The Classified Dossier: Sherlock Holmes and Count Dracula(105)
“Not so fast, Doctor!” Moriarty cried out. “You wouldn’t want to risk hitting your friend. What would the world do without its greatest detective and the second-most powerful intellect in all of England?” His voice dripped scorn and derision. “You wouldn’t want that, now would you?” He had one hand around Holmes’s neck and held him fast with an iron grip, but my view of them continued to be intermittently blocked by the billows of sooty smoke. I had reason to know that Holmes’s grip was no slight thing, but it was nothing now to Moriarty’s, and I could see that Holmes’s fingers pried frantically, but uselessly, at Moriarty’s immobile fingers while he continued to gasp for breath.
“Unhand him, monster!” I shouted, but Moriarty presented too small a target, hiding as he was behind Holmes, for me to risk a shot on the roof of a moving train. Holmes seemed helpless in his grasp, losing the struggle to get air.
“It won’t be like Reichenbach Falls,” Moriarty gloated, shouting into the detective’s hair. “That’s far enough, madam. Unless you want me to snap his neck?” This last was to Mina, who had inched forward slightly. I put a restraining hand on her elbow, though I kept my revolver aimed, hoping for an opportunity.
“I had just come into my powers then,” Moriarty raved. He was seemingly focused entirely on his helpless prisoner, but the instant I moved my weight to take a step his gaze snapped on me and he moved his free hand to seize Holmes by the hair, bending my friend backward, against all his strength. Moriarty positioned his arms so as to snap my friend’s neck in an instant. I froze and my heart quailed.
“Foolish to try and apprehend me with your weak link presented in the forefront,” Moriarty said. “The weak, human link, Holmes, but I knew you would never see yourself in that light. Your ego would not permit it and this is a blind spot, so easy to exploit. You do not understand, Holmes, the profound and powerful combination of a superior intellect that drives an enduring, potent vampire body. You yourself had the opportunity to seize it, I understand, but were too weak to embrace it. Fool! You value your resources, your friendships, which is your ultimate weakness.” He shook Holmes like a ragdoll without releasing his grip and I feared for my friend’s life, but never had the chance to get a clear shot and dared not advance. Moriarty had lost all reason. His hair was wild, his eyes blazing, and spittle hung from his lips.
He regarded Mina, standing frozen next to me. “You are alive, I see. Unexpected, but not entirely unimaginable. Your husband must have survived, too, I wager.”
No one answered him and he glared down at Holmes. “Resources sometimes fulfil their ultimate potential when they are expended, and you never saw that? Friendships are a weakness, Holmes. I would think that you, of all people, would understand that. There is no room for friendships in the mind and heart of the true ruler. Only someone that has lived with power for countless centuries. Isn’t that correct, Count Dracula?”
He shouted the last two words of this speech. I was astonished at the uncontrolled display of fury. I had never met Moriarty before this, but Holmes’s descriptions had prepared me for a malevolent force, to be sure, but one of controlled malice, not this snarling, spitting, furious monster of a man. Moriarty’s schemes had all contained plans within plans, and when Holmes had portrayed him as a spider in the centre of an enormous web, it had been a testament to his patience and cunning. This man was a fury of passion and I saw now why Holmes had had his doubts about it being the same man behind the machinations all this time. Vampirism had changed Moriarty, making him far more reckless and perhaps even more dangerous to everyone and everything around him.
“Dracula!” Moriarty shouted again. “I know you must be here. Holmes would not be so foolish as to come without you. Reveal yourself, or he dies!”
The train whistle blew and a cloud of steam and soot and smoke washed over our heads, but no other answer came. Or so I thought at first.
Then the cloud cleared completely and I saw the figure astride the roof of the engine. There was no mistaking the proud silhouette of the Wallachian nobleman, tall and stern, with the grand sweep of his black mane and the cloak billowing around him.
“You see?” Moriarty said. “You see now, at last, how little friendships matter to one who is immortal? With your intellect gone, there is no one who can sit across the board from me as an equal. Even now, I have agents, both human and vampire, in places that you cannot, Count, possibly ferret out without the help of the world’s… greatest… detective…” Here he shook Holmes again, punctuating every word with an angry, bone-rattling motion. “They can find you, Dracula, find you and your lovely bride, and end you. For I have set into motion a world that will know all the important details of you, your bride, and your kind. They will know the vampire, not as a tale to frighten, but as a world-ending plague that needs to be eradicated for the human race to continue. Imagine the frightful forces that could be raised against you once the world knows everything? Do you think you can stand against all the nations of the world? How long would it take agents of the same to find you during daylight? How much will they sacrifice to end you once they realize that their very existence is on the line?”
He turned slightly so that he could face the Count behind him, while still holding Holmes as a shield against my pistol.
“So what say you?” said Moriarty. “You could attempt to benefit with your association to Mr Sherlock Holmes, who offers you little, or you could come into an accord with me, who offers the world. Who could stand against the two of us, with Sherlock Holmes gone?”