"There is nothing wrong with me! I´m soon at my feet again!"
Young man who was sitting on the bed, tucked with his pillows, was pasty-faced, with shock of dark hair and white shirt matching with his sheets. His voice was annoyed.
Elderly house-keeper spread her hands. "Do you see, Doctor? This is impossible task for me!"
Van Helsing smiled kindly and sat on the bed. He looked the picture on the bedside table - picture of an old lady, surrounded by pearl-frame like she would have been purer than the pure and pearls selected to show it.
"I am doctor and can probably make better judgment of your health than you," Van Helsing said with kind but resolute voice. Young man shot odd glance to him - Van Helsing had seen it before. Young man was changing.
Van Helsing tilted his patient´s head to expose his neck. Two blue bruises, or actually puncture-wounds, marked pallid skin.
"You are indeed soon on your feet again, " Van Helsing said. "Rest, food - especially with good garlic flavour- and port wine make you soon healthy.
He looked the picture on the table.
"Your mother? What a lovely picture."
"She was killed," came the blunt answer. Trauma was clearly there, Van Helsing observed, under the surface. "Group of filthy young... men murdered her."
"I am very sorry," Van Helsing said.
"She was traveling in the city... they kidnapped her. They were Hellfire-like club, but these people really sacrificed people to Satan to get eternal youth."
"And Satan gave them fangs," Van Helsing said.
"What do you mean?" young priest´s face was crafty again.
"Was the man who killed your mother... was he named Meinster?" Van Helsing studied young man´s face carefully.
"One of them was, yes."