three minds cradling his
soul among them …

And then the dreams. Dear God, the dreams! Catherine …

Renfield brought up his hands to the coffin-lid just above his breast, and thrust. In life he had been a
strong man. The lid gave way like cardboard, with a sound that was shocking in the deep silence.

The damp melancholy smell of dying leaves, of turned earth, came to him above the mouldy stink of
mortality and wet stone and rats.

Renfield was a little surprised. He was in the family tomb at Highgate. He recognized it, from when
they’d buried his par-ents. He’d have bet money Lady Brough and Georgina would have given
instructions that he be sent to a medical college for dissection.

Or was it beneath the dignity of the Brough family to have even a disgraced in-law anatomized by such
low creatures as students?

Looking back, with a sense that was not quite sight, he saw that the coffin was of cheap pine.
Apparently they drew the line at putting forth a single extra penny on a mere tradesman, an
India-merchant who’d had the temerity to refuse their advice about how his daughter should be brought
up. As a living man he could have ripped his way out of it, never mind one of a vam-pire’s preternatural
strength. The clothes he wore were those he’d been found in, wandering the streets of London raving last
April. They hadn’t even cleared out the pockets: his handker-chief, a few bus-tickets, an old key.

The lingering smell of parafin within the tomb, and the fresh-ness of the tracked mud near the door, told
him he’d been put there that day. Even in total darkness he knew it was sundown that had wakened him.
His back no longer hurt, nor his face. He raised his hand to feel his skull above the right ear, where Van
Helsing had trephined to relieve the pressure of the blood, and the skin was smooth.

Had they even noticed? he wondered. Or had Seward been so shocked and disoriented by Dracula’s
assault on poor Mrs. Harker that he’d simply signed the death certificate and left that drunken imbecile
Hennessey to take care of the details?

All this went through his mind in a few distracted moments, as he stood before the tomb’s marble door.
None of it mattered to him, nor formed more than a candle’s weak glow against the blazing sun of the
thought: I must get to Catherine.

The horror of his dream hammered in his mind.

The door of the tomb was locked. Renfield thought he could have broken it, but he’d seen the other
vampires pass through tiny cracks, keyholes and slits, in the form of mist. If they could do it, surely he

could, too.

It was a most curious sensation.

He was, as he’d thought, in Highgate Cemetery.

Catherine, he thought again. I must get to her. I must tell her…

He began to run.

***

He had dreamed about Catherine, dreamed terrible things. Georgina and Lady Brough were going to
take Vixie, take her and lock her up, send her away. Teach her shame and squea-mishness. Teach her
that everything she loved and felt and cared about was wrong.

He had dreamed about Catherine weeping, weeping until she was ill, by the glow of the lamps in the
bedroom of the house they’d taken in Kensington, under the name of Marshmire. Ren-field had pleaded
with her, pointed out again and again to her that they’d covered their tracks well. They’d made
provisions, taken other bank accounts, established still other names, other identities …