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

again,” Mina answered, “it was just sheer relief at not having to endure another of their meetings.” She told me how she had just anticipated her re-exclusion by their leadership, and sighed as if at the removal of an ill-fitting shoe. “They all sit there, scowling or open-mouthed, listening to Van Helsing rant on about how hideous vampires are, as if that had no connection at all with me. That is, until one of them remembers the mark of Cain upon my forehead, and sneaks a look at it; and then his eyes slide almost guiltily away as soon as they come near to meeting mine. Even — even Jonathan is no longer quite willing to look me steadily in the face. He loves me still, I think, but it is as if — as if he has grown somewhat ashamed of me.”

      She raised her fingers to the red scar that marred her beauty. “Vlad, speak fully and honestly, as your love for me is full and true. What can be done about this? Is there no way to make it disappear?”

I       was now sitting on her bed, my legs crossed, swinging one of a pair of stylish new English boots. I supposed I might possibly have applied some hypnotic powers of my own to rid her of the scar, but it had been my experience with similar hysterical manifestations that if they were suppressed in one form, without the root cause being removed, they were likely to reappear in some new form even more discomfiting.

      “Not without considerable risk to you,” I answered. “Not at present, anyway. Remember, Van Helsing would probably be gravely suspicious that you were truly turning vampire if the scar, or the small marks on your throat, were to suddenly disappear. But take heart, in time we shall find a way.”

      “But, Vlad, why should Dr. Van Helsing’s touching me with the Host have left this hideous stain for all to see? I still cannot understand; be patient with me. Why must I bear this mark if — if I am not in fact …”

      “Unclean and evil? Be assured that you are not. That mark can have come only through Van Helsing’s mesmeric power, whether under his deliberate control or not, acting on your body through a part of your own mind that is not conscious.”

      “But how can a mind that is not conscious act?”

      “I do not know how.” In that year of 1891 a young doctor named Sigmund Freud was only beginning his researches into hysteria. “But I have seen similar things before. Mina, I myself may be evidence of a superior kind of hypnotic power.”

      “What do you mean, Vlad?”

      “I mean a power basically similar to hypnotism, but carried to an extreme degree, far beyond what Van Helsing or Charcot or any of the regular practitioners of today can hope to accomplish. Surpassing their best efforts — or the best efforts I could consciously make — even as the steam locomotive transcends the power of the boiling tea kettle.

      “I should have died of sword wounds, Mina, in the year of Our Lord 1476. My lungs stopped, and my heart, but I feared neither death nor life … do you know the writings of the American, Poe? Or of Joseph Glanville, your own countryman? ‘Man doth not yield him to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only by the weakness of his feeble will.’ It was no vampire woman’s embrace that made me what I am.”

      She stared at me so strangely for a little while that I had to smile to reassure her. “But it is frightening, Vlad,” was all she said.

      “Any human life can frighten the one who lives it,” I told her softly, “if he or she will let it do so.” Still smiling, I caressed her cheek. “Then simply trust me. To frighten you again is the last thing that I want. In good time both our scars will disappear. Come, now, will you not smile again tor me? Ah. That is one ray of bright sunshine that I find most pleasant.”

      After we had talked of happy matters for a little time I said: “I am very glad to have you with me now. But at the same time I could almost wish you were below at the men’s council, that we might be fully informed of all their plans. Is your latest exclusion from their meetings permanent, do you think?”

      “Oh, pooh! I can find some way to rejoin them, if you think that there is something truly vital I might learn.”

      “There are several questions whose answers may be vital to me. For example, when and by what means do they intend to pursue Czarina Catherine? I am sure they mean to do so somehow. And, have they telegraphed ahead of her, to authorities at the Bosporus, say, or perhaps somewhere nearer my homeland, in an attempt to have the box investigated or destroyed? Godalming is influential and they will not be above using bribery to hunt me down.”

      Mina was now sitting on my knee, rubbing her face against mine, then tilting back her chin so her long throat passed against my lips. “I will try to make certain, of course — ah. But as for telegraphing ahead, I think not. I think they want the satisfaction of destroying you with their own hands.”

      I held her at arm’s length, and spoke with utmost seriousness. “And you had best take care, my sweet, that they never turn on you with the same thought in mind. I have seen things in Van Helsing’s eyes, and heard things from his lips … his own wife’s not in a madhouse for nothing, in my opinion. Give him any evidence that he can interpret as just cause and he’ll be delighted to hammer a stake through your soft heart and watch you jump with every blow. Or, more likely, he’ll talk dear Jonathan into doing it for your own good whilst he and the others watch. As he