Diaries Of The Family Dracul - Children Of The Vampire Part 7

The Frenchman leaned forward to draw a hand across my cheek and whispered, with a lecherous wink, "Ah, you are a lovely young thing. Best not to tempt me with that question!" And when I recoiled, he laughed.

"/want nothing with you. You are simply a means to an end for me. As I said, your safety is a.s.sured. Those who await you merely wish to ... embrace you into their bosom."

I pondered this indigestible news a time, then asked, "Where are you taking me?"

"At the moment? Brussels." He held me for a moment with his bright blue gaze, as piercing and curious as a precocious raven's. "Enough of questions for the moment. You are tired.

Rest."

The suggestion had an immediate effect on me; I realised at once that I was indeed quite drowsy and fell into a doze.

A sharp knock at the door to our compartment woke me sometime later. My companion leapt to his feet, for the first time demonstrating anxiety, and, drawing a small pistol from his coat, pressed against the door. In a voice deep, threatening, and unquestionably male, he challenged, "Yes?"

I know not how to describe the voice that replied, save to call it masculine and unearthly beautiful; the voice of an angel.

"It is I. The prince."

The mistrust etched on my captor's face transformed into surprise and awe. He opened the door at once-only a crack, not far enough to permit even a child entry. Nonetheless, the visitor entered, first growing as two-dimensionally thin as a sheet of paper before my very gaze, then slipping through that crack with impossible ease.

How shall I describe him? His appearance was like his voice: angelic, utterly compelling. His hair was raven, streaked with grey, his eyes the darkest green I have ever seen; and his skin was so translucendy pale that the light caught it and glinted pink, pale turquoise, silver, like mother of pearl.

He was, quite simply, magnificent, and neither I nor my companion could take our eyes from him. Yet mixed with that uncorruptible beauty was an aura of sly fierceness, of danger, as though we beheld a bejewelled serpent-graceful, diamond-brilliant, lovely, poiso-nously evil. / An angel, indeed: Lucifer.

"Prince," my captor whispered, at once lowering the pistol and bowing from his shoulders; then he gestured with his empty hand at me. His demeanour remained one of awe and subservience, but I detected a faint note of fear as well. "As you can see, I have done as you asked. He is unharmed and well. But I did not expect to see you until-"

A gleaming alabaster hand appeared from the depths of the prince's ebony cloak and sliced the air in a gesture for silence. "There is no time for the expected." And he turned and, for a long moment, studied me.

Guessing him to be the instigator of my absurd abduction, I glared back at him with hatred.

But he looked on me with such utter unmasked adoration, such sorrowful yearning, that my fury gave way to astonishment. And then he released a long, low sigh, upon which rode a single word-nay, a heartfelt prayer: "Stefan."

Clearly this dazzling stranger knew me; even more clearly, he loved me. Yet his very presence p.r.i.c.ked the skin at the nape of my neck.

Reluctant, he turned from me at last and faced my captor. "So. The time has come for your payment, then." And he reached into his pocket and drew forth a black velvet pouch.

The female man recoiled from it with contempt, and though his voice trembled faintly, his posture was one of pure determination. "Do not insult me with your offer of lucre, sir; you know my price."

The prince tilted his head and gazed steadily at him with dark glittering emerald eyes; I could think of nothing but that jewelled viper, coiling to strike. I tensed, straining at my bonds, at the sense of imminent violence.

But its eruption was at once halted by the swift movement of my captor. I expected him to fire the pistol; to my amazement, he tore away his starched collar and the top of his s.h.i.+rt to reveal a neck as white and smooth as a woman's, without the slightest sign of an Adam's apple. But its perfection was marred by a small red mark of some kind; from my lower perspective in the dim evening light, I took it to be a razor cut, from shaving-though the skin was free from stubble or any trace of a beard.

"It is this," my captor said. "That you finish what you have started. That you grant me immortality." And he proffered that soft skin to the prince, whose eyes blazed at the sight of it-indeed, literally reddened, as though the blood had rushed there.

With blinding speed, the prince struck-like a serpent, with fangs bared, and fastened his mouth upon the white neck. At that instant, the man cried out softly, indignantly, and despite his earlier willingness, he struggled. But the prince held him fast, and all struggle soon ceased; his breathing slowed, and his eyes glazed, and he soon fell into a trance.

I watched as the prince leaned over his victim, convinced that the chloroform had somehow induced hallucinations-or that I had fallen victim to a brain fever that had fabricated this entire wild episode from my imagination.

Hallucination or no, I stared with horrified fascination as the prince sucked the wound on my captor's neck for an eternity, until the former's pale face grew ruddy, and the latter's white as chalk. I stared until the victim swooned and fell, and stared still as the predator swept him up into his arms and continued to drink.

At last the prince raised his flushed face from the man draped in his arms and laid the body gently upon the seat across from mine.

He turned towards me. I tensed again, expecting the same fate to befall me and knowing myself still too groggy from the chloroform to put up a successful fight.

Instead, he knelt beside me, his face so close to mine that I could smell his warm, blood- tainted breath, and ordered: "Turn, Stefan. Let me loose your fetters."

What was I to have done? I turned and felt, impossibly, his cold fingers squeeze between my wrists and the tight manacle that bound me.

He grunted; and with two near-simultaneous snaps, I was free. I faced him again and saw on the seat beside me two steel handcuffs, broken in two.

"What do you want with me?" I demanded with a bravado I did not feel, as I rubbed my tingling hands.

"Just this," he whispered, and I am not certain what transpired then: only that his eyes loomed larger until I saw nothing else in my line of vision; then they loomed larger still and became the entire world.

Into that world, a flash of metal entered: a small, sharp knife. I remember an eternal instant when that knife poised above my upturned hand, against the backdrop of those dark, compelling eyes. And then the swift pain of a finger p.r.i.c.k, and that finger squeezed, nursed, milked so that it rained bright fat drops of blood upon his waiting open palm.

He licked it-no, that description is altogether inadequate. He partook of it, as though it were the sacred Host, the most consecrated wine. And the look on his face just after: that image shall remain with me forever. With an expression of the most infinite bliss and love and sorrow, he closed his eyes, causing a single diamond tear to course down his cheek.

The knife flashed again; but it was his blood now spilled upon my palm.

G.o.d help me, I drank. Drank, and gagged on the bitter taste of death and brine. But beneath that bitterness had been something sweet and utterly intoxicating.

I stared back at my benefactor, aghast that anyone should love me so fiercely.

"We are tied now, Stefan," he said tenderly. "If ever you have need, summon me in your mind, and I shall come. Morning or evening, awake or asleep, if danger threatens and you call, I shall come. No ill can befall you without my knowledge."

"But I swear most solemnly: As long as you will it, your mind remains your own. I myself have experienced the horrors that another's mental control can produce; never will I violate your privacy without your call."

And as he spoke, his visage wavered slightly, and his face changed; the features grew less severe, younger, the eyes flecked with brown. Even the silver vanished from his coal-black hair.

"Who are you?" I breathed.

A lightning flash of grief contorted his face; for a moment, I thought he would yield to it and weep. But he composed himself and in that handsome voice at last replied: "I am your father."

Chapter 6.

The Journal of Stefan Van Helsing, Cont'd.

I had no difficulty accepting that I was not the son of Jan Van Helsing, for I had always known that he had adopted me, an abandoned infant, out of kindness. My childhood had been pure happiness; yet as a boy, I often wondered about my real parents and dreamt of the day I would be approached by a kindly man with dark eyes and hair who said:Stefan . . . I am your father.

But to hear from this frightening stranger that I was his son-this was much to bear.

Yet I believed him; believed because, in tasting his blood, I felt the depth of his love for me.

Believed despite the strange murder I had witnessed, despite the fantastic tale he told: That we were the heirs of a centuries-old monster from an untamed foreign land, and that that monster sought me in hopes of corrupting me, for my d.a.m.ned soul would purchase his continuance. This was the prince of which my captor spoke; and when my father, then a young man like me, attempted to die in innocence in hopes of destroying the monster, he was transformed by the prince's bite into one himself.

Writing it down, it seems all too wild; part of me rejects it utterly. But then a surge of the love I felt during our b.l.o.o.d.y exchange returns, and I am convinced.

Perhaps I have been bewitched.

Possibly. Even my father warns that the prince, Vlad, will attempt to tie me to him in similar sanguinary fas.h.i.+on, and that this would make me his unwitting p.a.w.n. Am I then my father's? (How easily I write the term; too easily, with poor Papa so recently dead!) He swears that I am not, that my mind is my own and he will never invade its sanctum, that I shall have to summon him, else he will know none of my thoughts.

The truth? I do not know. I know only that, on that long, strange train ride that literally and figuratively deposited me in a dark foreign land, I trusted him. Trusted even when he pulled open the window and hurled out the contents of my captor's travelling-trunk: fine men's suits; a magnificent array of women's dresses of silks, satins, brocades; and a collection of men's and women's wigs, including the long auburn tresses. And when the trunk was almost empty, he laid the blood-drained body of my former captor into it, covering it with a shroud composed of satin and lace skirts. Then he closed the lid and straightened, saying to me, as though I would understand: "Vlad has bitten him, and he now will know of my intervention here. His agent has no doubt informed him of your home in Amsterdam. You dare not return there."

My trancelike complacency was shattered; determination pierced the veil of chloroform and languour. "I must! I cannot simply leave without explanation my family, my brother-" I broke off before I could complete the phrase: my brother's wife.

The train began to slow; I could see the distant lights of the station.

Fast-moving shadows dappled his gleaming white features as he pondered this a time, his hand upon the now-closed trunk that held my abductor. "Perhaps you are right," he said at last. "Your mother"-and here he lowered his voice, and another wave of unutterable sadness pa.s.sed over his features before he composed himself-"your entire family is in grave danger. Vlad will stop at nothing to find you, even if it means tormenting and killing them all. He has lost his best agent; to procure fresh a.s.sistance, he will require time. Your family will be safe perhaps a week, no more. You must go to them, convince them to take shelter."

How I was to accomplish such a thing, I could not imagine; but as the train pulled into the Brussels station, it seemed quite reasonable.

So, too, did our exchange with the conductor, when he arrived, and my father-whose name, I learned, was Arkady Dracul-arranged for the trunk to be sent upon the next morning's train to his agent in Amsterdam (for what purpose, I shudder to imagine). He paid the conductor in gold and tipped him quite heavily for his trouble, whilst I stood nearby and marvelled at the misleading normalcy of the exchange. For the window was shut, and any trace of the female man's existence-including the snapped handcuffs-was quite gone.

Nor did my groggy, dishevelled appearance provoke any curiosity; even Arkady's brilliant handsomeness had faded. He seemed a striking but ordinary man, and together we blended in quite successfully with the crowd that exited the train.

I did not understand why he had not also purchased tickets for our return to Amsterdam the next morning; my question provoked a faint wry smile.

"I am obliged to return to Amsterdam before the dawn, Stefan-and while I could return there much more swiftly alone, I insist on personally seeing you safely back. I shall accompany you for as long as I am able."

Thus it was that, after brief negotiations that involved a startling amount of gold, he procured a small caleche and two swift stallions, and we set off through the cold, dark damp towards Amsterdam.

The emotional exhaustion and chloroform predisposed me toward an uneasy intermittent sleep, which was punctuated by dreams both troublesome and bizarre-but no more so than what I had already experienced in my waking hours. I remember only fragments of that wild nocturnal ride: of my professed father's face and hands, internally aglow like j.a.panese lanterns against the melting ebony backdrop of his hair, his cloak, the mid-night sky; of his urgent whispers to the galloping horses, who trembled at the sight of him even as they obeyed.

At only one point was I called upon to drive: when, after some hours, we came to the river at Geer-truidenberg, the first of the Rhine's three branches that carve their way across the Netherlands to the sea. My companion roused me and with an apologetic smile said, "As it is not the slack of the tide, I must ask you now to drive the horses."

So I did, and we made our way by a long, narrow bridge over the river. Three times we crossed water- the Maas first, then the Waal, and at last the lower Rhine-and three times Arkady handed me the reins and let himself be driven.

By the time we pa.s.sed from Utrecht province into North Holland, some fifteen kilometers from home, the darkness was easing to predawn grey. For the fourth and final time, Arkady gave me the reins, saying, "I must go. Tell your mother that my agent will watch your house during the day, to see you are safe; and I shall see you both to-night."

Before my very eyes, he disappeared, and a swirling mist surrounded the carriage, unnerving the horses. Just as suddenly, it moved into the distance and was gone.

I arrived home to a magnificent winter dawn: blood-tinged clouds, edged with sungold, and the air cold, sharp, clean. When I stepped from the caleche and tethered the stallions in front of the house, their warm, quick breath hanging as mist, the door slammed like a gunshot.

I looked up to see my mother, barefoot, running through the freezing mud in her dressing- gown. She said not a word as she sped towards me, then flung her arms about me; but as we embraced, she let go a hitching sigh full of such relief and pain, it tore my heart.

We held each other tightly a full minute, perhaps longer; then she drew back and, still silent, studied me: my eyes and face first, then the whole, then at last my hands. She gazed down at them slowly, reluctantly, turning them in hers so that the palms faced upwards.

And at the sight of the small blood-encrusted cut on the tip of my left forefinger, she let out a piteous sound, half-groan, half-sob, and began to sink to her knees.

I caught her arms before she reached the mud. "It's all right," I told her softly. "It was my father. My father. He rescued me."

"Your father?" She stared at me blankly a moment -in the grey light, her sweet face looked haggard, ashen; I knew she had not slept the entire night-then, with hope asked: "Arkady?"

I nodded.

She released another sigh-this one uncertain- and said: "Come inside. We must talk."

I put my arm around her as we turned to walk inside; but I paused as I looked up to see, in the open doorway, my brother, already dressed, with his wife beside him, her long, dark hair streaming down onto the shoulders of the white silk dressing-gown she had worn the night we coupled.

Guilt stopped me in mid-stride. I saw the anxious joy and tears in Gerda's great dark eyes; she trembled with the effort to restrain herself, to keep from running to my arms. I saw, too, the glance Bram cast at her, and the flicker of anguish that pa.s.sed over his features.

It was still in his eyes when he looked at me. Our gazes locked, and in that terrible instant, I saw accusation there, beyond any doubt: He knew. My brother knew.

But the instant pa.s.sed; his expression softened, became that of the loyal loving brother I have always known. He ran down the icy steps, across the frost-encrusted ground and mud, and embraced me.

My poor mother's anguish had left me dry-eyed, but as Bram held me, I wept. Wept and gazed beyond his shoulder at his wife's pale face, radiant with shame and joy, and found I could not meet her eyes.

Like my mother, he drew back and scrutinised me for damage, then glanced over at the caleche with its two handsome stallions and whispered, "But what has happened, Stefan?

What has happened?" There was no judgement in his voice, no anger, only concern and typical overwhelming Bram-curiosity.

I left one arm around him, drawing comfort from his unbroken love, and put the other round my mother as we three walked back up the steps. "You will think me mad," I said.

"Then you will not be alone in this house," he replied softly, with a pointed look at my mother.

I think he intended for her to smile; she did not. "I would much prefer the truth be sane, Bram, but to my sorrow, it is not."

Confused, I said no more but gave my sister-in-law the customary chaste peck on the cheek-Gerda, why must it be such h.e.l.l? Why must it all be reversed?- which only served to underscore the remembered pa.s.sion of the previous night. I kept my eyes lowered lest they reveal too much.

We all went inside to the kitchen-all but Gerda, who excused herself to tend her crying child; I think she sensed the delicacy of the matters about to be discussed. And in truth, I did not want her to hear them, for her sensitivity is so great, I feared they would trouble her more than she could bear. I have already been the source of enough worry for her.

After much strong coffee, I recounted my night ride to and from Brussels, but I instinctively withheld the supernatural aspects of the affair. I claimed the transvest.i.te was merely overpowered by my mysterious benefactor before being stuffed unconscious into the trunk, and I failed to mention the strange b.l.o.o.d.y exchange, or the fact that this helpful stranger claimed to be my father. In truth, I was reluctant to admit everything, for my memory of it had taken on a rather nightmarish air of unreality, and I was uncertain whether parts of it had not been inspired by the chloroform.

But when I mentioned his name-Arkady Dracul -Bram started so that he nearly dropped his cup, slos.h.i.+ng hot coffee all over Mama's white tablecloth.

An odd look pa.s.sed between them, then Mama said, "You need not dissemble to protect us or yourself, Stefan. Everything Arkady has told you is true; and I already know the facts about Vlad and the covenant. I have told your brother here the truth, but belief comes difficult for him. Perhaps you should tell us all that really happened."

So I did, reluctantly; and Bram listened all the while intently, his blue eyes peering over his coffee-cup at me with that calm, stoic gaze. His expression betrayed no disbelief, but I knew from the ramrod straightness of his posture, from his perfect stillness, that an internal war raged, for the more troubled he is, the quieter he becomes.

And when I finished, I sighed and leaned back against the chair, exhausted. For a full moment, Bram neither stirred nor moved his gaze; but then at last he turned to my mother and me and asked, "What are you suggesting we do?"

"Leave," my mother said, leaning towards him with such urgency that silver-gold curls spilled down onto her forehead, her cheek; her expression was so animated, so filled with sudden fire that age and exhaustion left her, and I could see the handsome young woman she had been: the woman who had loved the dark, pa.s.sionate Arkady Dracul. "We must all leave, and go our separate ways; it is the only way to ensure our safety. Otherwise, if we remain together, Vlad will use us each against the other."

Bram rose at once, his eyes and voice filled with a flat impenetrable anger. "This is insanity, of course. I will not leave my practise, my home, my family, all based upon . . . ravings. I do not understand what madness has possessed you both, but I pray you soon come to your senses!"

And he left, his determined rapid footsteps echoing behind him.

I no longer knew what to say, what to do; I leaned forward and laid my weary head in my hands. Mama took my arm then and led me to my room, murmuring soft words of comfort.

Like a feverish child, I let myself be undressed and tucked into bed, and sighed at the cool touch of my mother's hand upon my forehead. But before I slept, she sat beside me on the bed and said, very softly: "I am a horrible woman to have kept these things from you; I should not blame you if you hated me for the way you have been used. Here is the truth of the matter, the whole, entire truth, which I alone can tell."

She told me everything; more than I could have imagined, more than I dare record here, for safety's sake. I was given a choice, which I made, and we wept together at our complicity.