We marched in grim formation from the dungeon and through the little-used back corridors of the mansion: the Count, tall and imposing at our center, flanked by Godalming and Seward as the keepers of his bindings. I walked ahead with Gabriel, and Harker brought up the rear, our guard against any unexpected move from the prisoner.
It was not until I threw the chapel doors open and strode inside that we encountered our first difficulty. The Count balked at the threshold, a sneer of distaste plain upon his gaunt features. I paused to look over my shoulder as I heard the faltering of footsteps behind me. "Please enter," I invited calmly, deliberately misreading his expression.
The vampire snorted superciliously. "It wasn't for your lack of invitation that I paused." Godalming and Seward, the unenviable wardens, stepped inside and mutually braced themselves to drag the prisoner bodily in; but he suddenly seemed to change his mind and entered of his own accord. "All right then," he smirked, observing his surroundings with an unimpressed air, "You have me in your little church. Shall I kneel and say a prayer with you, now?"
"Not bloody likely," Harker uttered under his breath as he entered and shut the doors behind him. Dracula merely smiled and watched me: almost indulgently, as if he found our actions sadly amusing.
"Move him to the center of the floor," I instructed my assistants with an illustrative wave of one hand, holding out the other to my son to take the package he'd carried. The Count put up a token resistance at being so positioned; Jonathan and Gabriel quickly moved to assist the other two with his unwieldy lurching.
I set the flat box on the table where I'd previously laid my etching, and murmured a soft prayer as I lifted the lid with both hands. Within lay two items: a nondescript, worn leather pouch, and an American bowie knife. I lifted one in each hand with reverent care. Dracula's struggle ceased in a moment, as his eyes fell upon the knife, then flickered to me with an expression of sudden, renewed hatred.
"I'm glad you recognize it," I commented blandly, tucking it carefully into my belt and then plucking at the drawstring that held the pouch shut.
Jonathan peered at me. "Is that…?"
"The weapon of Quincey Morris, which he plunged into our prisoner's heart ten years hence; and so weakened him that we could take him. Yes," I confirmed, approaching the vampire with the now-open pouch in my left hand, heedless of the murderous glow in his eyes; my four companions held him fast with his silver bindings. I dipped my right hand into the bag, and withdrew a few grains of the precious dust within. "Gott mit uns." God with us, I whispered, looking into the empty eyes of the beast. "I swear upon my soul, if you cannot be killed, you shall be bound. Hold him well," I raised my voice in warning, and flung the dust into the vampire's face.
An unholy shriek rose from his unliving lungs and shattered against the rafters as the ancient granules of the Holy Wafer fell upon his bare flesh. He struggled in earnest now, thrashing against his bonds. I saw, from the corner of my eye, Jack and Gabriel lifted bodily off the floor as they tenaciously held onto the rod binding his arms. Arthur rallied with a bold cry; he and Jonathan yanked the Count off balance, allowing the others to regain their footing.
"Hold him!" I repeated urgently, as with the precious contents of the pouch I began to scribe a pattern on the floor. The Enemy lunged for me, but I dared not break in my task. I had to trust to my friends, now; and they did not let me down, circling the Count in a deadly dance that kept him off-balance and unable to follow through on his murderous desire. I ducked around their weaving forms, eyes set upon the floor, a murmured stream of rehearsed Latin rolling from my lips, for whatever protection it might offer me from the Evil writhing above my head.
I drew a final stroke in the dust and fell back as fangs snapped, bare inches from my face. "Careful!" I yelled, pushing to my feet.
"Sorry Father— we have him now!"
Dracula threw his head back and howled with laughter. "This is the best you can do? Dust? You think that dust will contain me?" His form twisted unnaturally, his face darkening and taking on dire wolfish proportions. Jack and Gabriel let out a unified yell and gave their chain a deft twist that caused him to stumble sideways; and despite his mocking words, as his body brushed the invisible barrier extending upward from the inscription on the floor, he recoiled with a snarl of pain.
"I do not," I gasped, drawing the bowie knife from my belt. About the undead lord's feet I had drawn the familiar pentagram, using the blessed dust of the Sacred Wafer. But that was only the basis for my conjuration.
"Let me go first, Professor," I heard a voice at my elbow, and turned to see Jonathan, holding his hand out for the knife with grim solemnity. His shock of white hair had flown unbound in the struggle, giving him a wild, unearthly mien. Bitter vengeance glittered in his eyes.
I pressed the hilt of the weapon into his hand. "You know what to do." I put my hand on the steel pole chained to the prisoner's neck and exchanged places with the younger man.
Harker drew a steadying breath and faced the enemy, eyes unblinking as he looked upon the contorted, bestial face. "For my love," he whispered; wrapped his left hand firmly about the blade of the knife and drew it sharply back. Crimson welled betwixt his clenched fingers and dripped in a solemn stream to the floor.
As his blood touched the Wafer, I thought I perceived a faint luminescence radiate from the seal of dust. Dracula screamed suddenly and dropped to one knee, his partial transformation sharply reversed. He fought wildly against the bonds on his wrists as his hands spasmed and clenched in agony. "What are you doing? Stop it now!"
Harker kissed his clenched, bleeding fist, and held the dagger out with his right hand, offering it hilt upward to Seward. Trancelike, the doctor let go his hold on the pole and took the weapon, taking his place beside Harker at the next point of the pentagram. "For God in Heaven," he uttered, drawing the stained blade boldly across his own flesh. His blood spattered sharply.
Again I perceived that faint glow rising, and as if of some incomprehensible will, the rivulets of crimson upon the floor mingled and began to flow into a distinct pattern about the pentagram. Dracula bowed his head and flexed mightily, straining against his bonds. I saw one of the clasps of his shackles pop. "It's working!" I cried huskily, urgently. "Hurry!"
Gabriel dropped the rod on the floor and took the bowie from Seward, his young face hardened and aged beyond his years. "For the dead at peace!" he declared, in homage to the man whose knife he now held; and sliced his palm open, his blood splashing on the dust and cold stone.
The room seemed to darken as an imagined wind caught the Count's hair and lifted it like a live thing, as if it too struggled against the bonds. I was ever more conscious, in the deepening gloom, of the crimson radiance that intensified with each drop of sacrificed blood.
"Arthur," I uttered hoarsely, and Godalming claimed the dagger with silent dignity, driving the point into his hand and slashing outward. "For Lucy," he announced softly, holding his hand out over the fourth point of the pentagram, palm downward to let the blood fall freely. He extended the knife wordlessly to me, and I took my place in the circle.
A bone-chilling snarl ripped forth from the center of the seal as Dracula staggered to his feet, held no longer by the chains that dangled unattended from his bindings. "Arrogant filth," he spat, smiling. With a wholly inhuman exertion he heaved and shattered the bonds of silver about his wrists. He thrust his hands into the surrounding barrier of glowing red and cried out, half in pain and half in lustful triumph as the unnatural wind whipped and scattered the dust upon the floor.
"Doctor Van Helsing!" Harker shouted frantically.
I had to maintain my calm. Beyond the looming shade of demonic power that was our Enemy, I met my son's eyes across the circle, and spoke my dedication:
"For my blood."
I was hardly aware of drawing the knife across my palm; but I saw my vitae splash upon the floor and hiss, smoking as the seal drew complete. I turned my eyes upward again, in taut anticipation, to the raging devil I imagined we had bound.
A cold, clammy hand gripped my insides as I met the creature's eyes and heard his defiant laughter. The unearthly red of the seal upon the ground was matched by the throbbing crimson of the brands upon his palms. His form seemed to waver to my eyes, as though seen through an imperfect mirror. The silver collar about his neck turned black and clattered to the floor.
I heard my companions cry out in pain; saw them sink to their knees in the face of the maelstrom of shadow; and I staggered backward in horror.
"Gott in Himmel!"
I heard the words uttered but they seemed far too distant to have come from my lips. The brands on his hands. The sister seals I had placed upon him in the thought that their presence would bind him irrevocably to our master work. I could see them suspended before my eyes as his form continued to contort, dissolving into a mass of shadow filled with glaring crimson eyes; but his hands remained, taunting.
The brands upon his palms had taken on the aspect of the greater one we had just forged, the arcane markings glowing first red and then deepening to blackest pitch as he twisted reality to suit his will. I forced myself to think the thought that brought horror beyond rationality: I had done this.
In branding him I had indeed succeeded in binding him to the seal; but instead of becoming entangled in its trappings, he was somehow feeding off of it. Off of us: for it was by our blood it had been formed. I now felt the drain that had staggered my companions, and dimly sank to one knee. There was nothing left in the world but the glaring shadows and his mocking laughter. My gaze fell downward in despair.
It landed on the bowie knife still clutched desperately in my right hand. "For my blood," I whispered bitterly.
For my blood.
My blood, which had formed the binding component of the scores across his palms. Which flowed in the veins of the fallen boy across the rift of shadows that separated us. My blood, which surged strength to my wearied limbs as I lurched to my feet, letting out a scream of defiance.
"You cannot best me, demon!" I roared, and slashed the knife fiercely across my forearm.
No token sacrificial trickle was this: crimson life fountained from my torn flesh and spattered violently on the floor. The mass of shadows before me seemed to recede and solidify slightly. I could feel his surprise. I thrust my fist into the air and let out an exultant cry:
"You must drink!"
Then he was upon me, his fangs latching into my wounded arm with a sudden terrifying desperation. Oddly, I decided, I felt no pain. Merely a strange floating sensation as my life flowed from me into him. I could feel his presence again in my mind, like a tangible thing, pushing, prodding, fighting for dominance.
I fought back, dimly aware of the weak movements of my arms, vaguely cognizant of falling backward to the floor, but resolutely steadfast within the boundaries of my own mind. As my physical form grew weaker, I felt the power flowing through my imagined mental self and I grappled with him on equal footing. The frenzied struggle; the agony; it was… exquisite.
I could end it now, he thought, as plainly as if he had spoken.
"No…" I murmured weakly, though in my mind I was pressing him back with a grim smile and inexorable force. This… is only the beginning.
"Enough!" I cried, and felt him fall away from me. I opened my eyes, distantly registering the sight of the vampire thrust to the floor amid the tangle of bodies that had pulled him off me. I fumbled for the handkerchief in my pocket and pressed it dully against the wound on my arm, gasping for breath.
Jack moved swiftly to my side and applied pressure to the makeshift bandage, worried eyes roving over my face. "Doctor…?"
At that moment the vampire rose, thrusting his assailants away as though they were matchsticks. He regarded me thoughtfully for a moment, then smiled broadly, a Cheshire Cat grin made grotesque as his tongue deliberately slid from his parted lips to lick my blood from his teeth. I lifted my unmarked hand weakly, grasping for the imagined barrier I dimly perceived suspended between myself and him; but Dr. Seward gently took it and replaced my arm at my side.
"Please don't exert yourself, Abraham. You've lost a lot of blood."
Yes, you need to rest… I stared, uncomprehending at the looming form of the undead lord. …Master.
As his musing chuckle echoed in my head, I found the strength to force one last utterance from my lips. "Get out of my sight."
In a startling swirl of shadows, he was gone. I was dimly aware of my shocked companions crowding about me in concern; and then I, too, was gone, claimed by blissful unconsciousness.