The Pierced Heart: A Novel (32 page)

Van Helsing smiles down at her, a smile to turn the heart to ice. “And indeed I am,” he says softly, putting a finger to her cheek, “for I will do you the greatest service any man may perform. I will rescue you from an eternity of working wickedness by night and growing ever more debased by it by day. I will save you from murdering innocent babes in their cradles, and feasting upon the flesh of those you most love—”

“It was you,” she whispers, the tears running down her face. “It was you I saw that night, in the cemetery, with my Dora. I thought it was him—I
blamed him
—but it was you, all along—”

“She had crossed to the Undead long before that night—the marks on her neck left no room for doubt.”

“I was with her every day, and I saw nothing.”

Van Helsing’s eyes narrow. “She hid them—in the cunning manner of her kind. However fervent you are to excuse her, Miss Causton, you cannot deny the truth. Your friend had taken to wearing a black band about her throat, had she not?”

“That was for the brooch—so she could wear the brooch—the one
I gave her
—”

Van Helsing shakes his head. “How naïve you are, how very trusting. And she would have preyed upon that—upon
you
—had I not acted when I did. That black band was most efficacious, by way of concealment. But it could not deceive me. They were still there, those marks, when I broke open the grave and tore that band away. Her body was as perfect and intact as my sister’s had been, when I found her corpse lips black with the blood of a little child—a child that had
been found with its throat torn open, as if by some wild and rabid beast.”

“What do you mean?” cries the girl, before Charles can prevent her. Because he knows what was done to Dora Holman’s body, and he wants to save this girl the pain of it—the impossibility of forgetting it. “Why would anyone do so terrible a thing as disturb the peace of the dead?”

“It was
I
who gave her that peace,” replies Van Helsing, stroking her face. “When I lifted the lid of the coffin I saw her lying there radiant with the bloom of the Undead, her lips full and red and moist, and then she opened her eyes and looked at me—”

“No,
no
!” cries the girl, struggling against her constraints, and Charles can see now, that there is a knife in Van Helsing’s hand, a knife with a long hooked blade, and dark stains along the edge. Old blood, long dried. The blood of those girls in London, murdered and mutilated, and of young Rose Danby, who died in the dirt, in terror and exhaustion, begging for her life.

Van Helsing’s voice is softer now, almost tender, as he caresses Lucy’s golden hair. “Believe me, it pains me to tell you this, but it is the full and terrible truth. Your friend’s eyes that once had been so gentle were then as hard as stone, the pupils so dilated they seemed as black as fathomless wells. And then her bosom began to heave and she smoothed her hands voluptuously over her own breasts until the nipples were hard and she whispered to me like a street whore, ‘I have been waiting for you—kiss me—make love to me!’ And I saw that there was blood on those swollen lips, and I knew what I must do. I took the stake in my hands and plunged it, without mercy, into her heart. She writhed, and twisted, and her beautiful face was curdled into a vile thing of fury and of vice, and as I drove the stake deeper and deeper still, she screamed like a demoness and the blood spilled over her lips and ran over her white death-robe but I never faltered, never shrank from the gruesome necessity until she lay finally still and my high task was done. And then I took this knife and cut off her head in one sweep, and filled her sagging mouth with garlic flowers. And as the scent rose all about me I saw that she was changed, and the face
that had been so foul was sweet and pure once more. She was at peace. Just as you will be at peace—”

The knife is at the girl’s throat, and Charles’s gun is to his hand, but the angle is all wrong, he cannot do it—cannot risk a shot that might kill the girl.

“I believe you,” he says, starting forwards. “
I believe you.
”

Van Helsing stops and stares at him.

“I had a beloved sister, too,” stumbles Charles. “A sister who was lost through my own fault—my own carelessness. I know how unbearable such a loss can be.”

Van Helsing frowns, but his grip on the knife is looser.

“I will help you,” insists Charles, hoping that the despair—the lie—is not as flagrant as it sounds in his own ears. He sees the girl’s mouth open, but he cannot afford to look at her. “I will help you put an end to the menace of Von Reisenberg forever, and rid the earth of his hideous kind.” He strides now to the bag and lifts the stake from it. “Tell me what I must do.”

Van Helsing’s eyes narrow. “Why should I trust you? How do I know you are sincere?”

“Because I will help you with the girl.”

Charles’s heart is beating hard now, and his legs shaking, but he walks as composedly as he can to the head of the table. The girl’s fear is palpable; he can smell it on her.

“No,” she whispers. “Please.”

He hesitates; what he’s about to do is a tremendous risk, but there is nothing else, no other way. In her weakened condition, after what happened in the Albany, surely Von Reisenberg would not have used the scarificator on her—surely he would not have endangered his most precious possession, or harmed the one person who could vindicate a lifetime’s ambition.

“Should we not,” he says, his throat tight, “ascertain first, and conclusively, that the girl has indeed fallen victim to his foul predations?”

Van Helsing is sardonic. “She has been alone with him for the better
part of two months. And you have only to look at her—her breathlessness, her pallor—”

Charles shakes his head. “That might derive from another cause. I saw evidence, in London, that Miss Causton has recently miscarried a child—miscarried badly. She lost a great deal of blood—”

He had wondered if she knew; if a girl so innocent would have even known she was pregnant, and he sees from her face now that he was right. Her eyes widen and her lips part, but no words come as she shakes her head slowly from side to side.

“Very well,” says Van Helsing, reaching a hand to the collar of the nightgown. “There is one piece of evidence she cannot dissemble.”

But as he pulls the silk aside there is a rending crash and one of the windows shatters open in a rain of glass and splinters and the lamp gutters and goes out. The moon must be clouded for the room is utterly black, and filled with the sound of wings beating. The huge leathery wings of an enormous bat, shrieking and clattering against the walls, swooping over Charles’s head and into his face. He beats the thing away but there are fingers now at his throat, gripping him from behind, wrenching his head back and down and there is something cold and thin at his throat and the breath is squeezing from his lungs and he can hear his own voice crying out as the world explodes in a crescendo of light.

The moments that follow etch his retina like photographic stills. Van Helsing, blinded, raising his hands to his face and falling backwards. The girl standing in a blaze of white flame, her hands raised high above her head like an angel in ecstasy. And then the light going out and the dark closing back and the two men are on the floor, rolling over and over, kicking and clawing, and there’s the sound of furniture toppling, and specimens are falling about them and rolling on the polished floor and the knife is spinning away, and he is thrusting Van Helsing back
and down and closing his hands about his neck, closing his hands about the neck of a man he knows to be a murderer—

“Don’t you understand,” gasps Van Helsing. “He has taken her—
he has taken her
—”

Van Helsing starts to cough and retch and Charles can hear suddenly the sound of wheels. He leaps to the open window and out onto the parapet. Far below, in the courtyard, a carriage has come to a halt by the door and a man is lifting Lucy Causton into it. A man who stops, for one tiny moment, and looks up to where Charles is standing, before stepping quickly inside and shouting to the coachman to make all speed.

The Baron Von Reisenberg.

It’s too late to follow them—too late to prevent them—and Charles can do nothing but watch as the carriage gathers speed at the gate and begins down towards the causeway.

“Shoot,” croaks Van Helsing behind him. “You have a gun. Use it. Use it to stop him!”

It’s too far away and the gun only a pistol and there is no hope of the bullet finding its mark, but like a man in thrall Charles raises his aim and fires. And then time slows to a heartbeat and he can hear his own pulse thundering in his ears as the horses rear at the noise, and their hooves slither on the wet stones, and the coachman cries out, and the carriage lurches from side to side, gathering pace and careering faster and faster until it plunges headlong over the side of the causeway and rolls, splintering, in an agony of screaming horses and breaking wood, to a shudder, and a stop.

By the time Charles gets to the gate the servants are already crowded about the coachman where he was thrown clear but not safe, his body broken. Far below, the carriage lies shattered, half submerged in the river, one door hanging open and the wheels spinning. Charles barks at Bremmer to send for the doctor, then races down the causeway and onto the shingle, slipping and stumbling, out of breath, half out of his mind, up to his knees in water, until he reaches the overturned coach where the Baron Von Reisenberg is lying, his face turned up to the
moon, his mouth running with blood, and the metal spike of the carriage axle pierced through his heart.

“Lucy!” cries Charles in panic, wading round to the opposite side. “Lucy!”

The carriage is slowly sinking now, the sand sucking at its weight, and he wrenches desperately at the door. He can see her inside, but she is not moving, not answering. The carriage lurches, dips sickeningly, but all at once he has the handle open and she is in his arms and he is carrying her out and up the slope, and laying her gently on the ground. There is a graze on her cheek, and a deep cut on her neck, but she is breathing, she is alive. And as he cradles her head and takes her hand in his own it is as if some energy passes between them, and she opens her eyes and looks at him. Looks at him in pain and bewilderment, and a distant anguished recognition.

“Don’t leave me,” she whispers, at last. “Don’t leave me, Charles.”

EPILOGUE
 

B
UCKINGHAM-STREET
, 18 J
UNE

AUTHOR’S NOTE