The Origin of Dracula (33 page)

Harry glanced at me. “I like it so far.”

“There’s a massive ridge on the east side of the pass,” I said. “What if we rig it with dynamite, then drive Drakho up under it?”

“Not bad. But how we gonna drive him up there?”

“The generator. We draw him to us, flip it on, and he hightails it up to the ridge.”

Harry nodded. “You’re gonna have to detonate the dynamite at just the right time,” he said.

“Yeah…”

He grinned and leaned back, and I could tell that he’d caught on to the part of the plan he might not like. “And I’m the decoy,” he said.

“Hopefully just a decoy, and not a sacrifice.” I wasn’t grinning.

“Either way is fine with me. I been waitin’ a hell of a long time to kill this bastard.”

So the plan was set. I would carry Harry and the generator to the col, to a spot that ran under that ridge. Then I’d come back here, grab the dynamite, blasting caps, and mechanical match, hike through to the woods to the ridge, from the backside, and plant the dynamite.

“So when Drakho comes after me in the col,” Harry said, “I’ll fire up the generator and we pray to sweet Jesus that it drives him up to the ridge.”

“That’s right.” But then I brought up the flaw hanging over this entire operation. “Of course, if he knows we’re here, none of this is going to fly.”

“Kinda late to be worryin’ about that now. Besides, the guy’s got other Hatfields he’s playing games with. And even if he does know what we’re up to, he’s sticking to the rules he put down.”

“You mean I have until tomorrow.”

“Yeah. But he’s still gonna mess with ya.”

I believed part of this. The part about Drakho playing by the rules. I knew my enemy well enough by now to understand that these games were his life—the Paspahegh had told Edna that hundreds of years ago. And without the rules, there was no game.

But that didn’t mean he wasn’t watching me, mocking my plan, preparing to counter it at any time. Harry’s theory that Drakho was out messing with other victims, playing a myriad of games, was plausible—it explained why Drakho hadn’t been messing with me every second of every hour since I’d received the letter. But I couldn’t be certain. The only thing I could be certain of—or at least
felt
I could be certain of—was Drakho’s respect for the rules of the game.

Now that we had a battle plan, I moved on to the next order of business. I gassed up the generator—our amber weapon—and hauled it to the col, where I positioned it directly below the ridge. Then I hiked back, picked up Harry, and carried him back to the col.

“Turn on the generator at eight fifteen,” I said.

Harry’s eyes swept up the hillside, past the ridge, to the sky above. “You think you got nightfall goin’ for ya, don’t ya?”

“I think so.” While I’d been hauling Harry to the col, a small revelation had come to me—or maybe it was just a desperate attempt to boost my faith. I had realized that Drakho had never shown himself in daylight. Not with us, not with Edna, not in Bram Stoker’s tale. Never. And nightfall would hit the col at around eight fifteen.

Before I left Harry alone—which under any other circumstances would look like a horrible and cruel prank: leaving a man who couldn’t walk stranded in the middle of the wilderness—I felt obligated to let him know how big my doubts were.

“This whole plan, and everything leading up to it—it could all be wrong,” I said. “All the connections and threads and links might only exist in my head.” I motioned to the wilderness around us. “And not out here.”

“That don’t make it any less real, does it?”

I smiled. He’d nailed it. Fact and fiction were the same.

By the time I was closing in on the ridge, dusk had fallen, bringing with it a chill in the air and long shadows cutting through the woods. The darkening sky was a haunting violet blue, disturbingly luminous, as if heralding Drakho’s imminent arrival.

During my hike up, I’d been on the lookout for signs of Drakho, but twilight brought on another fear. I was now wary of a change in scenery—a literal one. A vision, a hallucination, a warping of reality.

And the closer I got to the ridge, the more I wondered if I was already hallucinating. Was I seeing what Drakho wanted me to see and not what I needed to see to fight this battle?

I scanned the terrain below, trying to spot Harry and the generator. But the forest was too thick to offer a clear line of sight, and I didn’t have time to look for a better view. I had miscalculated how long it would take me to hike out of the col and circle up to the ridge. I should’ve told Harry eight thirty. As it stood now, Harry would be turning on the generator in less than ten minutes, which meant I needed to hurry.

I ran to the underside of the ridge, where the air was cooler, the trees thinner, and the shadows darker. Then I scouted for a spot to plant the dynamite, a crevice in the ridge that fit Buck’s parameters. Of course, I was adapting his instructions; he’d told me where and how to plant dynamite so it’d have maximum impact when it came to sealing a cave, not bringing down a ridge.

I went with a fissure that ran lengthwise in the stone, near the center of the ridge. I securely planted the dynamite, rigged up the blasting caps and the fuse, then attached the mechanical match. To ignite the fuse, I’d have to come back and pull the ring from the match.

Then I hiked out from under the ridge, scouting for a location that would protect me from the explosion. The dusk had turned darker now, and with it the tenor of the pass had changed. The haunting purple light had gone from luminous to dull and heavy, and the sounds emanating from the hillsides—cawing, croaking, rustling, buzzing, and crunching—reverberated with an unnerving dissonance. I wondered if the other world had suddenly enshrouded the pass, but I also knew it didn’t matter.

I moved forward until I spotted a cluster of boulders that were a safe distance from the ridge. Then I looked down toward the col—and my heart immediately started pounding.

There was a clear sightline to Harry, and what I saw was impossible to process. Harry was
walking
—on his own two legs—toward the generator. It was as if Drakho had never crippled him. My perch was far from the col, and my view was obscured by the approach of night, but there was no doubt that Harry was walking.

He stepped up to the generator, hovered over it, and then a few seconds later a low hum filled the pass.
Harry couldn’t have walked up to the generator.
So was the generator off or on?
There was no way to know.

But one thing I did know: Drakho was here, and he was clouding my vision.

I scanned the hillside, looking for a sign that Drakho had arrived with the night. I saw nothing. I looked back at the ridge—and my throat went dry—

There was a castle where the ridge had been. Its moldering gray walls stood stark and silent; its menacing battlements, turrets, and towers loomed over me.
And why not?
I thought. The final confrontation in
Dracula
had taken place in Dracula’s castle in the Carpathian Mountains. And although I didn’t know where Edna’s final confrontation had taken place—or even if there’d been one—my bet right then was that she had confronted Drakho in a castle.

Drakho was playing chess. He was tying everything together, bringing the game full circle. For not only had the final confrontation in
Dracula
taken place in the count’s castle, but the first supernatural novel was
The Castle of Otranto
, and that tied the game together in a nice, neat, novel therapy bow.

I stared at the castle, trying to see through it and past it, willing myself to see what was
also
there—the ridge—so I could locate where I’d planted the dynamite. But all I saw was the medieval monolith, a gloomy fortress dominating the pass.

And the fortress was inviting me inside for the final battle. Its gates—heavy oak, and iron eaten with rust—were open.

There was no seeing past the castle to the ridge and to the fissure where the dynamite lurked. Fact and fiction were mixed together, but I needed to see both—right now. If I couldn’t see the dynamite, I couldn’t detonate it.

It was time to up my game or lose the game. I’d cast my lot—I hadn’t come here to tell Drakho his name. The only thing that mattered now was whether novel therapy was going to be enough to beat him at his own game. He clearly thought it wouldn’t, which was why he’d chosen it. He’d challenged me on my own turf to make it a worthwhile competition, but he’d never believed he’d lose.

I suddenly started running downhill—away from the castle and toward the pass below. I had a plan in mind and was going for broke, betting that Harry
had
turned on the generator. If I was right, then I was rapidly approaching a strong electrical field.

As I ran, I intermittently glanced back at the castle. After fifty yards or so, the first part of my plan paid off—there was no castle. The ridge was back.

And so was Drakho.

He was on the ridge, silhouetted by the darkening sky, keeping his distance from the electrical field. My bet had paid off. Drakho couldn’t cloud my mind and change my world if I was far enough inside the electrical field.

Now it was time to execute the second part of my plan. I started back up toward the ridge, toward Drakho, until I made it to the point where the ridge was once again transformed into the castle. Drakho was gone—but I knew he hadn’t disappeared. He was inside the castle.

I retreated again until the castle disappeared and the ridge returned—but this time Drakho wasn’t on the ridge. I didn’t have time to worry about where he’d gone; I had to focus on the location of the dynamite. Staring at the fissure where I knew I’d planted it, I climbed toward the ridge again, slowly, until the castle reappeared. I made a mental note of exactly where the dynamite was located
inside
the castle. Once I was certain of that spot, I turned and raced down through the thick woods toward the generator. A pale light from the rising moon lit the way.

I found Harry just as I’d left him—not ambulatory.

“I saw him,” he said as soon as I stepped into the col.

“Me too.”

“Then what happened to blowing him up?”

“I’m not done yet. I’m going back up there. Give me three minutes, then shut the generator down. When you do, he’s going to head down here. If you see him or even if you just sense he’s nearby—turn the generator back on.”

There wasn’t time to explain any more. I took off, hurrying uphill, until I made it back to the edge of Drakho’s power—the edge of the electrical field—where the fact of the ridge met the fiction of the castle, both as real as anything I’d ever know.

And then the hum of the generator died out. And without the resistance of the electrical field, the castle immediately grew larger, sturdier, more ominous. It sprawled out farther, sweeping past the length of the ridge, taking up a wide expanse of the hillside.

In awe, I waited quietly and still, hidden in the forest. I was sure that as a result of Harry shutting down the electrical field, Drakho would now take care of business. I pictured him traveling downhill as a lone gray wolf—the same husky, powerful wolf from that night in Cold Falls so long ago—hunting his prey. With the generator off, this col was once again the wolf’s sacred, untouched land—land that Harry and I had just polluted. Drakho would clean it up as fast as he could.

I waited for the hum of the generator to fill the air, the sign that Harry had sensed Drakho’s approach. But I didn’t hear the generator’s gentle hum—and never would again. Instead, Harry’s shrieking cry took over the col, followed by horrifying, wet, ripping sounds—a mauling, a fast and vicious one—

And then silence.

The wolf had struck. Harry had become the sacrifice, and I had to make it worth it.

I raced through the woods, toward the castle’s oak and iron gate, knowing the wolf was already on the hunt for me. I tried to keep my mind off of Harry’s death, telling myself he had believed that sacrificing himself was worth it
if
it helped me complete my mission.

I ran through the castle’s gate and into a courtyard. Massive wooden doors—the entrance to the stronghold—greeted me from the other side. But rather than continue toward them, I ran to the east side of the castle, toward the dynamite, until I came to another entrance: an arched entryway with no door.

I darted through it and found myself in an empty room with doorways on either side. I took the one that led east. This led to another room, a much larger one. It looked like an abandoned banquet hall. A long wooden table, covered with a thick layer of dust, sat in its center, surrounded by scarred, high-backed chairs.

I took a second to figure out where the dynamite was in relation to this banquet hall, not by searching for the explosives, but by weighing whether I was far enough east along the ridge; I was scrolling through the blend of fact and fiction in my mind. This
wasn’t
far enough east, I decided—so I continued through the room and out into a narrow hallway that dead-ended at a set of stone stairs. The stairs led up into a tower.

Somewhere in this tower, somewhere above me, was the fissure where I’d planted the dynamite.

I was so sure of this that I suddenly had an epiphany:
I have some control over fact and fiction.
I had exerted that control back in the library, when I’d stopped the bats from mauling me; and now I had carved out my own trail within Drakho’s world—within this other world. Novel therapy was working.

I hurried up the circular stairs. They wound up at a steep angle, along a narrow passage no more than three feet wide. After a minute or so, I passed a small arched doorway on the inside wall—but there was no time to explore. If I was on course, the dynamite was farther up the tower.

I kept climbing, expecting to come across another doorway, the one that would lead to the dynamite. But when no door appeared, just more and more steps, panic crept up on me. Had I made a mistake and misjudged where the dynamite was? Had I misjudged my ability to wrangle with fact and fiction?

I slowed down and glanced back.
Did I need to
will
a doorway into existence?
A door to the fissure in the ridge?