Reckoning (17 page)

The estate business that brought me back here is progressing well, and last night I hosted our annual ball. The family holds one every year for the local gentry. I always dread it, of course—you know how much I hate such social occasions—but the event is part of local tradition now.

Needless to say, it would have been much more pleasant with you by my side, but I braved it alone—and my guests seemed to enjoy themselves. I am glad, though, that the ordeal is over and I can spend more time with my dogs and in my library and hothouses. I do so hope I shall one day get
the opportunity to show you the exotic fruits we grow there.

I still wish with all my heart that you would visit me here. But I must not press you and risk driving you away. So in your own time . . .

                                              Your affectionate friend,
                       Xavier

My heart ached as I folded the letter and put it back in my pocket. The friendship of this honourable man had soothed me, made me feel safe and cherished—yet I had given little thought to Bathory in recent days.

I gazed at Quincey, sprawled on the sofa like a sleeping tiger—wild, untamed, and dangerous. I knew well enough that I must resist becoming enthralled by his arresting good looks and charismatic presence.

It would be dangerous to follow the wild yearnings of my heart. . . .

Journal of Mary Seward

29TH
N
OVEMBER 1918

Today went by in something of a blur. I had again arrived home from Carfax Hall before dawn—leaving only an hour to sleep before my shift. The lack of rest was beginning to tell on me, so this evening I decided to sleep a little before going to Quincey.

A tapping on the window awoke me. I sat up slowly, still wrapped in slumberous confusion, and stared uncomprehendingly about the room. The luminous face of the clock told me it was almost midnight. Exhaustion must have caused me to sleep on through the shrill ringing of my alarm clock.

The tapping continued, gentle but persistent—and I could hear a stiff breeze whistling around the chimney tops. Deciding that the tapping must be a branch against my
window, I slipped from the warmth of my bed and tiptoed across the chilly floor. I would push the branch aside lest it break the glass.

I pulled back the curtain, and my heart gave a jolt of shock. I was staring into another pair of eyes that glimmered in the moonlight. It was Quincey. Had he climbed up to my bedroom window? Or had he transformed into a bat? Flown here? The thought made me shudder, and at first, I hesitated in opening the window. But the eyes staring into my own were all too mortal, the suffering in them plain to see.

I had not come to him tonight as promised. Guiltily I pulled up the sash—and then, conscious that I had shed my uniform and wore nothing but my petticoats, I hurriedly reached for a shawl and wrapped it tightly around me.

“Come in,” I told him.

Quincey hauled himself inside. “Thank you,” he panted. And then he hunched over, crossing his arms over his belly as though in great pain.

“I overslept. Forgive me!” I said.

“The hunger . . .” he rasped, beginning to pace the carpet. “How am I to endure it?”

“I will fetch the morphine,” I promised, turning to make for the door.

“Do not leave me . . .” Quincey pleaded, grasping my hand. “I may not be here when you return. The night calls me, and I am desperate for blood!”

I felt alarm rise in my chest. “Quincey, you must not succumb now . . . you have endured it so far,” I argued.

I felt helpless as he let my fingers slip from his and carried on pacing, back and forth again and again, like a wounded animal, unable to settle lest agony should draw it to the ground and make it easy prey.

“Saint Andrew’s Eve . . .” he gasped desperately. “I fear it will push me beyond endurance! All this abstinence—all this suffering—it will have been for nothing!”

“That won’t happen!” I insisted. “We have found a weapon with which we can fight your craving. Let me fetch the morphine.”

I searched Quincey’s face, expecting agreement—but instead saw with alarm that a red glow was beginning to tinge his anguished gaze.

He shook his head violently. “No . . . no . . . you wish to drug me and let me slide into death!” he accused, his voice manic and hoarse with pain now.

“No, Quincey, I am only trying to help you!” I pleaded.

He strode toward me and grasped my arms. A cry escaped my lips as his fingers dug into my flesh. His eyes burned like hot coals, and I glimpsed his fangs as he breathed a low, menacing growl. Cold terror flooded through me. Was Quincey’s hunger about to defeat him as it had done a year ago, in the monastery? Would he kill me as he had Brother Stephen?

My breath came in quick, desperate gasps. “Quincey,” I entreated. “Don’t listen to the dark voice within you. I gave you morphine only because I wanted to ease your pain—and still do!” Tears of both fear and compassion welled in my eyes. “I cannot bear to watch you suffer. . . .” It was true.

“Mary . . .” Quincey thrust me away from him and I fell against the bed, unharmed.

I watched as he buried his face in his hands. I had to be strong—for both of us. “You must endure this!” I insisted. “Just as a soldier with gangrene endures the surgeon’s knife. Your salvation depends on it!” Slowly, tentatively, I reached out to him. “You must hold on.”

He turned to me, remorse filling his eyes, washing away the heat that had threatened to possess him. He grasped my hand in his. “Oh, Mary . . .” he gasped. “Forgive me. You have shown more courage than I had ever hoped. . . .”

My fingers ached in his powerful grip—but I did not pull them away. I did not wish to. The memory of our closeness these past nights bound me to him. With my free hand, I stroked his cheek.

He groaned at my touch and then, suddenly, slumped to the bed.

“Quincey!” I gasped. I sank to his side and took his head into my hands so that I could see his face. He peered up at
me through half-closed eyes, and I saw that their deep brown depths were restored to calm.

“It is receding.” He sighed, his body now lethargic, loosened from its stiff rictus of pain. Reaching up, he gently took my hands from his face. “Thank you, Mary . . .” he breathed. He brought my hands to his lips and pressed a gentle kiss on each of them. “For your faith . . .”

I nodded, full of emotion. “Shall I come to the hall—sit with you?”

“You are tired,” he said softly. “Sleep. The memory of you will be enough to sustain me for now.”

He headed toward the window. As he climbed out over the sill, he turned and gazed at me. And then he was gone. I sat there on the edge of my bed for a few seconds and then slowly moved over to the window to fasten it shut. There was no sign of Quincey in the night.

Report of Dr. Jonas McLeod Purfleet Sanatorium

Sergeant Hopkins was discovered dead this morning. Time of death appears to have been sometime after midnight last night, its cause suspected to be an unidentified virus. A full and thorough autopsy will be required to determine whether
this was indeed the case and, if so, to help establish how the disease attacks its victim and by which process it brings about death.

JM
29TH
N
OVEMBER 1918

Journal of Mary Seward

30TH
N
OVEMBER 1918

The peace of mind that gave me such rest after seeing Quincey win through over his demons last night was destroyed when I entered the ward this morning.

It was unusually quiet. I sensed at once something awful had happened. Helen was stripping the sheets from Sergeant Hopkins’s empty bed. I hurried to her side. “Is he . . . dead?” I asked, fearing the worst.

She nodded as she shook the pillow from its case. “The porters have taken him away for autopsy,” she murmured. “Sister went with them.” She avoided my gaze, and I knew at once that she feared for me.

My thoughts began to race. I felt certain now that Quincey was not to blame for this outbreak. It must be a
virus—and considering Father’s identical symptoms, I was sure it was I who had carried it into the sanatorium. A crushing despair pressed on my heart; I had caused a death. What would be the penalty?

Helen touched my arm. “Any one of us could bring germs in here—you were just unlucky,” she said, trying to comfort me.

“If only I had not returned to the sanatorium so soon,” I berated myself.

“And left us here to manage shorthanded?” Helen argued. “You acted with the best interests of your patients at heart.”

“Thank you, Helen,” I said. “But I should have taken more precautions.” I turned away from her and picked up the sweat-soiled sheets from the sergeant’s bed. “I’ll take these to the laundry.”

Time seemed to crawl along until Sister returned to the ward. When she did so, her expression was perturbed. Anxiety prickled in my fingers. Did she know the results of the autopsy?

I had to know my fate and approached her. “Is the autopsy over, Sister?” I asked tentatively.

She turned, still frowning in consternation. “Yes. And it is most strange, Seward,” she murmured. “Sergeant Hopkins died from loss of blood. . . .”

Her words struck me like a blow.

No! Not a virus after all.

“I do not understand,” Sister went on. “His veins were empty, virtually every drop of blood drained from him.”

Quincey.

My mind reeled in horror. The realisation came crashing in that Quincey must have left me last night to feed on Sergeant Hopkins. Pain and rage at his betrayal stopped the breath in my throat.

“Nurse Seward!” Sister’s voice broke through. “You look pale; are you all right?”

“Yes, Sister . . .” I replied hoarsely. I forced myself to draw in a lungful of air to ask, “Did the pathologist find anything else of note?”

“That is what is so disturbing, Seward,” Sister answered. “He found needle marks—in the crooks of Sergeant Hopkins’s arms, the crease of his groin, and the backs of his knees. It seems someone . . .” She hesitated and then added, “Drained the blood from him by syringe.”

I gripped the foot of the bed beside me for support, hardly able take in this new discovery. But it all made a perverse kind of sense. Quincey knew that I, of all people, would check the necks of his victims for bite marks as soon as I saw their pallor—so he’d found another way to draw the blood he craved. On the nights I’d sat with him at Carfax Hall, he’d sent me away before dawn—and no wonder: he’d wanted time to prey on my patients.

How could I have allowed myself to be so taken in? My
heart twisted painfully in my chest as I recalled the tender gratitude and resolve Quincey had shown me last night.

It had all been pretense.

He had been toying with me.

My thoughts whirled like autumn leaves, searching desperately for some motive to explain Quincey’s cruel deceptions. But I found none . . . other than an evil pleasure, perhaps, in causing me pain. . . .

I felt a hand touch my arm. “Nurse Seward . . .” Sister said again, more softly this time. “You really don’t look well. The news of Sergeant Hopkins’s death appears to have been too much for you. I think that perhaps you have returned to work too soon after the loss of your own father. Go home. We shall manage here.”

I nodded slowly. “I think you may be right, Sister,” I murmured. “Thank you.”

As Sister hurried away to talk to Helen, I fetched my coat and left the ward.

On the walk home, my rage at Quincey grew stronger—and with it, rage at myself. How could I have been so foolish as to trust the word of someone as wicked and calculating as Quincey Harker? I had been so naive—and after all I had witnessed! He had assuaged my fears with a seduction so cunning I did not even realise it was happening.

I had almost come to love him, as Lily had. . . .

Keeping quiet, so as not to disturb the sleeping Becky, I
came straight up to my room to confide in my journal—for there is no one else now, with Father gone.

My body feels weary and numbed with the shock of it all. And yet . . .

I must voice a further conclusion. One my mind had refused to face until now.

What of Father?

If the virus did not exist, then Father could not have suffered from it either. Quincey must have been drinking his blood too. The monster!

Oh, Father! Was your falling down the stairs not an accident after all? Did you use your last ounce of strength to throw yourself down? To save yourself from abominable immortality?

Time wears on, and night is fast approaching. Quincey Harker will come to me; I am sure of it. I must leave here immediately and seek sanctuary in the only place I have left to go—Lord Bathory’s house. Quincey will not know where I have gone, and I pray that will keep me safe from any further torment at his hand.

But before I leave Purfleet, there is something else I must do. The autopsy showed that poor Sergeant Hopkins died from loss of blood. Quincey did not spare him from the vampire’s curse. Sergeant Hopkins is doomed to rise again and drink the blood of others.

I cannot let that happen.

L
ATER

My decision made, I hurriedly packed a case and scribbled a note for Becky. I could find no words to explain to her why I was fleeing and so simply said that she must spend her time with Helen and Stella while I was away. I would be in touch, and she must not worry about me.

As I slipped out of the house, I realised with a tingling of alarm that I should hurry. The sun was already turning red in the sky.

With my case in one hand and Van Helsing’s bag in the other, I made my way to the sanatorium.

Flora at the reception desk raised her eyebrows at my unusually late arrival but nodded me in. I headed toward my ward, but once out of Flora’s sight, I slipped down a different corridor and found the staircase that would lead me into the morgue.

I raised my hand to finger the vial of holy water and crucifix around my neck—and realised with a jolt of horror that the crucifix was missing! I had left it on the mantle at Carfax Hall. Quincey Harker had tricked me into removing it!

Every nerve in my body rang with alarm. I was more vulnerable than ever. I would have to hope that my vial would be enough. Praying for God’s protection, I descended the stairs.

The winding passage that led to the morgue was empty of
all but gurneys and dusty heating pipes. The grey peeling walls were lit by weak electric lighting that flickered with the fragility of candlelight.

Nurses rarely came down here. It was porters, pushing corpse-laden beds, who most often haunted these hallways. But none were here now.

I pushed open the morgue door. The air felt chilly. Darkness, black as pitch, lay before me. The sickly sweet odour of decaying flesh invaded my nostrils.

Straining my eyes to see through the darkness, I ran my hand over the wall beside the doorway, praying I would find a light switch.

With relief, I felt the outline of one and flipped it on. Overhead, lights flickered slowly into life, illuminating a room that was no less shabby than the hallways outside. About a dozen gurneys were lined up in there. Half of them held corpses. I could see the shape of the bodies beneath the sheets. But which one was Sergeant Hopkins?

Leaving my case near the door, I crossed the room to the first gurney and placed Van Helsing’s bag beside it. I could see the outline of a face beneath the sheet, and steeling myself, I leaned forward and drew back the sheet. The unveiled face was mottled with shrapnel cuts and blue bruises, its eyes cloudy with death, gazing blankly up at the ceiling.