Mrs. Van Helsing; the phrase filled me with trepidation, though I did not immediately understand or remember. Had there been a Mrs. Van Helsing? I had come to this house twenty years before, to take sweet little Jan with me and to steal Bram's brother away...

Of course, of course. There had been a woman; a timid, large-eyed mousy little thing. I had bitten but not killed her, as she had been an obstacle in my way. She had one of those forgettable Dutch names that began with a G, that strongly aspirated sound like the Hebrew ch, repeated twice in the name "van Gogh."

For some reason, it had not even occurred to me that she was still alive. But the revelation that she was-and that she was in England with Van Helsing-filled me with horror.

What if he were using his wife to get information about me? For vampire and victim are linked together so long as both survive; and so this wild-eyed woman was linked to me, even though her personality was so timid, so cringing, that over the years I had become blithely unaware of her. I, who had been such an idiot that I had not thought to turn the tables and get information about him.

I have corrected my oversight.

Through all this, I had been listening to footfalls and terrible screams overhead, and Frau Koehler's soft, comforting murmurs. The screams had ceased, followed by the sound of pouring water. I slipped out of the study, and waited at the bottom of the stairs again until the nurse appeared.

She did not invite me up, but came down the stairs to stand beside me; perspiration shone on her forehead and upper lip. She raised her ap.r.o.n to her face and wiped it.

"I think she will sleep now," she said in a low voice. "She is very tired; she has had a very difficult day so far. Will you be back soon, Mrs. Windham?"

I shook my head, eager to leave this sad house, and troubled by what Mary had told me.

"No. It's time for me to leave. I have my own family to take care of; and I have already given her my good-bye."

Her broad, square face grew genuinely sad. "I am sorry you must leave after such a short visit, madam. I can see Mary loves you very much, and you her."

I turned away before she saw my tears, and she led me back to the front entrance. When she opened the door, I paused and faced her, then lightly touched my fingers to her cheek.As I'd hoped, she met my gaze, and fell at once into trance. "You will remember none of this," I told her. "Not me, not my name, not my appearance, and if Mary speaks of it, you will take her to be delirious. Most important, you will not, so long as you live, mention this to Dr. Van Helsing."

"Of course not," she said, and I smiled, breaking the fell.

"Thank you, Frau Koehler." I kissed her on the cheek as I would a sister.

"G.o.dspeed, Mrs. Windham."

Now I am on the boat home, where I've found myself a secluded spot down below (it is a beautiful day and everyone is taking sun up on the deck). Here, I let myself go deep into trance and found my connexion with Mrs. Van Helsing. The threads tying us are rather weak, though with practice they will strengthen. This is what I saw, only moments ago: A small, plain room with white walls, a window with black iron bars marring the view of a flower garden below. Over the window, a small gold crucifix.

Behind me, the sound of a door opening; a man's soft, deep voice calling: "Gerda, dearest..."

Gerda, yes! That was her name.

The view swings one hundred eighty degrees; I now find myself looking at an older man with white speckling his golden hair and thick eyebrows, and a smile meant to mask the worry in his blue eyes. He has not recently shaved, and the sunlight pouring in through the window catches the silver hairs on his chin and ignites them. There is such an air of heaviness about him, as if he were like Atlas, bearing the world's weight upon his shoulders.

At the same time, there is an air of goodness, too, reflected in his eyes and the simple, rounded features on his face.

There is something familiar here, something disturbing: I look at him and think of my dead brother, though they look nothing physically alike. I know this man, but for an instant, I am stymied, for he is almost a quarter-century older than the last time we met, and the years and tragedy have aged him.

Bram, Gerda thinks, but the deep sorrow within her holds her tongue so that she cannot speak-and I at once remember. This kindly older man is my nemesis, Van Helsing, the murderer of my little Jan, who would still be beside me today had Van Helsing not killed my immortal adopted child.

So. Van Helsing is with Gerda-in an asylum, I think; how else to explain the bars? And at that very moment, he begins to ask her questions: What do you see now?

"I'm not sure. I see water, a great deal of green water -and disappearing behind me, a coastline with tiny windm-"

I pull her up short before she can utter the word windmills, although damage has already been done. He will know now that I have gone to Amsterdam-but d.a.m.ned if he will know when or if I have returned to London.

He asks other questions, but she remains steadfastly silent, until he surrenders and leaves.When I emerged from the connexion, I wrote this all down at once, lest I forget any detail. I will tejl Elisabeth about the fact that Van Helsing is in Purfleet, somewhere near Vlad. She will be angry enough at the wasted time-so I must never tell her about my terrible error in forgetting about Gerda; she will never forgive me.

And if we fail, I will never forgive myself.

At the same time, I am deeply troubled. Whenever I think of Mary, it is as though my icy heart is gently warmed by a small internal flame-a flame she has rekindied; and I remember what it is to feel human compa.s.sion, human love. Shall I kill her only son?

Enough! Enough! Such thoughts are too dangerous. I will have my revenge...

Chapter 10.

Zsuzsanna Dracul's Diary 20 AUGUST.

No further clues from Gerda about Bram Van Helsing; I suspect she said or did something which alerted him to my interference, and he in turn has performed some powerful magic to prevent my repeating it. We have been going through the city bit by bit, looking for an iron- barred window that looks down onto a flower garden, and we did find two possibilities, including a madhouse adjacent to Carfax-but no Van Helsing, no wife. Is it possible that he is adept enough to make them both invisible?

It is my own fault that I could be so disgracefully outdone by a mere mortal; Vlad taught me only the most cursory exercises in mesmerism, invisibility, and self-protection, but I never pressed him for more information. (I know now he would not have given it even if asked, but there were times when I could have got hold of some very enlightening ancient tomes, and did not.) I honestly had no interest in such "boring" things... now comes the time for regret.

Elisabeth's welcome was sweeter than I'd expected it would be when I returned from Amsterdam; I never confessed to her about Gerda, but lied and said I had bitten Mary and learned that the good doctor is actually somewhere near London. This surprised and pleased her, and we spent some agreeable hours together over the following days. Yet as generous as her mood was, she seemed to grow somewhat haggard and irritable. I thought it was out of frustration over our vain search for Van Helsing, and that she was struggling to hide it out of concern for me. Now I know better; she was dissembling for my sake, all right- not out of kindness, but out of a wish to deceive.

Tonight I am beginning to see just how much she has kept from me. And what she has told me: are those, too, all lies?

It began mid-morning. We had been going mad awaiting Vlad's arrival, but today I had an overwhelming hunch that this was to be the day. So Elisabeth and I at once hurried to Carfax. (What a vision she was, dressed in palest pink and cream satin, her long curls pinned up beneath a matching cap; it was as if she had intentionally made herself more beautiful in an attempt to extinguish my anger and doubt.) Safely cloaked in our invisibility, we stood a distance from the dismal old house, beneath a copse of large, gloomy oaks-Elisabeth would go no farther-and watched workmen deliver the same wooden boxes I had seen the tsigani load onto their wagons and carry away. Fifty boxes in all-and one unquestionably containing Vlad! I recognised it by the enveloping elliptical glow- midnight-blue speckled with gold, like a starlit sky, larger than any aura I had ever seen him cast (mind that my abilities in this regard have always been less than remarkable).

I know Elisabeth saw it, too, for she gasped aloud-then caught my arm and hissed into my ear, "We must leave at once!"

Confused, I turned to frown at her-and my confusion increased at the poorly masked fear upon her face. "What do you mean, leave? He has arrived; it is day... Now is the time. When the workmen are gone, we must go in and destroy him!"

"Then you will go alone. Can you not see how powerful he has become?" She gestured at the glowing box, her expression and posture-with one impatiently tapping cream slipper- revealing intense anxiety. She turned and began to move away, but I grasped her arm and held it.

"You're afraid of him," I marvelled. "You who claim to be unconquerable, you who swear that you avoided confronting him only because you wish to relish your little cat-and-mouse game... You are afraid. Can it be that he is now the cat, and you the mouse?"

"Let me go't" She surrendered all pretense then, and uttered a Hungarian epithet as she swung at me with a pink-and-cream-striped arm. I have never seen her features so grotesquely contorted with anger; in an instant, she was transformed from porcelain doll to Medusa. "Don't be a fool-if we argue, he will sense us. Zsuzsanna, you have no idea what danger you're putting us in!"

I would have said more, would have asked, And are you afraid, too, of Van Helsing, whom you refuse to kill? Is he, too, the stronger? She broke free from my grip, and transformed herself directly into a golden b.u.t.terfly that sailed away upon the late summer breeze.

I controlled my anger and rode upon the sunbeams, but I did not follow her back in the direction of the house in London. Instead, I left Carfax estate and made my way into Purfleet proper, where, beneath the cloak of invisibility, I slipped into a silversmith's shop and made off with a shining dagger and long-handled sword.

Then it was back to Carfax, for my fury at Elisabeth's deceit made me ever the more determined to destroy Vlad, and to destroy him at once. Why else had we been waiting all these weeks? I would show her what true courage meant, and then, having destroyed him, would leave her to her vanity, her decadence, her vile dungeon waiting silently for its first victim. As for myself, I needed neither the protection of man or woman, nor their love; the two I had dared love had both betrayed me, and I would never again permit myself so to suffer. Perhaps I should go to Vienna, or Paris...

When I arrived, the workmen were still hard at their task. The anger wavered only once as I waited beneath the dying oaks, when I reflected that perhaps I had been hasty in thinking that Vlad's belief that no vampire could ever destroy another in traditional fashion, with stake and knife, was simply another of his mediaeval superst.i.tions. What if it was true?

Then I shall leave and bring a mortal to do the task, I told myself. I would not be swayed, nor would I permit myself to believe I was in as terrible a danger as Elisabeth insisted.

The workers (a small group of lower-cla.s.s c.o.c.kney "blokes," as they would call themselves) took the boxes in through the front entrance, at a maddeningly slow pace, one box at a time.

This, with several pauses for bawdy jokes, conversation, and laughter, left me so impatient for the hour and a half it took them to finish that I was tempted to appear to them in my most ferocious fang-toothed guise and send the lot of them running.

The sun was straight overhead when finally they left- mid-day, which realisation cheered me, as this was the hour Vlad was weakest. Even so, I took care to strengthen the veil of invisibility around myself and my silver weapons before entering, and with them slipped through the crack in the weathered front door, which the "blokes" had relocked.

Inside, the floor was carpeted with a layer of dust inches thick (how like Vlad!), leaving the workmen's every step visible. Making no footprints myself, I followed the trail through the corridor, until it ended at an arching oaken door bound with iron.

There was a sizable gap between the door's base and the dust-padded floor, as well as between its arched top and the curving lintel. One might expect to see rays of sunshine streaming through, illuminating errant airborne dust; but in place of brightness shone that ominous and sparkling indigo aura, darkness which was not an absence of light, but an equal and opposite force that could displace it.

For a brief moment, I quailed-then summoned all my anger and courage and again reduced myself and my burden to a hair-thin sliver which slipped easily beneath the gap at the door's base, through the radiant darkness which seemed to permeate my being. I emerged on the other side full of trepidation, for though the room (once a chapel, as the far wall bore the marks of a .large crucifix which had been recently removed, above the ro.tting remains of a wooden altar) was vast and high-ceilinged, it was filled with the sparkling deep blue radiance that marked Vlad's presence.

I steeled myself and with my weapons moved forward, towards the box from whence the indigo non-light emanated. And here I can only describe the sensation in mortal terms, for immortal experience fails me here: It was rather like attempting to walk into and through a swarm of very annoyed bees, or to swim against a raging current; I felt myself being buffeted backward by a hostile, buzzing force, whilst the skin on my entire body stung as if p.r.i.c.ked.

Excelsior.

I moved onward, struggling to submerge my fear. No matter how powerful Vlad might have become, I trusted in my own invisibility, and my plan: to reach the box in which he lay, fling open the cover, and, in the instant of surprise, pierce both heart and neck with silver.

At last I arrived at my goal, and there paused to gather my nerve even as I reached for the wooden lid-nailed shut, though I could tear it free with but a modic.u.m of effort.

My fingers curled round the edge; I pulled. The lid did not move, but remained steadfastly bound.

Again I pulled, harder, silently cursing. Again, no result at all. I paused, infuriated and perplexed, wondering what immortal skill I might use to pry open the impossibly stuck lid.

Or was this a trick of Vlad's?

The lid in front of me suddenly exploded into a mighty whirlwind, hurling me back against the door in a flurry of splintered wood and dust; had I been mortal, I would have certainly been killed at once. As it was, I listened with pure astonishment at the sound of the door and my own immortal bones cracking... and at the ear-splitting clang of my weapons driven into the stone wall an inch from my head.

And when the storm eased, causing the dust and bits of wood to drop to the filthy ground with the abruptness of a funnel cloud belching out a tree or a terrified sheep, I sat and looked through the glimmering darkness to see that the box was open-and within it lay Vlad.

Not asleep, yet utterly still as a corpse, with his arms crossed upon his chest, his malachite eyes opened wide, and a sneer upon his lips. He was a young man now, no longer ghastly but handsome, with flowing coal-coloured hair and mustache. I looked upon him and was at once smitten and horrified.

And desperately curious about the piece of iridescent white parchment pressed between his hands and chest, as if it were a great treasure that must remain close to his heart.

The sensuous lips moved. "Zsuzsanna, my dear," he said, in a voice beautiful, strong, G.o.dlike. "Surely you are not so stupid or foolhardy as to want to do me harm. Perhaps you have merely returned after realising that you have sided with the loser."

I was too stunned to flee. Clearly, Elisabeth had been right to fear; I knew that he would destroy me now, despite any lie I might think to tell him. The keen understanding that I was utterly lost filled me with numbness and an odd calm. If I was to die, then I should at least learn the truth that had been kept from me.

"Loser?" I asked. "Do you mean Elisabeth?"

"The same," he replied, all but his lips still motionless. "You are her p.a.w.n, my dear. She is too cowardly to confront me herself, and so she uses you. Ask her, Zsuzsanna; I know you will believe nothing I say. Ask her about the terms of her own covenant with the Dark Lord.

Ask her what they have to do with you."

A sickening surge of dread overwhelmed me, for he spoke with the calm confidence of truth.

"Why are you so powerful now? And what is that?" I pointed at the shining paper in his hands, leaning forward just enough to see a few lines of text written in pure, gleaming gold.

He smiled, but ignored the question. "Ask her what it is; ask her what she would do to you in order to get it. You must destroy her, Zsuzsanna. Destroy her before she destroys you. If you do not, I shall have no choice but to inflict upon you both the same grievous end. Take heed: I will not warn you again. And remember that I could have destroyed you here and now, but chose instead to take pity."

Immediately, the door behind me swung open, and another mighty gale pushed me-furious and frightened and spitting dust-out into the corridor and out of the house altogether, as easily as if I had been a feather and not an angry immortal.

Outside, I dusted myself off and travelled upon sunbeams into the city, to the beautiful house where Elisabeth sat waiting upon the sofa, golden curls freed and swept all to one side so that they spilled down onto her bosom. She sat with uncharacteristic stiffness, spine straight and unsupported, hands folded primly upon her knees. To test myself-and her-I entered the house with aura still retracted, maintaining my invisibility.

She did not see me at all-or if she did, she belongs onstage with Ellen Terry, for she kept sighing and frowning and glancing out the window as a concerned lover ought; one cream satin slipper tapped relentlessly against a Turkish carpet the colour of blood. When I materialised hastily in front of her, she rose, clapping her hands, and cried out: "Zsuzsanna! My sweet Zsuzsa! I have been so terribly worried! Did you go inside? Did you see him? How did you ever escape?"

She flung her arms about me and repeatedly kissed my cheeks and lips. But I did not return the embrace; I stood still as Vlad had lain in his coffin, and said, "You are right; he is powerful, fearsomely powerful. I cannot defeat him alone."

At this she drew back, confused by my physical coldness yet approving of my words, and clasped my hands, waiting for some sign which might explain this contradiction.

I kept my expression solemn, my hands limp, my gaze direct. "He says that I must ask you about your covenant. Your... contract with the Dark One, and what it has to do with me."

The judgement? Guilty. Conflicting emotions rippled subtly over her features like ocean waves spilling onto the sh.o.r.e, only to be pulled back and swiftly replaced by others: rage, hatred, fear, cunning-and the last, indignance.

"Zsuzsa! Can't you see what he is trying to do to you? To make you hate me, to make you return to him. And what do you think will happen to you then?"

"I have seen the ma.n.u.script," I said quickly; she recoiled as if she had been slapped.

Indeed, she turned away, clearly overwhelmed and unable to respond to this new development, whilst I affected a knowing expression. The intimation was that I had read and understood its value to Vlad (and clearly, now, to her)-a lie embedded in a truthful statement.

With her back still to me, she wrapped an arm round her ribs-clutching herself, really, though she tried to make the gesture seem casual. Her other hand quickly ma.s.saged her forehead, then her neck, just above the sweet, sculpted bone beneath milky skin. With utter-and unbelievable-calmness, she asked: "What did he tell you about it?"

"Enough. Enough to know that you have lied to me." She whirled about, setting pink and cream satin skirts aswirl, and began to protest, but I raised my voice and would not hear her. "At the very, very least, you have constantly kept the truth from me."

At once the porcelain face crumpled, and diamond tears spilled from her sapphire eyes.

"Zsuzsanna-do you think I did so simply to torment you? Yes, he is stronger than both of us together at the moment, but I have not given up hope. We will find a way to defeat him, but until then, we must use all our wits and caution." She reached forward and took my hand once more, pressing it between her own and bending down to kiss it, baptising it with her tears. "Have I been cruel to you in any way, my darling? Have I hurt you? Tell me, and I shall make amends at once. I did not bring you to London to make you unhappy!"

I wavered. She sensed it, and pressed her case with increased vigour. "You know Vlad, Zsuzsa. In all the decades you were with him, did he ever treat you with respect or genuine affection? No! He treated you as his own slave, to do with as he would; he gave you immortality, but not out of concern for you-only for himself! You know you cannot trust him; you know that he is a liar. I beg you-do not let him drive a wedge between us! He is telling you these hideous prevarications in order to achieve just that! And if he succeeds, then we all are lost, indeed. We must work together, darling, to defeat him. And our best hope, I tell you, is Van Helsing. With him as our p.a.w.n, we can succeed."

In truth, I was swayed-by her beauty, her tears, her words. Still, Vlad's charges gnawed at me. "If I am to help you, then, in such a difficult task, you must explain everything to me.

What is your covenant with the Dark Lord? And what is this ma.n.u.script that Vlad clearly prizes?"

She sighed. "As to my covenant-that is not the sort of thing one discusses; if you had your own, you would understand. As for the ma.n.u.script, I cannot say. Please trust me, dear Zsuzsa. I, too, am trying to solve all these mysteries; perhaps we two can discuss them today, and come up with a proper strategy."

Then she put her arms round me and kissed me, and cajoled me until I yielded, smiling. For the rest of the day and night, she was as kind to me as anyone has ever been.

But I cannot do as she has asked: I can trust her no longer. I remain with her now only because I have nowhere else to go. Bad enough that I have attracted Vlad's wrath; I do not want hers as well.I must find a way to destroy them both.

26 AUGUST.

The delay grows maddening. No Van Helsing thus far; Elisabeth and I have agreed that he is our best hope in conquering Vlad. Kill the Dutch doctor and Vlad will be destroyed as well.

I am convinced now that the lone lunatic asylum in Purfleet contains the view I saw through Gerda's eyes, for the flower garden looks just the same. Yet there we can find no trace of either Van Helsing, and my fear is that they were there for a brief time, but have since left.

Either that, or the doctor is as powerful a mortal man as I am a vampire, and knows how to render himself and his wife invisible for days at a time. The second possibility is indubitably worse.