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

      Of course if the semantic bludgeons hideous and ghastly are omitted from this passage it may provoke the thoughtful hearer to a quite different evaluation of the matter.

* * *

      Up to this point Carfax had still been available for my use, though my enemies had actually known for three days that it was my base and believed they had the means at hand to deny it to me — God send my foe such generalship in every war. But on the morning of October third, only an hour or so after Mina’s forehead received its mark, Van Helsing acted at last, leading his troops in another invasion of my lands and house. To their disappointment they once more “found no papers, or any signs of use in the house; the great boxes looked just as we had seen them last.” Their leader set about to distribute fragments of the Host in all the boxes; in order to deny the vampire his base of operations, he judged it necessary to:

sterilize this earth, so sacred of holy memories, that he has brought from a far distant land for such fell use. He has chosen this earth because it has been holy. Thus we defeat him with his own weapon, for we make it more holy still.

      Faith and reason are whipped together from the temple.

      My own business in Piccadilly was finished before midday, and I came back by train and cab to Purfleet, walking the last half mile home to Carfax. In a lair lined with my native earth deep-hidden in a thicket on my grounds I rested, needing rest yet still wanting to be near Mina should she suddenly and urgently need help. I rested in the gloom of heavy undergrowth but did not truly sleep; and I heard the hunters when they came to bang about inside my house once more. If I listened attentively I could tell when they opened a box and when they closed its lid down tight again and could pick out their individual coughs and curses as they choked on dust. It was an opportunity to seek the further confrontation with them required by the plan that I had formed; but Mina did not know that plan as yet and I considered that her full cooperation would be vital.

      After a while I heard the vandals leave, driving away on the road that fronted Carfax rather than going back to the asylum. I rested a little more, then walked out onto my overgrown lawn before my house, from which vantage point the upper front of the asylum, where Mina’s windows were, was visible. In the hazy autumn daylight of England, mild and cloudy to the eyes of breathing men but enervating desert glare to me, I sought, as some weary traveler might seek the sight of an oasis, a glimpse of my beloved — and behold! To my great joy I saw her come and stand there in a window, waving, beckoning to me.

      In one moment I was running toward the wall that separated our grounds, and in another I had leapt lithely up and over it. Intervening trees on the asylum grounds now kept me from seeing Mina’s window. I was working my way toward the building, taking care not to be seen by others, when with a leap of my heart I beheld Mina’s sturdy figure come running gracefully toward me through the trees. It might have been impossible for me to have entered the asylum in the daylight, forbidden to change forms, without some servant observing me. But Mina could stroll out into the grounds without attracting any particular attention, and she had done so.

      After our first quick, tight embrace I held her at arm’s length. “Mina, my dear one, it is a joy unutterable to see you … how is it with you now?” I was gazing with concern at the cruel mark that marred the whiteness of her forehead.

      “You may see how I am,” she replied, taking note of the direction of my gaze. There was a tremor in her voice but yet the words were clear and brave. “I have looked in the glass at the scar you wonder at, and have seen that it is nearly a mirror image of your own. For good or ill, it seems that I have in truth been delivered into your possession. Oh, Vlad, what is my life to be?”

      “This,” I answered, and gathered her, as willing as ever before, into my arms. Again we exchanged blood, there in the deep shadows underneath the trees. This time I took but little, so as not to weaken her.

      “But,” I added firmly, holding her at arm’s length once again, “because I truly love you, I do not want to take you into my land now.”

      “To your land? You are going to leave England?” I thought I detected the smallest undercurrent of relief in her demeanor.

      “Mina, my princess, my land is the country of the vampire. It exists here in England as well as abroad, but it is different from any country you have ever known. And were I to bring you there, those men would inevitably pursue us, and never rest until they had destroyed us both. Do you think you would be spared because they love you now, or say they do? Remember Lucy’s fate.”

      Mina shuddered, and raised one hand so that its fingers almost touched her scar. “I know I would not be spared.” And suddenly she poured out in some detail the story of her terrible morning: the questions and the isolation, Van Helsing’s suddenly pressing the Host against her skin, the conviction that followed at once amongst them all, that she had been contaminated. “Vlad, does this mark truly mean that you are a fiend from hell, and I am damned? When you hold me I feel no sense of evil force, but rather joy.”

      I shook my