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

travels. As I stared at this evidence of how stubbornly my enemies still relied on metal to accomplish my demise, my plan for their deception began to take its final form.

      Shortly Jonathan rose and, with a few words to his wife, which I could not hear, thrust the keen blade into a scabbard underneath his coat, bade her a chaste goodnight, and left. As soon as he was gone and the door of the compartment locked Mina came over to the window. Her face was wan but the sight of my own visage, inverted just outside the glass, brought some animation to her countenance, and she remembered to beckon an invitation to insure my ability to enter. A moment later and we were in each other’s arms.

      Mina reported that, as far as she could tell, the men were still all firmly convinced that I lay as inert cargo aboard Czarina Catherine. She had been doing what she could to reinforce this opinion, with her changeless reports of watery noises and darkness, at her regular morning hypnotic sessions with Van Helsing when she pretended to be entranced after he had made a few mesmeric gestures.

      “It will take us at least three full days to reach Varna, where they plan to intercept the box,” she told me. “Vlad, are you sure that your presence aboard the train can be kept secret from them until then? When and where will you rest?”

      “I am getting off at Bucharest,” I explained. “And I have made provision, too, for resting whilst on board.” And with scarcely a qualm I told her of the great leather trunk that rode in the baggage car, half filled with good Transylvania earth. I felt scarcely a qualm, as I say, in telling her; not for centuries had I trusted any breathing soul with knowledge so vital to my survival. To lose my trunk or be deprived of using it would place me in a desperate strait — though admittedly not quite so desperate as if I had been wrecked in the North Sea on my way to England. The Express was hurtling eastward, hour after hour; and from near the Franco-German border it might have been possible for bat, wolf, and man, traveling sequentially, to regain the homeland before being destroyed by exhaustion and the sun.

      When Mina and I had pleased each other as best we could that first night in the swaying train we lay companionably together side by side upon the narrow bed; I with my acute hearing found some amusement in parts of a conversation that penetrated train noises and thin partitions to reach my ears from a neighboring compartment. The persons talking were a young lady, who I suspect had auburn hair, and a young man who by daylight probably wore blue silk and white stockings in the dining car, and by night evidently served in a more enterprising and lucrative capacity as the lady’s business agent.

      “What is it makes you smile so, Vlad dear? I confess that my own heart is heavy, whilst your life and Jonathan’s remain both in grave danger.”

      “I am pleased that Arthur and Quincey have plans for less destructive work tonight.”

      “Really? What do you mean?”

      Mina was quite interested as I explained. Perhaps because of the nature of our special relationship, she discussed openly with me matters she would have been reluctant to mention to her husband.

      “At least it must distract them from their cruel thoughts of harming you,” she murmured. Then shortly I said it was past time for me to go, if I was to manage to dine on beef blood and to get some rest before the dawn.

      “Now do be careful,” she warned, “especially going atop the moving train.”

      I kissed her hand. “I shall take care. But really, I am no more likely to fall from the train top than you would be to topple over when crossing a level and unmoving floor. And for your sake too it is time I left; for you must rest. The good professor will no doubt come round for his usual report before dawn, or have you brought to him to deliver it.”

      “And what am I to tell him in the morning?”

      “Let it be the same report as before — wind and waves, and the darkness of the hold.”

      The kitchen or galley portion of the voiture-restaurant was not deserted even at that hour. Bakers and scrubbers worked industriously so that the passengers should dine and sup in serenity and plenty on the morrow. But after biding my time at a window I entered in mist-form and abstracted some beef and lambs’ blood —  congealed, but better than nothing — from carcasses kept in a massive icebox toward the rear. Then, hunger appeased and ruddy cheeks preserved for a few hours more, I sought the privacy of my great cowhide trunk.

      Getting into the unpeopled baggage car presented no problem at all. Alas, what with my unusual fatigue, and what would now be called jet-lag, or weariness compounded by changing time zones, getting out again did become a problem. The fact is that I overslept, and woke past dawn, to find with some concern that I could not change my shape to get out of the box.

      I managed to force open the trunk’s lock from inside, and then, exerting all the considerable strength of my fingers, tried to close it again once I had got out, so that it should appear to be normally locked. Some of the train crew came blundering into the car whilst I was thus employed. I tried to take shelter behind some piles of luggage; but the cunning of centuries, if I could in fact lay claim to such, was set at naught by the mere limited geography of the confined space; and in fact I was soon accidentally discovered.

      There began at once an excited argument. Conductor, porters, trainmen of all description seemed to appear from nowhere to press inquiries upon me, in a dozen languages, as to who