The Classified Dossier: Sherlock Holmes and Count Dracula(22)



Those questions and many more rattled around in my brain while I lay in bed, far from even the slightest trace of slumber, but obstinately refusing to rise and lurk through the darkest hours like some kind of haunt. (The irony that these hours have always been favourites of Holmes did not escape me.) Still, I refused to rise, and lay there through a long and arduous vigil. Finally, after a waiting period longer than most ice ages, slumber came to me.

When I woke, there was but the barest glow of sunlight left to suffuse the outer pane of my window and I realized that I’d slept through the best part of the day, which probably indicated that I’d lain awake all night and fallen asleep just as dawn broke, despite all my best efforts. I rose in a foul mood as a result, and made my way down the stairs to the study and dining table. There, next to a more ordinary repast of cold meat and bread, I found Mrs Hudson’s porcelain tea service. The meat held no appeal for me and I could already smell the intellectually repulsive but life-giving contents that lay within the teapot. Fortunate for my own person that Mrs Hudson did not go in for, or possibly could not afford to purchase, a silver tea service.

I stopped with my hand outstretched, looking at the teapot. Holmes was not present, had not been present for most of the day. The lack of recent scent in the room told me that as clearly as one of Holmes’s own deductions. But the blood in the teapot was still warm, I felt sure. Placing my hand on the pot confirmed it.

Which meant that Holmes could not possibly have prepared this, but had instead given orders to Mrs Hudson to do so. How had he explained that? Even if he had come up with an easy and facile lie, how long would that story hold and how long before Mrs Hudson knew the truth about my condition? She was no dullard, and would make some deductions of her own as our sanguine ritual became routine. The woman already put up with a great deal of horror because of Holmes and I. Brawls and rifle shots, police and criminals, along with the accompanying theft, murder, blackmail, and espionage that all laid their sinister fingers on this doorstep, just because she chose to allow Holmes and I to stay at 221B Baker Street. Now she would have vampires, too, and that rested solely on my shoulders. How would she look at me once she understood what I had become? I was no longer a person and certainly not a doctor. How could I be, when blood now represented the greatest distraction possible?

How long I stood there, staring at the teapot, I do not now remember, but I heard the front door open and the scuff of a shoe on the bottom stair. This finally broke through my paralysis and I poured out a cup of the rich, warm blood and drained down the contents in one draught. I set the cup down and fumbled with a cloth napkin as Holmes, for surely it must be he, reached the top of the stairs. Some of the blood must have gotten on my moustache, because the napkin came away with the smallest of scarlet stains on it. I carefully folded the napkin to hide the evidence as best I could, not from the world’s greatest detective, but from myself.

A stranger opened the door of our study.

My senses reeled, for it was Holmes, undoubtably Holmes, but also a complete stranger that faced me. He wore a beggar’s outfit I hadn’t seen before, all rags and tatters, and the changes Holmes had made to his stance, the way he walked, and even the way he breathed disguised him almost as well as the cast-off clothes and the small changes he’d made to his face. I detected, with tinges of both shock and admiration, that he’d even gone to a great deal of effort to alter his scent, though this measure failed him now in such close quarters as he’d undoubtably been wearing the disguise since this morning. I suspected that, knowing the nature of our new adversaries, he’d gone to a great deal more trouble to maintain his incognito than he’d ever been forced to before during his long and illustrious career.

Though Holmes had often enjoyed dragging out such subterfuges to the most dramatic effect in the past, he did not do so now. “I can see by your expression,” he said in his normal voice, “that my disguises are going to have a much shorter duration than before if all of our future criminals possess the same noses that you and our current enemies do. I shall be glad to rid London of all vampires, excepting those here at Baker Street, if only to save pennies on second-hand clothes.”

“Still,” I admitted, “what you have done is astonishing!”

“Merely a necessity considering the circumstances of this case,” Holmes said airily, though I could see that he was pleased at my praise. He walked across the study, flinging off his wig, coat, and other bits of disguise before he’d even gotten to his bedroom door.

He emerged a few short minutes later, looking, moving, and smelling like his own self again. “We have not a moment to lose, Watson. I should have much preferred to take our next steps during the hours of daylight, but I’ve reason to believe that our presence is needed to prevent the birth of several more vampires tonight. In the next few hours, in fact. Do you feel up for it, Watson?”

“A block and tackle should not hold me back,” I said.

“Excellent,” Holmes said. “I wanted to offer you a chance to strike back at the foul monster who has so wronged you, this Mariner Priest. I confess no small amount of personal guilt in this matter, since I’m quite certain that your fate was actually an indirect attack on myself, with the intention of distracting me from pursuing the Count’s case.” Holmes put a hand on my shoulder and I could see that my otherwise austere comrade was quite shaken with a deep emotion that I had always known lay underneath the cool exterior. “If not for me,” he said, “your dear wife would still be with you, and not transformed as she was.”

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