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

Mycroft remarked: “Well, this much seems to be true–if there was any actual treasure involved, and the Admiralty records seem to suggest there was, the loot was never recovered.”

Mycroft had also brought with him more details of Count Kulakov’s rented establishment, Smithbury Hall, which we had already inspected from a distance, and he confirmed that the police were starting to take an interest there. Two plainclothes policemen, calling at the door on some pretext, had been told by the man’s servants that he was not at home and they did not know when he was to be expected.

Holmes was more and more intently focusing on the Russian aspect of this affair. “Prince, if you thought that some member of this English family, or any other, had robbed you, at some relatively remote epoch in the past, what steps would you be likely to take to regain your property?”

The prince, sitting with one pale hand extended before him, appeared to be admiring his own sharp fingernails. Suddenly, out of nowhere, it occurred to me to wonder whether they might be retractable, like a cat’s claws, and I shuddered slightly.

He flexed his fingers briskly and then forgot about them. “That would depend to a great extent upon what kind of property it was.”

“Of course. Land would be very difficult to regain by anyone striving for justice–as I presume you would be–outside the formal channels of legality. Gold, for example, or anything that can be locked up in a small space, would be comparatively easy.”

Dracula, when he had heard the tale of our discovery of Louisa Altamont, was confident of his ability to overtake this little child-vampire in hot pursuit, catch her and bring her back. but he was not sanguine about his chances of discovering where she might be now.

“Why did Louisa flee from us?” Armstrong asked the question.

Dracula replied that she gave every evidence of being under some very strong hypnotic influence, strong enough to overcome her natural inclinations.

I then asked: “Even in this–altered state, she is subject to the hypnotic influence?”

The prince replied: “Indeed, even more thoroughly, strongly subject to such influence; given a mesmerist–or a hypnotist, if you prefer that word–of overwhelming willpower and superb technique.”

How were we to find Louisa again? And, when she was found, what to do with her, her pallid form, her bloodstained lips?

Sixteen

Martin Armstrong returned to Norberton House that evening, and lied convincingly enough to Rebecca and to the elder Altamonts about his day’s activities.

A little later that night, when Armstrong had retired and was trying to close his eyes in sleep, Louisa drifted in uninvited through the window of his room and, as on the previous night, materialized sitting on the edge of his bed.

The idea of trying to resist her attraction crossed the young man’s mind, but only briefly. The attempt failed before it had really started, and the couple passionately made love.

This did nothing to resolve Armstrong’s feelings. He found himself sliding inexorably into a crisis of doubt, fear, and hesitation regarding his relationship with his beloved.

While the sensual attraction between the pair was, if anything, stronger than on the previous night, the young man’s feelings of revulsion had also increased to the point where they could no longer be denied. He realized, with the night’s first surge of passion spent, that these contrary emotions must be either wholeheartedly accepted, or overcome.

Armstrong was thinking, as most of us do most of the time, of his own future. Holmes and Watson had been trying to instruct him about vampires. For him to remain Louisa’s lover in a permanent way, forsaking all others, would sooner or later mean setting his own feet irrevocably upon the path to vampirism, thus bringing upon himself the implacable enmity of the great mass of humanity–however many could be induced to believe in him.

Side by side with the great tree of passion, the faint seed of disgust, sown during Louisa’s first visit to his bedroom, was growing rapidly.

He spoke the word to her during this visit: “Lou, you have become a... vampire.”

“Yes. I know.” She pleaded with her lover not to tell anyone, her parents least of all. They must not learn that she was coming to him in this way, the discovery that their daughter had become a monster–so they must view the matter–would destroy them.

Nor did Louisa’s new master know that she was here, and she was afraid that he would find out.

She also feared Sherlock Holmes and his associates, though not as much as she feared Kulakov. She felt instinctively that Holmes and Watson, as preservers of law and convention, would pass the terrible knowledge of her state on to her family, and would separate her from Martin.

Dracula she feared as well, but in yet another way; he was somehow kin to the man who had enslaved her, even though he was Kulakov’s enemy as well.

Armstrong was both angry at Kulakov and afraid of him, and wanted to see the man destroyed.

Louisa had had other reasons for returning that night to the home of her breathing childhood, and actually she had accomplished these before coming to see her lover: She had wanted to see her sister (without allowing Rebecca to see her), and also to gaze from a distance at her parents, whom Louisa loved but who, she thought, were now farther than they had ever been from understanding what had happened to their elder daughter, and what was going to happen.

On Saturday morning, at least some of the people who arrived at the cemetery for the burial service of Abraham Kirkaldy were astonished and outraged to discover the vandalism that had been committed by an angry vampire the night before.

But the service went on as scheduled.

Martin Armstrong was there, nervously wondering if the small amount of blood he had lost during the night had weakened him, and if one of the new fang marks on his throat might