Mina Part 20

"I've done nothing. I wasn't even in London until tonight."

"And Ujvari has been dead for some time. But he is dead because of you." Mina stiffened, but Gance went on. "My reputation can survive a link to this murder. Yours is, forgive me, my dear, expendable. But your husband's . . ." He left the thought unfinished, but Mina understood. Solicitors had to be above reproach.

She waited in the carriage, her eyes fixed on the path until he returned from his search of the cottage, the agreement and some letters clutched in his hand, along with the cover of the leather-bound journal that he had found in the stove. It was over. She would never know what had been written in the book now.

"Did anyone come by?" Gance asked his driver. "Someone did while you and the lady were at the house. A homeless old beggar from the looks of him. I gave him a few coins and he went on." He pointed in the direction the man had gone.

"Go the other way," Gance ordered. "And put Byron up front with you. He's far too muddy for the back."

As soon as Gance sat beside her, Mina buried her face against the thick sable collar of his coat. He held her tightly as they rode away, and scanned the fog through the open window, noting with relief the glow rising through the mists behind them. By the time they reached his house in St. James, Mina's tears had stopped, but her face still showed grief, and the terrible depth of her guilt.

Whatever impression Gance's house might have made on Mina was lost by the evening's shock. She scarcely noticed the magnificent brick mansion with its tall white marble pillars. She did not comment on the drawing room with its Parisian upholstered settees in rococo shades of plum and gray and teal, or the ta.s.seled pillows scattered across the floor. She paid no attention to the black walls with their patterned stripes in red and green, the oriental lacquer desk with its carved dragon and peac.o.c.k designs or the huge water pipe from India already filled with opium that Gance had purchased to help prompt her confession. Instead, she sat on the edge of one of the padded divans, her back stiff, her hands clasped firmly together in her lap.

Gance rang for his butler, who joined them quickly. Though the man wore a dressing gown instead of a uniform, he listened attentively to Gance's whispered instructions and disappeared to get a carafe of brandy, a warming stand and two gla.s.ses.

Gance prepared the drinks himself. After handing one to Mina, he stood behind her, kneading his fingers into her tense shoulders while she drank it. He poured her another. "You should get out of those damp clothes and into a hot bath," he suggested.

"I'm leaving in the morning. I am going home and telling Jonathan everything that's happened. I've been keeping so many secrets.

Gance, I think it's time to confess."

"Start with me," he said softly. "Tell me why Arthur drinks so excessively and raves in his sleep. Tell me why that man's body was mutilated so gruesomely. Tell me about this." He touched his collar above the place where she had bitten him. "After tonight I deserve an answer, don't you think?"

"You won't believe it," she said.

"After what I saw tonight, I'm prepared to believe anything." He'd tried to be witty, she knew, but his words only brought back the memory of Ujvari's bloated body. "Come on," he added after a moment. "Bathe while we talk."

"Very well," she said wearily. She pulled the first pages of the translation from her bag then followed him upstairs. He helped her with the hooks down the back of her blouse then let her undress. She did not ask him to leave the room, nor did he volunteer to do so. They had mated, and the sight of each other's bodies was natural now. While she undressed, he read the pages she gave him.

Then he followed her into the bathroom.

As she soaked in the ornate porcelain tub with its gently sloping back, she told him about Lucy and Van Helsing and their desperate chase across the Continent. She told him too about how she found the book Ujvari had been translating. Sometime during her account, he left her, and returned stripped of his tie and vest and carrying the water pipe. He set the pipe the edge of the bath, and took an occasional pull as he listened to her. He offered it to her three times before she took it.

As he promised, the drug moved through her, relaxing her through the terrible revelations of her dark pa.s.sion for Dracula-of how he had fed on her and forced her to share his blood as well. "Now his life is within me like some caged animal, demanding release. You are a part of that, Gance. I'm sorry. If what I did to you repulsed you . . ."

"Repulsed!" He unb.u.t.toned his collar to show her the purple bruise and the bite still red at its center. "Mina, this mark I hide so diligently is hardly the worst wound a woman has inflicted on me in a moment of pa.s.sion. If you like I can show you the place where a usually sensible woman . . ."

"Gance, don't make light of this. It's far more serious than I've let on." The room seemed to move around her, in a languid spiral with her and Gance at the center. She took his hand and rested it on her cheek. "I think this will be our last night together and not a good one. And yet, if I dared . . ." Her voice trailed off; she had said too much.

If she dared what? To stay with Gance openly? To flaunt all tradition, all accepted social norms? She felt perverse, unclean even at the thought of it. And yet? Her hand brushed her forehead where the host had marked her. Realizing what she was doing, she pulled her hand away and splashed it into the warm water.

"Mina, don't fear that pa.s.sion. Let it go. See how far it carries you," Gance said. He helped her out of the tub, took a large towel and dried her thoroughly. When he'd finished, he lit the pipe and pa.s.sed the stem to her.

"I can't lose control, Gance. I could kill you the way Dracula killed poor Lucy and so many others over his centuries of existence."

"I don't believe that." He rummaged in the washstand drawer and pulled out a razor. He opened it and deliberately made a cut over the mark already on his neck before handing it to her. "I even trust you with this."

She looked at the blade. The few drops of blood on its tip shone in the dim lamplight, more precious to her than any gems he might have offered her. "You must not do this," she whispered. The room was spinning faster. Her voice seemed too soft, too uncertain, while inside her someone unseen laughed at her fear. She saw Ujvari's face as it had been in the cafe, alive and intense, and as it had been in the river, white with milky open eyes.

Life! The creature inside her, aroused by the sight and scent of blood, was loose and howling for it.

"Come with me," Gance whispered. "Come to bed. Bring the razor, put it on the bed table. If you have the urge to kill, all you have to do is reach for it. I know you, Mina, better perhaps than you know yourself. You wouldn't harm me, or anyone. It isn't your nature." As he spoke, he moved closer to her, a hand reaching out to brush the tip of her bare breast.

"No!" She backed away until she reached the wall. "Get away from me!" she screamed, the blade held high. "Get away!"

He disobeyed. His fingers moved lightly over her cheek, her neck, her shoulder. He reached for her hand, saying softly as he did, "Come, Mina. Come with me."

"No! Not tonight. Not like this!" She slashed down, cutting his palm. Instead of retreating, he turned it toward her, the blood dripping from the cut onto the floor. She stared at it, then forced her gaze upward toward his face. She stopped to focus on the small trickle of blood from the cut on his neck. She fell on her knees before him and pressed his wounded palm to her open mouth, moving her tongue furiously over it.

Gance had only expected her to want a taste. This terrible craving to devour was something unimaginable. "Mina!" he exclaimed, a hint of panic in his voice.

She raised her head. Her lips were covered with his blood, her cheeks and chin smeared with it. One hand had a white-knuckled grip on the razor. Her body shook with an emotion far more potent than fear. He knew it well, for he was an expert at arousing desire.

"This is what I've become," she moaned and flung the razor across the room. "Do you still trust me, Gance?"

He stared at her face a moment then decided to follow the instinct that had always served him so well. He held his wounded hand in front of her, and with the other pulled Mina to her feet. "I do," he said. "Now, come with me."

He led her into the bedroom. As her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, they focused on the bed, with its mother-of-pearl inlaid tiles and carved dragon posts. He took her past it, to the fireplace, where the first of the logs had already burned to embers.

He threw another onto them. Its bark blazed, sending a soft yellow light through the room.

Without letting go of her arm, he pulled a chair from the shadows to the front of the hearth. At first she thought it was nothing more than an oddly designed settee. Then she noted that it had handles rather than arms rising from its side, and a pair of stirrups mounted in its elaborately carved paint-and-gilt frame. A flush spread over her face as he led her toward it. "Gance, is this . . ."

"Silence!" he ordered, holding up the hand that she had wounded. She glimpsed the blood on his palm. Without a word, he pointed to the base, padded like the seat and back, then to a second pair of bra.s.s fittings that would keep the partner's feet from slipping backward. He placed her on the seat, arranged her feet in the stirrups and wrapped her fingers around on the handles. The one he had grabbed to pull the chair forward had blood on it from his cut. Mina's eyes focused on it. She thought of ritual defloweration, of blood-coated ritual phalluses.

"Gance," she whispered again, and his hand pressed against her lips-feeding her, silencing her. The cut seeped blood into her mouth as he fell on his knees in front of her, his free hand and his lips seeking her. With a moan, she relaxed. He had given himself to her completely. He could do whatever he wished.

Later, as he pounded against her from below, with a rhythm so strong and deep that it brought both pleasure and pain, she began to suck on the wound, blood mingling with pa.s.sion as it had so many times before, with her doomed immortal lover. When they had finished, they moved to the bed. She looked at his body against the brown satin sheets, pale as the vampire's had been against the darkness of his clothing and the night, pale as Ujvari's had been against the muddy water of the Thames.

As she rolled on her side for still another embrace, she saw that somehow during the night he'd retrieved the razor she'd thrown away and set it on the bedside table. "Gance, you mustn't," she said, but made no move to stop him as he lifted the blade, made a cut on her chest and pressed his lips against it to drink.

"I take what I give," he said and raised his head to kiss her, not surprised to feel a renewed pa.s.sion in her response.

As Gance slept beside her, Mina licked her lips and tasted his blood. She inhaled and smelled his blood. Sleep would bring no rest tonight, at least not yet.

She put on her chemise, lit a candle and went downstairs to the drawing room. She recalled a small electric lamp, but with the darkness dispelled only by the flickering candlelight, she could not find it. She pulled the chain for the chandelier instead, and the room was bathed in more light than would leak in through such heavy curtains by day. She blinked from the sudden glare. As she did, something moved in the corner. She gave a small, stifled cry then saw that it was her own reflection in a gilt-edged cheval screen. Moving closer, she saw the smear of blood across her cheek, another on her chest. Her eyes were bright, her body flushed with lingering excitement.

She searched the corners until she found her bag. From it, she removed the little journal and a pen. The chandelier, with its blaze of electric lit crystal, was too revealing for her work, so she switched on a small desk light, turned out the others and, embraced by the shadows around her, wrote a detailed account of every act she had committed with Gance that night. She used his name in this account. She would hide no longer.

I wondered often how it was that Gance and I came to be naked in one another's arms while someone had died because of me.

All the horror of the day seemed to vanish when he came toward me, she wrote. Yet through every act of pa.s.sion, I thought of the young man who had spoken so touchingly of the Countess Aliczni, and I hoped that at some time before he died, he felt such wondrous ecstasy. I thought that if he had died in grace and G.o.d was just, He would let him feel through my body the magnificence of a skilled touch, an unrestrained response. I offered the night as a prayer for his soul, as a memorial to him.

And through it all, there was the blood. The amount I drank was hardly life threatening, and the desire for it, though as strong as ever, no longer repulses me. This sudden change of heart would trouble Van Helsing, and, I suppose, it should trouble me. Instead, though I know that I have been used, and will certainly be discarded when I no longer please Gance, I am thankful to him. He has freed the woman that Dracula woke inside me, the pa.s.sionate woman that I always feared.

And created a new fear in its place. How can I return to Jonathan and tell him what I did without promising that I will never be unfaithful again? I see only one way. I will go to him as Gance went to me. I will offer myself with the same frank need that Gance displayed. I will make Jonathan understand that death waits for us all, and the only real regret when life is over is never having possessed the courage to live.

She put down the pen and closed the book. All that was left to write about was Ujvari's death, and she would not delve too deeply into her thoughts on that, at least not now with the darkness all around her. To do so would be to encourage a return of the old hysteria, just when she needed to be as sane and cool as possible.

Besides, she couldn't remain awake any longer. Now that she'd recorded her thoughts, wakefulness seemed less important.

Fantasies could be feared as the ancient mystics had feared them, punis.h.i.+ng their errant bodies with whips and hair s.h.i.+rts, or they could be cultivated as a private, harmless pleasure. With that idea firmly in her mind, Mina returned her journal to her bag and went upstairs to sleep.

TWENTY

The following morning, Gance and Mina dressed in silence, both uneasy about how the day would end. More than once, Mina noticed Gance looking at her intently, as if there were something important that needed to be said, but that was all.

They had a late breakfast in the second-floor drawing room, where huge windows with tiny panes of beveled gla.s.s overlooked the gardens. Mina stared at the morning mist, sipping her coffee and saying nothing. Her silence frightened Gance. He had seen the emotion that lay beneath the cool surface of the woman. How much was she hiding now?

"Why would the killer throw the body in the river?" Gance asked. "Could he have wanted to expose it to sunlight?"

"Running water is a more likely reason," Mina said. "Or perhaps, when the body did not crumble to dust, the killer realized he had made a terrible mistake and wanted to hide the evidence."

"How big a man was Ujvari?"

"You saw."

"The water distorts. And he had been dead some time."

"Ujvari was a little taller than me and rather thin."

"The lock on the door was broken. He had warning of the intruders. Could one man have subdued him alone, do you think?"

"He was young, outwardly healthy." She recalled his hand shake. "He didn't seem particularly strong. I ... I really don't know."

"How big was James Sebescue?" He p.r.o.nounced the name as Graves had. Ze-beck.

"I didn't see his body, but Winnie described him as a large man. Under the circ.u.mstances, you'd expect her to say that.

"I'd expect Winnie to observe his actual weight, place his accent and note any unusual moles and scars before she killed him,"

Gance responded.

"She guessed his name." Mina gave him a fleeting smile and looked away, her eyes scanning the garden once more. "The lock on Mr. Ujvari's door was broken, but there was no sign of a struggle in the kitchen," she commented when the silence became too awkward. "You brought papers from the house. What did you find?" she asked.

"Very little." He retrieved the papers from his coat. There were a few bills, a copy of the letter Ujvari had given her, and Winnie's address at the beginning of a letter that had never been mailed. "It's to you, I believe," Gance said and started to hand it to her.

Mina frowned. "Read it aloud," she said.

Mrs. Beason, he began. I feel that I must warn you. An old Romanian man came to see me yesterday. He asked about you and the book. I was also contacted this afternoon by someone who offered what to me is a fortune just for the sake of reading the translation. I almost weakened, then took pains to be certain that the story he told me had some semblance of the truth. As I suspected, he had been lying.

I think someone was watching me, following me as I left work. I have managed to lose the man, and so I think it is a man and not one of the fantastic creatures Countess Karina describes with such terrible detail.

Under the circ.u.mstances, I have taken to securing the book when I am not working on the translation. As you see, the journal is so persuasive that I almost believe.

Gance handed her the letter. "Whatever precautions he took weren't enough," he said. He poured himself a gla.s.s of wine, then filled a gla.s.s for her as well.

"Gance, you needn't sit with me," Mina said. "I would feel so much better if you would get word to the police."

"Very well." He rested a hand on her shoulder. She didn't respond. "Try to get some rest. I'll be back in plenty of time to get you to the station." He spoke defensively, as if she were already a stranger to him, but if he could think of a way to keep her here, any way at all, he would do it.

He left the house as she had requested and walked only as far as the nearest pub. At this hour, it was filled with old men, the middle-cla.s.s clerks of two decades ago, nom discarded for their younger compet.i.tors. He watched then drink, seeking forgetfulness, watched them talking, the bitterness so evident in their eyes. He ordered a black and tan As soon as the mug had been brought to him, he pulled out the papers and began to read Mina's correspondence to Ujvari, and to read more carefully the translation Ujvari had mailed her earlier.It seemed to Gance that the men who tortured Ujvari must have a.s.sumed that they knew where to find Mina. What could they have wanted from Ujvari? A confession of her nature? A confession of his own? If they believed so strongly in the creatures Mina said she had faced, perhaps finding the papers and making them public might have served their purpose. He read on.

An old man. A dead priest. Hardly proof, and yet Karina Aliczni's words were as compelling and believable as Mina's story had been, as emotionally charged as poor Arthur's ravings. Delusion? Most likely, yet Gance placed great weight on other's beliefs.

How could he really know?

He picked up a copy of The Times that another patron had left behind and scanned the headlines. As he'd expected, he did not have to risk contacting the police after all.

After Gance left, Mina sat for some time in front of the window staring out at the garden. It was probably guilt that made her so certain that someone watched her every move. At least she had come as soon as she knew of the danger and would not have to blame Ujvari's death on her indecision.

Her single bag was packed. All she had to do was sit and wait. The moments between now and tonight, when she would face Jonathan, stretched eternally before her. To pa.s.s the time, she went upstairs and picked a novel from Gance's library. There, in the stillness so profound she could hear the downstairs clock ticking, she sat by the window and began to read.

The day brightened. The mists were burned slowly off by the insistent sun, revealing the intricate hedge maze, the stone patio. The lilacs were just budding in the March thaw, the few early bulbs already blooming in the front of the formal beds. If she and Gance had been lovers in the summer, would they have played night games here, naked satyr pursuing naked nymph through webs of greenery? Would Gance have taken her savagely on the scented clover lawn? She tried to imagine Jonathan in Gance's place and found the thought impossible. She forced her eyes back to the pages of her book. As she did, she heard the hound barking in the stable and looked outside. Motion on the lawn below her drew her attention back to the garden. She stood and walked close to the window.

Beneath her was an old man, his coat ragged, leaning wearily on a cane. He was bathed in sunlight, while she was hidden by the shadows of the library. He could not see her, yet he did look up. His face seemed terribly drawn and pale, as if he were ill. It seemed doubtful that he worked here; more likely he had come to beg. Mina had thought of ringing for a servant to see to him, had even looked behind her for the bell, when she heard the front door open, Gance's step on the stairs.

He carried a copy of the London Times and pointed to an article on the front page. "A fire destroyed Ujvari's house last night.

The neighbors found the body soon after," he said as soon as he joined her. "No one will trace the information to us."

"Did you set the fire?"

"There was nothing of value there, and I might have overlooked something tying you to the crime."

"I see." Mina walked closer to the window. "A man was in the garden a while ago. He didn't appear to be a servant."

"Are you sure?"

"Not unless you dress your servants in rags."

"There's a wall. It would take some effort to climb over it unless, of course, some fool left the gate open."

"I heard your driver mention seeing a beggar. Perhaps the man followed us here. It could even be Sebescue's father, the old man who ran the bookstore."