The Dracula Tape by Fred Saberhagen (best black authors TXT) 📗

      “Pax vobiscum,” I replied, but in such low voice that he may not have heard. “Dr. Van Helsing, I presume,” I added, louder, as I drew near, in unconscious parody of Stanley’s Ujiji words of twenty years before.

      As I approached Van Helsing got to his feet, an obstinate bull digging in his heels to launch a charge at a locomotive. Despite his gloomy note left for Seward, he really thought himself protected. The great stone cross was still at his back; in his left hand I saw a small golden crucifix, and in his right, only partially visible, the whiteness of some folded paper.

      He raised both hands and held them forward as I drew near. Let him think his toys would stop me, if he really believed such rot. I wanted the chance to talk. We eyed each other for some moments above the little crucifix.

      “Count Dracula.” He made a tiny bow. His nerve was high, his mouth smiling a little now.

      “At your service,” I replied, and gave him back his bow.

      He tipped his head in the briefest nod toward the silent tomb. “You may not have her longer,” he said, continuing to smile. “She is no longer yours.”

      “My dear young sir, she never was.” Van Helsing’s face at that time bore more agelines than my own, but he understood. “Not in the way you seem to think.”

      “You lie, king-devil Dracula. Ve know you, better than you realize.”

      “Very well, Van Helsing, we will have bluntness. I know your name, but nothing good of it. What are your intentions now?”

      “That the so-young Miss Lucy shall have rest, and peace.”

      “And as regards me?”

      “If it so may be,” he said with a grim, measured determination, “that you shall trouble none other as you have troubled her.”

      I turned away and strolled about a little among the tombs, my hands behind my back and beneath my cloak, somewhat in the way that I have seen Napoleon walk when deep in thought. “Why?” I asked, stopping to face my antagonist once more.

      And then I saw in his face, in his eyes, that he probably really did not understand my question.

      “I mean why, Professor, do you persecute and torment us? I know of one vampire that you have slain near Brussels, and two more, a man and wife, near Paris …”

      “Man and wife!” He was outraged. “If there are marriages not in heaven, as the Scripture say, then surely not in hell either!”

      “And we are hellish, of course; more so than other folk, I mean. Tell me, Van Helsing, if I took that cross from out of your grasp and hung it ’round my own neck, would you still be so certain that I came from hell?”

      His pudgy fingers tightened on the gold. “By your works I know you, Dracula. I fear there is much power to you, and that you may play tricks with crosses, and the other things of holiness. In Brussels where I did my work of mercy I heard your name, and in Paris too; and I have read the journal of young Harker, from his stay at your damned castle, from which the powers of heaven so blessedly delivered him.”

      “Ah! And is Jonathan well, and back in London now?” As I spoke I recalled the notebook with Harker’s ciphers in it. “I would be pleased to know that he is well, but saddened if he found my hospitality so hard to bear as your grim tones and looks imply.”

      Van Helsing now held silent, regretting perhaps that he might have given something away by mentioning Harker at all. Utter loathing was in his eyes, which remained fixed on me, but also the beginning of something like triumph as he saw that my renewed pacing brought me never any nearer to his crosses, nor to the white envelope in his right hand, whose contents I thought I had already guessed. He put this hand back into his pocket now whilst he swiveled the little gold crucifix to keep it facing squarely toward me as if it were a loaded gun.

      Three quick strides, a twisting of my arms, and he would have been a vastly surprised corpse. But others — Harker, Dr. Seward, I could not guess who else — were certain to know of Van Helsing’s vigil here tonight. They might even be watching us at the moment from somewhere nearby. Was I then to kill them too? The more I killed, the more the ranks of my enemies must grow, fed from the ocean of unbelievers in which both hunters and vampires were now no more than vastly scattered drops.

      What should I do, then? Kneel down and pray a rosary? I might have done so, but never to placate a foe, and least of all a smirking, self-righteous enemy like this one.

      I tried fair, honest words again. “I have not come to London to make war, Van Helsing, but to make peace with all mankind —”

      “Then, monster, what of the girl? This so sweet young miss who was put in those walls of cold stone; and, worse, who do not stay —”

      “Van Helsing, you may believe if you wish that being a vampire is worse than being dead; I see I am not likely to sway you by any argument. But forcing the consequences of misbelief upon others is something else again.”

      “You dare to speak of forcings, monster!” His courage continued to grow as he saw that I continued to keep my distance. “You who forced that girl to yield to you her very blood and life —”

      “Not so, murderer!” Now I did move closer to him by a step. “You who drove those splintered stakes into the living breasts of my three friends in Brussels and in Paris! And as for Lucy, it was to save her life that I drank deep enough of her sweet blood to make her what she is — it was really you who sent her to