dead. Wasn’t more than a minute I suppose before light bloomed gold in Mrs. Westenra’s doorway, and there she was staring at me, her face gone dead pale, her eyes big as saucers.
Lying half across me was Miss Lucy, her skin ice-cold, her color like ashes. She had two wounds in her neck, fresh drops of blood staining the white linen of her nightgown. Poor thing, she was like a breathing corpse. I got to my feet, and Mrs. Westenra bent down to help, but her color was almost as bad as Miss Lucy’s. I couldn’t
Except Elizabeth Gwydion, coming, up the steps with a candle. She was smiling.
“I’ll help you,” she said, and took Miss Lucy’s feet. I hated the idea, but what choice did I have, then? We carried her into the bedroom and laid her in the disordered bed; I tucked her carefully in, added blankets from the wardrobe, and closed the open window.
All the garlic flowers Dr. Van Helsing had left around the room had been swept into a corner. The necklace he’d asked Miss Lucy to wear was broken on the floor.
I looked up and Elizabeth Gwydion was staring into me, digging her eyes in like claws. Smiling.
“Too late,” she said.
“We’ll see about that,” I snapped, and saw that Penny had finally worked up enough courage to come down, and lurked like some hunted animal behind the doorframe, only her round pale face showing. “Penny! Get George and tell him to drive like Jehu for Dr. Seward. Go now!”
She went, her bare feet padding on the carpet. Elizabeth Gwydion never quit smiling.
“Mary Margaret—” Mrs. Westenra, who’d been standing quietly by my side, put a hand over mine as I straightened blankets atop Miss Lucy. “That will be all. I’ll sit with my daughter.”
Elizabeth Gwydion lost her smile. She didn’t like that, didn’t like it at all. She’d thought Mrs. Westenra defeated, I saw.
But she bobbed a curtsy and said, “Tea, ma’am?”
“Fine,” Mrs. Westenra snapped. Elizabeth went.
“Ma’am—” It was terrible forward of me to say anything, but I had to. “Ma’am, best not to drink anything she brings you. Until Dr. Seward arrives.”
She blinked and nodded. After a moment she looked at me again, and there was new strength in her eyes.
“You’ll defend my daughter?” she asked. “Against anyone?”
“Yes ma’am.”
She took her hand out of the pocket of her nightrobe. She was holding a shining silver paper knife, and she passed it to me and folded my fingers around the warm handle.
“Take it,” she said. “Use it if you have to.”
I left her and went downstairs to warn Cook that the battle was on.
But Cook was gone. Whether she’d run or been dragged away, we never knew; no trace of her was ever found. Penny had found George and sent him on his way, but as the day dawned, then dragged on, Dr. Seward didn’t come. There was no telephone at Hillingham, though the Westenras had one in the London house; I missed it most sorely, because help was miles away. Still, Dr. Seward would come. Surely.
Towards five I sent Kate out to walk into Whitby and find help—the constable, if nothing else. She’d only been gone a few minutes when she came back, screaming like the house was afire, to tell me that George was lying dead, the carriage smashed, on the rocks at the turn of the road. After that I couldn’t get any of them to go.
So night fell, and we were all alone. Four maids, two ladies, and Elizabeth Gwydion. But Dr. Van Helsing would be back early in the morning. All we had to do was see daylight again. So I told the others, and so it was.
But it was a terrible long night. Dead quiet outside, not even a breath of wind. Just the crash of the sea in the distance, and the sense that the whole house was holding its breath.
Mrs. Westenra dismissed Elizabeth. Oh, you should have seen the woman’s face—cold, haughty, amazed. But Mrs. Westenra was too soft to make the woman leave the house in the dark; she settled for sending her to her room and telling Penny to watch the door.
It was close on midnight when I took Penny a cup of hot cocoa and found the chair outside of Elizabeth Gwydion’s room sitting empty, though the seat of it was still warm. And the door open just a crack.
I pushed it to find poor dear Penny lying on the cold wood floor, struggling. She flung out a hand to me. Elizabeth Gwydion had hold of her feet, and stooped over her, like an evil black shadow—
Yes.
I suppose what saved me was the crucifix, which I’d mended and still had hung around my neck. It swung free and caught the light, sending Dracula reeling back. Remember that I told you I never saw him make himself dog or wolf or bat? I saw him turn to a stinking black mist like flies that whipped away through the open window. At the time I thought he was afraid of me. Now I think it was just that he was impatient to be about his other business.
Elizabeth still had hold of me. She was fearful strong, but I had a lifetime of scrubbing and lifting and hard work behind me, and I threw her off—
—Out the open window. I rushed to it, hoping to see her crushed on the stone below, but she was clinging to the brick, clinging with needle-sharp nails. Her pale face grinned up at me, and I screamed; she laughed and scuttled away down the wall like a black-shelled beetle.
I ducked back in and slammed the window sash and bent to help Penny to her feet. That was when I heard the crash of glass, and the screams.
You know how it ended, I suppose. Poor Mrs. Westenra’s heart gave out. Miss Lucy’s own letter says a dog came through her window, though I never saw it; we found her lying pale and gray on the bed with her mother dead beside her. Penny, Kate, Alice, and I did the best we cold—covered the broken window, wrapped Mrs. Westenra in blankets, and took Miss Lucy downstairs away from the horror.
“Mother,” she kept crying, and wanted to go back. But there wasn’t no use in it, and besides she was too weak. I took everyone into the withdrawing room and found the liquor cabinet standing open. The brandy was empty—George, no doubt, which would explain the wrecked carriage—but the sherry was still full. I poured everyone a stiff measure, and we sat close to Miss Lucy while she wept. A sip or two of sherry was all she would take, though the rest of us drank up willingly enough; Penny even gulped down what Miss Lucy wouldn’t.
“What’ll we do, Mary Margaret?” Penny asked, her eyes huge and terrified. She had a wound on her neck like Miss Lucy’s, but she didn’t seem the worse for it. Just tired.
“We’ll stay here,” I said. “Let morning come, and Dr. Van Helsing arrive, before we do anything more. Here, Miss Lucy. Are you warm enough?”
She was shivering, poor thing, though we’d wrapped her up. I felt warm enough. Over-warm, perhaps. Time passed, as time does even in the worst of circumstances; Miss Lucy wept, and we tried to comfort her.
It must have been near an hour later when I looked up and found Alice curled asleep in a red Moroccan chair. Kate had nodded off, too. As I watched, Penny dropped her glass and sank down on the fainting couch, her long dark hair spilling over the carpet.
My legs felt weak. When I tried to rise from where I sat, I found I couldn’t. My arms had gone numb, and I could feel it stealing through me now like a cold wind.
“Miss Lucy?” I whispered. She didn’t seem to hear me. The door of the withdrawing room opened without even a creak, and there in the dark stood Elizabeth Gwydion.
“Come,” she said to Miss Lucy. And Miss Lucy, who hadn’t but touched the sherry, wandered away, leaving the blankets on the floor. I couldn’t follow, couldn’t master my own legs enough to try.
Elizabeth came straight to me and looked me right in the eyes, grinning like a skull, and said, “My master’s seeing to your Miss Lucy. But it’s my privilege to see to
I started to pray then, because I didn’t think I could move. The world was going gray, the edges fraying, and she bent close to me, her lips cold on my neck, sucking like a baby at the breast, and I knew in the next instant
