Mina Part 31

She must have known how Dracula had died in me. Nonetheless, I tried to warn her. "I am blessed. My blood will destroy you," I said. She nodded, lowered her head to my neck and began to drink from the still-bleeding wound. She drank in death as she once had life, growing ever weaker in my arms, until I was the strong one, able to push her away.

I sat with her as the sun rose. It touched her flesh, and slowly she crumbled into dust as he had done, and blew away in the light dawn breeze. The presence left me. She was gone, soul as well as body, truly gone.

I buried my head in hands that until a moment ago had held her. I cried.

I had lost a great deal of blood, enough that I could never get down those stairs alone. I sat and waited. As I expected, the doors had opened at dawn. Van Helsing came to me. "It's done," I said.

"I know. I felt him die."

I was as surprised by his look of triumph as Karina had been by my tears. Perhaps both our emotions were wrong.

Perhaps this was something that needed to be dune, nothing more.

He helped me down the stairs. We rested together in the courtyard until I was steady enough to ride. It was nearly nightfall by the time we traveled the few miles to the town from which we had set out the afternoon before. We took rooms at the inn. I needed sleep, but I could not find it. Instead, I kept seeing Karina's face as it had looked in the last moments of her earthly existence-transformed from its vampiric magnificence to the charming childish beauty it had once possessed- and I knew that in the last moments of her life, she had found redemption.

After centuries of slavery, she had chosen peace over freedom. I sat at the table in my room and mourned her and our lover both.

And then, stilling my thoughts and emotions, I contemplated my life.

The pa.s.sion Dracula awakened in me has not died. I am no different than the Mina Harker who came here with Gance days ago, and I must accept this fate if I wish to find happiness in this fleeting life.

And so I have written a letter to Jonathan, telling him all that has happened and how nothing has really changed. I told him that I loved him, then asked him to decide if he can love me with the pa.s.sion I need. I enclosed the address of the artist in Paris and told him that I would wait there for him to decide.

If there is justice for both of us, I will meet him in that little garden. I will kiss him as I kissed my other lovers, and he will respond.

If he does not come, there will be life and happiness without him.