Mina Part 18

The iron gate was open, the outside door ajar. She barred it as she entered, then found Gance in the solarium, a gla.s.s of wine in his hand, a second poured and waiting for her. She said nothing, not even a single word of greeting. Instead, she took off her bonnet, her cloak, and began unb.u.t.toning the high neck of the blouse she wore.

l understood why I had to treat him that way, she wrote in her journal that night. I needed to make it clear to myself even more than to him that he was not my friend, not even my lover, but a creature to whom I came to to satisfy my basest needs, as I satisfied his. I could live with my conscience then, the way Lucy might have lived with what remained of hers had she continued to feed but not kill.

My remote behaviour confused him. I saw him watching me undress, waiting for me to smile or even be so silly as to giggle nervously. I did none of that, not even when I walked toward him, watching his eyes move over my sunlit body.

Finally, when I was close enough to touch him, I reached instead for my gla.s.s.

We coupled on the French divan, among the drooping palms and heavy-scented gardenias. The sun had warmed the room, and soon there was a sheen of sweat on his body, a musky undertone to the colognes we wore. At the end, when I was almost beyond sated and he close to his final release, I straddled him. He lay with his arms limp at his side, his head tilted back against the pillows. And in the sunlight I could see the vein in his neck pounding. Was it my imagination that it seemed so blue, his pulse so strong and quick? No matter. Pa.s.sion released my control. In the instant I felt his body tense, his hips thrust upward to meet me, I lowered my head and placed my lips over the pulsing vein, sucked in a fold of skin and bit.

Salty, yet sweet. I have tasted my own blood, sucked from small wounds to cleanse them, yet that blood was nothing like this. It was as if I tasted his pa.s.sion and made it one with mine.

I had expected him to recoil. Instead his own pa.s.sion increased, and he held his hands against the back of my head as Dracula had, holding my lips to the wound so I could not help but drink. We exploded together and I pulled back. With his blood dripping from my lips, I began riding him, feeling his blood move through me as his s.e.m.e.n moved through my womb-both the essence of life itself.

What must death feel like? Do vampires kill because they cannot die?

She looked down at the words she had just written and saw that her usually neat shorthand ended in a hideous, almost illegible, scrawl. She slammed the journal shut, not caring that the ink had not dried, and placed it back in its hiding place.

Why had she put those last words on paper? Why had she thought of them at all?

She put her hands to her face and inhaled deeply, but an act intended to calm her only made her more distressed. She smelled Gance's cologne, his body. She licked her skin and tasted his sweat. She stripped quickly and took a hot bath, scrubbing her skin until it was sc.r.a.ped and red and smelled only of violet soap.

Gance had remained at the house. That afternoon he also bathed, in the footed tub before the lace-covered windows, examining the bite Mina had left on his neck in his shaving mirror. The timing of her bite had been perfect. At that moment of pa.s.sion he had never felt the pain. Indeed, he might not have noticed it at all had he not seen her face as she pulled away, the hunger with which she looked at the blood leaking slowly from the cut and the terror when she saw that he was watching her.

It's high collars for a while, he thought. He might have dismissed the act as nothing more than an extreme of pa.s.sion had it not been for Arthur's drunken tale. He could picture Arthur believing anything while under the influence of alcohol or the suggestions of a superior mind, but Mina was more intelligent, and far more levelheaded.

And such a surprise. He had not thought of her as someone of such intense s.e.xual needs, indeed had not thought she would accept his offer at all. But she had intrigued him and that was enough.

Now, she intrigued him even more. As soon as he was dressed, he made his way to the train station, sent a wire to William Graves and caught the next express to London.

He dined with the diplomat at a quiet table in the rear of Tyburn Pub. Graves seemed pleased with his company, even more when Gance picked up the bill and ordered them a second round of absinthe drips and dessert."Did the woman I referred to you ever make an appointment?" Gance asked.

"Oh, yes. She seemed very determined and a little nervous. Odd, since she said that the book was nothing more than fiction."

"Did you do the translation?"

Graves shook his head. "I couldn't. I referred her to a Romanian I once knew, though I did not have his address. She apparently hired someone else but not before she contacted Ion Sebescue. Recently, his son came to see me and asked about the book."

Graves sipped his drink, commented on its excellence, then went on in a low, conspiratorial tone. "Did you ever meet anyone who you thought was truly lethal?"

Gance laughed. "Daily, William. You lead a sheltered life."

"And you should choose your friends with more care," Graves retorted. "James Sebescue is a dangerous man. When we talked, I felt that he was weighing the consequences of killing me after we'd finished. I became so certain of it that I walked him into the outer office while we concluded our meeting. Later, I decided that I might be reacting to the intensity with which he had spoken.

And yet I'm sorry I gave him any a.s.sistance at all. Now ... well, I try to remind myself that I don't really know what's in the journal, so there is no reason to harm me."

"I suppose," Gance agreed, then added wickedly, "unless he means to harm the translator or the journal's owner, in which case he may want to dispose of anyone who could link him to the crime. Did you give him my friend's name?"

"He never asked, and I certainly didn't volunteer the information. But the young woman can rest easy. You see, he referred to her a number of times as Mrs. Beason."

"Ah!" Gance responded, with only a fleeting pause. "Where else do you think my friend might have found someone to do the work?"

"The consulates, though I think I would have heard mention of it if she had. The museum is an even more likely place. I'm surprised I didn't think of it when she came to me."

After Graves left, Gance sat alone at the table and considered his next step. Though he intended to warn the women, he likewise wanted to learn more about what the journal contained. Arthur's ravings had been helpful. Quincey Morris, whom he'd met when Arthur brought him round to the Marlborough Club for drinks, was dead. Jonathan ... No, it was best to keep well away from the husband.

And then there was Seward. Gance hated the man-his petty superiority, as if he had some monopoly on the human mind, his supercilious manners, his arrogant temperance. No, it would be better to find the translator, he decided. He paid the bill and left.

The night was beautiful, warmer than February ought to be. The breezes gave hints of the spring soon to come. He breathed in the damp air and started back toward his house on Carlton.

It had rained that afternoon, and the streets were still dotted with puddles. As he traveled through them, he had a strange floating sensation, as if, like Jesus, he walked on water.

A woman sitting on a bench near the roadway looked up at him. He thought at first that she had lost her way, until she let the shawl drop from one shoulder to reveal the plunging neckline of her dress. He looked closer, wondering what tart would have the gall to solicit in the shadow of Buckingham Palace. As he moved toward her, he smelled the liquor on her breath, saw the insanity in her glazed eyes. And her age-her lined face, the thin skin on her fingers, the spots on her hands.

A crone could be tolerated but not a woman who was almost beautiful. He recoiled, ignoring her harsh laughter, the mad taunts that followed him as he walked quickly away.

EIGHTEEN

I

Anton Ujvari was used to shadows. In the corners of the museum rooms where he worked. On the streets he traveled on his way home at night. In the doorway of his house. He had always welcomed them, and the mystery they held. Not any longer. The journal was the source of his fear-that and the myths he had learned as a child.

Before he began the translation for Mina Harker, Ujvari had carefully copied the picture on the old Hungarian coin. He'd softened the lines of the young countess's face, given texture to the hair. She had been so beautiful, and her disappearance such a mystery.

His own mother was only a vague memory from his youth, but the memory he had of her was of someone who resembled the countess. They had the same nose and jaw. And they had both disappeared without a trace.

Someone loved them, he thought, for he was a romantic, and the aged, taciturn father who had raised him had instilled only fear in him. For years after he had run away to England, he waited for the man to reappear and drag him back to Romania, as if he were still a little boy needing to hide.

Three days after he had begun the translation, Ujvari pleaded illness and took a leave from the museum. This doc.u.ment, certainly not from the countess herself, was so strange, so darkly sensual, that he did not want to stop the work until he was done.

He translated in longhand, stopping after the first dozen pages to copy the account on a typewriter. Though they had not discussed the matter, it occurred to Ujvari that his employer might wish to see the first pages of the doc.u.ment as soon as possible, so he made a carbon copy of the work. When he'd finished the first third of the journal, he began to have difficulties with the language. He wrote Mrs. Harker a quick note, sent it and the first pages of the translation off to her and returned to work.

With no dictionary to help him, he went through the translated books and doc.u.ments, trying to find a similar dialect that he could use as a reference for some of the words. There was nothing, so he went into the storage rooms where uncataloged material from the region was kept. There, among the mummified cats, worn Roman coins, dusty sc.r.a.ps of medieval tapestries, and other paltry treasures, he found a box of letters from the Hungarian empire, they and their translations alike musty and crumbling from years of neglect.

Most were worthless save to the detail-oriented scholar. Many were doc.u.ments of the Habsburg bureaucracy; a few were personal letters written in Hungarian. None were as interesting as the doc.u.ment on which Ujvari worked, though one was in a similar hand.

Thinking he might have discovered something else by the person who had translated the countess's journal---or created a fict.i.tious one, he reminded himself-he pressed the page between two panes of gla.s.s and took it to his well-lit desk.

Though the doc.u.ment was not dated, the quality of the paper and the ink used indicated something far older than the few decades of the journal he worked on. In spite of this, the handwriting was nearly identical. The language, however, was Hungarian---dated, but perfect. With the doc.u.ment close to the light, he had no trouble reading what remained of it.

... I do not like it here in Vienna. It is pretty, but too many people seem to mar the beauty of the days, too many lights hide the splendor of the night stars. And there have been too many heartbreaks. I am sorry I am such a disappointment to you, but no one is more disappointed than I. Mama tries to look cheerful, but both of us are ready to come home.

The sc.r.a.p grew more ragged, the edges of lines missing. I will do whatever you wish, though in truth I would hope ... to wait for ... understand that? Did you not love Mother that way once?

Forgive me. I will do as you ask . . . Breaks in the final sentences, then the closure ... to understand. Your obedient daughter, Kar ...

Ujvari looked from the faded letter to the journal Mrs. Harker had left with him. Could someone have duplicated the countess's handwriting in an attempt to prove that the original journal had really been written by her? Would it not have been easier to duplicate only the first few pages of the journal in her hand? To continue the charade for the entire journal where the quality of the paper was so modern seemed odd. And yet, he had heard of cases in which forgers could easily continue in any script.

More importantly, he could think of no reason for anyone to bother. The young countess's story was known to only a few scholars. A forgery would have no value.

Unless the journal was not a forgery but the countess's own writing. What if one of these creatures had captured the young countess and had twisted her childish rebelliousness into something dark and sinister?

This notion, the twisted logic of it and his willingness to believe it, upset all Ujvari's a.s.sumptions about life and death and his own past. Yes, he knew the legends, had shaken with fear as the stories were told. But he had been a child then, hanging on his stern father's every word. He was older now, and laughed at the superst.i.tions of his native land.

Not anymore.

He had not thought his enthusiasm for this project could increase until now. He returned to his translation, determined to remain at his desk until the museum closed, and to finish the entire work by the end of the week if possible.

The bright lamps on his desk barely touched the darkness of the huge room in which he worked. He went on, heedless of the scurrying of mice in the walls, the distant footsteps of the night watchman making his rounds in the public halls, and the soft, steady breathing from the depths of the shadows, the eyes watching him as intently as he did the faded script.

A guard came around at closing time to tell Ujvari to go. With a sigh of impatience, Ujvari packed up the ma.n.u.script and his translation. As he reached for his coat, the old man stepped from the shadows near the door and walked toward the pool of light thrown by Ujvari's desk lamp.

"This is not an exhibit area," Ujvari commented more harshly than was polite.

"A word with you please," the man responded.

Ujvari shuddered. The man was Romanian, the voice too much like his father's. Could they have met before? "Speak quickly.

The museum is closing and I have an appointment."

"Appointment. Perhaps with Mrs. Beason?"

"Beason?" Ujvari looked at the man more closely. He had met him before, perhaps at the Orthodox Church soon after he'd come to London.

"The woman for whom you work."

"I work here, nowhere else." Ujvari circled the man and walked toward the doors to the exhibit area.

"You work on the journal of the Countess Karina, the vampir."

Ujvari did not look back.

"I want that book!" the man called. "Give it to me! Your soul depends on it!"

Ujvari continued on. Outside the door, he spoke a few words to a museum guard and, certain the old man would be led away, continued out. All along he had been cautious, some sixth sense warning him that danger approached. Now he understood why.

His countrymen believed. Even here they believed.

And they knew all too well how to deal with the vampir.

The following afternoon, as Ujvari left for lunch, a guard called him over to introduce him to a gentleman who had just asked for him. "You're getting to be a popular one," the guard whispered to him good-naturedly. "First the young woman, then that old man prying into your affairs yesterday, and now a real gent. Talk to this one, why don't you?"

The sight of Lord Gance made Ujvari somewhat nervous. The cadaverous frame, the pale skin, the light gray eyes whose pupils seemed so sharp as to be piercing made him think too uncomfortably of the creatures whose lives the countess had exposed so unpleasantly.

But the name was familiar, and Ujvari had met Gance at a museum function two years before. Satisfied, Ujvari introduced himself.

Gance offered to buy Ujvari a meal, but the man refused it and took him into his workroom instead. The deserted room was an even better place for the business Gance wanted to discuss. Since Ujvari had said nothing, and appeared most anxious to leave, Gance went right to the point. "Some weeks ago, a woman hired you to do a translation. I came to ask how you are proceeding."

Ujvari stared at Gance a moment then replied carefully, "if someone did hire me, the matter would be between us."

"The woman is a relation of mine. The family is quite concerned about her. You see, it seems that she has been under some delusion about ... d.a.m.n, it is so very hard to admit this . . . about some sort of demons. Her husband fears that she may need psychological help."

Ujvari eyed him coldly, saying nothing.

"Her name is Winifred Beason," Gance went on. "Her husband is Emory Beason of Exeter. The pages you are translating are handwritten, somewhat old. What else do I have to tell you to convince you that I know quite well what you are working so diligently on?"

Ujvari did not look at him. Gance's guesses were correct. Gance sat in a chair on the other side of Ujvari's desk. With another man, Gance might have lounged, or not sat at all. Now with his back rigid, his hands folded in front of him, he looked at Ujvari with the proper blend of pride and supplication, waiting for the moment when his adversary would weaken.

Ujvari's implacable expression softened for a moment. When it did, Gance spoke the discreet temptation. "The family is willing to pay twenty pounds if I am allowed to read a copy of the book that is obsessing her."The book is fiction, Ujvari thought, denying everything he had come to believe. It can be nothing more than fiction. Nonetheless, the old man who'd spoken to him yesterday had seemed obsessed with obtaining it. Now Gance offered him as much as he made in a year for what would require nothing more than a few hours' work. If he looked too closely at the motive behind the offer, he would never be able to accept it. "I'll allow you only to read it," he said. "I don't have the work here, but if you meet me later tonight, I'll bring it."

Or change his mind. Nonetheless, Gance had no choice. They agreed to meet at a coffee house near the museum. Afterward, Gance pa.s.sed the hours touring the Egyptian exhibits, looking at the ornate jewelry on their velvet pillows in the gla.s.s display cases.

He was wealthy enough to buy a copy of anything he saw. What he could not purchase was the sense of history these inanimate objects held. And the mummies, so carefully preserved so many centuries ago, had the same feel of tragic antiquity.

A small girl and boy were touring the exhibits with their nanny, staring at the linen-wrapped forms, making jokes about the bodies inside. They were scarcely six years old, how could they understand death? Gance did. At forty-one, he had begun to see his future clearly, and all the young women with their innocence begging to be lost could not postpone his fate.

It was dark when Gance left the museum, and an annoying drizzle dampened his hair and wool outercoat. By the time he reached his house in Mayfair, his coat weighed heavily on his back, and the early spring damp seemed to have chilled even his bones. He stood by the hearth in his wood-paneled den, thinking of Mina, the mark she had made on his neck, and of eternity, and of blood.

Gance arrived at the coffee house a little before the appointed time, ordered the darkest roast and waited. He had expected Ujvari to be late-wrestling with a conscience was always time-consuming work-but as the first hour pa.s.sed, he began to wonder if the translator had changed his mind. Finally, he paid his bill and left.

"Mr. Ujvari did not come to work today," a museum guard told Gance when he arrived there the following morning. "He was recently ill. I suppose he's having another bad spell."

Gance wasn't so certain. He left and returned later in the morning, working his way to the back of the exhibits. When he was briefly alone, he disappeared into the storage area, and through it to the room where Ujvari worked. Cold and silent, the room offered no sign that anyone had been there that day. Gance stopped at the museum office, but no amount of persuasion, including monetary, allowed him to obtain Ujvari's home address.

The next morning, he considered Graves's troubling information and, respecting Mina's apparent wishes in the matter, mailed a note to her via Winnie Beason at the children's hospital, detailing everything he had heard during what he termed his "chance encounter" with William Graves. Duty done, he settled into his London house, intending to visit the museum each day until Ujvari returned.

II

The days had lengthened enough that it was still light when Winnie Beason and her ward, Margaret, left the hospital. They took a cab to the center of town, where Margaret left to run an errand. On the way home, Winnie stopped briefly at Mina's to discuss the fund drive and to deliver a letter that had come to her at the hospital. As the cab dropped her off at home, Winnie noticed her front door partly open. Mr. Beason was not expected for another hour, but as his plans sometimes changed, she was hardly concerned.