The Classified Dossier: Sherlock Holmes and Count Dracula(99)
“I would have waited in your home,” Dracula said, “but Mina insisted it would be disrespectful.”
“If we had,” Mina said primly, “we would have lost our opportunity to observe their other intruder, whom we saw entering through the second-storey window. Moriarty, without a doubt, or someone sent by him.”
“There cannot be many people left to send,” Holmes said. “With one portion of his forces waiting for us under the warehouse in Gravesend and his more loyal minions carrying out the mission of piracy on your own person.” He straightened up and pulled out his revolver for what felt like the dozenth time that evening. “If so, there is but one of him and four of us. Our strength in numbers should help us overcome whatever cunning deviltry he might have concocted for us.”
Dracula, Mina and I all nodded our agreement and turned to make our way back to Baker Street.
“We shall enter through other means than the stairs,” Dracula said as we drew close. Holmes nodded and the two vampires, Dracula and Mina, both disappeared back into the alley shadows, leaving Holmes and I alone.
“Miss Winter will be very cross with us,” I said suddenly, surprising myself with the somewhat unexpected thought.
Holmes raised his eyebrows at me, a wordless question.
“She sent us onward under the quite reasonable theory that it would take a great deal of detective work, work that only you could perform, to track down Moriarty’s whereabouts. Had she but known that he waited back here at Baker Street, she would most certainly have left the supervision of clean-up and burials to someone else in order to accompany us.”
“It is just as well that she did not,” Holmes said, speaking low, but with a smile playing about his lips. “For I am not at all confident that our personal possessions, such as they are, would withstand the whirlwind. That woman is a fury.”
I could not suppress a wry chuckle at our feeble attempt at humour and it was all we could do for each of us to keep the other from bursting out into laughter. Then, banishing this most inappropriate flood of frivolity, we mastered ourselves again, and opened the door to Baker Street.
Mrs Hudson came down the hallway. “Look at the two of you,” she said. “Did you roll around in the dirty street to track such an abominable amount of dirt into my house?”
Holmes caught my eye and then looked up at the second floor, making it clear he did not want to say anything, even to Mrs Hudson, about our intruder lest vampire ears should hear our comments and so be prepared. As logical as that measure was, it took nearly every ounce of my nerve to let Mrs Hudson take my coat and bear with her running dialogue of commentary and criticism on the streets of London. I felt the warnings bubbling up inside of me as if they might burst out of my throat at any moment. It was a wonder she didn’t notice, for my eyes must have been bulging in their sockets.
Holmes started slowly up the steps and I followed, both of us lingering while Mrs Hudson disappeared back into her rooms. Only then did we exchange looks and draw out our pistols. Our home at Baker Street, with its comfortable chairs and warm fireplace, always represented shelter from theft, from intrigue, from the murderous and outré, even when I hadn’t lived there. This was the place where we heard stories about dangerous persons and terrible acts, but it was also the place where such fantastic tales were unravelled and explained. It was a place where problems found their solutions, owing entirely to the singular gifts and drive of Mr Sherlock Holmes. To be entering into this refuge with danger waiting for us inside was a strange and unwelcome change and it made my blood run cold. (That is, in so much as vampire blood does run cold, for I have found our blood – and flesh – does operate at cooler temperatures to our uninfected, that is, fully human, counterparts. As much as ten degrees cooler, I have found, though recent feeding can bring both of them temporarily up to more normal conditions.)
Holmes pushed open the door with his foot. It creaked open slowly, ominously. We entered, guns at the ready. I shiver now to think of it, that slow, tedious and terrifying prowl through our own rooms. After we passed through and nothing untoward happened, Holmes closed the door to the hallway behind us, locking it.
“To keep Mrs Hudson out,” he mouthed when I looked a question at him.
Finding nothing in the sitting room, Holmes led the way into his bedroom, leaving the stairs to my own room as our next logical step.
Holmes had taken only two steps into his own room before my hackles rose. The scent of other vampires is minimal, but I could clearly detect it here, despite the window being open a crack. Holmes silently looked at me and darted a glance at the window. Clearly, he hadn’t left it open.
The attack came from behind the door and above, where the man had evidently been clinging like a spider. So ferocious and so swift was it that the man battered Holmes on the back of his head and shoulders and dropped him to the floor before I had any chance to act. He was enormous, grizzled, with a full beard and a scarred face.
I aimed my revolver but a backhanded blow from our assailant knocked it out of my hand. The man was like a wounded bear. I’d never laid eyes on Moriarty before this apart from that brief glance at a distance all those years ago, but Holmes had described an aged and sinister academic, not this towering monster. And this fiend was a different breed than the many fledgling vampires we had dispatched underneath the warehouse in Gravesend, and it was as much as I could do to grapple with him before he flung me to one side and turned to Holmes.