Dracula in Love by Karen Essex (14)

I woke up under thick velvet covers in a vast bed. Truly, it was like floating on a sea of feathers. I had no idea where I was. I remembered traveling, my body jostled as I lay on what felt like leather. In my stupor, I had wondered if I had died, and the jostling was from my hearse as it rolled toward my grave. If I was dead, I had pondered, then why did my thoughts rattle on? After that, I floated into a long, dreamless repose.

Now I opened my eyes. The room was dark, though weak autumnal light filtered in through arched windows high on the walls, illuminating the room’s rich aubergine brocade wallpaper. Its color cast a soft violet haze that floated through the bedroom, twinkling the huge diamond-shaped crystals that dropped from two immense, many-tiered silver chandeliers. They were larger than any I had ever seen, things out of a palace or a fairy tale. An imposing, heavily carved wardrobe, which looked as if it had been in place since the early fifteenth century, faced the bed where I lay. Beside it on the wall hung a large bronze shield with an iron French cross at its center, crowned by a gilded fleur-de-lis with a dazzling gemstone in the middle of the petal. Large portraits of nude ladies, odalisques that looked as if an Italian master-Titian, perhaps?-had painted them graced the adjacent wall. A heavy crystal vase of white long-stemmed roses sat on a table at the bedside, their petals tight, but their sweet perfume filling the air, mingling with the aroma of fresh baked bread.

I ran my hands down my body. I was not in my own nightdress but in a pale green gown of fine quality damask silk with a triangular neckline and long, full sleeves that cupped my wrists, draping white lace over my hands to the fingers. I had never seen such a rich garment. I imagined it was something that the queen’s daughters would have worn.

I heard a door open, and it startled me. I pulled the covers to my neck.

“Ah, she is awake.”

It was the voice. His quick footsteps approached the bed, and he soon stood over me. His presence was different this time. He was more solid and real, more like a man-a human-than in all the previous times he had come to me. He looked anchored inside his body, which let me know that I was not dreaming or hallucinating. At least it did not feel that way. Still, his skin was slightly more luminous than that of an average person, and I wondered if it was noticeable enough to attract the attention of those who passed him on the street. He sat next to me and put out his hand, and I put mine into it. His body did not seem to have a temperature. I realize that is difficult to imagine, but while his hand was a perfectly formed male hand, it was neither warm nor cold, but beyond those things. It was concrete, but it had a subtle and peculiar vibratory quality, like the tremor of a violin string.

He put his fingers over my pulse at the wrist, and then leaned into me, inhaling my scent at the neck. I felt little shivers inside me, remembering the dream in which he bit into me and tasted me. But he soon withdrew.

“The medication is still in your blood, but you are recovering well. You are very strong, Mina. Very strong.” His full crimson lips formed a little smile. “Do you like the bed? You have been asleep for two days.”

“I do like it,” I said, my voice crackling with the first words of the day. “It is the most luxurious bed I have ever slept in.”

“It once belonged to Pope Innocent, though he was anything but. Ironic that you are lying in it now.”

“Do you think I am not innocent?” I cannot say that I wasn’t afraid of him; yet there was something between us that made it seem as if we were simply picking up a conversation where we had last left it.

“No, you are innocent, but the pope was not. He knew that he was dying, and he tried to save his life by transfusing the blood of healthy young boys into his sick body. They died, of course, and so did he. If the doctor had given you his blood, you would have died.”

“Is that why you came to me? To save me once again?”

“I came because you called me,” he said.

I was about to dispute this, but I remembered that when I was drifting into unconsciousness, it was he who came into my mind most strongly.

“How do you know that I would have died?” I asked.

“Because I can smell your blood and the blood of the others, including your husband’s, and I can tell by the fragrance which blood will not mix well. It is inexplicable to you, I realize. But if you accept the Gift, you will understand.”

“What Gift?”

“The Gift you have rejected for the better part of a millennium,” he said. “But that is for another day. You are hungry. Your stomach is terribly empty.”

He produced a wide silver tray with wrought handles that was piled with sliced bread, grapes, apricots, oranges, apples, cheeses, and a goblet of red wine, and put it on the bed.

“Wine?” I asked. I wanted a cup of tea.

“Your blood needs its elements. Drink at least some of it.” He sat on the bed next to me. “You must eat now. You will need your strength.”

At that moment, the pungent aroma of the cheeses, the sharp citrus of sliced oranges, and the yeasty smell of the bread overrode both my fear and my curiosity. I wanted to dive into the food like a hungry dock-worker. With great discipline, I picked up a silver knife and spread soft butter across a slice of the warm bread and then daintily cut a piece of dark cheddar cheese. The food tasted exquisite, and I tried to chew slowly, as he was taking in my every move. We sat in silence for a while as I ate my fill and let the wine relax me.

“Where am I?” I finally asked.

“You are in the mansion that I purchased for us in London, the one your fiancé found and helped me to buy,” he said with the slightest touch of a smile. “One does not live for seven hundred years without developing a keen sense of irony.”

I imagined how shocked Jonathan must have been to see my picture in the newspaper with the man who left him to be ravished by his nieces. It almost made me forgive him his violent reaction.

“I am very confused. I do not understand-well, any of this-but I do not even understand how you know me,” I said.

“In this particular life trajectory, you have a very obstinate memory. It is difficult sometimes to remain patient with you.” His eyes turned a chilly blue, and he got up off the bed, turning his back to me. “But then, it always has been so,” he said with an air of resignation. “That is why I am taking you to Ireland. We are going to go to the place where we first met, and then you will begin to remember.”

The Count opened both doors of the heavily carved medieval wardrobe revealing dresses of many colors and fabrics. “I have selected for you clothing for every occasion, but I suggest you dress simply. Ireland is a poor and hostile country. You do not want to appear as a haughty Englishwoman flaunting her wealth.”

“I have no wealth,” I protested. “And I am not going to Ireland!”

“You are wrong on both counts. You will find first that you do, indeed, have wealth and second that you are going to Ireland. Select the things you would like to take on our journey,” he said. “I will have them packed for you. As a courtesy to you, I brought my staff from Paris to run this house. I happen to know that you speak French. We leave this evening for Southampton and we will sail in the morning. I have purchased a small luxury steamer for the trip. Will you please be ready in an hour?”

I see that you are unaccustomed to being told no, I thought but did not say. Something in me wanted to challenge this creature that was both regal and feral.

He read my thoughts as clearly as if I had said them aloud. “Not accustomed to being told no? You have told me no hundreds of times.” His eyes flared bright and angry. I knew that he could easily hurt me-kill me-if he wished. But if he were going to do that, I would prefer that he do it here, rather than on a boat in the middle of the Irish Sea.

“What would happen if I decided not to go?” I asked, trying to test where I stood with him. He had once said he was my servant and my master, but I saw nothing of the servant.

He took two steps back, and I felt the anger he had hurled at me moments before recede. He shrugged. “The choice is yours. The doors to the mansion are open. Walk through them anytime you like.”

His sharp change of tone disarmed me. I could not think of anything to say that would not sound like a schoolgirl fumbling for words.

“I would enjoy watching you dress, but there will be time for that later. I sense that you require some privacy.” He gave me a perfunctory bow. “One hour. Please be ready.” And then he left me alone in the room.

The vessel he had purchased had fifty first-class staterooms designed to transport one hundred people and considerable cargo, but besides the crew, we were the only passengers. I was given my own quarters, luxurious and small. I opened the wardrobe, which smelled of sweet sachet. Everything in my trunk-from undergarments to nightdresses to gowns to jewelry-had already been unpacked and hung or folded with supreme precision and care. French soaps, lotions, and powders populated the drawers of the vanity, and a vase of white lilies sat on its top. I sat on the narrow bed, looking out through the round porthole to sea, and marveling that three days prior, I had been in an asylum being tortured with the water cure. But was this voyage going to prove any less dangerous? I must have been lulled into a shallow sleep by the undulation of the sea when I heard a rap at the cabin door. A steward was delivering a note advising me that dinner would be served at eight.

I had seen renderings in The Woman’s World of elegant, bejeweled ladies with gentlemen in ties and tails, dining in the new transatlantic luxury liners, but I did not know the protocol on this mysterious ship. I selected a simple but graceful gown with a sage-colored organza overdress and a seed-pearl choker, hoping that I had chosen well, and I swept my hair up with long, pearl-dotted pins from a small ivory box on the vanity. I checked my appearance in the mirror and then opened the door to find that the steward waited in the hall to escort me.

The centerpiece of the dining room was an atrium of etched glass surrounded by exquisite plaster crown molding patterned with vine roses. Classical columns held up the lower portions of the paneled ceiling. The room would have seated one hundred at its stately mahogany tables, but we were the only diners. Bowls of fruit and big vases of hothouse violet-blue hydrangeas covered the room’s sideboards. In one corner, a pianist softly played a sonata on a grand piano.

“Do you like the music, or would you prefer to dine in silence?” the Count asked, standing up to greet me as I entered the room. He sat at the head of a table wearing evening clothes, much like those in which I had first seen him on the riverbank.

Another steward rushed over to help me into a chair adjacent to the Count. The steward exchanged a few words with the Count in a language I did not understand, bowed, and hurried away.

“The music is lovely,” I said.

“Chopin. Such talent. A pity that he died so young.”

I was woefully ignorant of serious music, an aspect of my education that Headmistress had ignored. “How did he die?” I asked.

“The doctors thought it was some disease of the lungs, but it was exacerbated by his taste for, shall we say, the wrong sort of woman.” He smiled. “Or rather, their taste for him.”

I had arrived in the dining room with a litany of questions, but the soft light from his luminous face and his incalculable eyes that were devouring me erased them all. I thought of Kate’s advice to be silent so that the words of another might come forth, and I tried to relax, but I felt fidgety under his gaze.

“I knew that the dress would match your eyes, or that your eyes would change their color to match the dress,” he said. “And do not worry. All your questions will be answered in due time. That is why we are making this trip.”

Waiters began to appear with tureens of soup, platters of fish and meat, and bowls of vegetables. Another with a huge gold tasting spoon hanging like a necklace at his chest showed the Count a bottle of wine, which he approved, and when opened, sniffed the cork, and then nodded so that a glass could be poured for me. He ordered the waiters to put everything on the table and retreat to the rear of the room. “I will serve her,” he said. “Tell me what you would like, Mina.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but he put a finger to my lips. “Not that way. Tell me with your thoughts.”

Without looking at the food, I directed my attention by scent to the tureen of turtle soup, whose aroma I recognized from my first dinner at the asylum. “Yes, good,” the Count said, ladling out a small bowlful for me. “What else?”

I relished the aromas of the white fish with wine and capers, the lamb with mint sauce, and the carrots, but rejected the turnips, which I had eaten for so many years at Miss Hadley’s that I had come to abhor them. My repulsion made him laugh, and he signaled for a waiter to take the bowl away. He finished serving the food and sat in his chair with an empty plate in front of him. “Bon appétit,” he said to me.

“You are not eating?” I asked.

“When I am fully living in the body, which I am now, I do feed it, but not tonight,” he said. Seeing my confusion, he added, “I will explain all in time, Mina, but I know your appetites as surely as I know my own, and I know that you are dying to eat but wondering how you might do so politely when your dinner companion is not eating with you. You must forget your training for the moment and enjoy yourself.”

Unlike other times when I seemed to frustrate him, now he seemed utterly amused by me. I obeyed him, taking the first bite of food, and, finding it delicious, I proceeded to eat while he watched.

I finished one glass of wine, which made me more relaxed, even blithe. “You seem to know me exceedingly well, Count, while I know you very little, or at least, I do not remember knowing you, as you say that I do. May I please ask you exactly who and what you are?”

“Exactly? At this moment in time, I am Count Vladimir Drakulya. Some twenty years ago, I reclaimed a Carinthian estate and title in Styria that was rightfully mine through an ancestor. He was given them hundreds of years ago by the King of Hungary and inducted into the Sacred Order of the Dragon for his role in assassinating a certain Turkish sultan. Of course, the ancestor is myself, but you are the only person alive with that knowledge.”

As outrageous as his claim was, he spoke with the sort of certainty that made me believe him. “I feel as if I have entered some sort of magical kingdom,” I said. “Forgive me if I do not know how to respond.”

“Respond any way you like, Mina. I must admit that I have been surprised at the way that you have allowed politeness and formality to suppress your higher nature. But that will change,” he said. “You have entered a magical kingdom, but it is the realm in which you have existed before, the realm in which you belong.”

“Are you speaking of the hallucinations I had as a child?” I asked. “I remember that in one of them, you came to me.”

“Oh yes, and not just once, though that is all that you seem to recall. I have been aware of you since you reentered the earthly plane. It took me some time to find you. You had come back to the place where we first met-the stormy west coast of Ireland-and I took it as an omen from you that you were going to be receptive to me and to all that I have been offering you. Once I found you, I saw that you had been incarnated with powerful gifts and that they frightened you and those around you. That is when I decided to watch over you and protect you. I did not want to wait another lifetime for you to come back to me. I would merely wait for you to grow up. Though you were not, by any means, defenseless, you believed that you were. It amounts to the same thing.”

“But how did you find me? How did you even know that it was me you were looking for? I must have been just a baby.” Some part of me understood that he was telling the truth, but none of it made sense.

“We are physically and psychically attuned, you and I. Everything that exists in this material world also exists on the other side of the veil. On the etheric plane, you and I are eternally united. You have read the philosopher Plato?”

“No,” I said. “I have not read philosophy.”

“You must do so sometime. What he said of the twin souls is not far from accurate. We are twin souls, so to speak. You know this, but it frightens you.”

He poured me another glass of wine. “Drink it,” he said.

I was not accustomed to having more than one small glass, but I liked the soft and careless way it made me feel. I took a long sip and swallowed it. He leaned over toward me, putting his fingers under my chin. He grazed my lips with his nose and then with his own lips, first gently, and then taking them into his mouth and biting them one at a time. He put his big hand around my neck, covering my throat, terrifying me with the power he had to wrap those fingers tight and suffocate me, but exciting me because I knew that he would not do it. There was too much that he wanted from me, and I did not know yet exactly what it was. He kissed me with an open mouth, my lips subsumed by his. His tongue found mine, and he pulled it into his mouth.

As soon as he felt my enthrallment, he pulled away from me so that I was looking into his eyes, and I understood in that moment why he called himself my master. His eyes were intense and fathomless, an eternity of deep blue, like the sea at twilight, and they left me without a will of my own.

“I want you to suck my tongue,” he said. “Taste me.” He put the length of it into my mouth, and I obeyed him, latching on to it. I was surprised at how much it thrilled me, and for a long time, I nursed at his tongue as if I expected it to feed me. His lips and his tongue-and his entire being-hummed with a subtle but indelible current. I felt that I could stay there forever, feeding on his tongue, but he broke it off, pulling back, his hand still on my throat.

“Does that feel familiar?” he asked.

“No, I have never felt anything like that before,” I said, disappointed that he had stopped and wanting more.

I was still catching my breath, yet wanting him back inside my mouth where I could taste him again. What had he tasted like? Salt, iron, spice-like nature itself. But his mood had changed, and I could tell that he was not going to invite me to do it again, at least not now. I could not imagine how to collect myself, which he apparently knew. “Tea will help,” he said, at which point one of the waiters appeared pushing a tea cart.

“I did not hear or see you call for the tea,” I said.

“My staff have been long with me. Their training is rigorous.”

I wanted him to kiss and touch me again, and at the same time I wanted to ask him more questions, when I realized that I had no idea what to call him.

“You may call me whatever you like,” he said, addressing my unspoken words. “In time, I hope that you will call me by the term of endearment that you have always used.”

“And what is that?” I asked.

“You have said it in many languages, but it is always the same.” He put his hand around the back of my head, bringing my ear to his lips. “My love,” he whispered.

“Are you human?” I asked. We were in the ship’s small library, where we retreated after dinner. He gestured for me to take a seat in a big stuffed chair covered in a Turkish carpet.

He shrugged, turning his back to me. He lit a pile of herbs whose smoke filled the air with a heady mixture of flowers, spices, and vanilla. “I know how keen your senses are, Mina. We must feed them a variety of delights,” he said. He poured topaz-tinted brandy into a heavy crystal glass and handed it to me. He sat on the divan opposite me.

“Why do you not want me to sit beside you?” I asked. I thought I was beginning to have inklings of what passed through his mind, as he could read mine, and I knew that he had a purpose in relegating me to the chair.

“I must tell you about myself, but if I am sitting next to you, your scent will overcome me, and then I will overwhelm you, and you will still be ignorant of me and afraid.” He sighed a heavy sigh, stretching his long legs out in front of him.

“I began life as a human. But I have transcended the human condition and am an immortal. At least that is what I believe, as I no longer age, and no one has been able to destroy me. But who or what is truly immortal? I cannot be certain.”

“I want to know everything about you, and about us,” I said. “Have we always known each other?”

“No, not always. Shall I tell you about my life before we met?” he asked.

“Your life before you came to me when I was a child? Or before you took me away from the asylum?”

“My life before we met seven hundred years ago.” He got up and poured a brandy for himself. He put his nose deep into the glass, but he did not taste it. He sat down again.

“I was born in the Pyrenees in the southwest of France in the time of the king known as the Lionheart and into a distant branch of his family. Those were the days of the Crusades to the Holy Land. As a young man, I trained as a warrior, and when I came of age, I entered the service of a French nobleman, the Viscount of Poitou, a relation, who was raising an army to help King Richard reclaim the city of Jerusalem after it fell to the Saracen commander Saladin. The Viscount of Poitou was known for his bravery in battle, and eager young knights and vassals flocked to his cause when he came to recruit us. While King Richard set off for the Holy Land through Sicily, the Viscount of Poitou marched through France and eastward through the Rhineland, the Kingdom of Hungary, the Slavic countries, and on through Greece, recruiting a huge army before we crossed the Hellespont and entered Byzantium.

“In the evenings, by campfire, a time when men love to tell tales of conquest, our leader enthralled us with the story of how he courted and captured a fairy queen and made her his lover and wife. At first, some of us scoffed at him. We had heard old nurses and midwives tell these kinds of tales to charm and frighten us. Yet he convinced us that his story was true. ‘I was hunting in the forest one day,’ he said, ‘when I shot an arrow at a fleeting form. It was a careless, quickly delivered shot, for the deer seemed to come out of nowhere. I shot blindly, and my arrow hit a tree. When I went to retrieve it, the animal was standing beside the arrow, staring at me with insolent eyes. I could not believe the boldness of the creature. It seemed to defy me.’

“The Viscount of Poitou was as intrigued by a challenge as any man alive, and so he nocked another arrow and aimed straight at the deer, which then took off with great alacrity into a thicket.”

The Count smiled at the memory. “Hunting stories captured our young imaginations. I can still see the rapt faces sitting round that fire. I remember it exactly as he told it, for he told it more than once, and always in the same manner. He said, ‘The little beast ran into a part of the forest through which no path had ever been cleared, and I chased it, scrambling through bush and brush, which ripped at my new cloak and angered me, for I have always been proud of the elegance of my costume. Soon I was in a small clearing, which had an eerie, chilly atmosphere, as if the surrounding forest had thus far protected it from both sunlight and human entry. I knew instantly that I had entered an enchanted place. In its midst was an enormous tree with a massive trunk that had bowed over-either by its own weight or by the winds that howled through that part of the country-and now slithered along the ground like a long-snouted dragon. It bore no leaves, and its bark was thick and gnarly like the scales of that reptile. I was out of breath, but I could hear movement, and so I drew my bow and aimed in the direction of the rustling leaves. Suddenly, from out of the thicket came, not the deer but a beautiful naked woman with golden hair so long that it protected her modesty. Her eyes were like none I had ever seen-dark, wild, and green, as if they too were a product of this magical forest.’”

The Count paused. “You can imagine how he had us young men in his thrall.”

“An old woman in the asylum told me the story of magical women who enchanted men,” I said. “I thought she was mad. Yet I have seen you as both wolf and man, and so I must believe you, as you believed the French nobleman.”

He smiled. “Shall I continue?”

“I would like that,” I said.

“The viscount told us in great detail how he and the mysterious woman coupled, first on the forest floor and then in every curve of that serpentine tree, leaving him so fatigued and spent that he fell into a deep sleep. When he awakened, he found himself in his lover’s kingdom, and that is where he learned the history of her tribe.”

The Count stopped speaking. “Are you tired, Mina? Do you want to go to sleep?”

“No, I am not tired,” I said. The room had grown chilly, but I was as eager as a child to hear the rest of the story.

“I do not want to strain your credulity,” he said. I thought he was teasing me, but I could not be sure. He opened a cabinet, producing a thick wool throw, which he put over me. Then he sat down and continued.

“The viscount learned that his fairy lover and her tribe were descendants of the angels who left heaven, but not because they were expelled by God. That, he said, was a lie told by priests. These angels were powerful creators in their own right and enchanted by human life. After observing humans for millennia, they craved all that physical life offered-touch, sound, scent, the heat and desire that comes with the flow of blood through the veins, and the taste of food and of wine. Sensuality is an abstract quality in the spirit realm, so they came to earth to experience all the senses. The angels thought humans to be magnificent creatures, and they longed for their companionship and their adulation. With their power to shift their shapes, the angels made themselves into physical beings and selected humans who were the most likely to give them children. With their superior intelligence and supernatural gifts, they were irresistible to the mortals.

“Now, all this happened thousands of years before man began to record his history. The fairy queen who seduced the viscount was a descendant of those first couplings between angels and humans. She claimed that some of the offspring of the angels were mortals but some were immortal. As with any two creatures mating, the outcome is not guaranteed, no matter how careful one is in the selection of a partner. But the viscount’s wife was an immortal, and from his union with her came three daughters-beautiful, magical creatures-who went to live with their mother’s tribe in Ireland.

“After hearing his story, all the young knights wanted to go on a quest to find immortal lovers, but the viscount explained to us that even if we did find them, some of us would be driven mad and some of us would die. ‘Their bodies emit a strange power,’ he warned. ‘No one can predict its effect on a mortal.’

“Naturally, each of us wanted to prove that we were as strong and virile as the Viscount of Poitou. So full of bravado were we that the more he tried to warn us, the more we desired to journey to these mystical lands and test our manhood.”

“Did you turn around and go looking for the fairy creatures?” I asked. I was anxious to hear more about them, and this time, not from a madwoman.

“As curious as we were, our honor would never permit desertion. The enchanted women would be our reward for our service.

“The viscount assured us that in battle, we had the protection of both the Church and the fairy queen, and so when we faced the enemy, we fought fearlessly-viciously, in fact. We were as close a band of brothers as has ever existed, and it tore us apart when one of us succumbed, either in battle or to one of the epidemics that infiltrated our camps. We began to inquire about special herbs and tonics and spells that we had heard of that would make us invincible; and with these inquiries, we attracted the attention of a sect of warrior monks, who began to reveal to us their mysteries.

“These monks believed that through the daily transubstantiation of wafer and wine into the body and blood of Christ, magical powers were conferred upon them-powers that could be used over our enemies, who were instruments of Satan. ‘We use the very power of Satan to defeat his disciples,’ they claimed. They invited us to take part in a forbidden ceremony, a Requiem Mass, said not for the dead but for our living enemies. We gathered in secret at midnight before the day of battle, and we prayed with great fervor for the souls of our enemies, who we strongly envisioned as already vanquished and dead. At first, it was eerie to imagine the living as dead, and moreover to pray to God to take their souls. But we left these ceremonies elated, and the next day, we fought with uncommon ferocity, slaying greater numbers of our enemies than we thought possible. Whether or not the Black Masses were the reason for our victories, they gave us the faith to go into battle with the certainty that we would win. And win we did. We became a renowned fighting force, and our loyalty to one another grew with every victory.

“As our success grew, so did our ambitions. The monks believed that they had discovered what we were looking for-not just invincibility but immortality. They said that the Christ himself had given us the key when he said, ‘Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.’ These words, as you may know, are from the Gospel of John, and the monks believed in their literal interpretation, that drinking blood was the secret to life everlasting.

“Some of us were appalled at the idea, but at the time, monks were the keepers of all the world’s knowledge and knew things that no one else knew. They said that in ancient times, it was known that the blood housed the soul. Supplicants of warriors and heroes like Theseus and Achilles poured blood into the soil of their graves to give them strength. With this blood, the heroes rose from the dead to fight alongside them in battle. The monks told us other stories to support these ideas: the goddess Athena gave Asclepius the power to heal by giving him the blood of the Gorgon. The Roman gladiators drank the blood of their kill, both animal and human, to absorb the strength of the enemy. The berserkers, the savage warriors of Odin who tore their opponents apart, ripping through their jugulars with bare teeth and eviscerating them without the aid of weaponry, got their power by drinking animal blood. The maenads, the original followers of Dionysus, drank both wine and blood in their rituals, sacrificing animals and sometimes a human in their frenzies. The monks said that blood consumption and blood sacrifice were as old as time, and that was why Jesus made himself a human sacrifice, giving us His blood to drink. They also warned us that drinking the blood of another can cause illness, even death, for blood carries humors both good and bad. But we were men who faced death every day. For us, drinking blood would be just another test of our strength.

“We young men desperately wanted to join the ranks of the eternal heroes. We formed a secret brotherhood and vowed that we would not rest until we discovered the key to immortality. Despite the risks, we began to drink blood as part of our ritual to prepare for battle-the blood of animals, the blood of our enemies-and eventually, we shared our own blood with one another.”

He paused. “You must sleep. Your body is still recovering from the treatment at the asylum, and some of the medication is still in your blood.” He reached his hand out to me. “Please come and sit beside me.”

I did as he requested. He took my hand and put his fingers to the inside of my wrist. “As I thought. Your pulse is not what it should be right now. Your energy centers were weakened by what they did to you.”

“How do you know these things?” I asked, remembering what he had done to my pulse points in my dream, and I felt a hot, crimson flush across my face.

“I was not always a warrior. I have also been a doctor,” he said, placing my hand back in my lap. “And by the way, it was not a dream, Mina.”

I was astonished that he had read my thought so quickly. It was both thrilling and terrifying to be so vulnerable to another. There was nowhere to hide. It was like being perennially naked. “It had to be a dream. It happened in my sleep,” I said.

“It happened in another realm, one in which I have visited you many times. And do not worry. As you grow stronger, you will be able to efficaciously hide your thoughts from me. I do not look forward to that day, but it will come. Now to bed.”

“I do not want to go to bed,” I said. “I want to hear the rest of the story.”

“That will take a very long time,” he said. “I would prefer if you would rest. You will need your strength in Ireland. It is not a kind climate at this time of year.”

I had been listening to the rain beat down on the ship as we sailed. I wanted him to lie next to me so that I could fall asleep safely beside him. “Will you sleep as well?”

“Not tonight,” he said. “Sometimes I sleep for long periods of time, years at a time, and sometimes I do not sleep at all. If I am bored, if I do not admire the ways and customs of an era, if my physical body is wounded or fatigued, I go into a deep sleep, an altered state during which the body is preserved. You would call it hibernation or a very long trance. I have entered this state before when you broke my spirit with your rejection. When I reenter the world, it has inevitably changed.”

“I do not think I can sleep. I will lie awake thinking of you and of all that you have told me,” I said. There was no use in lying to him.

“Then I will put you to sleep myself,” he said.

Before I could object, he swooped me into his arms, carrying me out of the library and down the stairs to my quarters, kissing me lightly on the face and lips along the way. I wrapped my arms around his neck, wishing for the journey to never end, relishing the strange and electric touch of his lips, and marveling at their power to ignite all the small cells of my body.

He opened the door to my cabin. The mysterious staff that had unpacked my things had been inside, lighting low lamps and laying out a satin nightdress. He put me down, standing me in front of the mirror, and he stood behind me. As I watched our reflections, he reached around, unbuttoning the front of my dress and slipping it off my shoulders. He ran his lips along one side of my neck. “The scent of you is as familiar to me as my own.”

I shivered, which I know he felt. Nibbling my ear, he slowly pulled the pearl pins out of my hair until he removed the last of them, and the tresses tumbled down upon my shoulders. He grasped my hair in his hand, tugging so that I could not move my head. “I once told you long ago that you were like a wild horse that I would control by its mane.” I pictured him as he was in my dream, pulling my hair as he bit into my neck. I held my breath, hoping that he would do it again, right now, and resurrect that strange ecstasy.

“You are not strong enough for that, Mina,” he said, reading me. He released my hair, and it fell down my back.

He unlaced my corset and pulled it apart, loosening it, and letting it fall to the floor. I stepped out of the clothes, and he knelt in front of me, sliding his hands up my legs and rolling down my garters. He sat me on the bed while he unlaced my shoes and removed them. Then, one at a time, he slowly glided my stockings down my legs, making all the hair on my body bristle with excitement. With his fingers, he caressed the bottoms of my feet, and then sank his lips into one of the arches, and then the other, and I moaned.

“You have always loved your pleasure, Mina. It is no different this time, despite the armor you have put around yourself.”

Holding my hands, he pulled me up, putting the nightdress over my head and then smoothing it along my body until it fell fluttering at my feet. He swooped me up in his arms again and laid me on the bed.

“There is another way to taste you,” he said. He pulled my gown up and slid his hand up my thigh, parting my legs as it reached my private place. With one fingertip, he separated the lips. “How often have I worshipped at this altar.”

I closed my eyes to enjoy the pleasure, slipping into dreamy arousal.

Do not look away from me.

I opened my eyes again, and he locked them to his. When he looked at me this way, I had no will. Modesty has no place between us. Do you understand?

“I do,” I said. I was his to do with whatever he wished.

Spread your legs wider for me.

I did as he said, and his hands pushed them far apart, while his mouth sucked and tasted me. I wanted to scream with pleasure, but my voice was choked inside me and I could not breathe. My mouth was locked open and my head thrown back as I reached for something I could not name. His tongue snaked its way into me, and it seemed to expand there, electrifying my insides, and then he pulled it out and carpeted the whole of my opening. I felt his lips lock onto my flesh, and he took as much of me as he could inside his mouth, sucking there as I had earlier sucked his tongue. I started to rock with pleasure, just as the sea rocked beneath us, but he grabbed my thighs in his viselike grip so that I could not move at all. I was on the threshold of some kind of ecstasy but afraid that he would bite into me in that most vulnerable of places. I wanted him to do whatever he pleased, for I anticipated that anything he did would bring unimaginable thrills. But I also held the memory of his wolf dog blood-drenched fangs, and it was impossible to know if he would tire of giving pleasure and choose evisceration.

I waited for the shock and pain of his wound, but instead, he pulled away, leaving me panting and desiring him to resume. As much as I was afraid of what he would do to me, I was more afraid for him to stop. The inside of me throbbed with violent contractions, searching for something to hold in its grip.

“Though it would please me to do it, I am not going to taste your blood,” he said. “But I will give you what you want. What do you want?”

He knew exactly what I wanted.

“Yes, but I want to hear the melody of the words as you say it aloud,” he said.

“I want you to fill me up, as you did in my dream,” I said, surprised to hear this request come from my mouth. “I want to feel the whole of you inside me.”

He wasn’t even touching me now. Suddenly, it felt as if he had left the room. Had he disappeared? I looked around. All was dark but for a bluish orb of moonlight coming through the porthole.

“Where are you? Please don’t go away. Please don’t leave me,” I shouted.

“No, not ever,” I said. I could feel him in the room again, even if I could not see him. I was so relieved that he had not left me, but I needed to see him again, to believe that he was real to me and that all this was not a dream.

It’s not a dream, Mina.

If it’s not a dream, then touch me.

I waited. I took a deep breath, but before I could completely exhale, I felt a mad rush of heat, and he was between my legs again, and like some kind of eel or lamprey, he had sucked me into his mouth as if he was consuming all of me. I felt completely electrified, though I recognized that he was not moving but letting me feel the power of his being, the force of his vibration, for that is the only way I can describe it. He was flooding me with some sort of furious energy, like the gods of old who created storms by their whispers. He sent this power straight into the dark cavity of my sex, where it swirled and expanded, and then shot up my spine and into my head. At that moment, both ends of me exploded with staggering pleasure, as if my body had been ripped in half and my skull cracked wide-open, letting in the heavens. For a long moment, I felt nothing but elation.

Welcome home, Mina.

I heard the strum of the rain as it began to fall again on the sea. He pulled the covers over me, and I sailed on the rhythm of the waves into my dreams.

I awakened alone the next morning to dark skies, a turbulent sea, and a chilly cabin. I tried to get out of bed, but the churning waters tossed me right back. I sat up and looked out the porthole when a wave came crashing against the glass with enough velocity to send me on my back again.

I managed to stand up. A mysterious valet had been in my cabin and picked up last night’s discarded clothing and replaced it with a fresh dress, undergarments, stockings, and shoes, which I put on despite the efforts of the sea to knock me off my feet. In a box on the vanity, I found a bracelet made of ten black onyx snakes in figure-eight patterns, inlaid with ivory and diamonds and outlined in gold. The centerpiece was an exquisite angel’s face, which covered a watch face. The time was noon. I put the dial to my ear, listening to the precision of its ticking and imagining my heart beating at the same steady rate.

I am waiting for you.

As soon as I heard his voice, I saw in my mind’s eye the lounge where he sat. I was able to walk directly to it by following some internal navigation that I understood now would always lead me to him. It was a small room with a fire burning. Breakfast and tea were laid out and waiting for me. He stood as I walked into the room. His very presence almost knocked the wind out of me. Light entered the room from small etched-glass windows, emphasizing his effulgent skin and his chiseled face, and last night’s pleasures rushed back to me.

Suddenly, a blinding ray of light shot through the glass, creating strange prisms in the room. In that instant, I saw him, not as he was or as he had been last night, but as a different man in strange surroundings. He was younger, fiercer, and less ethereal, with a thick, dark beard and dress from another time and another place-an ermine-trimmed scarlet cape, a bright white tunic, a red cross slashed across the chest, a low-slung belt of gold. His eyes were a brighter blue, and they stared at me from a face desperate with either rage or love or desire or all those things. Feeling faint, I grabbed onto the doorframe for support, and I closed my eyes. When I opened them again, he was standing in the same place, as if what I had just seen had not happened at all.

“You are famished,” he said. “Sit down and have something to eat.”

The aroma of bacon and of the sugary confections neatly laid out on silver platters overwhelmed me, and I came into the room and loaded a plate with the sweet and savory treats.

“Exposure to my frequency leaves one very hungry,” he said. “You will find that.”

“Frequency?” I asked, spreading cream over a scone, savoring the delicious blend of flavors in my mouth.

“Every being has a frequency, a certain vibration. A scientist would call it electromagnetism. The electromagnetism of my being is greater than that of a mortal. That is why being in my presence, or in the presence of any immortal, depletes one’s own life forces.”

“Is that what happened to Jonathan in Styria?” I asked. As soon as I mentioned his name, my voice started to shake.

“Yes,” he said implacably.

After he had abandoned me to the doctors, I did not want to care about Jonathan. Of course he had had the shock of his life seeing me in the photograph with the Count. And perhaps he believed Seward and thought that by allowing the doctors to treat me, they were curing me. One thing was certain: if not for the Count’s obsession with me, Jonathan would still be the man he was when I met him, and perhaps he and I would have been happy together.

“Jonathan was innocent until you brought him into your world, and now he may never recover,” I said. I chewed a rasher of bacon and waited for him to elaborate on what had happened to Jonathan in Styria, but the Count was silent. Had I really expected this prodigious being to explain himself as if he were an ordinary man?

“He was never innocent,” he said. “He might have left Styria after we concluded our business, but he wanted Ursulina from the moment he saw her. He chose to remain at the castle, just as you chose to stay with me. I invited you to leave my home in London. Instead, you laid out the clothes you selected for the trip and came with me on this voyage.”

I had no rebuttal to this.

“Mina, all of your life, since you were a child, you called out to me in ways that you do not yet acknowledge. I had vowed to reveal myself to you after you reached your twenty-first birthday, but that was when Jonathan Harker appeared; and in a short time, it became obvious that you were determined to marry and settle into a life of convention.”

“I did not call out to you. I was not aware of your existence,” I said.

“You do not call out with your voice but with the hum of your desire. Think of us as musical instruments that vibrate with the same note. A note is struck, and it is heard by the note that must answer it.”

He sighed. “I will try to explain it to you. I was able to involve Harker in my affairs because he desired such a commission. I left him with Ursulina because that is what he wanted. This is what the religious among you call free will. They are accurate about its existence. The doctrine governs all human behavior.”

“Why did you leave him in Styria? Was it to come to me in Whitby?”

“Frankly, I thought that, like most of the humans who succumbed to her, Harker would perish. He is a stronger rival than I anticipated.” He laughed a very bitter, human laugh. “I chartered the Valkyrie to come to you and persuade you to travel with me to London. But the ship’s crew discovered that my cargo contained gold and other priceless treasures. The fools attempted to murder me and steal my belongings. I regret that they did this because I had to kill them while keeping their captain alive long enough to bring the boat to safety but not long enough to tell what he had seen.”

I shuddered remembering the sight of the dead captain tied to his ship, his bloody corpse battered by the rain and the sea.

“I know what you are thinking. You are not responsible for his death, or for the deaths of the crew. Human greed is to blame. I had to come for you, Mina. Your longing was intense. I answered your call. It is against my very being to resist.”

“And the creatures who seduced my husband? Did he call out to them?”

I have already explained this to you.

His impatience with me was the same sort that I sometimes experienced with my students when they refused to grasp the truth.

“Dr. Von Helsinger called them vampire women, the undead-monsters who made themselves immortal by draining the blood of their prey. Is that what they are?” I asked. Is that what you are?

“The creature that he imagines is but a ghoul that represents men’s fears. But the stories of the immortal blood drinkers are not fantasy.”

He must have read my confusion because he continued. “The German doctor misunderstands. It is not the blood draining that weakens and kills the prey but the exposure to our power. My being carries an electrical current similar to that of a lightning rod. You know this because you have felt it. When we interact with the body of a human-call it making love if you wish-even though this current brings great pleasure, it acts as a kind of electrocution. Over time, the mortal’s energy is depleted. Depending upon the weakness of the human, they may either get sick or in extreme cases go mad or die. It is nothing to do with draining the blood, unless one takes too much of it. The men who gave your friend Lucy their blood-did they die? No, they poured pints of their own blood into her but it did not affect them. I have never killed anyone by draining their blood, unless I meant to kill them anyway.”

“Is that what I have done by calling you to me? Have I signed my own death warrant? Will I go mad? Will I die?” I felt locked into my fate with him, but I still feared it.

“You are not like your husband and other mortals. At a juncture of history, the blood of the immortals entered your bloodline, introducing certain powers. Within that blood is the key to immortality, to being able to live within a body but to also exist without it, to walk on both sides of the veil in worlds seen and unseen. They say that at one time, it was a common trait, but over the millennia, humans have lost the ability.”

Jonathan had explained to me the science of how humans evolved with certain traits but not others. “Perhaps, if one is to believe the theories of Mr. Darwin, the trait was not advantageous to humankind,” I said.

“I have spent centuries studying science, medicine, philosophy, metaphysics, and the occult. I believe that it is a natural step in the evolutionary process, a step toward the merging of the mortal and the immortal. Eventually, the veil between the worlds will shatter. The warrior monks believed that Jesus was trying to teach this when He rose from the dead and ascended into the unseen world. But the knowledge was buried by the Church, which wanted power over its members and so kept true knowledge from them.”

Everything you are saying is against everything I have been taught to believe.

“You should have no trouble believing. You and others like you have a seventh sense, something beyond telepathy. Within you is the ability to fully integrate the body with eternal consciousness, to fuse flesh with spirit. If you do not embrace your gifts, they will forever be a plague to you, Mina. And I do mean forever.”