Dracula Unbound (19 page)

“You have been talking to a neighbor, Renfield. You know more than is good for you.”

“I'll be your slave, master. You know that. Ummmm. Ummmm. I'll be your slave. Bring blood, fetch. No—”

He was lifted up, twisted, body one way, neck and head the other. Then his body was flung contemptuously against one of the whitewashed walls.

Bob found him in the morning and shed a tear.

“Poor old bugger. Never harmed a fly …”

Total darkness and Bodenland in his bedroom with the gas fire hissing. He turned it off and listened. The brief wind had died. The stillness of the unknown British countryside came in to him.

“How silent is the nineteenth century,” he said, almost aloud. With gas and increased use of electricity, people had changed, become more active after dark, forgotten the ancient threats it masked. But in all the centuries before that, there had been no defense against sunset. Oil lamp and candle had been frail protection against the predators of night.

He sat in a chair and tried to resolve a problem. He wanted to understand why the Christian symbol of the Cross so terrified vampires—if indeed it did. That idea would have to be tested. Was every vampire similarly terrified?

He set blunt fingertip to blunt fingertip and thought.

Every vampire … All the facts indicated that all vampires were alike, though Dracula and a few lamia, which were possibly not true vampires, possessed greater powers. Otherwise they were as alike as …

As animals, as sheep or other livestock. No real individuality. And human beings had been similarly lacking in individuality when they emerged from the ape. So there had to be a period when individuality—the characteristic that set humanity apart from even the higher mammals—had dawned like a light. That light would have spelled the end of vampiric domination. A horse cannot defend itself from a vampire bat, any more than it can open a gate; a human can.

That great moment of development, the waking of the individual spirit, must be fairly recent.

His thoughts wandered. Bodenland was not much used to considering his inner self, such were the pressures of economic life. Yet he was aware of an inner consciousness, detached from daily happening, which seemed to be regarding him.

But many ancient creeds had held ceremonies which proved men were not then individuals, or regarded as individuals, but merely items in the mass. If you could sacrifice a ram or a slave to save your soul, if thousands of captives could be sacrificed to save thousands of souls—as happened in the Aztec culture—then all souls were equal and interchangeable. An individual consciousness had been slow to dawn.

Signs of dawn came in the sixth century B.C., with such great men as Confucius, the Buddha, and the classical Greek philosophers.

The religions Moses defeated had worshipped things of wood, graven images, without living spirit. Those images could make do with burnt offerings. The solitary introspection of prayer was a new idea. No one went forty days and forty nights in the wilderness for Baal.

After Moses, Christ embodied what was new and revolutionary—the value of the individual. The idea of individual salvation was consciousness-raising. It had changed the world, or most of it. It was an idea for which the time was ripe—hadn't other great religions sprung up in the same period? All with the same emphasis?

Originally the Ur-vampires had preyed on creatures without individual consciousness. Such was their natural prey. Their dangers hugely increased when they found themselves attacking an unpredictable individual—and the Cross was the symbol of that very danger. The Cross embodied all they most dreaded.

So Bodenland hoped.

He had sat thinking, fortifying his mind, for some while—reluctant to accept completely the very idea of vampires. Yet he found himself accepting many of the tenets of Christianity—a religion he had stoutly derided all his life. It was for that reason he had refused to undergo the marriage ceremony with Mina. Maybe Kylie and Larry had something, after all.

Rising, he paced about the bedroom, preparing himself for what he anticipated would be as great a challenge as any he had ever faced. After only slight hesitation, he left the bedroom and crept downstairs. As he let himself out of the back door into the chill of the waiting night, he muffled the click of the lock.

On the terrace, the statues stood frozen. The silence was unbroken, the light dim, for the moon was hidden in cloud. The line of trees bordering the bottom of the garden was as dark as an ancient sea.

As soon as he realized that an extra statue stood guard, Bodenland's senses became preternaturally alert. The figure was that of a woman, standing in an unnatural position, her head thrown right back to expose her neck and throat. Even before he identified the figure as Bella, he saw that behind it, close, something darker than the night stood there, moving, grunting quietly. He had an impression of fur but could not tell whether it was man or beast. She—Bella—remained resistless in that embrace.

Whatever it was, it looked up with a flash of yellow slitted eyes and was immediately gone with agility over the low hedging at the edge of the terrace, to be lost to view.

With a lethargic movement, Bella pulled herself erect and her garments in order. She approached Bodenland briskly, showing her white teeth in what could have been a smile.

His body, confronted by the uncanny, went into a kind of paralysis. Here was a loss of individuality indeed! Prepared though he was for the meeting, the instinctive part of his brain took over and he fought to regain control of himself, like a man trying to swim in a deep well.

She was more beautiful than previously, seeming to glow with an inner light. She combined the innocence and waiflike quality of a small girl with the eroticism of a harlot; and these qualities of virginity and depravity seemed complementary rather than in opposition.

She came forward over the flagstones, utterly confident of her powers. Her movement released him. He made as if to give himself to her, promising to surrender the train and assist in the forthcoming attack on humanity in exchange for the bestowal of her love.

“Do you place no higher price on my love?” In contradiction to her graceful shape was that deep voice, sometimes harsh, sometimes melodious.

“With your knowledge of the future, you can say where we might find some ultimate weapon to use against humanity,” he said.

“I could discard you whenever I wished.” It was a statement of fact, said without arrogance.

“Of course. You can form no attachments. That I understand.”

“You think so? But I can tell you where an ultimate weapon will be found. The super-fusion bomb is—will be—in the Great Libyan Empire of Tripoli, known as the Silent Empire.”

“I have heard of the Silent Empire.”

“It will be defeated by us. Its last defense, the super-bomb, lies in the capital in
A
.
D
. 2599, awaiting release. After that date, human history—that brief thing—ends.”

“That's definite?”

“Even the past is indefinite. After the end of the Silent Empire, all nuclear weapons are finished with. Together with their inventors. But you could live forever, Joe.”

She radiated a great emotional assault on him, from which even the hideous growling voice could not detract. Joe sank down on one knee, cowed by the sight of the sign emblazoned on her forehead.

In the empathy flashing between them, he caught an image of how he was seen through those alien eyes. He had shrunk to a scuttling mouse, in too-slow flight along a wainscot. About to master him was a great ox of a man—no female, but a monstrous masculine about to strike.

As its face came close, its teeth showed, gleaming clean and fascinating as cobra fangs.

Now was time for him to act. With enormous effort, he pulled the New Testament from his pocket and thrust it up before her eyes, its golden Cross outward.

Bella hissed like a wild cat and drew back. For an instant, a massive black thing—something torn from the ground—stood there. Then it took wing and was gone, westward toward the grounds of the asylum, howling as it went.

Bram Stoker emerged from the shadows behind the toolshed, tucking away a revolver with which he had armed himself.

“Joe, old chum!”

Joe had sunk down on the terrace and was holding his head in his hands. Stoker put a hand on his shoulder.

“Now you believe. Now you see it works.”

Joe laughed shakily. “Thank god I didn't hold up a copy of
your
book.”

“Faith, the bitch would have stood there reading all night, till the first rays of daylight penetrated her.”

“Don't talk about penetrating her. I shudder to think what was on my mind.”

“You wouldn't get much comfort on the nest there, me lad—it's fuller of worms than a shroud.”

“I know it.” He allowed Stoker to help him up. The two men looked at each other and laughed, clapping each other on the back.

Dr. van Helsing emerged from cover, pale and shivering.

“What a terrible apparition! You're certain she's gone, Mr. Stoker?”

Stoker looked hastily about, pantomiming terror, and van Helsing retreated a step.

“Fear not, Van, she's gone, though I doubt very far. We're a target for their attentions. You've just encountered a lamia, Joe. That's what Bella was, a lamia, a vampire with special powers. Even the Un-Dead have their lieutenants. And their lieutenant colonels, I suppose. It's capable of assuming the guise of either sex, male or female.”

“Which is it?” asked Bodenland.

“Neither. Neuter. That's my guess.”

“Can we kill it?”

“Oh, I think we'd better be getting to bed, Mr. Bodenland,” said the doctor. “Think of your health—it's late. The night air—”

“My health would be much better if the world were rid of such horrors.” In a sudden burst of nervous irritation, he turned on the doctor.

“How's your scientific view of the world now, Dr. van Helsing? How well does Bella fit in with your beliefs?”

“I'll have to think it over … One is, after all, either dead or not dead—don't you think?” He looked helplessly at Bodenland.

Bodenland set his head on one side. “There may be many degrees between dead and Un-Dead. Doctor, in my time, I've been scuba diving below Antarctic ice two yards thick. There—twenty yards down on the sea bed, in unimaginable cold—things live. Animals. Crawling about, feeding, reproducing. In that most marginal territory, some of them—wood lice, for instance—grow much bigger than their equivalents in temperate zones. That is a continual source of astonishment to me. Maybe these creatures, vampires and lamias and the rest—maybe they live in a zone as yet unexplored, in some Antarctic ice floor of the spirit. They've fallen into a metaphysical abyss. If we knew all the facts, we'd probably feel pity for the creature that once was Bella.”

“Pity? You're talking nonsense, Joe,” said Stoker. “The pitiless deserve no pity.”

“Is that what your father-in-law would have said?”

Stoker walked to the edge of the terrace and stared into the night. He motioned Bodenland over, and said quietly, “Look, Joe, we can't clear off tomorrow in quest of this Silent Empire leaving this horrible thing in the vicinity. I worry about Florence's safety. The doctor would be as much good as a sick headache in any emergency calling for more drastic action than the insertion of a suppository.”

“You've got stakes and mallets in the toolshed, I saw. I'm for finishing off the horror, count on it—but how do we track it down?”

“I had occasion to visit the asylum recently. I talked to one of the madmen. Research for the novel and that kind of thing. The asylum's built in the grounds of a ruined abbey, as I told you, and that abbey has a crypt still surviving, used by the asylum authorities on occasion. For instance, when they get outbreaks of influenza—when half the inmates meet a hasty end. I have my suspicions about that crypt.”

“Why don't we go visit it? Now?”

“Hang on to your Testament. Bella may well have a refuge there—a place to rest in daylight hours. We can cut through the woods.”

“And your doctor can guard the house while we're away.”

The decision was taken coolly enough. But first Stoker took ahold of Bodenland's arm and led him back into the warmth of the house. Sitting him down, he went to his drinks cabinet, to emerge with two glasses full of a dark liquid from which fumes rolled.

“Not laudanum?” Bodenland said, raising an eyebrow and smiling rather faintly.

“This is rum,” Stoker said. “What the British Army and Navy drink before going into action. Cheers, me boy! ‘What we've done before, we'll jolly well do again.'”

It was strong stuff, reeking of fighting spirit.

When they had drained their glasses, they set out for the ruined abbey.

The going in the darkness with only a storm lantern for illumination was not easy. They made their way through extensive woods and up a ravine where a stream tumbled, before ascending a slope and coming up to the high brick walls of the asylum.