Renfield obeyed. The Countess"s eyes blazed red as fire, her lips were drawn back over fangs like a wolf"s. Sarike, at her shoulder, grinned though she probably couldn"t understand the Countess"s thick-accented German, and licked her sharp teeth.
There was blood on the dark ruffles of her walking-dress, both dried and fresh.
"What could I do?" whispered Renfield. "He would kill me!"
"He will kill you, once he can come into this house!" retorted the Countess. "But until you invited him in, you were as safe as if you sat on the altar of a church!"
"There are a dozen madmen whose minds our husband could have touched in dreaming," broke in Nomie. "You know what he is, with those who pledge their word and then betray it."
"Coward!" The Countess"s voice was like the hiss of a serpent. Her red eyes narrowed, and she reached to Renfield with her clawed hand, and picked the wing of a fly from the corner of his mouth. "Glutton. You would betray us for pottage."
For lives, thought Renfield, too paralyzed with terror even to whimper. For Catherine.
"So now he drinks the blood of this-this Englishwoman. This schoolmistress. This type-writer lady whose husband leaves her alone, like a fool, to be cuckolded by the Lord of Darkness! He of all men should know better than that."
Sarike"s smile widened and her eyes gleamed with demon evil, and she said, "Jonathan," in her sweet crystal voice.
The Countess sniffed. "He"ll be her first kill-I"ll bet you my pearl earrings on that." Her eyes slid sidelong to Nomie. "And I"ll further bet that the b.i.t.c.h won"t share."
Then she looked back at Renfield. "If he completes his kill. Pah! He fools with them and fools with them, whispers to their dreams, until they come willingly, swooning at his feet." Nomie looked away.
The Countess went on, "You know, do you not, that it is only those who drink the vampire"s blood in their turn, who become vampires-and then only those who have the strength, the will, to hold on as death rolls over them; to hold on to the will of their master. That is why he seduces them. He makes them love him too much to let go of their lives."
In the silence that followed these words, Nomie gazed out the window as if she were enduring a beating; only once, very quickly, she pressed her hand to her mouth.
"She has a core of steel in her, that one." The Countess"s deep voice was hard. Her black hair, where it trailed in tendrils from her chignon, made streaks of night across a face white as the waning moon. "He will use her against me-against us," she added, with a glance at her sisters. To Renfield she said, with an outstretched finger of command, "Stop him."
Renfield gasped. "How?"
"By doing what you should have done last night. By raising an alarm. By showing some courage."
"I am a madman, in case you haven"t noticed!" protested Renfield. "I am locked in a cell! I did everything I could, everything!"
"You did what you could to be taken out of the house," retorted the Countess. "I notice that not one word pa.s.sed your lips concerning the precious Madame Mina"s being taken out of the house." Renfield reflected that this business of seeing things in dreams obviously worked both ways. "That imbecile poet Gelhorn could have done better.""Then why didn"t he?" Renfield straightened up a little from his crouch. "Why don"t you send him to rescue Mrs. Harker, or to warn her husband of the danger in which she stands?"
"If you"d ever seen him trying to get his luggage back from a railway porter, you wouldn"t be asking that."
"Because you are the braver man," said Nomie softly, and turned back from the window to look at him. "And the more intelligent one, I think. Do this for us, and we will do what we can-I will do what I can-to have you released, or to sunder these bars and spirit you away."
"Fail," added the Countess grimly, "and it will be the worse for you, to a degree that you cannot even imagine."
And Sarike, like an animal, only smiled again and licked her lips.
Then they were gone.
Renfield saw Mrs. Harker briefly the following day, pale and thin, like tea after too much water has been added to the teapot.
Her eyes were sunken and bruised-looking, as if from too much sleep or too little. Other than that brief glimpse, as she stood on the gravel driveway bidding farewell to Lord G.o.dalming and Mr. Morris-G.o.d knew where they were off to, Harker had left early in the morning-he saw none of the little band of conspirators against the vampire Count. According to Dr. Hennessey, who made Seward"s rounds for him, Van Helsing had gone to the British Museum. Seward himself was closeted in his study, making preparations and plans of his own.
Somehow, Renfield couldn"t bring himself to tell Hennessey of Mrs. Harker"s danger: Hennessey who reeked of gin and whose s.m.u.tty-minded speculations about the female patients had been audible to Renfield night after night when the Irishman had chatted with the keepers.
In any case, there was no telling what he"d do with that information.
Though the day was chill, flies swarmed to the little sugar he put out. He didn"t even trouble to put them in boxes, simply caught them and ate them, desperate to increase his strength, to build up the forces of his own life to meet what he knew would come.
Seward has to make evening rounds, thought Renfield. I"ll tell him then. That will be time to get her out o f the house.
But Lord G.o.dalming and Morris arrived just at sunset, met by Seward in the avenue. He must have been watching from his study window. An hour later Van Helsing"s cab pulled up at the door, and some time after that, Hennessey came again on Sew- ard"s rounds: "Very took up with Dr. Van Helsing, he is," the Irishman reported. "As well he might be-great man like that. And he was most kind, most kind indeed, when I told him at supper last night of my own observations and experiments with training the demented to behave themselves. Why, he said he"d seldom encountered a system as original as mine!"
Renfield could almost feel pity for the elderly Dutchman, trapped at the supper-table with Hennessey in full cry.
"If you would, Dr. Hennessey," said Renfield, "could you please tell Dr. Seward that I must see him. As soon as may be, this evening certainly, before the house retires to bed. It is vital."
""Course I"ll tell him," agreed Hennessey. ""Course I will." He unscrewed and sipped his flask as he went out the door. Renfield could hear him trading a crude joke with Simmons in the hall. I might just as well, Renfield reflected wearily, have asked one o f my spiders to take a message.
Seward didn"t come. Harker arrived at nine, springing up the steps like Sir Lancelot after dispatching a not-very-fearsome dragon. Renfield waited at the window, watching the reflected splotches of golden light from the asylum"s windows perish one by one against the night-shrouded laurels, until only one remained.
Somewhere in the darkness, a dog began to bark. Other dogs, everywhere in the neighborhood, took up the cry, and in the padded room, m.u.f.fled by the coir mats of the walls, Lord Alyn howled as if in response. Like the dogs, the other patients added their voices to his, Renfield picking them out as c.o.c.kneys pick out the voices of the City"s churchbells.
Oranges and lemons, Say the bells o f St. Clemmons.
Demons scratch at my door,Screams Emily Strathmore.
How the dark night has fall"n, Howls Andrew, Lord Alyn.
Mist began to creep over the garden wall. In the veiled sky, the moon was barely more than a fingernail, yet Renfield saw clearly the slow seep of those winding vapors toward the house. Terror filled him. He rushed to the door, pressed his face to the Judas, but Simmons was gone from the hall; it seemed every man on the wing had begun to scream and pound the walls, and Renfield"s cries were swept away in the not-uncommon torrent that Seward and Hennessey had long since ceased to hear.
"Dr. Seward!" Renfield screamed. "He is coming! He is coming! Get Mrs. Harker out of the house!"
The gas-lights showed him a hallway blank and empty as if it were a thousand feet underground.
Chill touched him, like an evil wind. Turning, Renfield saw the first curls of mist seeping under the cas.e.m.e.nt, flowing down the wall.
He turned back to the window, spread out his hands. "Get out! I forbid you to enter this place!"
Outside the window, the mists congealed in the thin glow of the moon. Renfield saw the glaring red eyes, the red mouth open and laughing, a terrible laugh. Saw the sharpness of the white teeth.
"Get out, I tell you! I renounce you and all your works! Begone, and trouble this house no more!"
And in his mind, Wotan"s voice whispered against the pounding leitmotif of Wagner, It is too late for that.
The mists pooled, where the small glow of the gas-light from the hall fell through the Judas. Flowed upward in a column, in which burned two crimson eyes.
Renfield shrieked, "Leave her alone, for she has never harmed you!" and threw himself at the shadow that was forming within those mists, behind the burning eyes.
CHAPTER TWENTY.
In agony, Renfield dreamed.
He saw Mina Harker in her room-it had the same wallpaper as Dr. Seward"s study and the hall in the men"s wing of the house- and the sickly light of that fingernail moon barely touched the edges of the window-frame, the bedposts, the china ewer on the dresser. Jonathan Harker lay beside her, so deeply asleep that Renfield thought the Count must have broken his back, as he had broken Renfield"s ...
... broken it and left him lying in agony, dying in a pool of blood on the floor of his cell.
From a great distance Renfield was aware of himself, of pain like a thousand sawing red-hot knives. He was aware, just as vividly, of the Count, standing beside the bed in the guest-room downstairs.
The Count held Mina Harker in the iron circle of his arm, the black of his clothing and his cloak like enfolding storm-cloud around the simple white linen of her night-dress. Her head lay back against his shoulder, her black hair, escaping from its braid, a marvelous inky torrent flowing to her waist. She made no sound, raised no cry, but her dark eyes were open, staring up at the Count"s face in revulsion, horror, fear that had nothing in it of panic blankness.
She knew what was being done to her.
The Count"s head was bent over hers, his mouth pressed to her throat. Blood ran down her breast onto her night-dress.
More pain. The dream splintered as if every bone in Renfield"s body were shattering with it. Renfield opened his eyes, saw Van Helsing"s face.
He couldn"t breathe. His whole body felt as if every joint, every muscle were locked in vises of incandescent iron. Tangled memories of Dracula hurling him to the floor, beating his head on the boards.He tasted blood in his mouth, smelled it everywhere in the room. Lamplight burned his eyes. Quincey Morris had a lamp, so did Lord G.o.dalming, both men tousled in pyjamas, hair hanging in their eyes. Van Helsing was dressed, in shirtsleeves, Seward likewise. There was blood on their sleeves, glaringly dark in the orange light, like Mrs. Harker"s, trickling down her nightdress.
"I"ll be quiet, Doctor," Renfield whispered. "Tell them to take off the strait-waistcoat. I have had a terrible dream."
I dreamed I was insane.
I dreamed that I was locked in a madhouse, from April to the threshhold of bitter winter, with no one to care for me, no one to love me, no one to touch me or talk to me in the deep o f the night. I dreamed of Catherine, lying asleep in the moonlight of our room ...
He blinked. "It has left me so weak that I cannot move. What"s wrong with my face? It feels swollen ... smarts . . ." He tried to move his head, and darkness came over him.
"Tell us your dream, Mr. Renfield," said Van Helsing softly. "Van Helsing,"
Renfield whispered. "It is good of you to be here. Water . . ."
Darkness again. Darkness and pain, and the yawning abyss where more pain waited for him-pain and the horrors of things he could barely see and didn"t want to. Then brandy burned his lips, and he opened his eyes again. Van Helsing was still there.
"No," Renfield whispered. "It was no dream."
He was dying, and the knowledge gave him a kind of exhilaration, a lightness. There was nothing further that Dracula could do to him. Catherine, he thought, Catherine, I have failed you.
But Mina, at least ... Mina-Mrs. Harker-could be saved. Freed by the knowledge of coming death, he told them of Dracula"s visits, stammeringly at first, then with greater confidence. Of the flies, of Dracula"s promises; of the Count"s coming that night and of how he had tried to stop him, to save Mrs. Harker who had been so kind. Surely, he thought, as he tried to gather breath and strength to speak again, surely now one of them-Van Helsing-will understand, and will go to Catherine, will understand the danger she and Vixie are in, will save them. But as he was trying to form the words, Van Helsing straightened up away from him: "We know the worst now," he said to the others. "He is here, and we know his purpose! It may not be too late! Let us be armed . . ."
Renfield whispered desperately, "Catherine ... Promise me..."
But they were already rushing to the door, crowding one another in it in their desperation to go, the lamplight jostling their shadows wildly over the walls.
"Please . . ." Renfield breathed.
But they were gone. He heard their footsteps thudding down the hall, felt the jarring of their race down the stairs. The gaslight of the hall fell through the open door over him, the thin distant howling of some of the women patients sweeping through the building like the whistle of wind.
He thought, despairingly, Catherine, forgive me! I"ve botched it all up! I only did it for you. It was all for you.
And now I will never see you again.
He could not move, and the tears that flowed from his eyes ran down the sides of his face to the bloodied boards of the floor.
Catherine ...
Mist curled before his eyes.
Dracula, he thought. Wotan. He has done with Mrs. Harker and he has come to drink my life. Come for the final insult, the final triumph ...
Red eyes glowing in the mist.
Then the pale oval of a gentle face, materializing out of the reflected gas-light of the hall. Fair hair like the sunlight that beats on the yellow rocks of the Khyber Pa.s.s. The red light died, leaving the eyes that looked into his as blue as pale sapphires, like the deeps of the up-country sky above the Simla Hills.
She asked, "Will you stay, or go?"
Renfield"s tears flowed harder, grief and guilt and pain. He managed to whisper, ". . . work yet to do. I must ... save them. Help me."
Without another word, Nomie bent her slim body down, and like gentle kisses drank the blood that was still trickling from the gashes Dracula"s nails had opened in Renfield"s face, from the open wound where Van Helsing had trephined the skull to relieve the haemorrhage inside. Then she undid the pearl b.u.t.tons of her sleeve, pushing the fragile figured lawn up to reveal an arm no less white than the fabric, and with her long nails slit open the veins.
Somewhere in the house came the rending crash of a door being broken open, men"s voices shouting. Nomie turned her head, listening for an instant, then pressed her bleeding arm to Renfield"s lips. "Trust me," she breathed, "and drink."
Her blood tasted coppery on his tongue, sweet and salt at once, like the blood of the men who"d died in the Mutiny, all those years ago under the broiling Indian sun.
"He is ours," whispered the Countess"s voice, and opening his eyes again, Renfield saw the other two standing behind her. "If he will be so, he will be of us all, my sister." Kneeling, she ripped the black silk sleeve of her dress, and opened the flesh beneath; while Renfield drank of the blood of her arm, she pressed her lips to his throat. He felt her teeth tear into his flesh, but the sensation was distant, as all sensation was failing.
Sarike opened her bodice, tore the vein above the dusky satin of her breast; lapped the blood off his face like a greedy cat. "You are ours now," whispered the Countess, kneeling above him, her uncoiled black hair hanging down to brush his face. "We will carry you through the dark of death. Your soul will be cradled within ours, until such time as it returns to your death-changed flesh. But a portion of that soul will remain forever in our keeping, so long as we ourselves inhabit this world. Do you understand?"
Renfield"s lips formed the words, I understand.
Somewhere in the house a woman screamed, the frantic scream that had nothing in it of insanity, but of too-clear awareness. Mrs.
Harker"s voice, thought Renfield, drifting on the borderlands of oblivion. Men"s voices clamoring, then Mrs. Harker"s crying above them, "No! No, Jonathan, you must not leave me!"
Cold began to seep into the room. At first, Renfield thought it was only his own body sinking into death, but the Countess turned her head sharply, whispered, "He is coming." She and Sarike stood. Nomie remained kneeling beside Renfield, and the Countess reached down and dragged the girl to her feet. For a moment Nomie"s eyes met Renfield"s, before all three women faded into the thready glimmer of the moonlight.
The next moment, the Count was in the room. His face was like a steel mask, with blood smeared down his mouth and streaking the front of his shirt. Shirt and the black silk waistcoat above it were open to the waist, and a bleeding gash on the pectoral muscle showed Renfield where Mrs. Harker"s mouth must have been pressed, to drink of the vampire"s blood. In his cloak Renfield could smell the clinging remains of her dusting-powder, vanilla and sandalwood mingling with the reek of gore.