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“Everything is fine?” called a voice from down the trail, and master and valet turned to regard the source of the question.
The man who had spoken was standing beside the low wooden cart, looking up at them with concern on his face. He was small and uncannily thin, his proportions rendered comical by the enormous fur ushanka that covered his head. His face was thin and pointed, the eyes dark, the hair of his moustache and triangular beard jet black.
“Yes, Bukharov,” snapped Van Helsing. “Everything is fine. Bring your men up to me. We should be able to see the castle once we round this bend.”
Ivan Bukharov nodded, then let loose a galloping string of Russian at the three men who sat astride aged horses before the cart. They dug their heels into the flanks of their mounts, and the wheels of the vehicle creaked into life. Bukharov swung himself nimbly up on to his own horse, and clattered along the treacherous path to where Van Helsing and the valet were waiting. The two Englishmen mounted their own animals, one with significantly greater difficulty than the other, and the three men trotted slowly around an enormous outcrop of rock that caused the path to make a wickedly sharp turn to the right. They rounded it with great care, and then stopped, transfixed by the sight before them.
The Borgo Pass widened and dropped before them, before rising steeply and disappearing out of sight. Above them, more than a thousand feet from the distant valley floor, perched on the very edge of the mountain like a vast bird of prey, stood Castle Dracula.
The turrets and ramparts of the ancient building were black in the cool morning light, spiked and twisted and fearsome. The central spire of the residence of the world’s first, and most terrible vampire, rose boldly towards the heavens, a blasphemous challenge to the authority of God, an unholy blade cutting into the pale blue sky.
Behind them came a flurry of movement and muttered Russian. The valet turned, and saw Bukharov’s men crossing themselves frantically, their eyes cast towards the ground, unwilling to even look directly at the castle that loomed over them.
“So it real,” breathed Bukharov. “I was thinking legend only. But it real.”
The man’s pidgin English was a source of constant annoyance to Van Helsing, but he barely even noticed it, so lost was he in the memories of the last time he had seen this terrible place.
I was on the other side of this plain, with Mina Harker pressed into a stone crevice behind me. I drew a circle around her, and I waited. There were screams, and the thundering of hooves, and blood, and a friend of mine was lost.
“It’s real,” he said, composing himself. “But it is merely a building, stone and mortar. It cannot harm us; whatever malevolence it may have possessed is long gone. Now come – our destination is no more than five minutes’ ride from here.”
The old man kicked his horse into life, and cantered down the shallow slope of the pass, towards the clearing where the course of his life had been forever altered.
The negotiations that had brought Van Helsing back to Transylvania, eleven years after he had sworn he would never set foot on her cursed soil again, had been long and arduous. In London, his hours were full, fuller than those of a man of his advanced years ought to have allowed, as the fledgling Blacklight began to take shape. The days were spent at the premises on Piccadilly that Arthur Holmwood, the new Lord Godalming, had secured for them, a noble use of the section of his father’s estate that had been set aside for charitable works, planning and organising and writing reports for the Prime Minister, alongside the friends with whom he had undertaken the protection of the Empire from the supernatural. The nights found him in tombs and graveyards and museums and hospitals, battling the growing number of vampires that were infecting London and its surrounds, sending them one after another to their grisly ends.
He spent precious little time in his laboratory, even though he believed that the vampire problem would ultimately be solved by science, rather than at the point of a stake. There was simply no time; it was taking all of Blacklight’s efforts merely to stem the tide of the epidemic that was washing across Europe, an epidemic that had started in the building that was casting its shadow over him as he rode down the pass. It was obvious that the four of them were going to be unable to keep the darkness at bay on their own, and tentative plans had been put in motion to increase their number. The first prospective new member was riding silently alongside the Professor now, his eyes keeping a sharp watch on the treacherous terrain around them.
Henry Carpenter will do fine, perhaps even better than fine. He alone will not be enough, as my days on this earth are undoubtedly drawing to a close. But he is a start, and a good one at that.
Despite the endless demands on his attention, Van Helsing had been able to draw two reasonably firm conclusions from his study of the vampire. He was confident that the transmission of the condition occurred when the saliva was introduced to the system of the victim, during the act of biting. And he was also sure that a vampire who had been incinerated to nothing more than a pile of ash could, with sufficient quantities of blood, be made whole again. This conclusion had been reached after the Professor had conducted a series of experiments in a heavily fortified room beneath the cellar of his townhouse, experiments he had told no one he was undertaking, for fear of rebuke. And it was this conclusion that had led him to the realisation that a return trip to Transylvania was imperative – as the Count’s remains, buried though they were under the heavy Carpathian soil, were too dangerous to leave unattended. The opportunity to bring Quincey Morris home, to give him the burial he deserved, was merely a bonus.
At Van Helsing’s request, telegrams had been sent to the heads of Russia and Germany, inviting them to send envoys to London on a matter of grave importance to the entire continent. Men from these nations had duly arrived in the summer of 1900, and, after signing declarations of utmost secrecy, had been admitted to the Blacklight headquarters and briefed on the threat that was facing the civilised world. They had been sent home with much to ponder, and in the two years that had passed encouraging word had reached Van Helsing’s ears, of equivalent organisations being birthed in northern Europe. It had been a gamble, and a dangerous political move, to show their cards as plainly as they had, but without other nations joining the fight, the battle was sure to be lost.
When Van Helsing informed the Prime Minister of his intention to return to Transylvania, to secure the remains of Dracula and bring them home to be safely stored, a telegram had been sent to Moscow, inviting the nascent Supernatural Protection Commissariat to send a man to accompany the Professor on his journey, in the spirit of international cooperation that befitted the new century. And so it was that when the old man and his valet disembarked at the port of Constanţa, they were met by Ivan Bukharov, who introduced himself to the Professor as Special Envoy to the State Council of Imperial Russia, under the authority of Tsar Nicholas II himself. The six men – Van Helsing, Henry Carpenter, Ivan Bukharov and his three Russian aides – had spent the night in Constanţa, before making their way north via carriage, through Brăila and Tecuci, where they spent an agreeable evening and night in one of the town’s three inns, through Bacău and Drăgoeşti, where they again took rest, and on to Vatra Dornei, where they left the carriages and advanced on horseback, pulling with them the low wooden cart that would ferry the remains of the dead back to England.
They rode up on to the Borgo Pass at first light, the mood of the travellers and the urgency of the journey far removed from the previous time Van Helsing had stepped on to the steep ridges of the Carpathian Mountains, when he had been chasing evil with one hand, while trying to protect innocence with the other.
Van Helsing recognised their destination when he was still more than a hundred yards away from it. A natural canopy of rock, not deep enough to be a cave, that nonetheless offered protection from the elements to the souls sleeping eternally beneath it. He called for Bukharov to follow him, then urged his horse onwards, its hooves clattering across the loose rock. He drew the animal to a halt, and dismounted. His valet appeared instantly at