Chapter XII

"Sorry, Ilona, but I cannot let you leave this house. It is too dangerous for you." Grayson looked at his beautiful wife with a regretful, but firm, expression.

"Please, Alexander. I just want to go see my father. And Mr. Renfield could accompany me." She turned to look at the lawyer with an expectant stare, which the latter promptly evaded.

Alexander eyed the both of them for some time, weighting the possibilities, and finally decided, "Oh well, then. You know I can't deny you anything." He lovingly caressed her cheek. "But promise me you'll be very careful, and you will not leave Renfield's side." He kissed her delicately on the lips and nodded at the lawyer, who made haste to grab his coat and hat, before exiting the house in company of Mrs. Grayson.

Mina climbed the stairs to the Hospital with a bright smile on her face, Renfield panting behind her, and trying to keep up with her swift pace.

"I'm just going inside my father's office. You can wait for me here, Mr. Renfield," she said gesturing to a couple of chairs in the main corridor. "It will not take long; I'm sure Dr. Murray will be soon with us: his rounds are almost up."

Without giving the man time to reply, she scurried into the room and closed the door. Walking to the back of the study, she found the door connecting with a ramp of stairs, leading to the old wing of the hospital. That musty passage was what her father always used, when he wished to leave discreetly the hospital, and Mina had known it for years. Today she was going to put that knowledge to good use: she exited to a narrow alley nearby the kitchens of the facility, and walked briskly towards the University.

Locked in his laboratory, Abraham Van Helsing was positively brooding. He had just kidnapped two children, and wasn't in the slightest sorry for it. However, he had already tried to kill them twice, with no success. He had hated himself to no end for the past two days, for his lack of determination, but he was sure tonight he would succeed where he had failed before.

He growled in exasperation when he heard a very insistent knocking on the door.

"What are you doing here, Mrs. Grayson?" he asked with apprehension, eyeing the woman with the hardest stare he possessed, in the futile hope she would go away and leave him again to his cherished, lugubrious musings.

Mina smiled at him kindly. "I needed to talk with you alone."

"Does Alexander know you are with me?"

"No."

Van Helsing drew an annoyed breath. "Let's go home. I'll accompany you," he said authoritatively, grabbing her arm to drag her towards the exit.

Mina resisted, but to no avail. They were already in the corridor, when at last she pleaded, "Professor, I want to help my husband, but I need to know the truth!"

Van Helsing huffed. "People always say that, and then they cannot handle the truth."

"I will not rest until you have told me everything! Please, Professor, don't send me away! I'm doing this just for Alexander's sake! I'm very worried for him!"

Van Helsing stopped his mad dash towards the door at the end of the corridor. Still gripping her arm, he turned to look at her ponderingly. "Are you sure? Because there is no going back from here…," he admonished.

Mina stared back at him with a serious look. "I'm sure. There is no going back since I married Alexander."

"That much is true," Van Helsing miserably recognized. He released her arm and passed a hand through his hair. He hadn't been a bit happy with Alexander's new married life, but the only thing that could be done now, under the not ideal circumstances, was to give Mina some sort of scientific explanation, with which she could entertain her mind for a while.

He was sure things were going to end in utter disaster with a prying wife added to the already explosive mix that had become their lives, and once more, he had to control the insuppressible urge to strangle Alexander, for all his recklessness. The doctor loved very well laid plans, and the unpredictable vampire had lately been doing everything conceivable to subvert the careful calculations of his precise mind, in regard to the destruction of the Order. His latest rendition of a jealous schoolboy in love, had been particularly unnerving for the professor.

He finally nodded, staring at Mina in the eyes with a calculating expression. "Very well, then. Let's go back inside. There are some blood samples I need to show you."

Mina had stayed two hours locked in the laboratory with the doctor, listening attentively to his explanations and the advances they had made with the serum. More than once, Mina's face had blanched at the implications of the words van Helsing was spitting out, but she had been disposed to believe in the professor's explanation of Alexander's terrible allergy to sunlight, which was apparently a simple side effect of his strange blood type, even if it all appeared to her quite fantastic.

By the end of the lecture, the professor had even managed to show a bit of excitement at having at last somebody else with whom to talk about the incredible medical condition of his favorite patient. He had told her everything that could possibly have a plausible medical justification, and had hoped that it would suffice for the annoying, inquiring mind in front of him. He had left purposefully out the topic of her husband's monstrous feeding habits, because he knew not even a divine intervention would have made him capable of justifying that in a purely scientific fashion.

Finally, Mina had lowered her head, shaking like a leaf, and had started crying disconsolately. Van Helsing had suddenly felt at a loss as to how to control her very distressing attitude. "Mrs. Grayson, if I had known you'd react like a child, I wouldn't have said anything to you!" he gruffly exclaimed. "It's not becoming of an accomplished medical student of mine, to have such an emotional outburst."

"Yes, Professor," she managed to say between one tear and the other, ineffectually trying to wipe her eyes with a completely drenched handkerchief. Van Helsing had offered her his own, with an aggravated suspire.

"Here, Mrs. Grayson. And please, put a stop to this spectacle. You will be utterly dehydrated by the time you reach your house."

Mina looked up at the doctor with a bewildered expression. The enormity of what she had done suddenly dawned on her. She had disobeyed her husband, and had extracted a secret she had no business in knowing, a secret Alexander hadn't wished her to know. She bitterly regretted her stubbornness. "I'm not sure I can go back to him, now," she confessed in a small voice. "I'm really scared."

It was Van Helsing's turn to panic. He was sure Grayson would kill him, if he were to let her escape.

"Mrs. Grayson, must I remind you that, as Alexander's wife, you are now lawfully his? Do you think your husband will be inclined to let you go, if you so wish?" The threat was evident in the doctor's voice.

Mina's face blanched further. The doctor was right: Alexander hadn't been coy in implementing any method at his disposal, to make her his wife. It would stand to reason that now he would never let her leave. She would just have to be brave and return to Carfax, hoping that her husband wouldn't be too enraged by her temporary disappearance, and then she would have to learn to live with that new, terrifying creature whose strange condition the doctor had just explained to her.

Yesterday's sweet lovemaking seemed just a distant memory now, and her heart clenched with fear at the thought of being imprisoned with Alexander for the years to come. She knew she was being irrational, but she couldn't help the horror that was taking hold of her mind. She felt pity for his condition, but was also mortally afraid of him now, even more than on the first terrible night she had spent with him.

Alexander Grayson was all a new person to her, a person with a terrible secret that he had gone to lengths to keep occult from her. She couldn't imagine how he would react once he discovered her deception. "I cannot do it," she confessed at last to Van Helsing.

"I don't even want to hear this nonsense. " Grabbing again her arm, he made her stand up. "You are his wife now: there is nowhere else to go."

"But, Professor…"

"Not another word: you promised me you would help your husband, so let's go and help him. He will need all your support for the trials ahead. His condition is far from cured, and he will need your help," he added with a calmer tone, in the hopes that appealing to her wifely duties would do the trick.

Mina looked in horrified fascination at the various blood samples they had examined together. She took a bottle in her hand, a serious expression on her face. She looked at the professor with a miserable expression. "But I'm just afraid to go back now: he must be very upset with what I did to Mr. Renfield…"

"Well, you should have thought of that before going gallivanting through the streets of London, without your husband's permission, Mrs. Grayson."

"I know," she admitted guiltily, while starting to quietly sob again.

Van Helsing felt the urge to grab his hammer and kill once and for all the stubborn person in front of him. Only the distressing thought of the enraged widower stopped his hand from going to his medical suitcase. He opted for trying a different approach. "Mina, look at me, " he said calmly, urging her to sit down again with him, and taking one of her trembling hands onto his. "Do you wish to help your husband?"

The woman averted her eyes and brought the handkerchief to her mouth.

"Do you? This is a serious question." The doctor's gaze was implacable.

Mina sobbed and timidly nodded into the handkerchief.

"If you have left even a shred of tender feelings for him, you must go back. He loves you with all his heart, and you must help him defeat his disease." He squeezed her hand encouragingly and waited for an answer.

At last the woman looked up, and asked, "Will you come with me?"

The doctor drew a relieved breath. "Of course, of course," he patted her hand, "I will accompany you back, and you'll see that Alexander will be understanding." Van Helsing was not believing a single word he was saying. "Come, you'll see everything will be fine." Shaking his head, the doctor stood up and, taking her again by the arm, walked towards the main stairs of the building with the distressed woman. Trembling uncontrollably, Mina let herself be guided to the carriage that would transport her back to Carfax.

While Doctor Van Helsing had been forced to play caretaker and spiritual counselor to Grayson's wife for the better part of the morning, Renfield hadn't had a better time of it himself. With Dr. Murray's arrival, Mina's ruse had soon been discovered, and the lawyer had been forced to spend a considerable part of his energies scouring meticulously every inch of the hospital, in the vain hope to retrieve the runaway wife, before her husband would get overly suspicious with the delay. He didn't ventured outside, nor he had the foresight of looking for Van Helsing: after all, the University was quite distant, and he hadn't given Dr. Murray the time to explain about the secret passage, before starting his mad search around the facility.

After three unfruitful hours, he surrendered himself to the inevitable, and took the way back home, with a foreboding presentment that his friend wouldn't be able to take the news with any modicum of composure.

Unfortunately, Alexander hadn't disappointed the lawyer's previsions.

"That's just not possible! I cannot believe she managed to best you!" Grayson looked scornfully at his lawyer, while exponentially raising his voice with each syllable.

Renfield had maintained the same contrite expression for the last half an hour. "She is a resourceful woman," he stated with gloominess, staring at nobody in particular.

"Don't praise her: she has openly disobeyed me, and now she may be in the hands of the Order. And I don't want you to forget that this has all been your fault!"

Reinfeld imperceptibly moved his head in assent. After a few minutes of silence, in a sudden act of bravery, he then cleared his throat, and tried to reason with the exagitated man, "Sir, I don't think the Order has had anything to do with it. They still don't know your identity, and there is no reason why they should have made such a move against a prospective member."

"Do you forget about their last attempt? I had to tear four men apart to save her life!"

"That was just Lord Davenport's doing. It was a personal vendetta."

"Nonsense!"

"Sir, I'm sorry to say you're being irrational on this matter: Mrs. Grayson will be in danger, but not before they discover who you are. I'll say that for now the both of you are safe, and maybe she has just gone to visit some friend of hers."

"Why the deception, then? Why?!" Grayson flung to the floor the liquor bottle he was holding. "No, Renfield, something horrible has happened, and again I haven't been able to save her! I have lost her all over again! I have lost her," he added at last in a mournful tone, while dropping on his knees in front of the fireplace and grabbing his hair in desperation.

During the whole time, Renfield had kept discreet watch by the main window, and finally saw a carriage approaching. "Sir, it's Dr. Van Helsing and Mrs. Grayson. They are here: she must have just gone to visit him." A profound relief could be appreciated on the lawyer's face, accompanied by a brilliant smile.

The same couldn't be said for Alexander: with a distraught rumble, he jumped back up and was at the door in few long strides.

Mina hadn't had the time to step foot into the hall, when a hand snatched at her. She was lifted by two powerful arms and carried away from Renfield and Van Helsing's indistinct voices of protest. She had the impression to be hurled downstairs, through a flight of stairs, towards the basement. Terror paralyzed her for interminable instants, and then she heard the growl coming from her husband, "One way or another, you'll learn to obey me, Mina!"