Séance for a Vampire, Fred Saberhagen [win 10 ebook reader txt] 📗

so, of course with no result. but Holmes laid a hand upon my arm and assured me that the young woman’s condition was in itself perfectly safe and natural, for one in her new mode of existence.

Martin Armstrong had backed up a pace or two, and sat on a crude wooden bench, staring in shock.

“That cannot be Louisa,” he said at last. “but... it is.”

“It is.” Holmes laid a sympathetic hand on the young man’s shoulder.

“Doctor?” The young man turned to me, moistening his pale lips. “This girl is dead?”

“No,” I said, and shook my head. “I do not believe so, despite appearances.”

Armstrong made a curious, awkward gesture with both hands. “But... she came to me last night.”

“We understand,” said Sherlock Holmes.

“But I do not begin to understand. If this is not she... then who is it?”

“I tell you,” said Sherlock Holmes, “that this is Louisa Altamont.”

My friend and I earnestly renewed our efforts to explain to this lover of a vampire what sort of changes he must expect.

“Look!” I exclaimed, pointing at the white face of the figure in the box.

The sun was now very near setting. Tree shadows had covered all the windows, and Louisa, already partially awakened, had turned her head toward her lover.

Armstrong jumped to his feet. He uttered a strange sound, compounded of fear, fascination, and something very like disgust.

Then he mumbled a few incoherent words, because suddenly Louisa was sitting up.

“Martin?” Her voice was soft and calm.

His only answer was a kind of moan.

Again, she who had been his betrothed called to him lovingly, and he hesitated, alternately shrinking away from her and then starting forward.

When the young woman’s red lips parted and I saw clearly her white fangs suddenly grown sharp, I moved between her and the man she had once planned to marry, to keep them from embracing.

Louisa, reacting to my interference and Martin’s acceptance of it, gave a little snarling cry and suddenly leaped out of the crude nest in which she had sheltered from the daylight, so that both Holmes and I recoiled, and I reached for my revolver. but the vampire, who was still Louisa Altamont, had no aggressive intention. In another moment she had fled from our presence into the gathering dusk, thereby relieving us of any need to make an immediate decision on what we had ought to do with her, or do about her.

The figure of the girl did not change form, but ran barefoot at amazing speed into the nearby trees, and disappeared.

We had followed her out of the building again. Armstrong, speechless, with one hand to his mouth, could only stare after her, on his face the wildest expression of terror and shock that I have ever seen.

Now that the sun was gone, it was imperative that we conduct a strategic retreat, lest our enemy vampire appear and destroy us all at his leisure. Once night had fallen, granting our enemy the power of changing forms at will, my chances of getting in a good shot with the wooden bullets would be reduced almost to nothing.

Armstrong, in a daze, made no objection as we urged him to come away. Nor did any of us have much to say as we walked briskly back to the place beyond the fence where we had left our carriage.

Driving back to Amberley as twilight deepened and faded into night, we stopped to light our carriage lamps, and Armstrong suddenly began to talk.

The burden of his conversation was that of course such things, outside the settled and scientific order of nature, were simply not possible. Certainly not now, with the world firmly established in modern times, the twentieth century well begun. And’demonic’ hardly seemed the proper word for the female who had come to his bed last night. Pagan and passionate, he thought, were apt descriptions.

Holmes was musing that the testimony of the victim herself now definitely indicated that she was the victim of a rapist.

And I, Watson, remarked indignantly that what was known of the girl’s history and of her family made any other explanation unlikely.

Holmes said it was almost certain that the vampire who had kidnapped him must be the same one who had so brutally and lustfully attacked Louisa.

It was, of course, fully dark by the time we returned to the Saracen’s Head. There we found our colleague Dracula fully awake, well rested, and waiting for us in our sitting room.

The mere fact that Dracula was sitting with a companion, engaged in quiet conversation, would have been surprising enough–but when that companion looked round and revealed himself to be Mycroft Holmes, our amazement knew no bounds.

“Calm yourself, Sherlock,” said Mycroft, starting from his chair. “The prince and I have introduced ourselves and reached an accommodation– it was necessary, you know, that we should.”

Never have I seen Holmes so at a loss for words as he was then. but in a few moments, he had recovered from the shock, at least so far as to be able to bid his brother welcome.

When we were all seated, Mycroft Holmes explained that he had found himself unable to remain away from the scene of action any longer.

Taking a deep breath of air, he looked toward the window open to the summer night. “It is years since I have been in the country.” but having done as much, he thereafter seemed indifferent to his location.

Mycroft had brought word from London concerning the connection of the Altamont family with pirates in the eighteenth century. Also, he had obtained historical confirmation of the fact that the family fortune had always derived chiefly from land holdings and that none of the strange events of 1765–at least some of which he had uncovered– had had any noticeable effect on it one way or another.

In fact, a transcript of the Admiralty trial of the pirate Kulakov had turned out to be available, and Mycroft had brought a copy of the relevant portions with him.

We marveled that Kulakov, in his sleepwalking indifference to what his enemies