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It is him. My heart fails. I almost cry out, but he catches my arms and my
breath stops in my throat. His form is so starkly black in the cassock. How
fierce his face is, made more fearsome by the curling bushiness of his
eyebrows, the long white moustache and the profusion of his long pale hair. I
close my eyes, cannot look at him. I am faint with the conflict of desire - to
escape him yet to be held captive.
'Look at me, Elena,' he says. His voice is stronger than before, rich and
harsh and commanding. 'What do you see?'
'A handsome nobleman. One who was a great hero.'
'Do not flatter me. The truth!'
'You know I speak the truth!' My own spirit surprises me.
His lips lift beneath the moustache; it seems a smile, though a very bitter
one. 'I have not seen my own face for more than four hundred years. No mirror
can capture my image.' He draws me to an overgrown tomb and sits me beside him
on the molded stone.
His frailty of the first night has gone, but I perceive a weakness in him, as
if he were held by invisible chains to the graveyard. 'You will talk to me and
tell me all you know of the world,' he says gently. 'I have walked upon it for
four hundred years and more. Yet it has turned for seven years which passed as
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eternity compressed into a single moment for me.
Now all is strange again.'
'Beloved companion, I thought you knew all there is to know. You have taught
me so much!'
'And I have lost much. It could be, Elena, that you saw visions of matters
that I have forgotten. Not all knowledge survives the grave. I have lain for
so very long in one grave or another.'
We talk for hours. It is so bitter-sweet to lie in the arms of death and talk
like lovers. I
tell him how the wolf came to me and led me to the castle, the visions I saw.
At everything I say, he nods, as if reassured. 'Yes . . . yes, I do remember.'
And he tells me some of his own story; wild, rambling and so strange I cannot
follow it all, but the core of it I understand. 'They destroyed me - the
Harkers and the accursed Van Helsing, who has made himself doctor of every
discipline as though he would heal the very world of its sickness. Fool.
Elena, my own land was frozen in the Middle Ages, drained of its vitality by
war, a ghost of itself. I sought a new kingdom, to move among the whirl and
rush of humanity in these great cities of the West. . . but they foiled me.
And they did worse.
They destroyed some I loved, who cannot return as I have. For that, they must
be punished.'
He speaks simply, not vengefully. But such is his passion that I would give my
life to help him. 'Van Helsing is a friend of my uncle. He is staying with the
Harkers.'
'I know, Elena,' he answers. 'I have watched them through your eyes, through
each other's eyes. I have entered their dreams and defiled them.' He smiles;
it is almost a sneer, a hellish look of pleasure. 'Do they ever speak of me?'
'Not to me. They believe me to be utterly innocent, and they intend the child
and myself to remain so. But now I know why they made the journey to
Transylvania; to see again the place where they destroyed you! But among
themselves, I am certain they speak of nothing else. They sent for the others,
too, Seward and Godalming. They are very afraid.' 'Good. How sweet to see
madness eating at them. They know I am among them. Jonathan yielded easily to
me; Van Helsing drove me out; Mina I could not enter, but she is falling in
another way. She is strong. I need her blood.' 'Is mine not enough?' I
ask, jealous. 'It is the finest wine, beloved.' He touches my cheek; my skin
tingles deliciously where his fingers pass. 'But my blood runs in Mina's
veins. Until I taste it I
cannot reclaim my full powers.' I fall quiet. I can't argue, yet still I hate
it. I fear my jealousy will make him angry. Instead he stretches out his left
hand above my lap.
'But how good it is to live again!' he says, flexing the fingers with their
long, pointed nails. I take his hand between my own. 'You gave me this gift,
beloved. To taste, to see through my own eyes, not those of others. To hear
the music of the owl and the wolf, to touch skin. Your skin.' He leans closer
to me, his mouth near my neck. I shiver. 'No earthly taste, no meat, no wine,
no sweetmeat can ever compare to the taste of blood. No potion can mimic its
vitality. Why do you tremble?'
'I am afraid of you,' I said.
'Then you are wise,' he replies, drawing away. 'But they are the ones who
should fear me. You have nothing to fear - as long as you are loyal. Will your
courage fail? You are a danger; you might give away my hiding-place to them.'
'No!'
'You chose to help me of your own free will, beloved child. You might as
easily change your mind.'
'My choice is made!' I say fiercely. 'How dare you doubt me? I will never
betray you!'
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'Then you have only yourself to blame,' he murmurs, for whatever befalls. Do
my bidding without question now, and later you will be rewarded richly.'
I bow my head, promising all. I am leaning against him; one of his arms is
around me, the other moving to brush aside my hair and loosen the collar of my
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