It was a long way from Holland to England and the heartache of his daughter's death made it an even more difficult journey for Professor Helsing as the last league of the trip stretched out before him. Darkness crowded around the compartment and obscured the passing countryside, his companion dozing against the back of his seat. The distant lights of Whitby station came into sight and he stood to gather his things, exchanging a distracted farewell with the man in the opposite seat, who awakened at the slowing train and blinked sleep from his eyes. The professor stumbled out into the night air. Ghostly pale and uncertain on his feet, if it were not for the appearance of his oldest friend he might have collapsed from exhaustion. But the round face beneath the crooked bowler hat was familiar in the light of the station-house, his voice welcome against the torrent of questions spiraling through his mind. The telegram had been abrupt and kind but devastating. Mina was dead. There was nothing he could have done. The circumstances were tragic but unavoidable, two words a father never desired to hear.
"In my own house!" his friend was saying with open distress. "How could I ever…"
He had been promised Mina would fare well in England; the weather would be good for her; constant walks and trips into town might restore her faltering constitution. He had been right at first. Even her doctors had noted an improvement, but now she was gone without a word or a warning. It was unfathomable to him, unforgivable, utter madness. Thousands of miles worth of ruminating pain surfaced in his voice as he demanded, "What happened? What in God's name could have happened?"
"I don't know," his friend said miserably. He had pondered that question relentlessly since her death in an effort to understand it. Steam issued around them from the train and a servant from the asylum staggered in the distance with the man's luggage. Dragging the trunk in the direction of the waiting coach, the others fell into step behind him, Van Helsing clinging to his friend's arm as if it would grant him answers.
"Jack, you must explain to me from the begging as patiently as you can."
The doctor shook his head. "I am baffled."
"Still, you must tell me it all. Do not spare my feelings. I must know." The professor opened the door of the carriage and stepped within, fixing his friend with an intense stare Dr. Seward found unnerving. Their driver hoisted the luggage up and secured it with a rope before climbing in front. They pulled away from the station and swayed down the road toward the distant lights of the abbey, glowing against the far hill.
Returning his thoughts to recent days was painful, for it forced the physician to admit he had lost more than a patient. It was easy to dismiss the death of most of his patients, for he did not form attachments to them. They were mere inhabitants of his mental institution, but Mina had been delightful, endearing and sweet, constant in her affection and desirous of making everyone happy. She had been like a daughter to him, except in his administration over her health. It pained him to admit he had not been as careful as he might have been with Lucy.
"For some weeks she had been showing improvement, but for the last few days was displaying unnatural tendencies. Listlessness, mostly, and a lack of appetite, but her color was good and she seemed in high spirits. Then she fainted the other night. I should have known something was wrong. I did look at her before bed and gave her a mild sedative, but she … parted from us the next morning."
They were not a mile from Carfax and his eyes were drawn to it, finding it mostly dark, towering in its obscurity. It was strange to know the Count now occupied it and he wondered if Lucy had returned. He could not imagine never seeing her again, sending her away and not knowing for certain she would come home. Seward understood the depths of his friend's pain, for it reminded him of the loss of his wife. That was what had kept them close over the years, their mutual grief—and in a way what had defined their daughters as friends.
Van Helsing was quiet as he asked, "Of course, you examined her with great care?"
"There were no functional causes, none. She'd been nervous, certainly, sleepwalking…"
Memories of the days following his wife's death returned in full force: his daughter wandering the corridors of the house and pulling at the latch of the front door. "She will not do it long," the nurse had promised him. "It is just her pain." Mina had not walked in her sleep for many years, and the thought of her walking the halls of the asylum brought a chill to his veins. It had been madness to send her here, even in the company of friends.
"… nightmares," continued Seward. "I prescribed laudanum."
His companion turned to him in astonishment. "What? Laudanum?" Disapproval was evident in his tone, for it was not a commonly administered drug and certainly controversial. He had seen its negative effects in his colleagues and the most proficient journals in the world agreed it often did more damage than good. Mina would have been more than placated by it; she would have been rendered insensible by it.
"For nervous prostration," his friend hastened to explain.
One of the professor's dark brows arched and he said nothing. Nothing could be heard beyond the jostling of the harnesses and turning of the wheels. The dim lights of Carfax shimmered through the trees as they turned onto the winding road to the asylum. Van Helsing repressed the anger stirring in his soul and offered, "But a great loss of blood? How?"
"I do not know, for we found none of it. Mina lost it in her sleep but it was nowhere in the room, not on the carpet or in the bedclothes. It is as if it simply vanished from her veins. I know you are a superstitious man, my friend. I am not, for I have found that all things can be explained through science… until now. I admit I am baffled and almost prepared to believe in devils."
Not in the forty years of their friendship had Seward ever admitted a belief in the supernatural, for he was a scholar of medicine rather than the divine, but Van Helsing had made it a study for most of his adult life. He had witnessed things in his travels that could not be explained except through spiritual forces, and spent much time in the company of priests familiar with the darker specters of this world. He had not known for certain his daughter's death had been unnatural when he had set out from home, but as the coach drew up before the manor and the door opened to let them out, he wondered if his deepening concerns were not justified.
It was strange to speak of death in such a beautiful place as Carfax, for the warmth of the candlelight softened their surroundings and bathed it in an ethereal hue, but so much loss in recent hours made Lucy incapable of abandoning her sadness and in her companion she found a willing source of compassion and understanding. Dracula told her of his mother, his sadness at her parting, and the anguish in his heart in his belief he would never see her again. She found it strange that he did not share his mother's faith, for she had been a devout woman of unyielding virtues.
"Her passion for the church was equal to mine for life," Dracula said. "I could never quite fathom her devotion."
"Then you have no faith in an afterlife." Lucy drew him from his thoughts and his eyes returned to her face, lessening in their intensity as he considered her remarkable beauty. It was external but also internal, her strength as alluring as her physical form. Women were unnatural creatures, unfathomable to most men and alluring to him, but he had never encountered one whose hold over him was so powerful. Maybe it was because Lucy fought him; she was not like the others who yielded to his will without resistance. Or perhaps it was the passion he sensed in her for something greater than society could offer. Lucy wanted to be powerful, to experience what life had to offer, but remained bound by social restrictions. Even her relationship with Jonathan was unequal, for he was not worthy of her.
Dinner had long since been eaten and put on the sideboard, the intimacy of their presence increased through conversation more than his nearness, for he maintained his distance, not wishing to unnerve her. "I do not believe in a conventional afterlife, no, but I do believe in life after death. Mine is a superstitious country, Miss Seward. There are the beliefs of the Church to which my mother ascribed, and the teachings of the gypsies, who believe in ghosts. My philosophies are neither, but I do think there are means in which to linger after death."
"When I was young," Lucy responded, "there was a visiting spiritualist in London. I persuaded Mina to slip out of school with me in order to go see him, but she was so frightened she would not go in." She smiled as she recalled Mina's reluctance, her nervousness, her insistence that it would be toying with dark forces. Her arguments had fallen on deaf ears and she had remained in the outer hall while Lucy had gone in to view the spectacle. "It was foolish but I hoped my mother would speak to me, single me out of the crowd."
Beneath her confession was an echo of pain he understood. Dracula knew spiritualists to be frauds and charlatans, masters of illusion without a true grasp of immortality. More than once he had made an appearance at their performances and they did not know what to make of him. Sometimes they sensed him in the audience and unease passed through them, while others continued without regard for his nearness.
Lucy lowered her chin and stared at her hands, resting quietly beneath the table. "Mina was so young."
Maintaining a constant focus on her, Dracula said, "So are you."
"Tonight, I feel positively ancient."
Golden tendrils glistened in the depths of her dark hair, light cascading down her slender throat and pooling in the darkness of the fabric beneath. He longed to go to her but resisted, desiring her to reach out to him. "There are worse things than death," he said softly. "You must believe me." He wanted her to know life did not end with death but begins, but knew she could not fathom his meaning, even hate him for it… until he could show her Mina and she could see the change in her dearest friend. Lucy thought of her as buried beneath the earth, having reached the end of her usefulness, not as the powerful, beautiful nymph of the night that she would become.
"If there are, I can't imagine them." Lucy's voice was tired, broken, and full of weariness. She wanted the pain to end but could not bear relinquishing it. Shadows closed in around them as the lateness of the hour became more apparent, the candles burning nearer to the stubs and wax dripping in eerie formation down the stands.
Throughout the evening his expression had remained pleasant and now did not shift but there was a haunted aspect to his eyes that matched the yearning in her heart. "I have buried many friends and I too am weary. I am the last of my kind, descended from a conquering race. My family was its heart's blood, its brains, its swords. But the warlike days are over."
How he missed the lust of the battlefield and the triumph of fallen adversaries. It was war that had unleashed the terrors of his authority and granted him release from imprisonment, had transformed him into an immortal warrior. Once it had ended, there was nothingness, emptiness, boredom, a never-ending thirst that had driven him to England. Here, it was a war of a different kind, a much subtler form of battle with far less formidable adversaries. The art of war was lost on the British, but then, seduction was an art of its own. He intended to seduce her, more than that, to make her his queen. It had been instinctive from their first meeting, a destiny both sensed. Lucy had been dissatisfied her entire life, searching endlessly for him without knowing it, and he had long yearned for her. The intensity between them was so strong she could not breathe, feeling intoxicated by his presence. It aroused desires she had never before experienced, yearnings she should not have entertained. He saw the rise and fall of her breast as she drew in her breath, attempting to repress her thoughts.
"It is not healthy to live in the past."
"No," he said meaningfully. "It isn't."
They continued to stare at one another, Lucy finding the longer she looked at him, the closer he seemed to come to her. She could feel the touch of his hand against her shoulder, the warmth of his breath on her throat, but he remained at the far end of the table.
"Jonathan Harker tells me you speak some Romanian."
It had been nothing more than a boast, a joke between them, a translation of fragments of the captain's journal she knew were wrong. Her protests were silenced as he spoke in an exquisite language like music to her ears; the words sank into her with such warmth she was strangely moved by them, prompting a curious upturn of her lips.
"There," he said with satisfaction, "you do understand."
Shaking her head, Lucy confessed, "No, really, I have no idea what you said."
"I said, 'It would be nice to see you smile.' "
"Then you should be pleased."
The Count smiled. "I am. But I must warn you to take care."
Flickering light wavered between them. It was as if nothing else existed in the world, if his nearness was all that mattered. She sensed it had been a mistake to come there alone but did not regret it. "Whatever for?" she asked in amusement.
"If at any time my company does not please you, you will have only yourself to blame for an acquaintance that seldom forces himself but is difficult to be rid of."
She did not understand him or the nature of his warning and did not wish to. Her only sorrow was the lateness of the hour, for it would soon force her home. "I do not think you will find me a reluctant acquaintance, Count. I have greatly enjoyed our evening. I am only sorry it must come to an end."
"Must it or will you walk with me in the garden? Most of the estate is dead, but there is Life in the courtyard." He pushed back his chair and approached to extend his hand, a request more than an invitation. Dracula did not want her to leave either and though it was well past midnight, Lucy was not prepared to go back to the emptiness of her room, the coldness of the pillow where Mina's head should have rested, the sorrow that faded in his presence. Her fingers fell into his and he lifted her to her feet, escorting her down a narrow corridor lined with shadows.
Stirrings in the distance caused him to pause and glance at the door, his senses heightened. It was not a intruder so much as a knowing that something had gone wrong, a sensation that filled him with dread as well as anger.
Mina stirred. It was not her time, but her hunger drove her to scrape at the walls of her imprisonment, breaking her fingernails on the rough boards and finding only dirt beyond. She was alone in a dark place, frightened but driven by instinct as she pushed aside the rocks. They fell to the ground of a tunnel that ran beneath the town for miles, an old mine that yielded coal for northern factories. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness, water rippling under her feet as she followed the narrow passage out into the night. Cold air stung her face and in the distance was the faint lights of town but it was the asylum she knew and walked toward. Passing like a ghost through the cemetery and approaching the side door, she let herself in. Voices wafted from a lower room that might have been the parlor, the murmur of the doctor confiding in a companion, but she ignored them and ascended the narrow flight of stairs to the far wing. Most of the inhabitants were asleep, either of their own choosing or drugs that slowed their minds. All was dark and quiet, her presence unnoticed except in the tossing and turning of a few restless souls. Mina went into a hall and at the far end of it, through the bars of the door, saw a lonely figure humming to the emptiness of her arms in the moonlight. Annie's child was asleep in her crib, her mother distant as she waltzed in circles.
Reaching for the handle, Mina felt the lock click beneath her fingers and inch open into the gloom. Her presence went unnoticed until the slender figure turned and by then she was standing over the crib, staring at the sleeping infant. Uncertain of what she was seeing, Annie approached and whispered, "Isn't he a pretty baby?"
Yes, he was. So pretty in the moonlight, her plump hand closed into a fist, blissfully asleep and distant from the mortal hell of her surroundings. Mina rested her hand on the round stomach, revealing the dirtiness of her fingers from having dug out of her grave. She sensed faint condemnation, his warning for her to leave at once and go to Carfax, but ignored it. Her eyes were filled with nothing but the infant, so soft and warm, so well-fed and full of Life. Primal instincts stirred within her, a rush of desire that compelled her to snatch him up. Annie shrieked and sprang at her, shrinking back in alarm as the moonlight revealed sharp fangs and red eyes. Mina snarled as she clutched the infant to her chest. It let out a howl and was silenced forever. Annie screamed and continued to scream, pummeling the intruder with her fists until Mina released the baby and fled down the passage, her white garments rippling behind her.
Throughout the asylum others were taking up the cry, for they had all been awakened. Some shouted and beat wooden spoons against the bars, others darted out of her path as she smashed through the nearest window. Fabric fluttered gracefully in her wake as she landed lightly on the ground and fled through the cemetery, blood coursing through her veins and fear hounding her steps as she returned to the mines. Bats stirred with her entrance and squealed in disapproval, but she ignored them, hearing the fierceness of her Master's voice in her mind.
Damn you, Mina! You will not stir again until I have come for you!
Scarlet coated her fingertips as she forced aside the rocks that enclosed her coffin and crawled once more inside. A shudder passed over her and she was still, death-like as Dracula regained his influence over her. But the damage had already been done.