Part 4 (2/2)

My pulse quickened with dread. ”But how?”

”You have always been the stronger,” he repeated. ”Dear Mary, can you be strong again?”

I replied nothing, only fixed my gaze upon him and thought of my two innocent sons.

When I came to this quaint country more than a quarter century ago, I considered myself reborn. It is far different from Transylvania or my native England: the temperate winters, the flat, marshy sweeps of land, the creak of windmills, the wide sky with its gilt-edged, swift clouds so favoured by artists, the clean bustling cities filled with smiling industrious people who care not a whit for cla.s.s-all were entirely alien to me. There is a sense of goodness here, a sweet freshness in the air that blows in from the ever-present sea. Beside it, Transylvania seems anciently evil, decadent, corrupt as a mouldering corpse.

Grateful for the change, I put the terror of the past behind me. I embraced the Dutch people to the extent that I spoke nothing but their language, forgetting my native tongue.

For more than twenty-five years, I had been so far removed from danger that I began to believe I and my children were safe.

Now, to find this long-dead fear resurrected . . .

”I cannot,” I said, withdrawing my hand from beneath his. ”Please ... do not ask for my help.

I cannot bear even to think of putting my children at risk-”

”They are already at risk.” He rose abruptly and, with a move swifter than my eyes could perceive, turned from me to face the fire. ”I have had twenty-six years to deliberate on what I would do when I decided to approach you and Stefan. I could continue to keep a protective eye on you and remain silent-as I have been doing for the past several months since I found you. But I am barely a match for Vlad. I am almost as wily as he now-but he has had centuries of experience beyond mine. I have attempted several times to destroy him; several times he has learnt of my plan in time and escaped. Many times he has come close to destroying me.” He whirled abruptly and faced me. ”I could have kept you unawares of the threat and spared you this pain-but your ignorance would only increase the danger.” He paused, holding my gaze with soft, desperate eyes, brown eyes flecked with green, eyes I thought I should never look into again, so beautiful and tortured that I fought not to weep. ”And you are the only one I can entrust with the most solemn of tasks. I need your promise.”

I hesitated.

”Mary,” he murmured, ”you killed me once before, my darling; when the time comes and Vlad is destroyed-if I do not die, can you be strong enough, can I trust you, to do it again?”

I covered my face with my hands, overwhelmed, and felt cold lips brush the top of my head.

I remained thus for some time, unable to speak, unable to think, able only to sit s.h.i.+vering at the sense of encroaching evil, at the realisation that my agonising act of mercy had purchased for my beloved not relief but the most hideous of purgatories.

When at last I looked up, an expression of such pure sincerity and anguish pa.s.sed over his features that I rose, pierced through the soul at the sight of his pain. I had buried one husband that morning, only to find now another, long thought dead; my heart welled with such love and sadness at the cruelty of his predicament that I reached to console him.

”Oh, Arkady . . .”

Sobbing, we embraced at last. For a blessed moment, I did not notice the coldness of the arms that enfolded me, of the lips that brushed my forehead, of the tears that rained upon my hair; nor did I perceive the odd stillness in the chest where once had beaten a warm living heart. I held him fast, thinking only that I was reunited with him I loved most.

And he held me, with all the sweet fierce tenderness of the husband I had known. Oh, how he held me. . . .

How long we remained in that blissful pose I cannot say. But the time came when I, swept up in an outpouring of affection, pressed my lips to his silent breast, the shoulder of his cloak, his neck-and then his mouth.

He drew away, but not before I caught the unmistakable scent and taste of death and iron. I pulled back -and saw on his parted lips, upon his collar, dark stains.

Dark in the fireglow, because of the night; but I had no doubt that were I to light the lamp, those stains would be bright, fresh, crimson.

I recoiled with a sharp cry.

He released me at once. I brushed fingertips against my own lips and drew them away, bloodied. He saw the object of my dismay, and his expression transformed itself into one of fathomless shame.

”Go!” I demanded as I lowered my gaze, unable to look further at him, to see anything but my own spread fingers, covered with an unknown victim's blood. ”Go, please! I cannot-I cannot bear even to think-”

His voice was calm and soft but carried an undercurrent of steel resolve. ”You must. Just as I had to return. It was too much for me to have come tonight, too soon after your loss.

Forgive me. But consider all I have said.”

I turned, mouth open to reply-and saw that I stood alone. Or did I? For it seemed that, from the corner of my eye, I espied a dark moving shadow scrabbling towards the window.

A sudden gust of cold wind made me s.h.i.+ver; I hurried to the window, now open, and pulled down the sash. Beyond, in the moonless dark, I could see nothing -nothing but the silent black shapes of houses across the street, aglitter from a light rain.I started at a sharp rapping at my bedroom door; the sound seemed startling normal, incongruous with the dreamlike unreality of what I had just experienced. Had it not come, I would perchance have convinced myself that Arkady's appearance had been naught but a dream. But I was full awake as I turned from the window and hurried towards the knocking.

”Moeder?” Bram's voice, hoa.r.s.e and tired, but tense with concern.

I opened the door to find my son, still dressed in the s.h.i.+rt sleeves he had worn to his father's funeral; behind thick spectacles, his bright blue eyes were swollen and edged with red. His waving gold hair, kissed with copper, was tousled, as though he had been lying down, but the exhaustion in his tone told me that he, like his mother, had not slept.

For a moment, I did not speak but permitted myself to gaze at him, to remember those dark fearful days when he was still a baby, to admire the brilliant young man that child had become. He is so driven, my Abraham, so upright and curious and intelligent that he had taken a law degree while exceptionally young, then followed in Jan's footsteps and became a physician when the law failed to offer enough opportunities to help the helpless. It became a great source of pride to Jan that his adoptive son should be so much like him; indeed, so like him in interests and appearance that we all came to speak and think of Bram as Jan's own son and saw no reason to disabuse Bram of the notion. Like his adoptive father, he thrives on overwork; yet I could see for the first time the toll it had taken on him, could see the weariness hidden in the shadows beneath his eyes.

He frowned with worry as he scrutinised me and reached for my hand with both of his; after the coldness of Arkady's grip, the warmth of my son's was rea.s.suring. ”I heard a scream-”

He spoke in Dutch, as I had intentionally never conversed with my sons in English but let them learn the language at school; and I answered him thus, conscious for the first time in many years that I was speaking a foreign tongue. ”It was nothing.” I tried to smile, tried to affect a light tone, and failed. ”A mouse. I startled the poor thing more than it did me, I think.”

”Ah,” he said. ”I must leave for the hospital early in the morning, but I will remind Stefan to set a trap.” He paused, his penetrating gaze never wavering from my face-he is so serious, that one, so unlike his brother-and for a flickering instant my resolve melted. I drew a breath and opened my mouth to speak, to tell him the truth of it all, to warn him, to beg him to flee.

Ignorance has brought my children a happy life thus far; will it now bring their destruction?

My words died unborn. Abraham is a dedicated sceptic, the last person living who would accept my wild tale. How shall I tell him? Tell Stefan? I reached out and laid my other hand atop his, tightening my grip, afraid ever to release it.

It served to increase Bram's concern. ”Are you quite certain you're all right, Mama?”

I could not release the contents of my heart. No; such a revelation required careful forethought. Instead I nodded, at last managing a weary smile.

”You would not like a draught to help you sleep?”

”No. Go to sleep, Bram.”

He patted my hand and withdrew. I shut the door, washed my hands and face in the basin, taking special care to clean my lips-and sat down to pen this entry. From time to time I wipe my mouth with my handkerchief, but the taste of blood lingers.Dawn is almost here, and still I cannot decide how or what to tell my sons.

What remains of my little family is no longer safe. Evil surrounds us. May G.o.d help us all.

Chapter 4.

The Journal of Stefan Van Helsing 19 NOVEMBER 1871.

I am the happiest and most miserable of men.

I am compelled to write it all down; as penance, perhaps, knowing that someday someone might stumble upon these words. It would be no less than I deserve.

Here, then, a tale of the Fall: and the truth is that, recounting it, I feel as much illicit joy as shame.

We buried poor Papa to-day. I was, of course, overwhelmed by grief (shall I use it to pardon the inexcusable?), of no use to anyone. But Bram was there; always there, and took good care of Mama. He is much like her: solid, never-changing, always dependable, so strong that he never once wept in public. Mama, too, never cried, though her eyes were rimmed with red.

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