Anno Dracula - Kim Newman [52]
‘You think to baffle me, you with your pale faces all in a row, like sheep in a butcher’s. You shall be sorry, each one of you. Your girls that you love are mine already; and through them you and others shall yet be mine. My creatures, to do my bidding and to be my jackals when I want to feed.’
Van Helsing, with a roar of rage, shoved his wafer at the Count, but Dracula moved with incredible speed, stepping aside to let the Professor fall again. He laughed again, a cruel chuckle from the throat. I stood paralysed, my hand throbbing as if covered with scorpions. Art, too, made no move. That shared lack of action accounts, for our both being, in a manner of speaking, alive three years later.
Quincey, ever putting deed before thought, rushed at Dracula, and stuck him through the heart. I heard the bowie sink in as if penetrating cork. As the Count staggered back against the wall, Quincey yee-hahed a victory yell. But the blade was plain steel, not the wood that would have transfixed his heart nor the silver that would have poisoned him. The vampire took the knife out of his breast as if drawing it from a scabbard. The gash remained in his shirt, but closed in his flesh. Quincey said, ‘Well, kiss my sister’s black cat’s ass,’ as Dracula closed on him. The Count gave Quincey back his knife, plunging it into the hollow of his throat, sucking briefly at the wound that erupted.
Our gallant friend was dead.
Next the Count picked up the unconscious Harker as easily as he would a baby. Mina was by his side, eyes glazed as if drugged, blood on her chin and bosom. Dracula kissed the solicitor’s forehead, leaving a bloody mark.
‘He was my guest,’ he explained, ‘but he abused hospitality.’
He looked at Mina, as if communicating with her mind. She hissed at him, startlingly like the new-born Lucy, setting her unholy blessing upon his intent. She was turning fast. With a quick snap, he broke Harker’s neck in his great hands. He jabbed his thumb-nail into the pulsing vein of Harker’s neck, and offered him to his wife. Mina, her hair swept aside with both hands, leaned over, and began to lap up the blood.
I helped the Professor to his feet. He shook with rage, his face purple with blood, foam about his mouth. He looked like one of the madmen in the other wing of the house.
‘Now,’ the Count said, ‘leave me and mine be.’
Art had already backed out of the door. I followed, hauling Van Helsing with me. He was grumbling under his breath. Mrs Harker dropped her husband’s lifeless body on the carpet and he rolled against the bed, open eyes staring. From the corridor, we saw Dracula pull Mina to him and press his face to her throat, his thick-nailed hands tearing at her chemise and the long tangle of her hair.
‘No,’ said Van Helsing, ‘no.’
It took all my strength, and Art’s too, to hold the savant back. We looked away from Dracula’s feeding, but Van Helsing was transfixed. What he saw in the Harkers’ bedroom was a personal affront.
A man in muddy striped pyjamas burst into the corridor from a stairwell, dragging a thin woman by her hair, waving an open razor. It was Louis Bauer, the Pimlico Square Strangler. A crowd of others, shambling in the darkness, followed. Someone sang a hymn with a ragged but pure voice, joined by animal-like whining. A hunched figure pushed to the front of the crowd. It was Renfield, twisted over where he was broken, his face and front a mess of blood.
‘Master,’ he shrieked, ‘I atone...’
The swell of bodies pushed him forward. He should have been dead, but insanity can keep people with the most terrible injuries on their feet, if only for the length of a fit. He had let out the inmates. Renfield fell to his knees and was trampled under by his mad fellows. Bauer kicked his already snapped spine, finishing him at last. There was a fire in the building somewhere. And dreadful screams, either from rampaging paients or the