[A/N] Heyy, sorry it's been so long since I've updated but I was sooooooooo busy with school work and stuff. Thanks to my imaginary reviewers, cause I don't have any real ones as of yet :( Oh well. Oh, and there'll be no reward for reviewing. I wanna see if anyone will review on their own ;)
Disclaimer - All characters except for children go to Bram Stoker *sigh* I'm gonna be famous one day, I'm writing a non-fanfic that I hope to get published. Dreaming is NOT against the law.
Enjoy!
Chapter 4
At two o'clock that afternoon, I got a faint surprise. I lay locked, as the sun held me prisoner, and the door of my tomb clicked. My mind threw spasms of panic. Was my master, the eerie vampire who had tainted my body, about to visit?
Luckily, it was not my master, but whomever it was sent a chill of fear throughout me all the same. It was a set of heavy footsteps that walked with a purpose, and a pair of lighter footsteps that conveyed disbelief and disinterest. Van Helsing and Dr Seward, I presumed. They walked over to my coffin – this I knew for the direction of their footsteps gave them away.
The lighter footsteps stopped a few feet away from my coffin, but the heavy footsteps continued to march toward my coffin. The lid of my coffin opened, and I tensed. Sunlight got in here during the day, and I did not want to burn.
The leaden flange was forced back, and some dim sunlight tickled my closed eyelids. Luckily the extent of it was blocked out by a large man's silhouette.
I heard someone gasp, and I felt a disbelieving gaze flit over me, like a delicate butterfly's wings.
"Is this a juggle?" asked the voice of Dr Seward, and I knew that it had indeed been him and Van Helsing who had ruined the leaden casing on my coffin last night. To prove my statement, Van Helsing said in response, "Are you convinced now?"
He reached out his hand and pulled back my dead lips, which were the dark velvet red of blooming roses. "See," he went on, "see, they are even sharper than before. With this and this" – and he touched one of my canine teeth and the one directly below it – "the children can be bitten. Are you of belief now, friend John?"
I stayed absolutely still, frozen by the sun's power, but inside my mind was a confused, frightened jumble. My death was inevitable, then. Van Helsing seemed so sure of his facts, needless to say that they were all true. All would come to trust him soon, and then my doom would become their focus.
"She may have been placed here last night," came Dr Seward's voice, ashamed.
"Indeed?" was Van Helsing's response. "That is so, and by whom?"
"I do not know. Someone has done it."
"And yet she has been dead one week. Most peoples in that time would not look so." Dr Seward had no answer to this, but Van Helsing did not sound triumphant in any way. He was staring intently at me – this I could tell with my eyes closed. He raised my eyelids and stared into my eyes, and I saw that it was indeed Van Helsing's monstrous shadow that had prevented the sunlight from reaching me. He then parted my lips again and examined my teeth once more.
"Here, there is one thing which is different from all recorded; here is some dual life that is not as the common. She was bitten by the vampire when she was in a trance, sleep-walking – oh you start; you do not know that, friend John, but you shall know it all later – and in trance could he best come to take more blood. In trance she died, and in trance she is Un-Dead, too. So it is that she differ from all other. Usually when the Un-Dead sleep at home their face show what they are, but this so sweet that-was when she not Un-Dead she go back to the nothings of the common dead. There is no malign there, see, and so it make hard that I must kill her in her sleep."
So he did plan to kill me in the time to come, during the time when the sun rendered me powerless. But his little speech had explained to me the cause of my seductive beauty, while my master had been gaunt and old.
Van Helsing must have seen something in Dr Seward's face, for in a joyous tone he said, "Ah, you believe now?" I shivered internally. He had convinced one of his group, the hunting party that strove to destroy me.
Dr Seward answered, "Do not press me too hard all at once. I am willing to accept. How will you do this bloody work?"
Alas! He had pledged his belief to my enemy, and I grew wary of their presence beside me. Were they to do their foul deed now, then? Were these to be my final hours?
"I shall cut off her head and fill her mouth with garlic, and I shall drive a stake through her body." So this was the way that I would end, hideously mutilated by one that I used to have faith in. I remembered my human self asking him to do all he could to protect Arthur. These were words that I should not have spoken.
Van Helsing closed the catch of his bag with a loud, echoing snap, and said, "I have been thinking, and have made up my mind as to do what is best. If I did simply follow my inclining I would do now, what is to be done; but there are things to follow, and things that are a thousand times more difficult in that them we do not know. This is simple. She have yet no life taken, though that is of time; and to act now would be to take danger from her forever. But then we may have to want Arthur, and how shall we tell him of this?" Yes, how so? How could they tell the one who loved me of their hideous plan of mutilation? How would he believe?
"If you, who saw the wounds on Lucy's throat, and saw the wounds so similar on the child's at the hospital; if you, who saw the coffin empty last night and full today with a woman who have not change only to be more rose and more beautiful in a whole week after she die – if you know of this and know of the white figure last night that brought the child to the churchyard, and yet of your own senses you did not believe, how, then, can I expect Arthur, who know none of these things, to believe?" He wouldn't. There was absolutely no way that sweet, gentle Arthur would believe anything so horrifying as my existence as a vampire.
"He doubted me when I took him from her kiss when she was dying." Ah, that I did notice, and how it pained me now that he had done so. If he had not, if he had let Arthur kiss me…I shuddered internally with pleasure at the thought of Arthur's rich, warm blood.
"I know he has forgiven me because in some mistaken idea I have done things that prevent him say goodbye as he ought; and he may think that in some more mistaken idea this woman was buried alive; and that in most mistake of all we have killed her. He will argue back that it is we, mistaken ones, that have killed her by our own ideas; and so he will be much unhappy always. Yet he never can be sure; and that is the worst of all. And he will sometimes think that she he loved was buried alive, and that will paint his dreams with horrors of what she must have suffered; and, again, he will think that we may be right, and that his so beloved was, after all, Un-Dead." Did Van Helsing truly expect Arthur to believe that I was Un-Dead? Did he expect Arthur to grasp such a far-fetched truth? If so, he was to be sadly disappointed.
"No! I told him once, and since then I learn much. Now, since I know it is all true, a hundred thousand times more do I know that he must pass through the bitter waters to reach the sweet. He, poor fellow, must have one hour that will make the face of heaven grow black to him; then we can act for good all round and send him peace. My mind is made up. Let us go." Thank the devil for letting him leave, and leave me to live for at least another few days.
"You return home for tonight to your asylum, and see that all be well. As for me, I shall spend the night here in this churchyard in my own way. Tomorrow night you will come to me to the Berkeley Hotel at ten of the clock. I shall send for Arthur to come too, and also to that fine man of America that gave his blood." Mr Morris! Arthur and Mr Morris were to join them, hoped Van Helsing. I, on the other hand, sincerely hoped that he was wrong, for I knew that Mr Morris was a practical man, and that he would not accept these ideas.
"Later we shall all have work to do. I come with you so far as Piccadilly and there dine, for I must be back here before the sun set."
They walked away from my coffin and toward the door. I heard them wrench it open and then heard it close again, and the quite recognisable sound of the click of the door's lock. I hoped fervently that they would allow me to hunt yet again tonight, but I quite doubted it.
Ah, my doubts were realised! I resumed my nightly ritual of size-shifting and flitted to the door in haste, but alas! Smeared across the door was crushed wild garlic, and hanging in the opening was a small crucifix. These seemingly insignificant things provided a stable barrier that which the Un-Dead cannot cross, and already I felt weak from the lack of blood. Growling steadily, I retreated from the doorway. The hunt would have to wait until the morrow.
[A/N] How long is Lucy gonna be able to hold without hunting?
Luv ya, see you tomorrow
I will update regularly now, I swear. Once a day :)
