The Classified Dossier: Sherlock Holmes and Count Dracula(64)
He turned that hooded gaze on me, unerringly. “You. Dr John H. Watson.” He walked over to my table, his heavy boots thumping on the wooden slats of the floor, and sat. “We need to talk, you and I.”
“Do I know you, sir?”
“That’s the way of you Brits, isn’t it?” he said. “Introductions and all that. We don’t stand on that kind of ceremony in Kansas, I’ll tell you. Well, I could get Mary to come introduce us, couldn’t I? She won’t be up until dusk, though. But then, I expect you know that.”
I clenched my jaw, but said nothing.
His hand dug into a large pocket in the duster and came out with a heavy Colt pistol which he slammed flat onto the table with a thump loud enough to make the whole room jump, myself included. I gave a brief thought to my own revolver, but there was no opportunity to pull it out. He jabbed a finger at the silver inlay on the grip. “Just in case you think I don’t know what I’m dealing with, I got silver in the bullets, too.”
The patrons were starting to slip out the front and back doors, no doubt unnerved by the pistol used in this blatantly aggressive manner. Probably one of them would be back with the constables, although nothing was certain in this seedy establishment. Even the barkeep was slipping through a door behind the bar.
“Now see here…” I said indignantly.
“I’m here to talk about Maggie Oakenshot, who you call Mary,” he said. “She’s mine, and I want you chaps to stay away from her.”
“Who are you?”
“My name’s Randall Thorne, and Maggie, she’s mine to take care of, not yours.”
I stared at this strange interloper with keen distrust. The pistol looked new and well-cared for with silver inlay worked into the handle, but, from the smell of it, had clearly been used often. His hands, too, were large and sensitive, and I could well believe them to be gunfighter hands. Certainly he had not worked the railroads or the like with those hands.
“I’ll take care of her, you mark my words,” Thorne went on, seeming to enjoy the sound of his own voice. “She’s a hard creature to track down, seeing as she likes the night life and a liquid diet, but I learned how to take care of her kind in Kansas and I’ll not shirk things now.”
“Good God, man, will you please lower your voice!” I said, shocked at what such open talk about vampires could mean in the daylight hours. He certainly wasn’t one himself, handling silver and with that tan complexion, but he clearly knew plenty about them.
Thorne spread his hands. “No one here but us, Doc.” I looked around again and found that was true. In fact, I’d known from the sounds alone. Thorne’s belligerent manner and casual indifference to pointing firearms had cleared out the place entirely.
“Very well,” I said. “How do you know Mary and what grievance do you hold against her?”
“Maggie now,” Thorne said. “Not Mary.”
“Of course she’s not Mary!” I burst out, irritated and unnerved at the bluster of this American. I lowered my voice to a hiss, despite the empty room around us. “Not anymore. She’s a monster. She’s not the woman I married at all!”
Thorne said, leaning back with a satisfied look on his face, “There’s some that would call her a monster, that’s true enough. Ruthless as a hammer shark, that one. I’ve been called that myself, though I ain’t infected.” This man’s narrative seemed inconsistent to me. He seemed to have a certain admiration in his voice when he spoke of ‘Maggie’, one completely at odds with his claim to be hunting her.
Thorne’s grin turned cold and serious as he leaned closer. “I ain’t infected… like you are.”
My hands slammed the table of their own accord, and I shifted weight in order to jump to my feet before he lifted the pistol and pointed it at me again. “Ah ah,” he said. “Sit back down, Doctor.”
I reluctantly sat back in my chair.
He lay his pistol back on the table and went on as if there had been no interruption. “But if by ‘monster’ you mean she’s no better than an unthinking beast, well there you’re just dead wrong. She’s as clever as they come. She’s too much hellfire to play out the lady’s life anymore. Won’t be kept in the house by any man. But she ain’t no beast. I want that part clear as day, now. Maybe vampires start out as animals and you’re right to put them all down the way that you do before they slaughter any man, woman or child they get their hands on. I can’t argue that. But when the fever dies down, the person emerges. The new person, that is. Murderers one and all, of course, but you get used to that. But you calling her a monster is why I’m here. I can see that Maggie had it right when she called you a bulldog of a man, and not likely to be thrown off our track, but I’m here to tell you that all you have to do is give it a day or so, and your problem goes away. I know where she’s going to be, and I know how to put a vampire down. Less than eighteen hours from now, Maggie will have a silver bullet in her pretty little heart and I’ll be on a boat off your tiny little island.”
“The constables are, as likely as not, on their way,” I said. “Wondering why the people of this establishment suddenly all spilled out into the street. They’ll likely want to have words about brandishing that revolver.”