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

find a way.” I had capitulated; but in point of fact she was not fully mine as yet, not in the physically irreversible way she seemed to think. And therefore to take her with me would be a hare-brained plan, as she herself must realize soon enough, if the attempt were made. Though she could in time become a vampire — nay, must become one if things went on as they were — she was not a vampire yet. She could not give up normal food, or be immune to cold or heat, or sleep on mold and dust in airless places, or pass as I do through a hair’s breadth chink.

      Nor would my enemies ever be persuaded to leave my trail, once I had taken her. Most important of all, once she became a vampire our love, though it went on, would be platonic, almost incapable of physical expression. It would then be like incest, and worse, for us to try to suck each other’s veins, and she would seek out breathing lovers, as would I … I did not want that, not for a long, long time to come.

      Mina, in her temporarily weakened state, had turned back to the bed, and Harker’s breathing altered slightly as she sank down beside him. I deepened his slumber somewhat, as I had done for the attendant outside Renfield’s door.

      And still I wanted with all my soul to carry Mina away with me, although I knew the plan was sheer romantic foolishness.

      “Mina,” I whispered, “in the eyes of the world you are my enemy’s wife. But in both our hearts we know that you are mine.”

      “Yes, Vlad.” Her whisper was small and frightened now.

      “And we shall find a way to be together. Come, I will bind us with a further tie.” And, pulling open my clothing above my heart, I drew the sharp nail of my left forefinger across my flesh, deep enough to let the blood well out. “Drink.”

      Before she drank she murmured that her hands were cold, and I clasped both of them in one of mine — did you think that vampire flesh is always chill? Not so; it can be warming, too. And with my right hand I fondled the back of her strong neck as I raised her to a kneeling position on the bed. She stood higher for a moment, to kiss the scar her husband’s shovel stroke had left upon my forehead. And then her lips came down to the level of my heart, and came tenderly against my bleeding wound, and she drank into herself some portion of my life …

      Thus you, Mina, my best-beloved one, became flesh of my flesh; blood of my blood; kin of my kin; my bountiful winepress …

      In that position were we, heedless of all the world, when the door leading from the bedroom to the hall burst in with a sudden crash and Van Helsing, Seward, Morris, and Arthur nearly fell into the room. The professor actually did fall, and so impeded the first onrush of the others.

      The two doctors had spent some time in attendance upon Renfield, since the noise of our brawl had drawn attention to his room. Van Helsing and Seward had performed on the spot a hasty trephining operation, which the patient did not long survive — not that the best of surgeons could have saved him then — and from his dying words they learned that I was his killer and had gained access to the house.

      The doctors soon roused their male companions in the hunt, and all — except for Harker — quickly armed themselves with the same collection of symbols and rubbish that they had carried on their invasion of my house. They understood in just what room I was likely to be found, and with Renfield’s battered corpse before them still chose not to be headlong in their pursuit.

      Eventually, no doubt eyeing one another and trying to think of alternative plans, they climbed the stairs.

      Outside the Harkers’ door we paused. Art and Quincey held back and the latter said:

      “Should we disturb her?”

      “We must,” said Van Helsing grimly. “If the door be locked I shall break it in.”

“May it not frighten her terribly? It is unusual to break into a lady’s room.”

      Regardless of who might have been terribly frightened, they finally brought themselves to the unusual act. When they hurled their bodies at the door it crashed in quite satisfactorily, and there I was, clasping Mina on the bed.

      Taken unawares and at a peak of passion, I was prepared to react in a most uncivilized way to this intrusion. Pushing Mina back on the bed, out of harm’s way, I turned on them with a loud snarl. The professor, who had just started to regain his feet, fell down again and all the others cowered back.

      A whiff of stale garlic came from the crowd of them, standing there in their garlands, foreshadowing malodorous flower children of a much later age. In trembling hands they waved at me their small white envelopes, like supplicants before St. Peter at the gates who think they have the proper admission tickets in their hands but are still a little doubtful all the same.

      I admit, this time it was those envelopes that tipped the scales and held me back. If I had followed my first impulse, and ground their bones to bits within their well-fed skins, or left them lying like so many Renfields in a bright lake of their own blood, it would have been impossible to avoid some further, grievous desecration of the Sacred Host. What else could it be they waved at me?

      Infirm though my own faith may often be, and reprehensible my behavior on occasion, I draw the line at desecration of the Sacrament. And, when this reluctance on my part had given me a moment in which to take thought, I found my old objections to mass violence as valid as they had ever been. It must eventually array