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

on Castle Dracula and its dread lord: “Oh, it did me good to see the way that these brave men worked. How can women help loving men when they are so earnest, so true, and so brave! And, too, it made me think of the wonderful power of money!” That is my girl, as they say, in a nutshell.

      On October thirtieth the three-pronged drive of my enemies was launched. Van Helsing took Mina by train to Veresti, where the professor planned to buy a carriage and press on to the Borgo Pass. Jonathan and Arthur, the latter an amateur steamfitter of some standing, to judge by the skill with which he effected several repairs en route, started chugging up the Sereth. In two days they reached the Bistrita, meanwhile receiving from the river folk occasional reports of the Slovaks’ boat that was carrying my box ahead of them. Quincey Morris and Seward meanwhile had rather a dull ride of it, trotting across country with no real excitement until they joined forces with the river-borne party near the end … or what they all took to be the end.

      Van Helsing’s journey with Mina was somewhat more lively, though nowhere near as eventful as it would have been if I had been as intent on his destruction as he imagined. The professor recorded in his diary that their carriage “got to the Borgo Pass just after sunrise” on the morning of November third. The several closely following entries are rather muddled and probably unreliable, for he records that they did not come near the castle itself until the sun was “low down” on the afternoon of the following day. This would seem to mean that nearly two full days of driving were needed to cover a distance which I as coachman traversed in a couple of hours with Harker as my passenger, on a night when I did some deliberate doubling back and made frequent stops looking for treasure. Perhaps the professor and Mina — both of them by now, for different reasons, in peculiar psychological states — actually dozed in their seats through many of the daylight hours, whilst the horses stood idle, or sought their own path among the few available.

      This daylight-dozing theory may be strengthened by Van Helsing’s statement that he was awake most of the night of November third to fourth to keep a fire going. Mina seemed to have given up eating, he wrote, “and I like it not.” During the night he several times nodded into slumber, each time awakening to discover her “lying quiet, but awake, and looking at me with so bright eyes.” At the same time she was in general “so bright and tender and thoughtful” that his fears were somewhat allayed.

      Still, by the night of November fourth to fifth, he again “began to fear that the fatal spell of the place was upon her, tainted as she is with vampire baptism,” And now Castle Dracula was indubitably in sight, even in reasonable hiking distance, and he set up a sort of base camp.

      Mina still professed not to be hungry, and — though she really made little effort to do so — apparently could not cross a circle of crumbled host that she watched him make around her. This, he told Mina, was for her own protection. Van Helsing himself of course was armored by all his usual freight of herbs and religious paraphernalia.

      After dark the horses screamed, and amid snow flurries the three women of the castle appeared, taking form slowly in the outer reaches of the firelight. From Harker’s descriptions Van Helsing “knew the swaying round forms, the bright hard eyes, the white teeth, the ruddy color, the voluptuous lips …” For some reason voluptuous was a favorite word of the professor.

      Alas for Anna, Wanda, and Melisse. I had warned them against touching any of the expected “English,” and now, too late, they were being obedient to the letter of my orders. But still of course they must go out and gibber at Van Helsing in the night, and drink his horses’ blood, and call to Mina to come and join them as a sister. Perhaps they thought to send Van Helsing screaming in panic and fleeing like a peasant down the mountainside, rushing over a precipice in blind terror. They did not know his name, of course. I had not told them that …

      They were disobedient subjects, not once but again and again. In the old days such behavior would quite likely have brought them to the wooden stake whilst they still breathed … has it occurred to you that impalement is the one punishment equally enforceable upon a vampire and a breathing man or woman? Some say now that I was known as Vlad the Impaler whilst I still breathed. Bah, to be remembered for mere gory butchery, no matter how just or necessary, and to have all guiding purpose and ideals forgotten …

      Never mind. I had tolerated far too long the three women’s disobedience, which had then culminated in treachery to me and assaults upon the innocent. Certainly if things were to fall out so that Mina had to join me at the castle at once, I did not want those three around to spit with jealousy and bother her.

      Seward at dawn on November fifth “saw the body of Szgany … dashing away from the river with their leiter wagon. They surrounded it in a cluster, and hurried along as though beset.” This was indeed Tatra and some of his most faithful men, who, according to my orders, had taken the box unopened from the boat and were rushing it toward the castle. By this time Jonathan and Arthur had seen their vessel suffer its final breakdown, had somehow commandeered horses, and were riding in pursuit as well.

      Meanwhile I had returned to Castle Dracula from my errand of duty with the unfortunate peasant, arriving just before dawn; and now, congealed in man-shape by the morning light, I squinted