Dracula in Love

The Count knew that I was elated and could not be confined in a carriage, so he sent the coach away and walked with me down London’s smoky gaslit streets. Soon enough, though, the rapture began to wear off, and I started to think again, wondering if I might have hurt my baby by what I had done. The Count put one arm around my shoulder and rested his other hand on my abdomen. “I do not think that you have harmed it or altered it,” he said. “Despite your formidable display this evening, the child still carries the frequency and vibration of the father. It is unchanged.”

“Jonathan is too weak to be a father,” I said.

Indeed. He is too weak to be the father of your child.

“Too weak because you left him to be the victim of those creatures,” I said.

“You are not so different from those creatures,” he said. He had removed his mask, and I saw the little ironic smile that crept over his face.

We walked through Shepherd Market, where a few dim lights shone weakly through the windows above the closed shops. It was a cold evening, but I did not feel the temperature. The Count kept his arm around me as we walked up Half Moon Street and on to Piccadilly, where we crossed the street and walked into the park.

“Those women-what are they? Did they begin as mortals?” I asked. His comment that I was not unlike them disturbed me. If I developed my powers, would I start preying upon the innocent?

“No, they did not. But in your original lifetime, neither did you. You would know them as the daughters of Lilith. They are enchantresses who live separate from men until they wish to seduce them. Some call them lamia. They are unruly and wanton beings, and they are able to take many different forms-swans, seals, snakes, and sometimes women with serpents’ tales.”

I had a vague notion of Lilith from artists’ paintings and biblical tales. “I remember the name Lilith from Von Helsinger’s notes. He had speculated about whether she might still exist.”

“The doctor was correct in a way,” the Count said. “Everything that once was still exists in one form or another. Lilith was one of the angels who, with Lucifer, called themselves into physical existence through their desire for life on earth. She first appeared in the midst of a wild tempest, and the humans who witnessed it called her the Lady of the Storm. Her beauty struck the mortal men who saw her. They fought savagely for her attention, shedding blood and betraying one another. Eventually, they turned the blame on Lilith herself for enticing them, and they began to demonize her, which made her turn angry and vengeful.

“By this time, she had given birth to many daughters; and together, they began to haunt those who feared and hated them, coming to them at night and sucking away their energy and their blood. They began to take revenge wherever they could, seducing the strongest of men to get their stock and then discarding them. If one of their lovers took a mortal wife, they invaded his home at night and drank the blood of his children.”

His words stopped me cold. They will try to do that to my child. I cringed at the vengeful acts I had invited by attacking that creature. How would I protect my child if he were fully human with none of my powers? They would easily do to him what they had done to his father. Or worse.

“The lamia live by their own code,” the Count said. “Men have called the fate on themselves by their own desires.”

“It seems to me that you arranged Jonathan’s fate. He is only human. You left him to be ruined by your women.”

“That is correct: he is only human. You are so much more.”

“And my child?” I asked.

“As you fear, the child will be in danger, but I will protect him. After all, he is yours too.”

The next day, plagued by curiosity, I went to look for the mansion where the masked ball had taken place, but I could not find it. I retraced the carriage ride onto the narrow street where the coachman had let us out, and then found the alley that led to the square, but neither the house nor the square was there. In fact, the alley dead-ended into the back of an ugly brown brick hospital.

After that, I gave up trying to solve any of the mysteries in my life. The Count and I loved each other, and if he accepted my child and could protect it against the creatures that might do it harm, then I would stay with him. I did not want to remain in London where I would daily see shadows of my former life. I could never face the people I had known without explaining something of what had happened. Kate Reed was probably still waiting for my information to write an article about the scandalous treatment of women in the asylum. Headmistress was undoubtedly contacting people who knew me to find out how I was adjusting to married life. Somehow, I thought that word would get out that I had fallen in love with a mysterious foreigner and left my husband soon after the wedding, and that would be the end of my existence in this city.

I did not want to go to the Count’s estate in Styria, the site of Jonathan’s fall. We decided that we would live quietly in the London mansion until the Count’s staff could ready one of his country estates in France. Then we would move our household there well in advance of the birth. He assured me that the French midwives were superb, and that the estate would be a wonderful place for my son to spend his early years. “You have lived there before, Mina, and when you see it, you will know that you are once again home,” he said.

“Was it a good life?” I asked.

“One of the very best,” he said.

After the blood-drinking incident with Ursulina, we watched my body for signs of change. Though my senses were keener than ever before, the only other changes we observed were the effects of pregnancy. I was happy to simply be that-a woman expecting a baby-and I was not anxious to use my power or my magic for fear that it might harm the fetus, though I knew that the resurrection of those gifts had permanently emboldened me. The Count acted as my physician and metaphysician, checking my human vital signs twice a day, and also reading my frequency for evidence of the transformation. He believed that the pregnancy had interrupted the process, or slowed the pace of it, in order to accommodate the creation of another being. As he had warned, this was a highly unpredictable game with no rules. “The body knows what it is doing, Mina,” he said. “The fetus is strong. Let us be satisfied with that for the present.”

In early December, snow cast an austere white hand over the city. I spent my days taking advantage of the Count’s magnificent library, which contained leather-bound volumes collected over the centuries. Sometimes at night, we took walks in the parks, where, between the snow and my new superior night vision, I saw as well as if it were daytime. Birds, animals, branches, all were clearly revealed to me by moonlight, and it was thrilling to watch night’s performances, largely invisible to the naked human eye, in all its vivid wonder. Some evenings, we read together by lamplight, or talked of plans for the immediate future. We did not speculate on eternity. I did know that I had at least this lifetime ahead of me, and I started to teach myself to play the piano. One day, a beautiful baroque harp appeared in the parlor, and, strumming the strings, I fell in love with its resonant sound, and melodies that I must have played in some long-lost lifetime came back to me with ease. I also imagined that it soothed my little one when I played a simple lullaby on either instrument.

One cold winter afternoon, two weeks into Advent, on the sort of gray London day when the sky begins to darken before daylight had taken hold, we were sitting in the library, when the Count looked up from his newspaper. “Someone is coming,” he said. He stood up, letting the newspaper flutter to the floor. Nothing had disturbed our serenity in weeks, and I did not like the alarmed look on his face. He walked toward the door and then stopped. I noticed that he had made a fist, which rested by his side. He turned and looked at me. “It’s Harker. And another man.”

As soon as he said it, I could feel the essence of Jonathan coming toward me. I felt him so vividly that I could hear the creak of the gate as he gingerly opened it and the snow crunching beneath his feet as he walked to our door. I could also feel that he was not alone. His companion felt familiar, but I could not put an identity to him. This was a new sensation for me; thus far I had been able to feel only the vibration of the Count. But now I could feel Jonathan’s essence-his being, his core, that hum that identified him as who he was-as if he were standing next to me. As soon as I was fully aware of him, something deep inside me-perhaps it was my baby talking to me-knew that I had to hear what he had come to tell me.

“Let me speak with him in the parlor,” I said.

“I do not like it,” the Count replied. He closed his eyes for a moment and stuck his nose into the air. “They carry the scent of danger, and the one who is with Harker is very strong.” He did not have to tell me that he was surprised by Jonathan’s courage in coming here.

“I can protect myself,” I said, knowing intuitively that the danger was not directed at me. “Perhaps it is