Dracula The Undead Part 23

'No, the doors are locked. Has he harmed you? I never meant to place you in danger! It would have been wiser if you had travelled with me, or stayed in the church 'He hasn't harmed me,' I said. 'He only asked questions about you, which I refused to answer. I am so tired. I want my son and I want to go home.'

'Come, sit with me,' said Dracula. 'You are safe here. I have so missed your company, Mina.'

This was part of the library that I had blundered into; a small, octagonal reading room, with a pattern resembling the points of a compa.s.s on the floor, and a cupola above, painted blue-black with silver stars. The walls were lined with shelves, but all the books were shut up behind heavy leaded gla.s.s. The whole room was in white and black marble, and windowless; the light came from candles and an antique lamp.

We sat at a round marble-inlaid table in the centre. One large volume lay open upon it; I glimpsed rows of arcane symbols- and medieval etchings of demons before Dracula closed it and pushed it aside. Sorcery.

We began to speak, like long-lost friends, of all that had befallen us since we parted. Dracula sat very still and upright as he spoke, one hand resting on the table. 'When I arrived, Beherit attacked me, which was no more than I had expected; I shut myself in here, not because I fear him, which I do not, but so that he would leave me in peace with the books.'

'Are the books all that concern you?' I said, sharp with fear. 'What about Quincey and Elena? You have said not one word about them. Are they here? If not, I can only think that they have died in the snow! But you must know!'

'Ah, Mina.' He was shaking his head, pressing my hands between his own. 'I have led you amiss, I fear. Higher considerations have required me to be less than truthful; for that, I beg your pardon. They are not here, but I a.s.sure you they are not dead.'

A mingled wave of anger and confusion swept through me. 'Then where - ?'

'Quincey and Elena never left England. They are quite safe at Carfax. You will be reunited with your son as soon as you go home; in that, I did not lie.'

My emotions at this news -1 cannot even begin to express their intensity! I trembled, I all but swooned. At first I was so relieved I could have fallen on him in grat.i.tude; the next moment I was ablaze with fury. 'You lied to me! You lied, to bring me here!

Why?'

He appeared unmoved by my pa.s.sion. 'Because I wanted you to share in this, Mina. Forget Beherit, he is a mere caretaker; I speak of this glorious knowledge.'

'No. More likely I was a mere shield, to keep your enemies at a distance! I stopped them destroying you, because I thought Quincey -!'

Dracula nodded; shamelessly, I thought, although there was no mockery in his demeanour. He seemed weary and thoughtful, as if he carried the weight of history OH his shoulders. 'Your presence has been strategic, Mina; I would not deny that. But I have made you my helper now solely in order to make you my beloved companion in the future.'

'And what of Elena? You seem to think nothing of discarding those who have been useful!'

A red gleam came into his eyes. 'You are unjust. Elena will be with us too. She has served me and loved me well. We are not bound by the narrow laws of your petty society, that I may take only one bride or you one husband. And I have been without a family for too long. Your Van Helsing destroyed the last of those dear to me.'

He sounded so sorrowful that I could only with immense difficulty feel anything but compa.s.sion for him. And this is how he wears me down, exciting not evil in me but my tenderest pa.s.sions! Even knowing consciously, with wide-open eyes, that this is the Devil's work - I still cannot turn aside!

I asked, 'Have you found what you hoped to find here?'

'Such a process cannot be realized in a day. It may take years, but time is on my side. If Beherit tries to hinder me, he will suffer.

He tricked me, of course - or so he thinks.'

'In what way?'

The Count gave a cruel smile that showed his teeth in all their sensual sharpness. 'He knew that if poor Kovacs said to me, "Do not under any circ.u.mstances go to the Scholomance," I would immediately wish to come here. Although I saw the deceit for what it was, it made me stop and reflect. Beherit is and ever was, you see, an unholy fool. There is knowledge here.'

'Which no Christian should possess!'

'And since I am no Christian; I believe there could be, in truth, a remedy in the Scholomance for all the restrictions that have plagued my immortal existence.'

'So you came here with no thought of redemption, only of increasing your evil powers.'

'Don't think you can redeem me,' Dracula said fiercely. 'Accept what I am, for I will never change. Yet believe this; I spurn the Devil! Kovacs sold his soul for access to undreamed-of wisdom - as did I. But I refused to pay. Therein lay my crime. I was the tenth scholar, chosen by the Devil to be taken in payment for the rest - but I have been warrior, warlord and boyar, and I bow down to no one, not even to Satan himself. I refused to give myself up; I killed those who tried to force me. Beherit was the only one left alive - Undead, rather - and he has spent hundreds of years in my place, waiting for me to return. Now he learns that it has done him no good.'

All of this he said quite calmly. I asked, 'Then you don't serve the Devil?'

'I care nothing for him or for G.o.d!'

'But if you don't serve G.o.d you must aid the Devil. And you still fear G.o.d, or you would not flinch from holy symbols!'

'Do leave aside your theology, Mina. Your reasoning may be correct. But Beherit is right, I left here too soon, before I armed myself with the arcane secrets that would free me from all such constraints.'

Now I sensed a trace of desperation in Dracula that I had never marked before. 'Beherit means to harm you. 1,1 he is afraid of you, and jealous.' 'He can neither harm nor command me, and he knows it. I ask only that he let me alone to conduct certain studies and experiments. You should stay, Mina; you would be more than comfortable here, and I will protect you from his foolishness. Is there not the slightest curiosity in you about this forbidden knowledge? No taint of Eve? Women were taken as students here. Lucifer, they say, has an especial fondness for women. . .'

'Were you really tutored by the Devil himself?' I whispered. 'What did he ... look like?'

'Like Beherit. Like each student's reflection; he stole our reflections, indeed. Like an exquisite black-haired woman. A horned snail. A little golden child ..." I could not tell if he were serious or mocking. He went on, 'We can send for Quincey and Elena as soon as the weather is more clement.'

I turned quite hollow inside, and could not speak. Beherit seemed nothing now; Count Dracula was the only lord of this domain.

He gripped my hand more tightly, saying, 'Well? Quincey will join us, will he not? You must have made your decision.'

And I had, although I did not realize it until that moment. The Count might kill me where I stood for making my answer, but that was better than being toyed with and tormented over my poor son's soul.

'Yes,' I said firmly. 1 have made my decision. If Quincey's days are meant to be short, G.o.d's will be done. I would rather nurse a broken heart the rest of my days than think that I had condemned a child's soul - and who knows how many others through him - to eternal d.a.m.nation!'

Dracula flung my hand from him, and rose so abruptly his chair flew back and hit the floor with a bang. His eyes blazed. The white brows knotted above the hard lines of his face, and his wolf-teeth showed in all their terrible b.e.s.t.i.a.lity. He seized me by the shoulder, lifting me so that I hung from his broad hand, gasping with the pain. And the pale infernal light that glared from his face! I feared for my life - and yet it was that very h.e.l.lish light that told me I had made the right decision. I could never be a part of this.

Even if it cost me my life!

He shook me. 'How dare you defy me!' He gathered me to him and I felt his lips and teeth on my throat; I thought that was the end. Yet I felt his mouth relax, and move over my jaw and cheek to rest in my hair. Dracula wept.

I believe I ceased to resist him then. I allowed his embrace, even returned it, my shoulders softening and my head falling back.

Holding me, he spoke softly and desperately. 'Mina, I love you. I have a powerful will to live, yes, but that will is all for you. If you reject me - what then is left?'

I could not answer. There was nothing I could say. I had no words of comfort; how can such an awesome being be comforted?

Tears fell from my eyes. I can't express the pain I felt - feel. For I so wanted to tell him ... but I could not. Because of Quincey, because I cannot give us both up to d.a.m.nation.Presently he put me away from him and spoke, very grave and sad. 'Ah Mina, I cannot complain at your determination. It was your very strength that drew me to you.'

He kissed my hand and bowed his head to me, as if acknowledging the end of a contest. 'Quincey will live,' he said, his tone soul-weary. 'He will grow out of his childhood weakness and thrive.'

'How can you know that?'

'We studied all arts here; medicine as well as alchemy, necromancy, weaponry and the command of nature. I gave him, while he was in my care, certain mixtures to strengthen his const.i.tution. But you will see for yourself.' He turned away.

I knew then that everything had changed. That when he gave his word to accept my refusal, he meant it! But to realize this was more than astonishing. To think that Count Dracula would, at my bidding, cease to haunt me, cease to persuade or seduce my good intentions to bad -1 felt as if some great prop had been jerked away from under my very being, leaving me in a heap upon the earth.

I had won my liberty, and now was not at all sure I wanted it. Do not judge, you who read this, that women are weak, unless you, also, have had to make the decision that I made!

The Count looked up into the starred cupola. 'The sun rises outside. I would rest awhile. If you wish to leave me, as no doubt you will...' He showed me levers, in two of the eight walls, that would open the concealed doors. 'But keep vigil over me, Mina, for old times' sake.' He lay down at one side of the room, hands folded over his chest, as if the room itself were his sepulchre; and while he lies as if dead, I sit at the table and write.

I have sat alone here now for hours. What will befall me when the sun - although here the night is eternal - sets again in the outside world? I dread to think. I can imagine no future. I cannot imagine myself ever holding Quincey in my arms again.

What will become of me now? There is nothing left. Never in my life have I felt so cold and desolate as I do now; the candles burn low, the lamp begins to fail. Now this journal is more to me than the friend and the discipline it has been; it is my only lifeline, the veritable thread of my sanity! And even this is fading. There is no more paper. If I am still here when Dracula rises I know I will become Undead ... I must leave but I dare not; I dread what lies outside, while here at least is a devil I know - all too well.

Shadows walk around me, and I hear voices whispering, and Beherit's footsteps coming closer, and the protective walls rent like veils. Oh, heaven help me! Farewell, Quincey. Farewell, all.

JOHN SEWARD'S MEMORANDUM.

I must finish this account, much as it pains me, for Mrs Marker :.

cannot.

We were distraught when she vanished; the more so when Beherit told us that the secret door through which she had pa.s.sed led to the library room in which Dracula had ensconced himself! But Beherit calmed us. 'Dracula will not harm her, of that I am sure.

Have you not seen evidence of it? He has been long enough in her company to take her life a dozen times over, yet she is still human, still alive. Think, ***&& have them trapped. We will use this time to plan our campaign. Our greatest problem is to unlock the doors; I do not know how it is to be done.'

Van Helsing said, 'But might you not enter the room in a changed form, as mist?'

'You fail to understand, some laws of our existence are suspended within the Scholomance. We can rest without our native earth, but we cannot change our forms. Such tricks, you see, impress humans but would be an insult to our Master. The doors are not flimsy barriers of wood; they are thick, impenetrable, held shut by subtle mechanisms that cannot be forced .. .'

I said, 'And if we do gain access and surprise them?'

'Do as I say, but do not question me,' said Beherit. I was more doubtful than Van Helsing, but made no protest -would that I had! 'Yes, I am of the Devil's party and you of G.o.d's, but this I swear; my only desire is to make Dracula pay his debt. I wish no harm to the rest of you. Aid me now and you will be allowed to leave safely, you will never hear a word of me again. G.o.d strike me down if I lie!'

And we were so desperate to destroy Dracula and free Mina from his foul influence, and to find the poor little boy, if he lived still, that we agreed. I still do not know, for all my agonizing, what else we could have done!

Beherit had Kovacs take us to a chamber, and left us there to eat and rest. Presently Beherit returned. He made no explanation of his business, but his face was agleam with a malevolent joy that made my soul revolt. I surmised that he had found some way, distasteful as it is, of spying upon Dracula and Mrs Harker! He said only, 'Now I know all that I need to know. Dracula sleeps.'

'Then we must rescue Mrs Harker without delay!' I said.

'The doors will take time . ..'

'We do not need to force them,' Van Helsing broke in excitedly. 'Madam Mina, forgive my indelicacy, will be prompted by her human needs to leave the room eventually. We have only to wait!'

'You are a clever man, Professor,' Beherit replied with a languid air. 'You would have made such a scholar . .. But we must plan carefully, for the moment we take Mina, Dracula will wake, be it day or night. Now no harm will befall your Mina, I promise. We require her only to lure Dracula out. . .'So we made our plans. I lost all sense of time and felt buried alive, trapped in eternal night, wretched and anxious. 'But Van Helsing, poring over plans of the library with Beherit, unravelling the secrets of the Scholomance's bizarre structure, was in his very element. Ah, he was not to know that Beherit's promise was worthless!

___.

There were two doors into the reading room where Dracula had so arrogantly ensconced himself. One led out upon the cliff above the underground lake; the other led into the main body of the library. This was where Kovacs and I waited, I with an implement somewhat resembling a crowbar in hand, sharp at one end and hooked at the other. The door itself had panelling of polished white marble, engraved with a pattern that disturbed the eye, compelling it endlessly along sinister mazes to nowhere. How I grew to loathe it! The mysterious library behind us lay in gloom, and I felt imprisoned in an underground purgatory, the victim of some h.e.l.lish joke.

The waiting was long and arduous, but at length I heard a soft noise. The door drew back, and a sliver of candle-light appeared. For a moment I saw Mrs Marker's face in the gap, white and thin as a ghost's! At once I forced my crowbar across the jamb, and hooked the door's edge, so dial she could neither open nor close it. Mrs Harker struggled briefly with the door; then she paused, staring straight at us through the gap. The look of terror dial suffused her face! It must have been the sight of Kovacs that so alarmed her. She withdrew; I could not see what she was doing. I allowed her a few seconds - as we'd agreed - before I pushed open the heavy door.

As we entered, we were just in time to see a section of the wall to our left swinging inwards, and the hem of Mrs Marker's skirts flaring out around her booted ankle as she fled. I knew Van Helsing and Beherit were waiting for her, out upon the rock ledge. All had gone to plan. I saw Dracula lying in his death-sleep on the marble floor ... Then his eyes opened and he rose; going from death to violent animation in an instant! I caught one glimpse of his furious, pallid face, before he strode out after Mina.

The moment he'd gone I hurried after him across the room, through the second door and down the short tunnel that led into the cavern. Kovacs followed me, bringing the hooked pole; a useful weapon, I thought.

As we reached the ledge I heard Mrs Harker scream! No sign of the Count; the next I knew, there was a roar of rage behind me, and Dracula seized me and flung me up against the railings that guarded the cliff edge.

The pain and shock were so great they all but blinded me. The Count's face almost touched mine, distorted and horrific with fury, like some beast-demon. I thought my end had come. But then there came a shout from further along the ledge.

'Dracula!'

The Count looked round. With a snarl, he lifted me off the rails and flung me down hard upon the rock.

I was stunned for a few seconds, and could see no more than colours upon the darkness. I came back to myself to find Van Helsing leaning over me. 'My friend, can you get up?' he said, grave and urgent. 'Beherit promised safety for Madam Mina once we had lured Dracula from his hiding-place - not this! I caught her but she was taken from my arms. Ah, mijn G.o.d. Let me help you, Jack . . .'

Through this I could hear the Count speaking furiously in the deep, commanding voice dial few can resist. I could not tell what he was saying, only that his fury was directed at Beherit.

As I got to my feet, I saw the cause of Dracula's rage and Van Helsing's distress. A short distance from us, no more than thirty feet, I saw Beherit with Mrs Harker in his arms. She seemed paralysed, as if he held her with hypnosis or with pure terror. She was bent back across his arm, her neck exposed and gleaming in the faint luminosity; I could see the movement of her throat as she panted for breath.

Beherit was holding out his palm against Dracula, who stood facing him just beyond arm's reach, a towering figure in black. 'I will not loose her,' said Beherit. 'And if you come one step closer I will tear out her throat! Now move back. Back!'

Dracula complied - one could not say obeyed of such a man - edging a little way towards Van Helsing and myself, where we stood supporting each other. I could not see what had become of Kovacs. Then Beherit began a chant - an incantation -1 know not how to describe the hideous syllables that came surging from his mouth!

The Count shouted, 'No!', followed by furious words in Hungarian - yet even his powerful voice began to be drowned by Beherit's.

Louder and louder Beherit roared, until I was forced to put my hands over my ears. Even that would not block out the chanting.

The horror of it was not the physical volume but the unutterable sense of evil that the words stirred, a sense of gathering doom and horrors beyond human comprehension. In desperation I drew out my wooden cross, only for it to slip from my fingers and go tumbling through the railings and down towards the lake far below.

Staring at the water, I shook Van Helsing's arm in astonishment. AH over the surface, little flames were dancing! As we watched, we saw an orange globe, deep in an underwater fissure, glowing brighter and brighter. The surface began to churn. Light ran across it in veils and skeins of palest yellow; this seemed uncommonly beautiful at first, but as the pattern became wilder, the glow redder, the beauty seemed to sicken into something unspeakably grotesque. Gusts of heat and choking sulphur came sweeping up to us and the cavern walls flushed red. Beherit's fair hair streamed back in the foul updraught.

The lake was turning to fire!

Beherit was doing this, waking the dragon that guarded the very gates of h.e.l.l. The air shook with the force of the incantation; the mountain itself began to tremble under our feet. Dracula went on commanding him to stop, but he could do nothing, for Beherit held Mina ... and I realized then that Dracula, even Dracula was not wholly evil, for Beherit was the one who cared nothing for her life. Mina - she would excuse this familiarity, I know, being no less than a sister to me - Mina had been right when she warned us against him. Every time we disregard her judgement it leads to disaster!

'Behold!' Beherit shouted suddenly.

The whole lake was burning. It was not a fire upon the surface of the water; rather the water itself had turned to flame, while great columns of light and of molten droplets came roaring up from the depthless chasm. I glimpsed a boiling pit, redness seething through a black crust. The noise was of a great furnace roaring. My face was scorched.

A screeching noise behind us made us look round. I saw, in the baleful reflected glow, Kovacs in a recess of rock, grappling a great black wheel that was wrought with suns, moons and planets in shining metals. As he turned it, a terrible sound roared out; the scream of metal against rock, of chains rattling and huge cogs grinding. The railings that guarded the edge of the cliff were rising into the air, catching flashes of light as they rose above our heads into the darkness.

I seized Van Helsing and we drew each other away from the lip. We had been leaning on those rails! Now there was nothing to keep us from the drop. We withdrew, but Beherit remained on the very edge, with Mina in his arms.

'Look,' said Beherit, his voice suddenly quiet yet very clear. 'Be still a moment and look on this wonder. Few can say they have looked into the very mouth of h.e.l.l. This is the Gate, as Dracula knows full well. This is where our Master dwells. Once opened, the Gate cannot be closed again without sacrifice. This is the Cauldron of the Dragon for whom your family the Draculas were named - and named well! Yadu Drakuluj- the Devil's Abyss!'

The Count's face was livid, its hard lines painted with red fire from below. 'Let Mina go. Let all of them go. This quarrel is between you and I alone, Beherit.'

'True,' said the demon. 'But I won't release them until your debt is paid, for you are treacherous, Dracula. My whole existence has been mortgaged to your folly. Pay the Devil his due. You know what is required!'

Their forms were outlined by wildly leaping fire, Beherit red and gold, Dracula stark black, his white hands and face stained with scarlet. He said, 'I am not at your command. The Devil himself does not command me, and you are only his lapdog. I say again, let her go.'

'But I know that you love her,' said Beherit, sneering.