The Classified Dossier: Sherlock Holmes and Count Dracula(94)

I had my revolver in one hand and my silver-topped stick in the other. I pulled the cover off and the silver gleamed in the wan light. Holmes spun and quickly moved to hang the lantern on a nail convenient for the purpose hammered into a beam next to the stairs. He snatched a folded sheet of paper that had been hung on the same nail, quickly stuffed it into his jacket pocket, and hung the lantern up. When he rejoined our defensive semicircle, he had his own revolver back out and the stick similar to my own, also now uncovered. Somersby had abandoned the pack of shovels, but pulled a wooden mallet and stake out. He promptly put the mallet between his teeth so that he could hold a pistol in one hand and his stake in the other.

Miss Winter was between Holmes and I, with me on the right-hand side and Holmes on the left. I aimed and took careful shot, dropping two of the vampires on my side before they even freed themselves from their shallow graves. Holmes’s revolver went off and I imagined he was doing much the same.

Miss Winter, clearly not content to hold her ground in a defensive action, bounded into the fray. She wrestled the nearest vampire, a young woman in a nun’s habit, to the ground with a sharp, twisting motion. Somersby, who seemed to have left his terror behind now that he was in the thick of the action, stepped up and fired one precise shot into the back of the vampire woman’s head. His pince-nez were back on his face and gleamed in the lantern light. Miss Winter leapt again and tore out another throat and was on the next vampire before the first one fell. Somersby followed, clearly falling into a battle rhythm they’d developed working together, though unlikely practised on multiple vampires before.

Holmes and I moved forward more slowly, guarding the flanks and moving deeper into the huge cellar.

“Don’t let them circle around behind us, Doctor!” Holmes called out. A vampire rushed him and Holmes hooked the man under the arm and performed an adroit throw, one of his Baritsu moves. The vampire twisted and fell and Holmes used the silver-tipped cane, which like mine, had a heavy bludgeoning weight of silver on one end, and a small silver spike on the other. We may have walked into the trap, but we had not come blindly. The silver tip pieced the vampire’s chest with ease and the man sagged and died on the spot. The horrible, bubbling chemical reaction that silver generated in vampire flesh filled my nostrils with an acrid stink.

We certainly had experience with the Midnight Watch in handling the monstrous fledgling vampires, which were terrifying even in small numbers. There was no sign of Moriarty’s method to preserve the personality here. These were monsters. Bestial screams and savage growls rang out all around us. None of them had any trace of humanity left and they were still crawling out of the earth further into the darkness. Even my night vision could not see to the far end of the cellar walls and I now revised my estimate of their count. More than a dozen, surely. More like dozens, in fact.

Our offensive wedge formation held for nearly a full minute. That is to say, for as long as our silver bullet cartridges held out. I pointed my gun to fire at a sallow youth only to have the hammer snap down on an empty cylinder. He rushed me and I clubbed him with my walking stick, but it was only a glancing blow and we both went down in a tangle of limbs with him on top of me. He snarled and tried to get his teeth into my throat, but I was able to rap him soundly on the side of the head with the heavy end of my stick and his grip loosened. Another blow from the stick and I was able to push him off, get to my feet and sink the sharpened tip of my stick into his chest. It sank all the way in with surprisingly little effort and I could feel it hit dirt. The boy screamed, spasmed once, and went still. A cold fury swept through me, not at this poor victim of a boy, but for Moriarty, who had made him into a slavering monster and then put him into harm’s way. If ever a man deserved retribution, it was Moriarty.

I crouched there for half an instant against my better judgement. Another vampire was wrenching itself free of the dirt half a dozen feet away.

Kitty Winter was her own kind of slavering monster, screaming and lashing at the vampires around her with blinding speed. A much larger female vampire seized her by the collar and hauled her around, but Miss Winter spun and lashed out with so quick a motion that it could not be seen and the larger woman clutched her throat and fell to her knees. Miss Winter kicked her over and Somersby was there with hammer and stake to finish the job.

I felt a moment of pure envy at her power and freedom and at the same time, fear that the transformation changed her so irrevocably that it was just a matter of time before her savage nature would break free and make her a danger to all. Perhaps this foray into violence would relieve those symptoms and give her more time, or perhaps it would exacerbate the animal nature within her. Holmes had claimed once that Miss Winter had a firm grip on her wicked nature, and relied upon it in her work. I envied her that, for I knew it was something I could never do.

I yanked the walking stick free of the corpse I had made and picked up the empty revolver. Our defensive battalion had fallen apart as quickly as it had formed. I was still only a dozen feet from the bottom of the stairs and the flickering lantern, while Miss Winter and Somersby had penetrated a good forty or fifty feet into the cellar’s interior. Vampires were crawling out of the earth in all directions, including between us.

“Holmes?” I said, twisting around.

“Here,” Holmes said, materializing from behind me. His face was tight and streaked with dirt. He’d lost his hat and overcoat and there was a gash on his brow, but his steely gaze remained. He took my pistol from my hand and replaced it with his own. “It’s loaded.” He nodded at the vampire nearest to us, newly free of its grave, and I shot it.