The Dracula Tape, Fred Saberhagen [the dot read aloud TXT] 📗

thereof by fate. “And their treatments? What are these little wounds? Surely they do not bleed you, in this day and age?”

      “Ah, Vlad, I do not know. The doctors are kindly, and they mean well, I am sure. But they tell me nothing, and I am too ill to argue with them and insist on knowing.” After a gasping pause, during which I tightened the bandage once more on her arm, she went on: “They bring me garlic flowers and bulbs. And three times now I have been drugged, and the doctor has performed some — some operation whose nature I do not fully understand.”

      “Three times. Damnable. Which doctor operates?”

      “Dr. Van Helsing, I think. I feel so safe when he is with me. But still …” She had lost the strength for speech. I bent and laid my ear against her breast, and liked not the laborious pumping sounds of the machineries of her body. By modern standards I am certainly no qualified physician, but then neither would many of those be who earned their bread as such during the nineteenth century.

      Her eyes were on mine, trusting, praying.

      “Lucy. Be clear, lightbearing girl. Be clear now in your thoughts. There is a most momentous decision that we may have to make tonight.” And I caressed the golden beauty of her hair. In four hundred years of war and peace I had seen death come to many, and I thought her unlikely to survive the night. Unless …

      “Vlad, help me, save me. Arthur is not here, and I fear the others are killing me with what they do.” A spasm of fear had temporarily renewed her energy. “Don’t let me die.” And Lucy was seized with sudden nausea, and retched feebly over the side of the bed. There was an acid smell but little vomitus. “Hold me, Vlad!”

      Yet I did not pull her into an embrace, but straightened and stood upright beside the bed. Belowstairs, all sounds of the maids’ movements had ceased, save for the stertorous breathing of their four pairs of lungs; for all intents and purposes, Lucy and I were in the house alone. There was a little time, at least, in which to plan and think. Perhaps no more than a little; she might well die, I thought, before a long discussion could be held.

      “Lucy. Death will come soon or late to all of us. And it is not the worst thing in the world, though full well I know how frightening it can sometimes be.”

      “No, no!” Terror gave her a terrible, momentary energy, and her nails tried to bite at my arm. “Save me, Vlad! Do something. I see in your eyes that there is something you can do.”

      “Lucy, there is one way in which I can — not cancel your death, for I am not God — but put it off, for some indefinite time. But to take this road will mean a great change in your life. Greater than you can possibly imagine now.”

      “Only save me, Vlad, I beg of you. I do not want to die!” I cannot describe the emotion that was in her failing voice as she uttered these words.

      I lifted her weightless-seeming body from the bed; in shifting her slightly in my arms, so that the whiteness of her throat where I had left my marks before was tautly exposed, I also turned my own body slightly. There was a mirror hung on the wall across the room, and inside its gilt frame Lucy’s unsupported body hung, her nightdress gathered up at the knees and back by the pressure of invisible arms. Then I bent down my head …

      When I had taken something of her blood it was time to give her to drink deeply of mine. I undid the clothing over my own heart and tore the flesh there with one of my own talonlike fingernails — no other cutting tool can do the job so well — and quickly pressed Lucy’s mouth against my breast as if she were a suckling babe and I a crooning nurse.

      As soon as we were done with exchanging a considerable quantity of blood I wiped her pretty lips and put her back into bed, having done all that I could do. At the moment she was still nearly comatose, but I knew now that she would not die before the night was out, at least not of unmatched blood put straight into her veins. I thought she was no longer likely to die at all, in the near future. It was still quite probable that she would soon be put into her grave, but as we know, that is not quite the same.

      “Lucy,” I said softly, and extended my hand toward her still figure on the bed. She took it and arose, although her eyes stayed shut until she came gracefully to her feet. Then they opened. Ah, changed … Van Helsing would be sure to see it, and what might he do then?

      But I had come to London on my own affairs, and not to fight him for this woman. She meant very little to me, except that she had called on me for help, which I had now given as best I could.

      “Lucy, you will not die tonight. You may feel ill. But if they come to you tomorrow, to drug you and transfuse you once again, I would advise you to refuse them.”

      “But they never ask.” Change in the voice, too, already; it was at once a little livelier, and more remote.

      “Insist that this Arthur of yours be called, if he will help you take a stand against them. Do you understand? They are putting the blood of other people into your veins. I suppose they do mean well, but what they were doing had brought you to the point of death.”

      “But, Vlad … I feel stronger now. I believe that you have saved me.”

      “And so I have, my dear, for the present.

      Snatched you from death, put back the Day