Part 19 (2/2)

I was too ill and exhausted to do more than build a fire and fall fast asleep by the hearth. In the morning when I woke, I made a pyre with logs from the woodpile and set my little boy's remains atop it. As it blazed, I watched the dark smoke carry Jan's soul heavenwards.

I sit once more before the fireplace, writing it all down. No detail must escape my memory, for I am sure this record shall be of use to me in the future.

I will remain here a few days to regain my strength and hope for Arminius' return. If he does not come, I intend to take with me the Goetia and certain other texts I have found, and carry them back to Holland. I know I am meant to return home; but my life there will not, cannot be the same.

Staring into the fire, I need no magical intervention to see a vision of my own future in the flames. I see two paths divergent, as though I stand at a fork on a fogbound forest road: The one path is the future now denied me, the life of a man loving and loved, surrounded by children and a wife who grows contentedly old by his side. A lifetime of laughter and arguments, of tears and ten thousand good-morning and bedtime kisses, ten thousand stories recounted by candlelight, ten thousand slammed doors and ten thousand unwilling apologies. A lifetime of watching my children grow to proud adulthood and raise families of their own. Grandchildren, a life well lived, a gentle death, and interment at my Gerda's side: All this might have been mine.

But for the sake of those I love and those I never knew and never shall, I cannot be that man. I see too clearly now the fate that lies before me: A life alone, eschewing love lest I bring forth another heir to be broken and destroyed. Ten thousand days spent in cold silent graveyards murdering those long dead, ten thousand nights on squalid streets, in villages and cities where I come and go a stranger.Ten thousand nights so the day might come when I am the stronger and can complete the task I was born to do.

I go willingly down this road, never before trod by human foot, so that the other path might be safe for those who travel it; so that the dreams of other men might be sweet.

And for my own lost family, whose blood cries out to me as it drips from the Impaler's hands: Justus et pius.

I will be avenged.

EPILOGUE.

The Diary of Mary Tsepesh Van Helsing 13 FEBRUARY 1872.

Bram has returned at last.

Writing those words should bring joy. After all, my heart's greatest fear never materialised; the child for whom so much was risked, so much gladly sacrificed, is safe, and here with me once more.

But at what price? At what price?

Gerda shares my room now-I am too fearful to let her spend the night unattended. Many nights, in the heavy hours before dawn, I am wakened by bright, tinkling laughter and sit upright in bed, heart pounding because the voice does not belong to my daughter-in-law, but to Arkady's sister. Sometimes, the voice turns petulant, then shouts in anger.

I know with whom Zsuzsanna fights: Him. He still walks the earth, and many an hour in the darkness, I have lain weeping silently, listening in vain for news of those beloved by me.

Little more than a fortnight ago, Gerda emerged from her self-imposed silence to shriek again, in Zsuzsanna's voice, leaping from her bed to stand like a distraught ghost in her white night-gown, elbows akimbo, hands clutching skull, dark eyes two fathomless voids in that pale, pale face. Murderer! You 've killed my child . . . ! And now you will pay in kind. . .

And then she collapsed to her knees, sobbing, cupped hands to eyes as she moaned, ”Jan . . .

Jan . . . my sweet little Dutch boy . . .”

I listened with a horror, a grief beyond the reach of tears. For some time I could only lie stunned and sweating, wrapped in linens and wool, feet pressed against the now-cold brick bedwarmer as a burning chill ascended my spine. But the question that consumed me became painfully tangible, so much so that it pounded in my ears until I could not bear to remain in bed, but rose and padded in woolen socks across the cold floor to ask it of her: ”Dear G.o.d, who has killed Jan? Gerda, I must know ...”

She did not hear me. I put a hand beneath her chin and lifted her face towards me: but the eyes were blank, the lips faintly moving, but producing no sound. She had retreated again to vacancy, to muteness, unable to answer my question.I already knew my grandson to be dead; I wanted now to know the name of his murderer.

For I had received only days before a terse letter from my eldest son saying that his only child had been killed, and offering no details-not even mentioning Stefan's death. And in the midst of my weeping over the death of my grandchild, I found myself besieged by a mother's hope: If Bram had not mentioned Stefan's death, then perhaps he, at least, was still alive, and Gerda mistaken. . . .

But in the meantime my grief was mixed with fury. I was certain that Vlad was directly responsible for the loss of our little angel, and this added kindling to the fire of my hatred.

”Who has killed him? Who? Speaks I commanded, this time with such vehemence that Gerda's dark, empty eyes flickered, and the moving lips produced a faint, low whisper before they fell silent again: ”Abraham . . .”

I staggered backwards from her and sat upon my bed.

Of course Bram had not harmed his own child; that I did not doubt, even at that horrible moment. But Zsuzsanna apparently thinks my son a murderer. And if the poor child had died by the time Abraham wrote to me, then why had Zsuzsanna waited so long to mourn him?

The only answer is too horrible to contemplate.

Yet, I see it reflected in Bram's eyes. Only five days before, I received a letter announcing his imminent arrival, post-marked from Hungary.

Two nights ago I sat alone in my room (alone, though Gerda slept quietly nearby), staring into the dying fire and grieving as I had the night-so long ago, it seems-Arkady returned to me.

Two swift knocks, soft yet insistent, at my bedroom door. The sound made me at once raise a hand to my startled heart: for I had heard no footfall in the corridor, on the stairs. Yet the cadence was unmistakable; I released a cry and hurried at once to fling open the door.

There stood Abraham, as he had so many months before the dark night of the past had descended on us.

This was my son-and yet it was not he, but a stranger. In the instant before I threw my arms round him, I drew back, fearful. This was indeed the same man who had come to my door only months before; for these were the same bright blue eyes behind thick spectacles, the same wavy, copper-gold hair.

And yet this man was not the same. There was an air about him that was new, an air of great power and mystery and sorrow. The bright blue eyes were tinged with hardness, such hardness as I had never seen in him before, nor thought him capable of.

”Moeder,” he said, and his speech was different, too, possessed of authority and a weariness deeper than any which can be borne by mere mortals.

Undead, I thought in a moment of dizzying horror, for there was an aura of the unearthly, the esoteric about him. Undead, or tainted like poor Gerda . . .

But no; his haggard features revealed no immortal glamour, only shadows and lines and the burden of a responsibility that had aged him far beyond his years.

Stricken at the sight, I touched fingertips to his face- warm, still warm-and saw it soften ever so slightly.

I took his hand, as comfortingly warm as his cheek. ”Bram,” I said, my own voice trembling as I searched his eyes to find therein even one small spark of hope. I had meant to welcome him properly, but had languished in uncertainty too long. ”You told us of Jan, but your letter did not mention Stefan or Arkady. . . .”

He briefly averted his eyes and drew in a breath-a small, hitching sigh, but that instant's hesitation revealed the horrid truth more than any words could. I pressed both hands to my heart and wailed a mere second before he answered softly, ”Dead. Both dead. But Vlad still lives.”

How shall I ever mourn them all?

Arkady, my darling, would that I burned in h.e.l.l in your stead! Yet can there be greater torment than mine: to live knowing that your pure soul suffers unjustly while the monster still walks the earth, revelling in the blood of innocents? Knowing that your death and d.a.m.nation have failed to free our child from a life in the Impaler's shadow?

And how shall I mourn the loss of the one now called Abraham? He has returned and lives here with us in this house, but much of the night and the day he is either absent or closeted in his study, poring over strange ma.n.u.scripts. He speaks little, and will not talk of Transylvania at all. When he does speak, he does so absently, with his gaze focused elsewhere-on the shades of his brother, or his father, or his son, in this house full of ghosts both living and dead.

Bram is here, but he is not with us. My son is lost to me, as surely as if Vlad had plucked him from my arms the day he was born. . . .

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