Gideon Smith and the Mechanical Girl Read online

  The police had, of course, combed the moors in search of the dog, but they pronounced it gone. And relieved they seemed about it, too, thought Stoker. With murders and mysteries to be solved, a wild hound was low on the constabulary’s list of worries. If it had run off toward the next police division, so be it. Stoker, of course, knew otherwise. The vampire had merely gone to ground and shed its transformed state.

  He took a meandering route, making his painstaking way along the beach and scrambling up the rocks. He surveyed the moors rolling away from the coast, the farms and small holdings dotted around the patchwork landscape, any one of them potentially providing shelter—or a hearty meal—for Dracula. But why here? According to Le Fanu’s account, Vlad Dracula was a Transylvanian nobleman of an ancient pedigree, and while the guise of a black hound might be suitable for effecting entry to England, surely rampaging like a rabid dog would not be the count’s style.

  Stoker’s path took him back toward the abbey, and he knew from there he could descend the famous 199 steps down to the town. He resolved to sit in the ruins of the abbey and eat his provisions while he pondered his next move.

  In the gathering dusk, just a hundred yards from the abbey, came a farmer, openly weeping and dragging a hessian sack. Stoker stopped him and said, “Good heavens, man, whatever is the matter?”

  The man simply pulled open the neck of the sack and bade Stoker look inside. He did, then drew back in horror. There was the severed head of a sheepdog in there, the blind, milky eyes of the collie staring up at him.

  “My old Shep,” wailed the man. “He’d been missing all afternoon. He never goes missing. I found this yonder, near the abbey. What sort of monster would do that to a dog?”

  What sort of monster indeed. His mouth set in a grim line, Stoker strode toward where the farmer had found the remains of his dog. The abbey. He fumbled in his satchel and took out a handful of stakes and his hammer, juggling them at his chest as he also delved in for the crucifix. In the gloom he slipped on a patch of dark wetness, which closer inspection revealed to be blood. His breath caught in his chest. The blood was before a dark opening, just off what must have once been the nave of the church, which led down half a dozen steps to an old cell or storage room. Stoker lit his small oil lamp with a painfully loud match strike. Was there a sudden movement from within? Holding the lamp high in one hand and clutching the stakes, hammer, and crucifix clumsily in the other, he descended, as boldly as he could, wishing he had Mr. Smith with him.

  The cell was small and damp, but large enough for what it held: a long box beside one stone wall and a figure, clothed in a black cloak, hunkered down over what could only be the headless corpse of the old farmer’s dog. His hands shaking, Stoker held up the crucifix and, summoning bravery as a bulwark against every other emotion screaming for him to flee the place, he said, “Count Dracula, I presume.”

  The shape paused in its repast, noticing for the first time the dim light illuminating the cell, as though it had been eating joyfully and with abandon, eyes closed. It straightened, and Stoker took an involuntary step back, then regained his composure and held the crucifix higher.

  “You presume wrongly, Mr. Stoker,” said the figure.

  Stoker blinked and swayed with shock, both that the vampire knew his name and at the voice issuing from the creature. The vampire turned and smiled, its teeth the distended fangs of legend, its lower jaw slick with dark blood. But the face was that of a singularly beautiful woman, her complexion as pale as a white rose, her black hair falling about her shoulders in lustrous curls. She fixed him with her shining eyes and said in flawless En glish, “Countess Dracula, if you must. But why stand on ceremony?”

  She advanced one step and Stoker moaned, the stakes falling from his weakening grip and clattering to the stone floor. She raised an exquisite eyebrow at his arsenal and said, “Call me Elizabeth.” She smiled again, showing those dreadful, bloodstained fangs. “Elizabeth Bathory. And you are just in time for dinner.”

  “Dinner?” asked Stoker, looking with horror at the corpse of the dog. “You mean you wish to share your foul meal with me . . . or I am to be your main course?”

  Elizabeth Bathory laughed lightly, and it would have been a pleasing sound under other circumstances. She threw a sheet over the body of the sheepdog and took out a white handkerchief to wipe the gore from her chin. “I mean neither, Mr. Stoker. I have a basket with bread, cheese, and wine, if you would care to join me. And you can put down that crucifix; it is a rather pointless endeavor to keep brandishing it at me.”

  Stoker looked self-consciously at the cross and lowered it, touching his hand to his collar. “I apologize for my rudeness, Countess. But I must decline your kind offer. My appetite inexplicably deserts me.”

  Bathory cocked her head to one side to regard Stoker in a maneuver he found both wanton and ever so slightly alluring. “So,” she said after a moment. “You are convinced a vampire is abroad on English soil and you are determined to rid the countryside of this foul beast. Am I correct?”

  “Well,” said Stoker, rather disarmed by Bathory’s beauty and self-assured manner.

  “And I should expect your satchel contains . . . let me see . . .” She placed an exquisitely painted nail to her full lips, as though lost in thought. “Garlic, wooden stakes, a Bible? An ax to chop off my head?”

  When she put it like that, it did seem ridiculous. Then Stoker caught sight of the lumpy corpse of the dog, slowly coloring the sheet with dark blood, and his resolve stiffened.

  “You surmise correctly, Countess,” he said, raising the crucifix again. “Your reign of terror must end this night.”

  Bathory’s cloak fell open, revealing a sumptuous ivory dress in an antique style plunging perilously at the neckline. She put her hand to the necklace hanging there and said, “It is hot in this cramped little hovel, Mr. Stoker. I intend to take some cheese and wine in the abbey grounds. Will you join me?”

  Stoker risked a glance through the stone doorway, as the last of the bloodred rays of the setting sun faintly painted the ruined walls. Was there enough sunlight to cause the vampire ill if she stepped into it? Perhaps . . .

  Bathory laughed again. “My dear Mr. Stoker,” she said. “I can see I must tutor you in the ways of my kind. The sunlight will not harm me, nor will that crucifix. I intend to step out for some air whether you come or not; this hateful little place reminds me too much of the dungeon where I breathed my last as a living thing. This is the place where Walter Scott had that poor nun suffer a similar fate in Marmion, if I am not mistaken.”

  Stoker searched his memory of Le Fanu’s document. Elizabeth Bathory, known as the Blood Countess for her habit of bathing in the blood of murdered young women to extend her youth. For her crimes she had been bricked up in her rooms in Csejte Castle in Hungary. Sometime in 1614, he thought he remembered. He blanched. Two hundred and seventy six years ago. He stammered, “You are well read, Countess.”

  She smiled, showing those fearful fangs again. “I have had plenty of time to read, Mr. Stoker. And not just the classics. Why, I read in the newspaper you had been helping the local constabulary with their inquiries into the mystery of the ghost ship that fetched up on Whitby beach, did I not?”

  “You did,” said Stoker. Bathory grasped the handle of a wicker basket and moved toward him. He pressed himself against the cool stone wall, and she passed by him and into the grounds of the abbey.

  Gathering his things, he followed, to find the countess laying out a gingham blanket on the unruly lawn, now painted silver by the fiercely glowing moon high above. Bathory sat down with her legs beneath her and closed her eyes, breathing deeply. “I always loved the smell of the sea.”

  Warily, Stoker circled around her. She began to lay out items from her basket: cheese, bread, and wine, just as she had said. “Please do sit down, Mr. Stoker. You are quite making me nervous with all this hopping around.”

  Stoker crouched on the corner of the blanket. He surveyed the food and r
aised an eyebrow as Bathory tore off a chunk of bread and began to nibble on it.

  “I thought . . . blood . . .”

  Bathory sighed and lay down her bread. “Mr. Stoker, you require water to survive?”

  “Of course.”

  “So it is with vampires and blood. But just as you do not entirely subsist on water, so we do eat other food as well. Life would be rather dull if I had to only drink blood.”

  “Life?” said Stoker, pulling a face.

  She shrugged. “Unlife. Undeath. Call it what you will. But mark this: I never felt more alive before I crossed over.” She paused. “Lesson two. Sunlight does not cause vampires to shrivel and burn. It weakens me, yes, and it can hurt my eyes. But I am quite capable of walking in it. I enjoy the sunshine, Mr. Stoker. Number three, your crucifix means nothing to me, so please put it away. My kind may have been cast from the Kingdom of Heaven, but by men, not God. Men are not always right, you know. In fact, I find they rarely are at all. Are we not sitting on consecrated ground? With no ill effect to myself?”

  “Garlic?” asked Stoker, rather hopelessly.

  “I like it, in moderation,” said Bathory. “This cheese is made with a small amount.”

  “A stake through the heart?”

  Bathory smiled. “I dare say if I hammered a wooden stake through your heart, Mr. Stoker, it would sting a little.”

  His shoulders slumped, and he sat down properly on the blanket. Was all Le Fanu’s lore useless? He could recall only one other fact. “Running water,” he announced. “Vampires can’t cross running water, can they?”

  She gave him the look a schoolteacher might direct toward a particularly dull pupil. “I arrived by boat, Mr. Stoker.”

  He sighed. “That you did, Countess.” He paused. “Do you mind if I have some cheese? I am dashed hungry, after all.”

  It was quite the most unusual dinner he had ever had. He said. “I must say, you are rather not what I was expecting.”

  “What were you expecting?”

  “A man, for one thing. Count Vlad Dracula of Transylvania, to be exact.”

  A cloud passed over Bathory’s flawless face. “My husband,”

  she said tightly.

  Stoker felt suddenly fearful. “Your husband? Is he here?” Bathory looked down at her glass of wine. “No, Mr. Stoker.

  My husband is not here. That is the reason I am.” She looked up at him. “Dracula is dead, Mr. Stoker. Properly, finally dead.

  And I am on the trail of his murderers.”

  Stoker was burning with questions. Bathory smiled and said, “But enough for now. Have you tried this Wensleydale?

  There are cranberries in it. Most diverting.”

  Stoker munched thoughtfully and asked, “How did you . . .

  become as you are?”

  “A vampire?” asked Bathory. “Dracula. He found me when I was near death and saved me.”

  “This was your death in the castle? Where you had been imprisoned?”

  Bathory nodded. “I was not a good person, Mr. Stoker. I was a vain, arrogant woman who felt all the good things in life belonged to the young, and endeavored to extend my youth with the blood of virgins.”

  “And you bathed in it? And it restored your youth?”

  “I did bathe in the blood of murdered women, yes. And no, it did not work. I was tried and jailed in my own castle to starve.

  And as I hovered between this life and the punishments of eternity, I was offered an opportunity to redeem myself.”

  “By Dracula?”

  She nodded. “He had lived many lifetimes by then, and he had heard about me and my crimes. Where others could not venture, he breached the walls of my prison. At first I thought he was the angel of death, come to take me to my final judgment.

  Then he bestowed upon me his kiss, and drew his thumbnail across his forearm, and bade me drink of his own blood. Thus, I was transformed.”

  “Count Dracula and Elizabeth Bathory together,” said Stoker wonderingly. “Your reign of terror must have been absolute.”

  A distant look entered her eye. “Men create their own monsters, Mr. Stoker. If you are not understood, you are to be feared and ultimately destroyed. Unless you strike first.”

  “But the stories . . . ,” pressed Stoker. “Preying on innocent victims, drinking their blood . . . Like that holidaymaker in Whitby.” He paused. “And my dream the night before . . .

  the face at the window . . .”

  She smiled. “I was curious, Mr. Stoker, about this man whom the newspapers said was investigating.” Her face darkened. “As for that brute forcing himself upon the girl? He got everything he deserved.”

  Stoker frowned. “You were protecting her?”

  Bathory looked Stoker in the eye. “My husband was demonized by those who said he took young girls and transformed them into monsters.” She sat back and regarded him. “What do you know of women, Mr. Stoker?”

  He frowned. “I am married, Countess.”

  She nodded. “Then you know when a girl’s blood comes, it unlocks a new life for her. It is the transition between being a child and becoming an adult. You know what I mean by blood?” Stoker reddened. He of course knew all about Florence’s monthlies, but it was not a topic for polite conversation. As he had already established, however, this was a most unusual dinner. “Of course,” he mumbled.

  “The blood sets her free. It enables her to embrace the world of love and passion, and to create life herself. What Dracula understood, and I later came to understand, is that there can come a time when bloodletting can unlock yet another life, a third life beyond childhood and adulthood. Vampirism is yet another transition, Mr. Stoker. The giving and receiving of blood takes the woman on to the next level of existence. It is the ultimate emancipation for women who live their lives under the yoke of man’s slavery.”

  “A rather . . . forward-thinking attitude,” he murmured.

  “And you have . . . set many women free into this new and secret phase of life?”

  “Dozens,” said Bathory, her teeth gleaming in the moon light. “At Castle Dracula, I have an army of them.” An army of vampiric women, all as passionate and abandoned and emancipated as Elizabeth Bathory. Stoker felt simultaneously sickened and excited.

  That faraway look entered Bathory’s eye again. “But that was not enough to save my husband. Castle Dracula, which has been my home for almost three centuries, is a beautiful place,” said Bathory. “Its spires and towers reach for blue skies only recently sullied by the occasional passage of your empire’s airships. It sits high in the Carpathian Mountains and can be reached only by the Gorgo Pass, on which no mortal will tread. The jagged peaks are covered with snow in the winter months, which thaws to form thunderous waterfalls and churning rivers in the spring. Raw, untamed forests spin out in every direction, haunted by things unknown to man, or forgotten by him. Wolves roam and sing in the moonlight, serenading Castle Dracula with the music of the children of the night. It is peaceful and happy. Or it was.” She looked at him. “We were attacked, Mr. Stoker.”

  “An attack? But you said you had an army . . . the mountains were impassable.”

  “No plot of mere men could have unseated us. They came stealthily and in secret, traveling the watercourses, swimming upstream like black salmon against the melt-water torrents.

  They crawled like rats over the battlements of Castle Dracula while we slumbered as the summer sun burned in the sky.”

  “But what were they?” said Stoker.

  Bathory shrugged. “If they had ever been human, it was a long time ago. They were dead things, wrapped in rags, with vicious claws and inhuman strength. Their faces were fearful to behold, Mr. Stoker: blank round eyes and rows of pin-sharp teeth. As my husband beheld them I heard him shout, ‘The Children of Heqet!’ and he entered the fray.”

  She paused, then spat, startling Stoker. “Foolish, foolish man. Always had to play the protector and the hero.” She cast her eyes down. “They tore him apart.
They broke into our treasury and took one item, a jeweled scarab from ancient Egypt, picked up from somewhere or other by Vlad many centuries previously. For that they murdered my husband and turned my world upside down.”

  Stoker sat in silence for a long time after the story was finished. “And these Children of Heqet? What do you know of them?”

  “Nothing. Vlad died before he could say anything further.

  They leaped into the rivers with their prize, and fled.”

  “So what brings you to Whitby?”

  “I joined the battle at the side of my husband. The Children of Heqet did not escape without casualties. Come with me.” Without any of his earlier fear, Stoker followed Bathory back into the stone cell. She took a sturdy hatbox and opened it, bidding him to shine his lamp on it. He did so and drew back, horrified. Within was the severed head of one of the monsters Bathory had described, its withered skin stretched taut over a domelike head, its bulbous eyes staring sightlessly, its thin lips drawn back in a grinning rictus over daggerlike teeth. “I have tasted their blood,” said Bathory. “And as foul as it is, I continue to taste it, a drop or two a day. Because when it suffuses me I feel their presence, these hated Children of Heqet. They shine like a beacon in my mind. I have followed them here.”

  “To Whitby? But why?”

  “I mean to find out. And they will know my wrath.” In the tiny cell, as Elizabeth Bathory drew herself up to her full height and bared her fangs, her eyes shining in the darkness, Stoker felt suddenly very afraid. No longer for himself . . .

  but for those who had wronged her.

  “Mr. Stoker,” said Bathory, holding out her hand. “Will you help me avenge my husband?”

  Stoker had come seeking one monster, and he had found more to hunt. And he still felt as though he owed something of a debt to Gideon Smith. The young man had given freely of his time and energy to help Stoker, all—it had seemed—for nothing to help him in his quest for an explanation for his father’s death. But now . . . it seemed likely the Children of Heqet could have done for the Cold Drake’s crew and Gideon’s father. Perhaps, while Gideon was away seeking help in London, Stoker could go some way toward making amends. He nodded and placed his hand in Elizabeth Bathory’s, then said, “Madam, though I fear my contribution shall be wretchedly mortal and weak, I most assuredly will.”