Reckoning (16 page)

“Tell me,” I said to him. “Were you truthful when you said you’d taken no other human life since killing Brother Stephen?”

“Yes.” Harker’s answer was immediate and firm.

And I believed him.

He was telling the truth. I felt it in my own soul.

I stood up briskly and brushed the dust from my skirt. Sentiment was of no use to us if we were to fight the devil within him. “I will do what I can to help you,” I stated. “Tomorrow night, once my lodger has left for her night shift at the sanatorium, I shall return—and shall sit with you till the dawn.”

His eyes lit with cautious relief. “Are you not afraid?” he asked quietly.

“I will come well protected, Quincey,” I warned him.

He nodded and then gave a weary smile. “You know, I had wondered if I would ever hear you speak my name,” he observed. “Thank you, Mary.”

26TH
N
OVEMBER 1918

I slept long and soundly last night and awoke refreshed. As I worked on the ward today, I waited for doubt to prick me, but it did not.

I waved Becky off to her shift in the evening, expecting fear to rise in my breast at the night’s work ahead, but again, it did not.

Determination sits like a rock in my belly, hard and cold and unmoving.

Now that Becky had gone, I prepared for the evening ahead. I took down a volume from Father’s bookshelves—Dickens’s last novel. We would need some distraction for the long night before us. And then I set off for Carfax Hall.

Quincey opened the door as soon as I rang the bell. He looked paler than usual and tired, but his eyes were filled with relief. “I thought you might have changed your mind,” he said quietly.

I brushed past him, wielding the book I had brought. “I
hope you have plenty of candles,” I told him. “I don’t intend to ruin my eyes trying to make out the words.”

“I have candles enough.”

Did I hear amusement in his voice? I hoped so; something told me there was a grim task ahead, and any comfort would help.

As I entered the parlour, I gasped in astonishment. How changed it was. A fire was burning in the grate, and every smear of dust had been removed.

“If we are to sit here night after night, then we might as well be comfortable,” Quincey commented mildly.

I sat upon the same sofa as before and found that some of the dust had been beaten from it also.

Quincey took candles from the mantle and put them on the table beside me. “To light your book,” he explained.

“You will need some too,” I informed him. “We shall share the reading.”

He smiled. “You would not prefer to play cards?” he offered.

“Tomorrow night, perhaps,” I answered.

We took it in turns, each reading a chapter and passing the book to the other. As the night drew on, Quincey struggled more and more to focus on the words, his face growing strained and anxious.

“Shall we stop?” I asked him as he stumbled over a sentence.

“No!” he snapped back. He closed his eyes for a moment.
“I’m sorry. The craving for blood . . . it feels like fire in my veins,” he explained, his voice thick with pain. “Let’s continue.” He went back to reading and I listened, my reluctant heart swelling with admiration at his strength of will.

My determination held until well into the early hours, but then tiredness crept over me and I found my eyes growing heavy. I was relieved to pass the book back to Quincey. He took it from me and began to read, his voice so familiar now after so many hours that I closed my eyes.

I must have dozed for when I awoke, Quincey was gone from his chair. I started, leaning forward anxiously. Had I lost him so soon?

I heard a groan from a shadowed corner of the room. A spasm of alarm gripped me.

“Quincey?” I called.

I hurried over and saw him, crouched there, doubled up and moaning quietly. His temples were wet with perspiration.

“What can I do?” I asked, anxious to help but afraid to bend closer.

I reached out a hand to him, and he flinched like a branded steer. “Stay away!” he hissed. He pressed himself against the wall, his face twisted into a snarl, and I heard a threatening growl rumble in his throat.

I shied backward, reaching instinctively for the crucifix and pendant at my throat, acutely conscious of the danger I was in. What if he could not resist this agonising hunger?
Who would he turn to but me to satisfy it? “What can I do?” I asked, my voice trembling.

“Take off that crucifix!” he hissed. “The weaker I grow, the more such things torment me.”

Quickly I lifted its chain from my neck and laid it on the mantle. I returned to Quincey’s side, knowing that my pendant of holy water, still dangling at my throat, would not harm him so long as it was safely stoppered. His growling and trembling subsided. I took his arm gently and drew him up, helping him back to his seat beside the fire.

Stiffly he lowered himself into his chair. I could tell from his laboured breathing that he must be fighting unimaginable pain.

“Please tell me what I can do!” I demanded.

“Nothing,” he rasped. “The pain must be borne.”

“Is there any nourishment I might bring you?” I asked, dreading the answer. I prayed he would not ask for the blood of some poor animal to slake his thirst.

“Nothing.”

I could only kneel at his feet and let him grip my hand tightly as he endured his agony.

And then, haltingly, he began to speak. “I have wandered the world these past two years in utter isolation, Mary,” he murmured. “At first, I thought the pain of it would kill me. I am not used to loneliness. My privileged position as part of Dracula’s bloodline left me wanting for nothing. But only
myself and John remain now, and his existence is a reminder of the misery I helped create—of how little is left to me.”

A sigh escaped my lips at the mention of John’s name.

Quincey looked at me. “I am sorry for my part in taking him away from you.” His voice was now barely a whisper.

“I thought I would always blame you,” I admitted. The candlelight flickered on the walls. Nothing else stirred but for our breathing. And in the quietness, I was suddenly aware that the rage I had nurtured against Quincey had calmed. “But he accepted Mina’s bloody kiss. He participated in his own transformation. And for that, he must be held accountable himself.”

We sat in silence, Quincey’s grip tightening and loosening as his pain ebbed and flowed. Time seemed to creep past with such slowness, I thought morning would never come. And then, as though a veil were lifted, his suffering seemed to ease. His pain-clouded gaze seemed to clear.

I saw that dawn was nearing.

His grip on my hand loosened, and he spoke to me once more. “Mary?” he breathed.

I laced my fingers with his. “I’m still here,” I told him. I took a handkerchief and wiped the moisture from his pale brow.

“Thank you,” he murmured.

“I wish I could have done more,” I said.

“You stayed,” he replied. “That was enough.”

He got up wearily from his chair and helped me gently to my feet. Kneeling by his chair had left my legs stiff and numb, and I clung to his arm for a moment while I gained my balance.

“I will go to my bed now, Mary,” he told me. “Will you be safe returning home?”

I nodded. Though dawn was not yet lighting the sky outside, I found I had no fear of the dark. “I’ll come again tonight,” I promised.

He lifted my hand to his lips and kissed it gently. “I was not wrong to trust in you,” he breathed.

I returned home in the pre-dawn greyness, being careful to slip quietly into the house. Becky would be not long back from her shift and would be fast asleep by now. For the first time, I was relieved she worked nights. How would I explain my absences if she did not?

I have managed to snatch an hour’s sleep before going to work myself. Tonight, when I return to Carfax Hall, I shall go armed with a new weapon—not from Van Helsing’s bag, but from Father’s old medical bag.

27TH
N
OVEMBER 1918

I had hoped to steal another short sleep after work today, but the virus has made us busy on the ward and I did not leave until late. Becky was already awake and bustling around the
kitchen when I returned. She would have worried about me if I had gone straight to my bed, so I sat with her as she prepared tea.

“A letter arrived for you from Lord Bathory this morning,” she said with a grin and a mischievous twinkle in her eye.

“R-really?” I stammered. A pang of guilt shot through me. I had been so consumed by Quincey’s problems that I had not given much thought at all to Bathory these past few days.

“At least I think it’s from him—it’s postmarked from Devon,” Becky added. “I’ve put it on the hall table.” She went to fetch the butter from the pantry. “Have you decided whether to accept his offer to visit him there?” she called over her shoulder.

I stood up and began to gather plates and cutlery for the table. “Not yet,” I stalled. “There’s still so much to do at the sanatorium.”

“But still, it is nice to be asked,” Becky observed, setting the butter down beside the bread on the kitchen table.

“Yes.” I sighed. I leaned across the table and laid a plate before her, silently vowing to read the letter from Bathory as soon as I could.

Becky chattered cheerfully while we ate tea together, and I felt ashamed that I longed for her to go to work, the dear soul. I tried to be good company, but my head was filled with thoughts of Quincey.

She got up from the table at last. “You’ve been away with the fairies through the whole of supper, Mary!” she said with a wry smile. “Go and read that letter. You’re clearly bursting to.”

Dear, sweet Becky—if only she knew who really occupied my thoughts.

As soon as she had left for work, I thrust Bathory’s letter, unread, into my pocket and hurried to take Father’s medical bag from the shelf where it had been stored since his retirement.

I found there what I needed—a small brown vial, its aged label peeling at the corners. I remembered the bottle well, from when Father nursed Mother through her final illness. Morphine. It had given her relief from her pain and in doing so had eased our suffering too. I slipped the vial into my pocket along with a syringe and hurried out of the house. The sun had long since set, and I knew Quincey would be waiting for me.

He opened the door of Carfax Hall to me with such a look of relief. “Mary,” he breathed. He looked paler, his face now drawn with pain.

“How are you this evening?” I asked as I followed him to the parlour.

“I have been better,” he admitted.

The volume of Dickens I had brought yesterday had been placed ready on the table beside the sofa.

“I hope this will help,” I told him as I took the vial of morphine out of my pocket and showed it to him.
“Morphine,” I explained. “My father used it to alleviate the terrible pain my mother suffered in her last days. He showed me how to administer it and what dosage to use. It might help you through the worst of your symptoms.”

Quincey’s dark eyes softened. “Thank you,” he said.

We read into the early hours once more, until Quincey’s voice became halting and I knew his suffering was growing more than he could bear. Only then did I administer the morphine—enough, I hoped, to dull the agony of craving that clawed his body.

I pressed the needle into his arm and injected the drug, seeing it take effect almost at once. Pulling a chair close to where he reclined, I leaned forward and smoothed the dark hair from his brow.

“What relief . . .” he murmured, his voice thick with the drug. “You have made it bearable, Mary. . . .”

As I watched over him, Quincey Harker seemed no fiend at all, only a soul in torment. I felt truly glad that I had been able to ease his suffering.

“When I was a boy, I worshiped my father,” he murmured, as though from far away. “But before I walked out of Castle Dracula two years ago, I killed him.”

His voice was so soft, so sleepy, that at first the words did not penetrate. But then—

“Killed him?” I echoed, shocked.

He nodded, eyes still closed. “When I told him I was leaving
he attacked me. It was not so much that he did not want to let his firstborn go, I think—it was about my foiling his master plan.” His eyes snapped suddenly open and he glared at me. “So, Mary?” he challenged. “Do you applaud me as a demon slayer or condemn me for patricide?”

Something stirred in me—something more than pity, more than understanding. I placed my hand against his cheek. “I have learned something these past days,” I told him softly. “The issue of what is right and what is wrong is a more complex one than I ever suspected. Your question is one for God to answer, not I.”

His gaze softened, and a wry smile twisted his lips. “I can’t believe I ever thought John a fool for loving you,” he said. “How is it that you are so young and yet so wise?”

I smiled. “You think that spending the night with a vampire is wise?”

He laughed despite his pain, clutching his chest as he did so. “I think we have established that you can look after yourself,” he concluded.

I remembered uncomfortably how easily he had snared me in his spell only three nights ago—how desperately I had desired him. The memory of that passion brought a glow to my cheeks even now. “How easily you seduced me into sparing you in the church,” I reminded him.

“I would not seduce you again,” he answered, his eyes slipping out of focus for a moment.

To my horror, a pang of regret echoed in my heart. I quickly smothered it.

“At least . . . I would not use my vampire powers to do it . . .” he went on. He grasped my hand. “If I were to seduce you, Mary . . . it would be fairly, sweetly, and out of love. . . .”

Against all common sense, my heart swelled. I gazed into his eyes, wondering if he had hypnotised me again; they were dreamy and glazed. It was the morphine that made him talk this way, I told myself firmly. “How is your pain?” I asked, hoping to distract him.

But there was no need. I watched his eyes slowly close as morphine-induced sleep claimed him.

Carefully releasing my hand from his, I sat back on the sofa. The movement caused a rustling in my pocket. I remembered I’d hastily stored Lord Bathory’s letter there and drew it out. I felt a rush of guilt. How disloyal of me to think of opening my heart to Quincey Harker when a man whose character bore no stain, whom I could trust utterly to be gentle and kind, wanted my heart.

I opened the letter.

Letter from Lord Xavier Bathory to Miss Mary Seward

T
REGARISS
H
ALL
D
OCCOMBE
D
EVON

24TH
N
OVEMBER 1918

Dearest Mary,

I hope this letter finds you well. No doubt you are still working hard at the sanatorium.

Though I miss your delightful company, it is good to be back in the country once more. I do so miss my dogs when I am away. They always welcome me home like a returning king!