Dracula The Undead Part 24

'She is nothing to me,' Dracula answered. 'Mere refreshment.'

'Liar.'

So saying, Beherit gripped Mina in both hands and held her out over the drop! She came to life, struggling and gasping in breathless horror; becoming as suddenly motionless when she realized that her struggles made it more likely that she would fall. She was coughing, her eyes streaming from the * stench. 'Van Helsing's face worked with impotent fear and he cried out in protest, to no effect. I grew afraid for him, his face was so ill-coloured.

Dracula roared, 'Beherit!' He made an abortive lunge, stopping dead as stone when the demon gave Mina a threatening shake.

She made not a sound, but her face was ashen.

Beherit said, 'Either you throw yourself into the Abyss, Count Dracula, and give yourself up to our sovereign - or I cast your beloved into the fire!'

I had never seen Dracula so racked with despair. He took a step towards Beherit, who stepped neatly away. 'Thrust me in and she goes with me,' Beherit said. 'What choice have you? I heard the words you spoke to her in your grief. She rejected you, and you answered that without her love, you have no reason to continue. From this death there is no return. You know I would throw her to h.e.l.l without a second thought. I have no mercy.'

Dracula's face was hideous with anguish. He seemed to age as I watched him! In the pause that followed, I felt a growling undernote, as if the roots of the mountain were trembling. I was almost faint with dread. How could we be sure that Dracula would not destroy Mina to save himself? For Beherit to gamble with her life in this way was an atrocity, never part of our plan!

When Dracula spoke his voice was hoa.r.s.e and hollow as death, 'And what guarantee will you give me that if I do throw myself through the Gate, she will live?'

'My promise, that is all. Here stand her dear friends, her champions. Once you are gone from between us, I will hand her back to them. I have no interest in causing her death for its , own sake. You must believe me. For if you don't, she will die.

Dracula stared at Mina. She raised her head and stared back at him, her face pallid with terror and appeal. 'No,' she said, to my shock. 'Don't do it, not for my sake.'

'Count Dracula, you must!' Van Helsing broke in harshly. 'For her, and for all the sorrow you have caused!'

Dracula pointed a shaking finger at Van Helsing. 'I curse you!' he said. 'May you know how it feels to the as my beloved women died, pierced to the very heart! I curse you!'

'Your life,' said Beherit, dangling Mina over the boiling chasm, 'or hers.'

Dracula became very still and dignified. He gave Van Helsing and me a hard, cold glare. 'I charge you to hold Beherit to his word. May you save Mina or share my fate! My will to live has been taken from me - but remember this, that I put her life, her priceless blood, above my own!'

Then he looked at Mina, and his eyes became tender, his demeanour gentle. So n.o.ble and dignified he seemed in that moment, the knowledge that such a man had devoted his life to evil seemed an insupportable tragedy. Mina gazed back at him, her mouth open and tears flowing down her face. In the reflected light the moisture shone like fire. Ah, I would have done anything to shield her from such suffering!

'Mina,' said Dracula, 'all my desire for life was contained in you, in your blood and flesh and soul. And you have rejected me.

You are a crueller lover than ever I was! Since one of us must die, let the remaining life be yours. Much as I have loved my existence, I love yours more. Remember: I do this so that your son may not be deprived of his mother's tender love! Farewell, Mina. Take care of the child.'

And with those words, Dracula stepped to the very edge and leapt.

An ear-splitting cry of anguish rang off the walls. 'No!'

It was Mina who cried out. The agony of grief and loss in her voice rent me to the core. It will haunt me for ever; I might have expected to hear no more and no less for the death of her very son! 'No, no!'

Dracula's form plummeted towards the flames, black against the red, his clothes fluttering in the fierce updraught.

He broke the glowing crust and was gone. But then the Abyss began to roil and heave, and the heat came boiling upwards so strongly that I feared we would all perish.

Beherit was laughing. He set Mina down rather carelessly, as if he were not so much eager to keep his promise as no longer interested in her. Van Helsing and I started towards Mina. At first she appeared dazed, tear-streaked. She turned a little, saw us coming, but did not fly to our arms. Then, a change! I had never seen her face so resolute, so absolutely pure in its intent - as if Dracula's death had redeemed her, his sacrifice transforming her from fallen soul to fierce saint.

Above us, the fence was descending as Kovacs turned the wheel.

As it fell, Mina turned again to Beherit. With his arms raised in exultation, he was paying her no heed. She ran at him and with her little hands gave him a quick, strong push. Beherit slipped. His face dropped in horror. He fell.

He went curving, tumbling down the drop, and the fire swallowed him in a great gout of molten gold droplets.

I screamed, for Mina, too, lost her footing and was slipping towards the edge! Then the railings came down with a great clang, the Gates of h.e.l.l indeed, and she slid against them and came to rest on the very lip.

I reached her first, leaving Van Helsing behind. Mina clung to me, shuddering with spent emotion. As I helped her up, she gasped and said, 'Oh, Dr Van Helsing is ill!'

I saw the Professor, my dear friend, leaning against the railings a few feet from us. He was clutching his chest, his face was grey with pain; yet he was waving his free hand at the shadows, trying to tell us something - trying to warn us, as I realized too late!

'Seward - ah, the pain, my heart -' and all this time the fires went on churning, the mountain rumbling ever more violently.

Through it came an indistinct, half-human sound, a, sort of keening. Had I only understood what it was, could I have prevented - ?.

As Van Helsing extended his hand helplessly to me, the keening I could not identify rose to a full-pitched, ghastly, deep scream and Kovacs came rushing towards Mina, brandishing a length of metal like a spear. It was the implement I had used to jam the door, now held with the sharp end aimed at Mina's heart. I have never heard such a cry of animal grief! 'Beherit! You killed Beherit!'

I was paralysed, too slow to pull Mina away. Instead, it was Van Helsing who flung himself in front of her! I stared in unutterable horror as Kovacs drove the spear-tip into Van Helsing's chest; only then did I wrench Mina backwards, just barely in time, for the sharp point came right through his body and would have pierced her too! As we got clear, Kovacs bore Van Helsing down and pinned him to the rock.

Our poor, dear friend! Mina hid her face in my shoulder but, G.o.d help me, I shall never forget the look on his face! Kovacs glared at us, his unhuman face ghastly and flecked with red foam. I thought he would attack Mina again. I was ready for him.

Instead he seemed to have a change of heart, as if some unbearable despair Overcame him. With a hoa.r.s.e groan he turned away, forced his way through two of the railings and leapt, flailing, after his evil companions into the maw of flame.

Through my tears I saw blood forming a great stain across Van Helsing's chest and dripping on to the floor. I could see he was dead, with that shocked expression frozen on his n.o.ble features. I believe I fell on him, weeping, pleading with him to rise again; it was Mina who pulled me away and brought me back to my senses. 'Come, John, please, we must go. There's nothing you can do for him. Come on!'

As I looked up, it seemed the whole fiery lake was on the point of exploding. Burning fountains of magma erupted. I saw a great shape rising from the Abyss, a ghostly, wavering form of bronze light with staring red orbs for eyes. The orbs "fixed us, glowing and swirling with the rage of Lucifer; for a moment I was convinced its great head was snaking down to consume us!

With a cry, I dragged Mina away.

Both sobbing, we ran. It seemed the whole mountain was quaking with the rage of h.e.l.l and Heaven. There was a deafening crack. Mina cried, 'Look!'

And I saw, ahead of us, a blade of light falling through the rock wall on to the ledge; faint and greyish, but clear and pure as water in contrast. The upheaval of h.e.l.l, whether in rage or unholy joy at receiving its own, had forced open a crack in the mountainside.

___.

Whether G.o.d opened that fissure to rescue us, or Satan to expel us, I know not. It was enough to be free; to breathe the icy, fresh air in place of that sulphurous stench! As we came stumbling over a ma.s.s of rock and out on to a snow-covered slope, we saw that a dozen fissures had opened at the base of the mountain, and that molten lava was flowing out to melt the snow to steam.

We ran, with the ground bucking and trembling beneath us, until we could run no more; and then we stopped and looked back at the barren peaks against a dead grey sky, as the last tremors subsided, and wondered if Satan had only been waiting for Dracula to return before he woke the Dragon in the lake and destroyed the Scholomance.

I said, hoa.r.s.e and broken, 'Quincey .. .'

It was then that Mina told me of Dracula's lie. And all for a lie we came here. We thought of Van Helsing, and wept, and she held my head on her breast as if I were a child. When I looked up again, the clouds had broken, and the moon shone brilliantly, washing the snow-veiled mountains in the most glorious white light; and Mina and I raised our eyes to this splendour and shared, in the midst of our sorrow, a moment of divine peace.

For Abraham Van Helsing, there are no words. He died as he lived: a hero.

Epilogue.

ADDENDUM - DR JOHN SEWARD.

I returned to Hermannstadt in the spring, when the snow-line had retreated and the weather was clement enough to allow a comfortable expedition. I retraced our steps precisely; every detail of it was engraved upon my mind. I used compa.s.s and maps; I knew the shapes and angles of the peaks against the skyline; there was no mistaking the gorge and the ridge beyond which the Scholomance lay.

And yet I could not find it.

On the far side of the ridge, the valley I remembered, with its circle of fanged rocks and its deep green lake, was not there. I found only a plain slope dropping into a spruce forest. I searched and searched; I went in circles, I tried from every angle.

There was no valley, no lake, no cave.

The Scholomance, it seemed, had ceased to exist. Or perhaps it is that the Devil has sealed the entrance against us. He opened it for a while, for his own purposes - and when payment was exacted, he slammed the great rocky jaws shut against all intruders.

We should be glad of that, I suppose. G.o.d forbid that they should ever open again, spill forth their vile contents or draw more souls - whether innocent or corrupt - into their maw!

I did what little I could for our friend Abraham, my dearest friend and teacher; that is, I placed flowers for him on the ridge, and there said a prayer for his immortal soul. He would be glad to see, at least, how happily and pa.s.sionately attached are Jonathan and Mina, how well Quincey thrives; to know that his lifelong crusade against the darkness did not come to nothing.

Many days after the terrible events in the Scholomance, when Mina showed me the journal she had kept upon writing paper during her captivity and asked me to complete her account, she made confessions of such trusting intimacy, such as may be made only between patient and doctor or the dearest of friends, that I could not help but be moved.

'I shall never keep a journal again,' she told me with gentle sadness, 'for it would only remind me of those terrible times.

Jonathan and I already have too much to remind us, in our own memories and in each other.'

I had thought, after all that had befallen - not Dracula's evil alone, but Elena's - that there could never be peace between them again. Somehow, in my awkward way, I said as much. I thought Mina would be offended, but she only smiled sweetly and replied, 'Did you think we could never forgive each other, Jonathan and I? But as he says, our sins are just the same! It is true our union is not as peaceful as once it was, that we must often comfort each other's nightmares or brood upon our own failings; but neither is it as staid and proper as once it was. For we find in each other at least a little of the wild darkness that lived in Dracula and in Elena. I do not believe that an understanding which yields such joy can possibly be wholly evil. Do you, Dr Seward? And Quincey - Quincey is Jonathan's. We must all believe it.'

It is not for me to condemn them, and indeed, I do not. Nor would Van Helsing, I know, for none of us have been above temptation, not even he.

Note.

What am I to make of this account, which my mother has shown to me on my twenty-first birthday while I am on leave?

She said that she wanted me to know the truth now, while she and Papa are alive to answer my questions - rather than for me to discover these accounts among their papers after their deaths. But I cannot bring myself to ask questions of them, nor even to mention it.My life has been so happy until today, secure in the tender understanding that has always existed between my parents. But to discover that their intimacy sprang from - from this Memories stir now that I had thought long lost. I had forgotten Elena; forgotten my incarceration at Carfax, or rather dismissed everything as some disordered product of my many childhood fevers. Even forgotten, or transformed into some ogre of nightmares, Count Dracula himself.

But now I begin to remember. Once flung open, the casket lid cannot be closed.

Is it possible that I had two fathers - one a saint, one a devil? From which do I take my spirit?

Ah yes, now I remember Elena. Her soft dark hair, her lovely accent, the warmth of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and thighs as she held me upon her knee and stroked my hair with her long, warm fingers. And one day she was no longer there. She vanished into the night.

I cannot believe she is dead.

I have seen death, and it is brought by bullets and sh.e.l.ls, not by vampires or wooden stakes or by fiery chasms that are gateways to the realms of the d.a.m.ned.

I must find her again, when this war is over. I must find Castle Dracula. I will never know who I am until I see their faces again; two pale and dark phantoms, who haunt me yet dissolve whenever I reach out to touch them. I cannot rest until I find the Scholomance itself, and there discover what became of my other father, my dark father, Dracula, the Undead.

- Quincey A. J. J. A. Harker