The Classified Dossier: Sherlock Holmes and Count Dracula(28)
Dracula assisted the still shaky Mina away as Holmes and I began to tear the remaining crates open. We found the same dirt in all of them. Most also had signs of previous occupation. Holmes had pocketed the blue button, and had also found an old, much tarnished pocket watch, a man’s handkerchief, a pair of broken pince-nez, a train schedule, an apple core, wooden teeth, the scraps of a child’s gingham frock, and no less than three pairs of heavily used dice.
“Eighteen,” Holmes said. “Eighteen crates that most certainly held eighteen newly minted vampires.” He shook the jacket pocket that now held our strange collection of discarded personal possessions. “We have a surplus of evidence that will give us insight into the previous lives of the tenants, but even a cursory examination cannot fail to suggest that they are from various walks of life. This may mean that the Mariner Priest is simply accosting whoever comes to hand. The handkerchief has stains from no less than three different brands of tobacco, so the shop owner, a man I spoke to only a few days ago, is likely among their number. His wife and child, too. The Mariner Priest constructed a veritable vampire factory in this cellar.”
“But how?” Dracula said. “I tell you this thing cannot be done at such breakneck speed, even for a vampire willing to abandon every instinct and do such a thing. The process involves either being bitten repeatedly or drinking vampire blood, preferably both, before the infection is certain to be passed. It is long, painstaking, and highly individualistic. It cannot be reproduced with a factory-like mindset. It would require a vampire to perform it. Nor could you rely on a previous relationship or agreement to hold, since the vampire transformation is so destructive to both the personality and the intellect. Usually the elder vampire nurtures and can guide the fledgling vampire, but this is by no means certain.”
“Destruction of the intellect?” I repeated. “Didn’t that make transforming Mina a near-fatal proposition?”
“It did,” Dracula agreed slowly, catching his wife’s eye. “She convinced me to perform it anyway and I could not refuse her. She knew that she would come out intact, and she did.”
“I believed in our love,” she said simply. “Perhaps it takes a certain kind of person, emotionally, to survive the transformation, for I have always counted myself as one of great heart, and great passion, and disregarded those who deemed this a flaw of character, or fault of female temperament.” She touched the Count’s face tenderly.
I could feel the expression of astonishment on my own face, and saw Holmes’s face take on one of irritation. I could almost hear his ‘motives of women’ tirade, which I had been subjected to more than once. ‘Inscrutable’ was the word he used, and he referred to it the way someone else might refer to a wrongful death.
Mina had clearly caught Holmes’s look. “I think,” she said, “that our Mr Holmes would become an absolute failure as a vampire.” Her tone was gentle, light, her dark eyes bright, and she caught my gaze and gave a secret smile, as if she and I shared a secret between us about Holmes and Dracula that the other two could not fully comprehend. It seemed a completely illogical stance, but I could not fault the results, the almost tangible love that existed between Mina and Dracula, just as it must have before the transformation. I wondered if Mina did not, in fact, possess an understanding that even Holmes lacked.
“There is another thing,” Dracula said. Here he gave me, and then Mina, a nod. “Humans may be creatures of passion over intellect, but I tell you that vampires are even more so. No vampire born in this century could do this thing, this cold and scientific experimentation, and no non-vampire would be capable. It must be someone very old, possibly older than I.”
I put a hand to my own chest, wondering at what Dracula and Mina had just said. Was, I, too, more a creature of passion than intellect? Had I been so before? But I had never possessed the icy intellect that Holmes could claim. I hardly knew how to measure the difference, but felt certain that the loves and passions of my life still beat in my stricken heart. Perhaps even more than they had before. Friendship, love, justice, Mary… all mattered to me deeply. Too deeply to measure, perhaps.
This gave rise to other thoughts. I knew that my circulatory system no longer worked the same way. My heartbeat now was so slight as to be virtually undetectable to a regular English doctor. I knew from my own experimentation that my heart still beat, albeit more slowly and quietly, distributing the blood I consumed much in the same way it had before.
“Our Mariner Priest must have a first-rate mind,” Holmes mused. “Since he seems to have a much better working knowledge of the disease and the transformation. An expert in vampire biology, if you will, if his understanding of the effects of submersion on vampires is any indication. Also, it may be that this was discovered by accident if there is any truth to his nom de plume.” He looked at Dracula. “You have heard of no such person in all the years?”
“I have not,” Dracula admitted. “Though my country is an isolated one. I had thought, until now, that my isolation was a necessity, that no vampire could live long in the city for fear of exposure. Now, I begin to wonder. But, gentlemen, my lady, let us be free of this accursed hole.”
“Why has there been no outcry?” Mina said as we mounted the stairs to the ground floor. “You would think that eighteen newly minted vampires, as you say, Mr Holmes, would cause quite a clamour. Have you seen no word in the papers?”