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

garlic — with which I had been, to all appearances, so easily dispatched. There was also a lack of “screeching.” “plunging,” and “lips of bloody foam,” all of which phenomena had accompanied each of their previous lynchings of my race. But I need not have worried. My hunters were emotionally and physically worn out, one and all, and more than ready to find the play utterly satisfying as it stood. Even Mina’s subconscious mind had been satisfied — for, even as she screamed to see my death — not knowing at the moment whether or not it might be real — the mark of the vampire vanished from her forehead, never to return. She was able to run out of Van Helsing’s Holy Circle at last, to comfort Morris in his dying moments and throw her arms about her husband. The gypsies had scattered and fled, and I, in mist-form amid the blowing snow, took my own leave …

      For a few hours …

      The snow ceased shortly after sunset, and the ensuing night was bitter cold. My enemies made camp in the open — their own fears and perhaps the consciences of some of them would hardly have let them rest inside the walls of Castle Dracula that night. They built up a fire against wolves — my disturbed children were still howling in the distance — and planned to take turns standing watch. But one by one they all sank into fitful sleep around the ebbing flames, till one person only remained awake, she who had begun to learn to make the night her day.

      I deepened the slumber of the others and then I came and stood in the far firelight, where her restlessly watching eyes could not fail to see me.

      Automatically at her first sight of me her hand went up to her forehead once again, to reassure itself of unmarked smoothness there. She looked around at all the men, then got to her feet and came toward me, placing her sturdy boots carefully upon the frozen ground. I could tell even at a distance that something had changed. What, precisely, I could not say. But suddenly I was wary.

      “Vlad,” Mina said, briskly and without preamble, as she came up, “you have given me your assurance that I have nothing to fear in the way of — of permanent physical consequences, as a result of our relationship to date. Is that not so?”

      “It is.” I bowed, without taking my careful eyes from hers.

      “It is a matter of some importance that this should be so, now,” she went on, and paused to emit a faint belch. “Excuse me.”

      “You have been reluctant to eat? That should vanish soon, as your stigma has already done. I told you these manifestations in you were merely the result of Van Helsing’s hypnotic —

       “This has nothing to do with Van Helsing, or with hypnotism,” she interrupted brusquely. “The fact is that I am pregnant.”

      My mouth opened but I could find no words.

      “I am pregnant, and I intend to take no chances with the welfare of my child-to-be. I am saying goodbye to you now, Vlad. Do you understand?”

      I could but nod.

* * *

      It was the summer of 1897, I believe, when Mina and her good Jonathan, along with Lord Godalming and Dr. Seward — who were by then encumbered with their own wives and infants — and of course with you-know-who acting as mentor and guide, journeyed once more to my fair land. I suppose that, as before, the peasants waggled fingers and blessed themselves with prayers and incantations upon learning the pilgrims’ destination as they passed; that sort of thing does not change much in six or seven years.

      Although by now, of course, Castle Dracula is almost obliterated, from truthful memories as well as from the landscape, the tourists in 1897 found it but little changed. I am sure that Mina had to put forth some effort to persuade them — to persuade her husband, at any rate — to make the journey; if I were he I would not have chosen Transylvania for my holiday.

      I knew that she was on her way, across the miles … I knew. And of course I knew it also when she walked into the ruined courtyard of the castle on a day of birdsongs and summer light and here and there a climbing flower.

      After chatting with the others of her party for a while over this and that item of the architecture she descended alone toward what I might call my public tomb — which is the one Van Helsing had already found. There was and is another, much more private, and not far away.

      With all the sunlight up above, even the dim underground chamber was almost bright as day. Before the impressive monument that bears my name, Mina stood for a long moment with her head bowed. Then turned — and I was waiting for her, sitting casually upon a lesser slab nearby.

      “You startled me,” she said, raising one hand toward her breast in a Victorian maiden’s gesture that she gave up on halfway through, beneath my gaze. Then she asked: “How is it with you, Vlad?”

      “Well enough. I continue to — pursue my destiny.” I made a vague gesture, not knowing, myself, quite what I meant. “And you?”

      The voices of the rest of her party were audible somewhere above, a childish treble among them. A slight shadow crossed Mina’s face and I divined its meaning, and went on: “The child is innocent of me and mine. The bloodstreams do not mingle in the womb.” So I thought then; latterly, men of science are no longer quite so sure.

      “Two children, Vlad. I have borne twins.”

      “Then both are innocent. But what if they were not? There are worse fates in this world than to be a vampire.” On Lucy, Mina’s daughter, I will have no comment now, for she was still alive the last I heard. But certainly Quincey, her son, kept to breathing all