Dracula in Love

Chapter Fifteen

Sligo County, 31 October 1890

The black cliffs along the Irish coast sliced perpendicular lines into the sea, where watery tendrils sucked at the colossal jet walls with ferocity. The sun shone brightly upon the sea, but its rays did nothing to calm the water’s turbulence. The farther north we sailed, the more the landscape became austere and unforgiving. Black stone flags began to jut like tentacles into the ocean from the mainland. The gray-green waters merged on the horizon with purple-tinged skies, and the winds shimmied the waves into prancing white peaks.

We watched the winds whipping the water from the glass-enclosed promenade deck of the steamer, where the Count wrapped me in a fur blanket against the chilly afternoon. About an hour before twilight, the steamer dropped its anchor off Sligo Harbor, where two rowboats met us to take us to shore. The sea spray left us wet, and me very cold, but a carriage and coachman greeted us to take us to the castle.

For the last two days of the voyage, the Count had insisted that I rest. Not once did he touch me as he had on the first evening, though I am sure that he read my thoughts and knew that I craved it. Sometimes he dined with me, and at other times, he left me to myself, sending broths and potions in the evenings that would help me sleep. He insisted that I had to gather my strength for the days ahead. He would not even continue the story of his early life but promised that he would tell me the rest of it at the appropriate time once we were in Ireland. He often pressed his fingers to my pulse and listened to my body’s rhythms. Sometimes, he would say, “Good, good.” Sometimes he would frown and send me to bed. I yearned for him to come to my cabin with me, or to allow me into the quarters were he slept, but he refused on the grounds that I must have uninterrupted sleep. A silent and dutiful staff saw to my every need, often while remaining invisible. I was never certain who had been in my cabin while I slept, taking care of my clothing and preparing fresh dress for the following day, or who left the trays of nuts, fruits, and tea to refresh me upon waking from naps.

We rode now in the dark, the countryside vaguely lit by the carriage lamps. A light mist had drifted in from the sea, and I saw only shadows and silhouettes as the Count pointed out sights and landmarks.

“There is the great mountain Benbulbin. It sits on the earth like an anvil, and when it rains, the deep rivulets run with water as if the mountain is shedding tears.”

“I barely see its outline,” I said, squinting to see what he described.

“Ah, I forget that you do not see what I see. But you will, Mina, and you will be amazed at the secret beauty of the night,” he said.

“There is the castle. Do you see it on the promontory at the top of the hill?”

The monstrous stone structure, with a tall, thick watchtower, lorded over the headland, the walls slit by long, thin bars of yellow light emanating from its windows. The carriage began the long climb up the hill, where we gazed over the dark and glossy moonlit sea. At the top of the hill, we were turning onto the long curved lane that led to the castle, when I glimpsed its massive entryway lit by torches. As we came closer, I saw more clearly its two huge, turreted wings with long, tall windows, united by a great stone façade.

A tall, thin woman in a plain black dress with a swirl of gray and black hair piled on top of her head greeted us as we alighted from the carriage. “My lord,” she said with a low curtsy to the Count.

The Count nodded politely. “We are delighted to be in your care, madam,” he said, introducing her as Mrs. O’Dowd. She was not old, perhaps younger than Headmistress, and though her frame was bony, she had very correct posture, and her sallow skin was unlined. “This lady is from the clan of the fiercest warlords in Ireland,” he said, which brought a pleased look to her face, and I wondered if she was one of the Count’s kind and had been alive since the early days of her tribe’s existence.

Awed by the sheer size of the castle, I let the Count take my elbow and guide me. Refreshments awaited us in the grand reception hall, where a roaring fire burned in a hearth as tall as a man. Immense animal heads crowned the room-big-toothed bears, elk, and an animal with jagged, tiered antlers that I could not identify. A tripaneled stained-glass window with English kings and imposing crests presided over the wide staircase that curved around on either side of the well and disappeared into the upper stories of the castle.

I wanted to run about the rooms like a little girl and investigate this wondrous place, but Mrs. O’Dowd took my cloak and gestured for me to sit on the divan in front of the fire, where she poured me a cup of tea. She neither poured any for the Count nor offered it to him. “Shall I serve the young lady some food?” She did not address me, but asked the Count, who nodded his head. She selected an assortment of sandwiches and fruit, placed it before me, and then left the room.

I ate while the Count told me some of the castle’s history, how it had originally been built in the last years of the twelfth century by a French knight who abandoned it some years later. “It went to ruin and was rebuilt again in the era of Cromwell, and modernized about fifty years ago by its present owner.”

I was curious to know more of this mysterious owner, but the Count said that he had another story he would prefer to tell me. He took me by the hand through the castle to a parlor at its rear. I could not see much of the room in the dark except the glimmer of its chandeliers and the large gilded mirrors on the walls. From a bay window, in the distance, I saw a vine-covered ruin sitting beside a moonlit lake. Something inside me stirred. I felt dizzy, faint. I leaned against him.

“Do you recognize it, Mina?”

“I do not, and yet it is familiar.”

“Come,” he said, taking my hand. He opened a door that led outside. The temperature had dropped, and the night was cold. He put his arms around me. “You will be warm,” he said.

He picked me up and started to walk toward the ruin and the lake. In moments, he was no longer walking, nor was he flying, but we were moving at a rapid pace, as if gliding on an invisible track. I held my breath as the landscape sped by me and the castle drifted away. In another moment, time collapsed, and we blasted through a window of sorts and were inside the ruin.

He put me down, and I held on to him while I caught my breath. “As your body adapts to mine, it will get used to that sort of travel,” he said. The room was very dark, but enough moonlight came through a big hole in the roof to illuminate its outline. It was a small room, bare but for some big logs that sat beside an abandoned hearth. The Count picked up a few and stacked them inside. He closed his eyes and held his hands over the logs. His long fingers, stretched out in front of him, seemed to pulsate and glow. Somewhere in the distance, an owl screeched, and wings fluttered madly in a tree, but I was too spellbound by his powerful shape in the moonlight to move or to utter a sound. He stood motionless until the glow in his hands intensified. I heard crackling noises coming from the logs, and suddenly, his hands ceased to glow, but flames started to shoot up in the fireplace, first in one place and then in another, until the hearth was dancing with fire.

He took off his cloak and laid it on the floor for me to sit on. He smiled at my astonished face. “It is not difficult to summon a fire spirit,” he said. “I have seen you do it.”

As soon as I sat down, the room started to spin around me. He knelt beside me, putting his arm around my shoulders.

“I feel sick,” I said. My stomach was upset, and I thought I would throw up the food I had just eaten. He put his hand on my stomach. “Just breathe, Mina.” I did as he said. “You are not accustomed to rapid travel.” His hand grew warm as it sat over my belly, dissipating the uncomfortable feeling. “This room carries memories, and, as with any human life, not all that we shared here was good. Yet so much of it was glorious.”

“What happened here?” I asked.

“We lived here. You and I, together, long, long ago.”

“I do not remember anything, and yet the place has an effect on me.”

“As it would, because the memories are still here,” he said. “All time occurs at once, Mina. I have shown you that. In a place that exists just beyond a thin membrane that you cannot see, you and I are still living that life here together.”

“I don’t understand,” I said. My eyes welled with tears and I clenched my fists in frustration. “I want to understand but I cannot. This is all too much for me.” A few months ago, all I had wanted was a simple church wedding, a little home in Pimlico, and a baby. Now he was calling upon me to apprehend the secrets of the universe.

He pulled me close to him and pressed his lips against my forehead, soothing me. “It has taken me centuries to understand it myself. I expect too much of you. You are probably still in shock from what happened at the asylum. Perhaps I should have waited until you were stronger to bring you here.”

“I wanted a life that was secure and simple,” I said. “I yearned for it, and now it is all gone, and I must comprehend things that are beyond me.”

“You cannot have that life because that is not who you are, Mina. You must be who you are, not who you wish to be.”

He took my face in his hands and looked into my eyes, once again mesmerizing me, melting away my frustration and making me want only him-to understand him, to be a part of his world. “You asked me last night to tell you more of the story of my life before you and I met. I want you to know everything-everything in my life that drove me to you. It will help you to understand who you are-who you are at the very core of your being-and why you and I are here together at this moment in time.”

He took his hands from my face and sat back, one knee raised, his arm resting on it, his elegant hand dangling. For a moment, he looked like an ordinary man, but he moved his face, and the firelight caught his skin, exposing his radiance and highlighting his fiercely strong cheekbones. “How we have arrived here is a long story.” He seemed to be breathing in the room’s memories. I had to draw my attention away from his beauty to listen to the words as he began to speak.

“After a time with the Lionheart’s army, we fought and won major battles against the Saracens at Acre and Joppa, battles that went down in history and are still talked about today. By this time, we had become savage fighters. Our forbidden prayers and dark rituals seemed to have the magic that we had hoped for, and we believed more than ever that we were invincible. Our reputation spread through the land, not only for our courage but also for our preternatural strength and daring.

“Now we were joined by a band of mercenary warriors-murderers, really-known in the lands of the Saracens as the Assassins, for hire by anyone who could pay the price. The Assassins had been terrorizing the Christian pilgrims by the hundreds on their way to the Holy Land, raping them, robbing them of everything including their clothing, and leaving them for dead. The Assassins entered the service of the Lionheart, who paid them to protect the pilgrims rather than destroy them. They were a fearsome group of men, animalistic, and yet also practitioners of mysticism. Though we considered them sinister and uncivilized, in fact, we shared many of their characteristics as well as their obsessions, and they fascinated us.

“We heard rumors that in the dead of night, the Assassins practiced forbidden rituals, ancient secrets to awaken dark powers that would give them invincibility and immortality. We made it known to them that we too were a secret band with similar obsessions, and soon, we were communicating with them. We found that they made blood sacrifices to a heathen goddess of warriors called Kali by the mystics of India, who drained the blood of her enemies into a bowl and drank it. On Tuesday eves, they ate a substance called hashish, which made the real world disappear, and made sacrifices to this goddess. They claimed that she gave them the power to stop both time and death. They invited us to join them in this and in the ritual magic they practiced, which they called the path of the left hand. They taught us the seven hidden centers of the body, where power is stored and through which the life force may enter. In the rituals, we meditated on those hidden seats of power, and we were taught to stimulate the lowest and most powerful center in the genitalia, on ourselves and on each other, which brought ecstasy and climax. We learned to take in more energy and light with each ecstatic climax; and in time, our mental and physical powers grew stronger. We found that meditating on an event would influence it to happen or direct its unfolding. We believed that we had growing dominion over exterior forces as well as over our own beings.

“Later, when some of these things were revealed, the Church proclaimed our practices satanic, but it was not the devil we worshipped. We devoutly believed in the word of Christ. The monks had taught us that the Holy Grail-the very promise of Jesus-was nothing short of immortality. We believed that Jesus confirmed this with His words and with the blood ceremony that He made the centerpiece of worship.

“We were anxious to test our new powers in battle, but King Richard was more anxious for peace, and he signed a treaty with Saladin. That was the second day of September in the year of Our Lord 1192. Some of our members set off on a separate quest to find the sacred vessel carrying the immortal blood of Christ, which they believed still existed. Others went to Aquitaine and other parts of France and claimed the lands that were due them for their service.

“But a small group of us had never forgotten the stories of the Viscount of Poitou and the daughters that he had from his union with the fairy queen. Intrigued with the idea of cavorting with immortals, we requested and received large grants of land in Ireland. Before I left him, the viscount came to me and warned me again of the danger of my quest. ‘You are like a son to me, so I must tell you something that I do not admit to other men, and that is the deep sorrow that comes with abandonment by an immortal lover. They cannot help themselves; it is in their nature to love and to leave. They tire of mortal life with its illnesses and vulnerabilities. As we grow older, they tire of us and they leave. But to the one who is left behind, all is dark. That is why I have buried my grief and loneliness in war. Once lost, nothing can replace the divine pleasures they gave. Few are those who have the privilege of their love, but the loss of them is unendurable.’

“Because I was inexperienced in the ways of love, his words did not affect me. He saw that I would not be deterred, so he gave me his blessing and charged me with finding his youngest daughter. ‘She is special and dear to me,’ he said. ‘Of the three, she is the most likely to be human. She seemed to have a deeply human heart.’ He gave me a token to take to her, something precious that her mother had given to him for protection before he left France. I thanked him, and I took it with me. The next day, I set off with my cohorts for that foreign land.”

He stopped talking and stared into the fire.

“And did you find her?” I asked. Surely he was not finished with the story. He did not answer me, and I grew impatient. Did you find her?

He slipped his hand into a pocket and pulled out something wrapped in a linen handkerchief. He handed it to me, and I was surprised at the weight of it-heavy and substantial. I untied the piece of string that held the package together and carefully unfolded the linen, revealing a silver Celtic cross inlaid with a mosaic of dozens of stones-amethysts, tourmalines, emeralds, and rubies. I stared at it, entranced by its glimmering beauty. The gems flickered and pranced in the firelight.

I put the cross to my heart and fell into his chest, and the world around me disappeared.

31 October 1193

My sister and I help each other dress in the black robes we have made for the ceremony to honor the Raven goddess who rules over the night, the moon, and its mysteries; who flies over battlefields protecting her beloved ones and destroying their enemies. The dresses are thick and heavy because it will be frigid cold this evening under the full ice-white moon. We cross the panels over our breasts and then tie them tight around our bodies with silver sashes. Our long hair-mine, midnight black and hers, dark copper-spills down our backs in thick waves, offering extra protection against the cold and the wind that whispers incessantly through our valley. This is the evening of the year when the invisible barrier between the two worlds falls and the deities reveal themselves to their faithful; a time when mortals and immortals may take delight in one another, a time when mortals are rewarded not only by the fruits of their labors in the fields but by the immortal ones as they bestow favor. This is the eve when the fairy mounds open and the riotous, pleasure-seeking Sidhe cavort with their chosen ones who live on the earthly plane. On this evening, mortal men too are restless. Knights and kings prowl the land, hoping to attract the Raven Lady, who bestows victories in battle upon her lovers, or one of her ladies, who will pray to the goddess for them, or a Sidhe woman who will give them both pleasure and protection.

We douse our necks with rose water because we know that the immortal princes who tonight may rise and come to us are attracted to the scent. My sister is betrothed to one of them, and tonight, she hopes that I will attract another so that we may remain together. The sweet fragrance fills my senses until I am dizzy with it. I am known to hear and smell and taste beyond what others do, even my sister, who is skilled in sorcery. We have made thick diadems of crimson roses to place on our heads. Careful not to prick ourselves on the thorns, we crown each other, and then slide our arms into the black gloves we have made with long talons at the fingers, turning our beautiful white hands into lethal weapons.

We slip out into the night and walk along the stream, following its babbling path until we are in the sacred grove, hidden from the sight of men, where the others have already lit two great bonfires. They sit in a circle, an unkindness of ravens, each draped to the lengths of their fingers in black, the elders hooded and the maidens crowned with flowers. Some of the women wear wide ruffs of black feathers that cover their necks and chests; and our leader, the high priestess, wears a tall, feathered hood, reminiscent of the hooded raven that represents our Divine Lady. They are passing around a bowl, an infusion of magic purple moonflower seeds that we have nurtured all year in our secret garden. Every year, foolish ones with no knowledge, curious about the tales they have heard of our powers, die from eating the poisonous blue and white moonflowers that grow wild. Little do they know of our sacred garden and the herbs and flowers that we cultivate for our brews.

My sister and I join the circle of women and take our share of the bitter broth, made palatable with herbs and honey so that we can drink enough to lose our heads to the goddess. The bonfires, pyramids of peat and timber and flame, fueled and tended by two priestesses, grow taller, casting ghostly shadows on the majestic trees that shelter the grove. Three women beat goatskin drums, and we pass the bowl around again while the winds pick up, whipping and whirling the fires, the flames spitting up toward the heavens. I look up and see a swirl of stars twinkling in the sky. The silver moon hangs lightly in night’s dark gloss, and the women begin to chant:

Come, goddess of the crossroads,

The One who goes to and fro in the night

With torch in her left hand and sword in the right,

Enemy of the daylight, friend of darkness,

Who rejoices when wolves howl and warm blood is spilt,

Who walks among the phantoms and tombs,

Whose thirst is for blood and who strikes fear into hearts mortal.

Draw down the powers of the moon

And cast your auspicious eye upon us.

With the fires blazing at pinnacle heights, we stand one by one and walk nine times around the fires to honor the priestesses of times past, preparing to walk between the flames that will purify our souls and make us worthy recipients of the goddess’s grace and power. I am behind my sister, who is older than I and has stronger magic and goes first in all things to protect me. I have never done this before, but I am unafraid because the broth has made me bold. The flames are calling to me, and I want to feel their scorching heat on my ivory-white skin, because I know that tonight I am invincible. The women walk between the bonfires, dancing to the rhythm of the drummers, twirling in the places where the flames meet, defying the fire to work its power. We know that the goddess gives us immunity and we can therefore be unafraid.

My sister turns to me before she enters the flames and whispers, “If you wish for it, you will see the face of your beloved in the fire.” I give her an encouraging smile and start swaying, throwing my shoulders from side to side as she walks straight between the blazes, her red-gold hair indistinguishable from the flames, her long, black-clad arms twirling above her head, her talons reaching into the night sky. I wait for her signal and then join her in the fire dance, walking fearlessly ahead until our bodies meet. Face-to-face, we grind against each other, heads thrown back as if we are offering our faces to the flames in sacrifice. I feel the crushing heat, so hot that I cannot breathe, but I remember what I am supposed to do, and I hold the image of the Raven Lady foremost in my mind as my sister and I dance together between the fires. She is the first to leave, looking me straight in the eye before she dances away to safety. I know that it is my duty to stay in the center, and I spin and spin, holding my arms above me in prayer as I let the flames lick my body.

From somewhere in the distance, I hear-no, I feel beneath my feet-hooves treading gently upon the earth, but because of my acute hearing, it sounds to my mind like rumbling. I know that a group of riders has approached, though they move stealthily. In my mind’s eye, or in the very flames, I have a vision of them as they dismount, tying their animals to trees, and creeping toward us, and I wonder if the Sidhe warriors have risen from the underworld. Over the cackle and roar of the fire, I hear them moving through the brush and see them standing behind the trees now, watching us. I feel eyes-intense, blue, curious eyes-upon me, and it breaks my trance.

Now I feel the flames on me and I throw my body out of the fire and into the arms of my sister, who is waiting to catch me. She pats my hair, and I can smell that the fire has scorched it. She holds me in her arms, and I am dizzy from the heat and the dance and the broth. I close my eyes, but I hear the other women start to scream, and when I open them, I see you-the owner of those curious blue eyes-standing in the grove and staring at me. You stand alone, but others, perhaps a dozen warriors, soon emerge from the thicket where they too have been watching us, and they flank you. You and your men wear heavy riding cloaks, some trimmed in fur, all of a more luxurious kind than what we are accustomed to seeing, and I can tell by the reaction of the other women that none of us is sure whether you are mortal or from the other side of the veil.

You are clearly their leader, and you hold my gaze and walk toward me very slowly. As you approach, I catch your scent-the musk and sweat of human male. The others stay behind, and they seem uncertain of what you are going to do. None of you have weapons, or if you do, they are not drawn. You come straight up to me, and the flames light up your features-enormous deep-set eyes beneath a strong, almost feral brow, your cheekbones rising up as if to meet your eyes. Your red lips defy the beard that surrounds them and protrude in a sensuous pout. Though you hair is long, I can see that it is clean, and that your curls have been combed in recent days. Beneath your coat, the flames highlight a low-slung belt of gold, something that looks as if you stole it from a god.

The high priestess does not like your boldness, not in her sacred grove, and she begins the chant of the raven, a loud, croaking caw, shrill against the silence of the night. The others join her, their cries escalating as you come closer to me. The women begin to move toward me with their arms outstretched, fierce shrieks coming from their wide mouths. Though I am staring only at you, I can see my sisters in my mind’s eye with their teeth bared to you and to your men, who are slowly receding in the face of the priestesses’ threats.

The women form a half circle around me to protect me, showing teeth and claws and chanting in a taunting chorus of tocks and cackles. Unflinching, you stand right in front of me, looking down at me, and I am trembling. I try to stand tall and regal to let you know that I am filled with the grace and protection of the Raven Lady. You watch me intently, unblinking, for a good long while, and then you drop to your knees.

With this unexpected move, the women stop their cries. “Princess of the night, I have come to offer myself to you,” you say in French, the language of my homeland. “Come with me.” I am trying to look inside you, to foresee your intentions-lust, rape, or ransom-but your beauty clouds my sight.

“Why should I go with you, stranger?” I ask, though I am thrilled by the candor of your request and the desire and enthrallment in your eyes.

“Because I am yours, whether you wish it or not. You enchanted me, with your eyes that hold the light of the moon within them, and your starlit skin that defies fire. Come with me, my lady, and I will give you all that I have.”

I am gazing at you, weighing your flattery, when, from somewhere in the night, we hear the cries of a raven. Everyone looks around to see who is entering the grove. Suddenly, out of the night sky, a wide pair of black wings is soaring above us. The large bird penetrates the sacred space with its strident cries. In the moonlight, I can see its long, thick ruff of feathers and its spiky talons, as it swoops and soars above me.

“She is warning us,” the high priestess says.

In the distance, I hear hooves beating the earth, unmistakably coming our way, but louder this time than the approach of you and your men. This band on horseback comes not in stealth but announcing its arrival with music-tinkling chimes, pipes, and cymbals-drifting in on the wind, which picks up force and grows stronger, sweeping through the grove. “Someone approaches,” I say.

“I hear them,” my sister says. “It is the Sidhe.” I can feel her exhilaration rise at the thought of seeing the fairy prince with whom she is in love.

The women grow excited, but I know what this means for you, who are still in front of me on your knees. “Go!” I tell you. “Get your men out of here.”

You stand, but you do not leave, though your men are calling out to you. None of them wants to do battle with the Sidhe warriors, but you do not move, and I wonder if this is the real challenge you have come for.

“Come with me.” You try to take my hand, but recoil when you feel the talons on my glove. There is something in me that wants to go with you, but my sister is yelling at you to go away. She reads my mind and knows that you are tempting me.

“Are you mad?” she asks me. She and I have discussed that mating with a fairy prince will deepen my powers and carry on our mother’s lineage. Tonight would be that opportunity. “Go away before they find you here,” she says to you. “My sister is not for you. Leave!”

“Not without her,” you say, reaching into the neckline of your tunic, and I wonder if you are going to produce a weapon and try to take me by force.

“You are wasting time,” I tell you. I do not know you, but I do not want to see you slain by the Sidhe. “It could cost you your life and the lives of your companions.”

But you are not listening to me. You wrestle with your garment, pulling out a bejeweled cross that hangs on a leather thong. My anger rises at the sight of it. I grab the leather, clutching it around your neck so that I am choking you. Your eyes pop out and your face turns red. You are surprised to be attacked this way by a woman. “That belongs to my mother,” I say, hissing at you, pulling your face closer to mind. “You stole it from her.” My sister and I are exchanging thoughts and we arrive at the same conclusions-you are just another mortal who spied my mother in the woods; just another whom she has taken for a lover and cast aside, and you, vengeful, stole her cross. “Damned is the man who steals from the Sidhe,” my sister tells him, looking him up and down. Suddenly, though, she bursts out laughing. I look to see what she is laughing at, and I am amused to see that even though I mean to choke you, being this close to me has given you an erection.

“Your father sent me,” you say. “He told me to find you and give it to you.”

Now it is my turn to be shocked. I release you so that you can catch your breath. I have not seen my father in years but know from my inner sight that he left Aquitaine to fight in the Holy Wars. I do not know where he is, but I know that he is alive. But the cacophony of the Sidhe is upon us. The drumbeat of their galloping horses, the sharp barking of the dogs that accompany them everywhere, and their music that sounds strangely like the color silver grow louder and louder, and we can hear them singing one of their rowdy songs as they come in pursuit of pleasure with us.

I have to make a decision. My heart is telling me to follow the man in front of me, the man who my father anointed to seek me out and give me this gift. But in the grove, the authority belongs to the high priestess. Reading my thoughts, she waves her feather-covered wand at us. “Go with him,” she says. “And hurry.”

Spurred on by the approach of the fairies, your men have readied their horses. One of them doubles up with another so that I can ride his horse, a moon-white stallion with a long mane. Before you help me mount, you pull the claw gloves off my hands, so that I can ride, and throw them into the bushes. As we start to ride away, the Sidhe warriors leap into the grove on their horses, slipping through the trees and the brush as if they did not exist, lighting up the dark space with their celestial glow. Glimpsing the dazzling Sidhe, with their radiant skin, bronze colored hair, and shimmering green mantles, I have a moment of regret, wondering what might have been.

But there is no time for wistfulness. You come behind me and kick my horse hard, making him bolt away. Ahead of us, your men fly through the night, and we follow. The animals know the terrain and gallop down the path so that the landscape is a blur. My head is still clouded by the moonflower broth, so I close my eyes and make myself one with the steed until I can no longer feel my own body but have melted into his. I feel his animal strength infusing my body with his power, and his with mine, and when I open my eyes again, it is to look up at the stars, which swirl above in a greenish glow.

After a time, we approach a stone castle guarded by men in the torchlit watchtower and surrounded by a deep ditch. One of the riders calls out to them, and they lower the bridge so that we can enter. Inside the gate, you, my blue-eyed captor, help me off my horse, and I fall into your arms, where it feels as familiar as if I have done this one thousand times and will do it one thousand times more. Someone lets us inside, and we pass through a large room with men sitting round a fire, who look at us as if this is just another ordinary sight. You carry me through a torchlit hall and into a bare room with a tall hearth and iron bars slashing the two windows high in the walls.

You place me on a mattress on the floor covered in furs near the hearth, and I yelp in pain as a thorn in the back of my crown pierces my scalp. Gently, you remove the crown and kiss my wound. But as you toss the crown aside, another thorn tears your finger, making a slit in the skin that soon fills with red. We are both startled at the sight, but I take your finger into my mouth and suck some of the blood, savoring its fresh taste and your salty iron flavor.

I want to show you my magic, so I when I have had my fill of tasting you and of watching your desire rise, I take your finger out of my mouth and show you the cut again. Then concentrating deeply, I run the tip of my tongue along the incision very slowly, first once, and then a few more times, sliding my tongue sensuously along the cut. In my mind’s eye I see you watching me in wonder, those gemstone eyes of yours sparkling with arousal.

When I stop, I show you that the wound is closed and the skin, unbroken.

I thought that you would be awed by my magic, but, instead, without a word, your lips are on mine. Your hands have untied my silver sash and are inside my robes, grasping greedily at my body. I feel your raw, human hunger and I answer it. It is not my first time making love with a mortal. I love the body heat that comes with palpable human desire, and the scent and taste of flesh and blood. Earth time collapses, and we enter a timeless space, kissing with great care, exploring every inch of our lips, tongues, faces, and necks. You discard your braies and hose and you pull up my dress to look at my body, touching the wine-red mark on my thigh, tracing its winglike shape with your finger.

“The mark of the Sidhe.” Some ignorant men think it the mark of the devil, and I hope that you are not one of them. But your look tells me that you are feeling something else, something closer to wonder. Because I am infatuated with you, I cannot read you as clearly as I would like.

“Why are you not living with the Sidhe?” you ask.

“My human side enjoys earthly pleasure,” I say, and it is true. I like the solid beat of a human heart, the aroma of roasting meat, and the delicate tickling of rain on my face. “I am not like my mother who loves mortals but wearies of them. I have a different nature, and I am still trying to discover it.”

“Are you immortal?”

“Perhaps,” I say. “I can extend my life by spending time in the Sidhe kingdom. But whether I am forever, I do not know.”

At this moment, my Sidhe blood is taking over as I inhale your scent. That small taste of your blood has aroused me, and I want to drink more, but I do not want to weaken you or kill you. My mother would be angry with me for these feelings. She hates me to question my nature.

“You have endangered yourself by bringing me here,” I say. I am looking at your bare legs, and they draw me like a magnet. I push them apart, my fingers slowly creeping up the length of your thighs as I lick my lips, anticipating the thrill of tasting you. Your eyes are wide now, straining to see what I will do to you, but I have paralyzed you with my touch. Without warning, I bring my mouth to the muscle at the innermost part of your thigh, surrounding the flesh with my lips, teasing, licking, kissing, and nibbling, first one side of the groin and then the other. You open your legs wider, making yourself vulnerable to me. You let me take more of your inner thigh into my mouth, so that my cheek rests on your sac, and I fondle it very gently with one hand while the other holds your bare, tense buttock. You close your eyes and moan with pleasure and anticipation. But I use that moment of weakness to break your skin with my teeth and bite into your tender flesh, taking what I want from you while you cry out in ecstasy and surprise. When I am done, you are panting and glowing with your own sweat.

But unlike some of the others I have been with, you quickly recover. “You are not ordinary,” I say.

“I am accustomed to danger and practiced in the ways of mysticism. Even if I were not, a night with you would be worth my life,” you say.

I fold my arms around you and pull you toward me, taking your lips and tongue into my mouth. You kiss me back with ferocity, and I see that you have not been weakened by me. Indeed, your erect penis is stabbing at me, looking for entry, and I realize that indeed you are a mortal like no other. The taste of your tongue pleases me, and I want to bite your lip, but I refrain, instead wrapping my legs around you to invite all of you to come into me. You enter me slowly, a man familiar with women’s pleasure. I wait for you to thrust hard into me so that I can meet your passion, but you barely move, and your body trembles. I remember that I do not feel like an ordinary woman to you, and you must grow accustomed to the hum of my body. You hold my hips tight against your pelvis as if you are trying to consume me. I feel you steady your breathing and your heartbeat as if you are preparing for battle, and, reading your memories, I have flashes of the kind of warrior you are-fierce and unfazed by your enemies. When you are ready, you pace yourself, moving in and out of me rhythmically until you reach the end of your control and explode inside me in a series of frantic thrusts. I wait while you recover your senses, and then you whisper into my ear, “I want to drink from you.”

I push your shoulders back so I can look you in the face. “You do not know what you ask,” I say. Few humans know the secrets of the blood, and I wonder where you have obtained such knowledge.

You look as if I have insulted your manly pride. “I have drunk the blood of others and have only grown stronger.” Your blue eyes are angry and indignant.

“But I carry the blood of the Sidhe. You may grow stronger, but you may also weaken and die. There is no way to tell. Even the soothsayers and seers have failed to predict who will die from our blood, or even from making love to us.”

“I can only stay with you if I am one of your kind. Otherwise, you will tire of me.”

I know there is truth in what you are saying. I often reflect on the cruelty of mortal life, how all things of beauty fade into decay and death. Looking at you, I cannot bear the thought of your degeneration, of the daily pain of watching your skin and muscles shrivel, your spine bend, and the fire fade from your eyes. This could happen to me too, if I give into my mortal heritage, but I have the refuge of my mother’s kingdom to keep me young. You must be reading my thoughts because you take me by the shoulders. “Lady, I am not afraid. Test my strength. If I am too weak, I deserve to die.”

I have enough magic in me to open a place at the base of my throat with a light touch of my fingernail, an incision just big enough for your mouth. I let it fill with the red substance that is my blood. It is brighter than mortal blood, the color of cranberries, and more luminous, and I see that this surprises you. Without giving you a chance to change your mind, I press your head to my throat and let you drink.

Chapter Sixteen

31 October 1890

Every nerve in my body was on fire as I felt him pierce my skin and sink into the tender flesh at the base of my neck. I threw my head back and held him close to me, a fistful of his hair in my grip. His hand was between my legs, fingers inside me, making me reach for a climax, while his mouth brought something close to agony, but it was nothing I wanted to stop. I surrendered all of myself to him. His mouth kept pace with his hand, and when he felt my insides tighten around his fingers, he bit harder into my neck. The world went blurry, and I was afraid that I was going to die; but in the moment, it seemed better to let this wild passion be the wave I would ride out of this world and into the next one. Even if all were darkness after this, it did not matter, for what could compare?

He let me writhe under his touch until the final shudder, when my body went limp in his arms. “Ah, Mina, the taste of you,” he said, holding me to his chest and stroking my hair.

We lay by the blazing hearth for a while, until the cold of the stone beneath us seeped through his cloak and into my bones, and I began to feel the pain from the wound in my neck. It throbbed and burned, competing in intensity with the heat of the flames of the fire. Drops of my blood were on his shirt.

“I know that it hurts you. Close the wound,” he said.

I put my hand over it and felt the torn flesh and the lazy ooze of blood.

You know how to do it. You have done it before.

Yes, but how? How to unite the magical woman I was in the past with the ordinary Mina in this body-this drained, throbbing, bleeding, and very human body? It seemed impossible.

He placed a fingertip on my forehead at the temple and made a tiny circle, soothing me. I closed my eyes, until the dark emptiness behind my lids was replaced with a mental image of the wound. Words long forgotten, words stifled for centuries, rose from their grave and sounded in my mind: Divine Lady, I am parched with thirst for your power. Bring me to the Lake of Recollection, where I can drink its cool waters and recall my source. Let me bathe in the Lake of Memory, so that I may remember all that you are, and all that I am.

My hands began to heat and electrify, and I placed the left one over the wound. Power of the Raven, be mine! Take my pain, close my wound, and let it offend me no more.

The heat from my hand met the burning sensation in the wound, and it felt as if I were setting myself on fire. My hand seared the lesion, and I did not know if I was further injuring myself or not. But some knowing inside me made me keep my hand over the gash. In my mind’s eye, my flesh bubbled and frothed, like something that rose to the top in a boiling kettle. It was more painful than the original insult to my tissue, and I was tempted to stop before I seared my neck. Maybe my former powers were forever lost to me.

Do not stop now. Trust.

In time the pain began to subside, and my hands went from scorching hot to warm. I put my finger where the wound had been, but it was gone and the area was smooth. I searched for evidence of the gash, but the skin on my neck and throat was flawlessly intact.

I sat up, and he sat with me, arms around me. We said nothing for a long while but simply held each other. I stared into the flames as they resurrected images and memories from my first days with him in this very room so many lifetimes ago. There is no explanation for love; no spoken words compare with its silent exhilaration. If that was true of the ordinary love between two mortals-if love is ever ordinary-then it was truer of a love that has contorted itself into different bodies in different eras over the centuries.

Finally, I had to ask, “How was it that you, a mortal, lived on eternally, and I, a daughter of the Sidhe, died a mortal death?”

“It was your choice,” he said, looking away from me. “I could not force you to choose eternal life, though I did try.”

“What would make me choose a life away from you, my love? I cannot imagine it.”

“My love,” he said, repeating my words. “I have waited a very long time to hear it roll from your lips again so effortlessly.” Then his expression turned to sadness. “The rest of that story is not a happy one,” he said.

“Then I do not want to hear it,” I said. “Let us forget the past-all our pasts, whatever they were-and let us bind to each other again in the here and now, and let us make it forever. I never want to be apart from you again.”

I expected a declaration of love, but he put two fingers on the pulse in my wrist, and then on my neck. “How do you feel? Are you dizzy or nauseous?”

No, I am not sick, I am exhilarated and on fire with love for you, and I want to drink from you and be with you forever.

“Yes, I know that,” he said dispassionately. “But I must gauge your physical response to what has happened. It is the rare human who could experience both returning to a past event and losing blood at the same time without severely weakening the body.”

“Did we actually go back in time?” I had experienced the return to the past with every physical sensation, but that was the way in dreams too.

He opened his hand, palm up. “The past is right here for those who know how to access it. Yes, we returned to it together. It was not a dream or hallucination, and that is why I could not restrain myself. When you opened yourself to me, the veil dropped, and we were caught between the two worlds. When we returned to the present time, I was still taking your blood, and I could not stop. I did not intend for that to happen, but our desire for each other was too intense. We must be certain that I did no harm.”

“How could you think that you have done me harm? You have opened up the world to me. You asked me to remember who I am, and who we are together, and now I do remember. Nothing else matters now.”

“Let us go back to the castle,” he said. “It is crucial that you stay warm and rest.”

I want to take your blood into my veins. I want to be your blood lover and live with you forever.

“This moment is seven hundred years in the making, Mina. We must be very careful. You are still quite mortal.”

Suddenly, an overpowering hunger struck me. I felt restless to the core. My legs and arms began to quiver, and a void opened up inside me that I had to fill or go mad. I did not know what I desired, what nourishment could possibly quell this odd starvation. My body yearned for something, and I could only imagine that it was for him. I am starving for you. Let me feast on you.

He did not respond but observed me as a doctor would, as John Seward had done. He took my pulse again. “Mrs. O’Dowd will have food prepared when we arrive.”

In the dining room, jumpy flames from the iron candelabra on the table made flickering shadows on the walls. I sat down to a lavish meal of Irish stew, boiled salad with beets, celery, potatoes doused in cream sauce, haddock and rice, and a long cheeseboard piled with pungent varieties and tasty rolls. I ate with fiendish voraciousness, and slowly, my hunger subsided and my nerves calmed.

We said little. The Count watched me eat, refilling my wineglass as I emptied it. “Much better,” he said, pronouncing on my condition.

Why did you stop me?

“It is not a decision to be made lightly,” he said. “There are consequences along the path to eternal existence.”

“You said that I have the blood of the immortals, and that you have been trying to convince me for hundreds of years to accept eternal life with you. But when I agreed to begin it-thirsted for it, in fact-you would not allow it.” The food had calmed me, but I was still angry that he was able to control me. He had evoked something wild inside me, some feral part of me that eschewed danger and lived to perform feats of magic, and yet he stifled me.

“There is more that you need to know.”

“I know all that I need to know about you, if that is what you mean. And I know all that I need to know about myself. I do not care what happened seven hundred years ago after we sealed our love. I no longer care what happened seven days ago, for that matter. The past is dead, my love. I only care about the present and the future.”

The Count looked at me as if I wearied him. “Let us see if you still feel the same way tomorrow.”

“I feel more alive now than I have ever felt in this lifetime,” I said. I pushed away from the table and went to him and sat in his lap. He hugged me to him, letting me rest my head on his shoulder. “If we can visit the past, my love, can we not change it? I want to return to the past and change whatever I did that separated us for all this time.”

I heard him laugh to himself. How many times have I tried to do just that? “If it were possible, I would have already done it, Mina. I would not have stopped revisiting the day of your decision until I changed your mind. I’m afraid that the gift of visiting the past is all that we have. We can revisit it, but only as it happened.”

“Like actors on the stage who must obey the lines that are already written,” I said, for that is what it felt like to me. “I inhabited my former body, but I did not control it.”

“And yet our powers are ever evolving,” he said. “We may discover in the future that we are able to do things that now seem impossible.”

Why did I decide to live as a mortal?

“Slowly, my love, slowly. Impatience will not serve you in this process.”

I woke the next day in the afternoon and tried to get out of bed, but my fatigue was great, and I was unable to combat it. Every time I rose, exhaustion came over me, and I retreated to the bed, where I took a light meal and some tea. The Count watched me with concern. I could tell that he had not expected me to respond this way to the loss of blood and the rekindling of my powers. He had been so sure that I would be able to make the gradual transition out of mortal life, but my overwhelming need for rest troubled him. He had the kitchen prepare strong, meat-and bone-based broths for me, which he watched me drink to the last drops. In the evening, he made me take a mulled wine spiced with something that he said would relax me.

“I do not need a sedative,” I said. “I can barely keep myself awake.”

“There is a difference between a fatigued body and a relaxed body,” he said. And so I drank it and slept for fourteen hours.

With one more lengthy sleep, I was able to rise in the afternoon, though a queasy feeling invaded my stomach and would not go away despite three cups of ginger tea and some toast. But a tepid yellow sun shone through the clouds for the first time since we had arrived, and it inspired me to dress.

I could not find the Count anywhere. I sought Mrs. O’Dowd, finding her in the kitchen. I asked her if she knew his whereabouts, but she shrugged. “I do not, madam,” she said. I waited for her to speculate as to where he might be, but she was as silent as a stone. I sensed that she knew many things about him, perhaps more than I knew at this point, but I also saw that she was not about to reveal them to me. She was solicitous toward me, but by the way that she curtly answered my questions, she seemed either amused by me or suspicious of me, and I wondered if I was not the first female guest the Count had taken to this castle.

“Mrs. O’Dowd, I would like to try to find out if I have any living relatives in the county,” I said, trying to establish a connection with her so that she might give me some information about my family. I explained that my mother had been an only child, and I did not know anything about my father’s family. I ran the only family names I remembered past her, but she claimed not to be familiar with any of them. She was very formal with me despite my attempts to approach her in a friendly manner. I asked her to arrange for me to have a carriage and coachman. I wanted to pass by my old home and I also wanted to find my mother’s grave. “You may try the old cemetery at Drumcliffe,” she said. “That is where many are buried.”

She looked at me coldly, and I stared back into her eyes, when, in my own mind’s eye, I had a vision of her as a much younger woman in this very room bent over the long, pine worktable hatcheted with knife marks, with the Count’s mouth on her lips and neck. He looked exactly as he looked today, whereas she looked perhaps forty years younger. I almost swooned with the sight of it, after which she looked at me with even greater suspicion. “I am fine, Mrs. O’Dowd,” I said quickly, even before she asked me. “I took a sedative that has had a lasting effect on me, that is all.”

“I understand the effect very well,” she said in a very knowing tone. “You needn’t explain anything to me. Do excuse me while I arrange for your carriage.”

By the time the coachman brought me to the cemetery and helped me out of the carriage, the sun had dropped and the light had grown dimmer. An ancient stone watchtower flanked the cemetery, casting a long shadow over some of the gravestones, and an Irish High Cross that must have sat there for one thousand years, marked by its great circle at the center and decorated with biblical scenes, lorded over the entrance. A Gothic-style church with an inviting wooden door recessed in a massive arch was attached to the cemetery. I wanted to have a look inside, but knew that I must take advantage of the ever-diminishing daylight.

I asked the coachman to wait by the carriage and I began to walk the rows between the headstones, searching for familiar names, especially those of my parents, Maeve and James Murray. I had nothing else to go on but that my grandmother’s name was Una. Moss, fungus, and wear from the passage of time obscured many of the stones’ inscriptions. I did not find any tombs bearing the name Murray, though it was common enough in the area. I was about to leave the cemetery when I saw a name and date that seemed strikingly familiar: Winifred Collins, 1818-1847. Where had I seen it before?

I closed my eyes, resting my hand on the headstone. The wind picked up, sending a languid chill across my face, as if it had intentionally stopped to caress me. I remembered the name written on John Seward’s patient file. Winifred Collins: Born 1818. Vivienne? But she had died in 1890 in London. A sickening feeling swept through my stomach, but I quickly told myself that it could not possibly be the same person.

What were the chances that two female children with the same name had been born in the same year in Sligo County? On the other hand, Vivienne had not said that she was from Sligo. Perhaps this was just a coincidence after all. Though Winifred was not a common name, Ireland was rife with families named Collins.

Poor Vivienne. I tried to banish my last image of her from my mind, dead by the hands of the doctors and their unnecessary, fatal experiments. If the doctors had had their way, I would be lying in the cellar next to her on another cot, covered by a sheet and waiting for burial. I did not like to think about her, either dead or alive, with her mad eyes that were the same color as mine. I remembered how her outlandish stories had captivated me. Now I had relived them the other night in my vision, or whatever that was, with myself as the central character. Had I been correct when I told John Seward that when I looked at Vivienne, I saw my future? Was I, in fact, as mad as she? The experience of two nights ago had been as real to me as any waking moment I could remember, but now I had to wonder if Vivienne had planted those ideas in my mind, and they had taken hold, transforming into an experience that I recreated and called my own.

I sat down on the grave of Winifred Collins, whoever she was, and put my head in my hands. I wished that I could be more rational, more sleuthlike in assembling all the information I had gathered with all that I had experienced to construct some semblance of reality that made sense to me. I needed a firm identity that I could hold on to, but as things were, that identity was in constant flux, and growing ever more sensational.

Feeling disturbed, and with more questions than answers coursing through my mind, I walked slowly back to the carriage and gave the coachman the location of the cottage where I had lived for the first seven years of my life. Perhaps I would find something there-anything at all-to help me sort out what was happening to me. “Ah, yes, off the old Circuit Road,” he said confidently, and put me inside the coach.

We drove down a country road lined with barren trees that I remembered from my childhood. I used to think that the jumble of scraggly branches cradled at the tops of their trunks were giant birds’ nests. Crossing a stone bridge that straddled a narrow, rushing river, we turned away from the sun, driving past old cottages hobbled with neglect-fallen chimneys, overgrowths of reedy grass. When we reached our destination, I saw that my parents’ house had fared no better. Weeds filled the garden where I had played, and windows and doors were crudely boarded up so that I could neither enter nor see inside.

I walked around to the back of the house and sat alone on the steps, feeling discouraged and rootless. I did not know exactly what I was looking for, but I had hoped to discover some connection with my past. I thought I could hear the current of the river charging over the big black stones I had seen in its midst as we had crossed the bridge. Or perhaps it was just the sound of the wind whipping through the valley. I contemplated taking a walk to the river while I still had a bit of daylight. I stood up and turned around.

“Mina, Mina, Wilhelmina, hair as black as night!”

I heard girls’ voices singing as if they were standing next to me, but no one was there. I knew those voices, had heard them before.

“Mina, Mina, Wilhelmina, eyes so green and bright!”

The voices were encircling me now, frightening me. I swirled around to try to see who or what was singing, and I stumbled backward. I tried to break the fall with my hands, but I kept falling and falling until darkness enveloped me, and only then did I hit the ground.

I laugh and spin, singing with my friends. I am giving a tea party for them, I know, because I see the little cups and saucers on the play table with low benches where I sit every day and play with my toys. My dress is of plain forest green wool, but the other girls are wearing beautiful tunics the colors of gems-ruby dresses with sapphire mantles and dappled with jewels that dance before me like little insects on fire. My hair is dark as a crow, but theirs is red and gold and even longer than mine. A ray of sun slashes through the turbulent Irish sky, and I see that my friends’ perfect skin shimmers in the sun, making them almost translucent. We all hold hands and sing songs, dancing in circles until I am dizzy. “Mina, Mina, Wilhelmina!” They sing my name again and again, making me feel giddy and special. I fall to the ground laughing. My three friends laugh at me, holding out their hands to lift me up, trying to get me to dance, but I am too tired to join them. While I am lying on my back, catching my breath, they drain all the tea from the cups on the little table and then they disappear. Suddenly, my mother’s face is above me, and I ask her where they have gone, and her look turns dark and angry. “You were alone in the garden, Mina. Why must you always cause mischief? You know that your father does not like it when you invent these stories. Why cannot you be a truthful little girl?”

“I am a truthful girl,” I insist. I have seen the girls and held their hands in mine and listened as they sang my name with their beautiful, high voices. I do not lie, and I do not understand why the adults insist that I do.

“Go kneel in the corner until your father comes home,” she says.

She drags me in the house, and I kneel with my face to the wall, my stomach turning sick because I know that when my father comes home I will get a spanking. The light outside changes and it is dark and I am still kneeling and it is very painful. My mother finally tells me to get up and eat my supper. My father is still not home. My mother’s frown is a fixture now. Over a lumpy stew, she tells me that it is my fault; my witchery is keeping my father away. “This house will be without a man if you do not change your ways,” she says.

The past faded away. I realized that I was curled up like a baby in the garden, my stomach still upset from the memory. I was cold and cramped, and I did not know what to do with myself. I stayed there for a while, waiting to see if the voices of the girls would come back, but all was silent except the distant sound of the river. I sat up, thinking that a walk to its banks might be what I needed to clear my mind. Perhaps the sight of the rushing water would sweep away my bad memories.

Luckily, I had worn a thick woolen skirt and calf-length leather boots against the unforgiving coastal weather, and I set out through a half-cleared path that I had trodden as a child. My skirt caught on thistle, and as I bent down to free it, I saw that a small red fox-a female, I somehow knew beyond doubt-was staring at me as if asking whether I was lost. I found myself telling her that I knew my way, and she turned and skittered into the brush, waving good-bye with her bushy tail. Beech and oak trees, some with broken branches and misshapen trunks, covered the glen leading to the river. The sun’s glow had faded almost to dusk, and I hurried so that I would not be trying to find my way back in the dark.

Tall grass lined the banks of the river. The current was even mightier up close than it had looked from the bridge. The water leapt over the black rocks chaotically, angrily, spilling its white froth as it raced to the mouth where it would be set free into the sea. I walked closer to the river’s edge until water splashed my skirt. I took off one of my gloves and reached out to put my hand in the water. Its bracing coldness shocked me, and I withdrew my hand, but I saw a strange reflection in the water, as if two people were standing behind me and I was watching their shadows on the current. I heard men’s angry voices and something like a howl. I turned around. The same strange feeling of falling came over me, and I shut my eyes, but did not like what I saw in my mind’s eye-two bodies intertwined beside the river, two men fully clothed, grappling with each other, hitting and punching. Shivering violently as if I were wet-as if I were in the midst of the water treatment again-I opened my eyes.

The Count was sitting on the ground next to me. My teeth were chattering and my eyes wet. Tears came running down my face-but from what cause, I did not know. He put his arms around me, and I sank into him. His wool coat was thick and scratchy, and I burrowed into his chest.

Do you remember?

I do not want to remember.

You must, Mina.

Images that I did not want to see and sounds that I did not want to hear came back to me: the sickening thud of a punch; a preternaturally strong hand upon a neck, gasping, choking; a body gone limp and disappearing into the water. “No, no, no!” I screamed, beating my fists against his chest until the futility of it overtook me and I let my arms drop helplessly and looked up at him. “Why?” I asked. “Why did you do it?”

“For seven long and painful years, I watched you and I did not interfere,” he said. “You were born with tremendous powers. You were unlike any mortal child I have ever seen, and you suffered for it. You were just a small thing, even for your age, and I used to take the form of animals and visit you so that I could watch over you and protect you. Sometimes we talked, sometimes at this very spot. But whenever you told your mother that you had had a conversation with a fox or a hare, she got very angry with you.

“Your father was suspicious of you from birth, but he did not panic until he saw you change shape. I think you remember the night. Your mother tried to convince him that he had been drinking and was imagining things, but he knew better. He wanted a confession from you that you were in league with some sort of evil entity, so he tied you to your bed for two days and starved you. But, of course, you could not tell him what he wanted to hear.

“He decided that you were a changeling-that the fairies had taken his real child away. He wanted to throw you on the fire to see if you would burn like a human child, for it is said that changelings do not burn. I did not have to interfere because your mother was able to stop him. She insisted that they consult a wise woman, which was against everything he believed in. The old woman told them that you were a fairy-struck child and that he must take you to the river every morning before dawn for seven days. If he dipped you twice in the water, calling upon the Blessed Trinity and all the saints to heal you, it would chase the magic out of you. After two days of this, you contracted pneumonia and almost died.”

“Dear God, the water cure!” I said. “It had been done to me before.” The feeling of drowning, of being held down against my will in frigid water, had been all too familiar.

The Count continued. “Despite that you were on the verge of death, he was determined to do it again. Though your skin and lips were blue and you could barely take a breath, he wrapped you in a blanket and carried you to the water. I could read your body and knew that it would mean certain death if he proceeded. I tried to speak to him, but he would not listen. He told me to stay out of his business. ‘I do not know you, stranger,’ he said. He thought that I was one of the Sidhe come to rescue his own. He strode right past me with you in his arms and put you down by the side of the river. He was going to bathe you in its waters again. I asked him to stop, but he did not.”

He did not have to finish his story, for I remembered it all-the two men fighting, one delivering the fatal blow and the other floating away down the river. “I carried you back to the house. Your mother never knew how you got home, which made her all the more afraid of you. I wiped your memory of the entire experience, which was easy to do because you were young and impressionable, and you had a fever at that time that made it difficult for you to distinguish between real and imagined events. His body was found that evening downriver.”

I rocked back and forth, holding my arms around my chest as if I were trying to prevent my body from shattering into little pieces. “Why did he hate me so?”

“Your father knew about your grandmother and the shame she had brought upon the family. He did not want that to happen to him.”

“What do you know about my grandmother?” I asked. “My mother would never tell me anything about her, just that if I was not careful, I would end up just like her.”

“You met your grandmother, though you did not know it at the time. But you were enchanted with her stories.”

He waited for the truth to dawn on me.

Vivienne?

“No, that cannot be,” I said, growing more upset at the idea of a madwoman being my grandmother. “My grandmother’s name was Una. Why are you telling me this? Why do you continue to fill my head with things that will make me go mad?” I got up to run away, but I did not get ten paces before he was standing in front of me, and he caught me in his arms and held me tight. I wanted to take shelter in his strength, but at this moment, he was the bearer of information that I was sure was going to make me go insane. He read my thoughts, of course.

“You cannot hide from the truth, Mina. Anytime you try to argue with truth, you will lose. Anytime you try to evade it or run away from it, it will find you down the road. Now sit down and just try to listen.”

Though I had not run but a few steps, my heart raced, and blood swirled around in my head, tightening into a band of pressure. I wanted to escape, but I felt too sick and too afraid to move. We sat down together on a big gray rock that I remembered standing on as a little girl to watch the flow of the river.

“Growing up, Vivienne was called Una, which means ‘unity’ in the old language. ‘Winifred’ is the Anglicized version of the name. She was very rebellious against her rigid father, intrigued with the old religions, and also very lustful. The family was racked with shame over her pregnancy, which came after she had slept with many of the local men. No one was certain who the father was, not even Una herself. Una’s own father, your great-grandfather, decided that the best thing to do was to send her away for good, but publicly they declared her dead and buried her. Your mother’s grandfather was Anglo-Irish and had considerable holdings at one time. He took your mother away from Una and raised her. He also paid for Una’s care.”

“His trust paid for my schooling and comes to me still,” I said, wondering how I would have reacted to Vivienne if I had known the truth.

“No, it was I who did that. Your great-grandfather was furious that your mother ran away with a Catholic not of her class. When he died, she inherited nothing. I set up the trust as if it were from the old man. I kept the stipend small so that no one would be suspicious or try to lay their hands on the money.”

“You paid for me to attend Miss Hadley’s School for all those years?”

“It seemed the safest environment for you, considering the circumstances,” he said. “I could not take you from your mother. You were a child. You were terrified enough as it was.”

I was trying to reconcile all that Vivienne had told me with what I had now experienced myself. “But Vivienne’s stories about the fairies? Was she mad?” Of course, the question I really wanted to ask was, am I mad?

“Una had heard the stories of the Sidhe all her life and adopted them as her own. But she heard them from those who had actually experienced these things.”

Whereas I?

“Who do you think told Una those stories?” He waited for me to hazard a guess, but I could not venture one.

“Her own grandmother, who was very powerful. The Gift often skips several generations until it manifests again. And though it skipped Una, as much as she desired it, it has manifested again in you.”

“This is too much for me to apprehend,” I said. I slid off the rock and sat on my heels, trying to absorb all that I had learned and all that he told me. “My great-grandfather locked his daughter away, and my own father would have killed me? What sort of family is this?”

“Your father feared you. And so you spent years fearing yourself.”

I do not know if it was the shock of the truth, or the relief of finally knowing all, but I crumpled to the ground and began to cry again. He let me sob for a little while, and then he took me in his arms and raised my tear-streaked face. But I was not ready to be appeased. “What about Mrs. O’Dowd? Have you been watching over her since her childhood? Did you have to murder someone in her family too?”

He smiled at me with the benevolence of a saint. “Are you jealous, Mina? You were not even born at the time of our brief liaison.”

I felt foolish. Had I expected him to be faithful to me for seven centuries? When, apparently, for a good deal of that time, I was dead?

“I have had other female companions, but you are the only one I have wanted to go through time with. I have endured your interminable cycles of birth and aging and death and rebirth; and every time, it has cost me a piece of my soul. I want you forever, but I wanted you to know the truth of what happened-the truth about your family history, and about my history-before you made a choice.”

“It is difficult to contain all this in my mind,” I said.

“You must give up the very act of analysis. You have a gift that is greater than the conscious, rational mind. It is the key to unlocking all mystery, and it is the very thing that you always try to deny.”

I had spent my life denying my gifts because they were frightening to me and to others, and trying to find a place in the orderly, rational world. But the rational world-the world of my father, of the asylum doctors, of all those from whom the Count had kept me safe-was where my nemeses existed. Despite how difficult it was to hear the things he was telling me, he was not the one to fear.

The sun had gone down, leaving us in the steel gray November dusk. “There is one more thing that I do not know, my love,” I said. “I do not know why I would ever have chosen a life without you.”

“At the time, you had your reasons. I did not agree with them, and I tried everything to change your mind.”

“You are my refuge, my sanctuary from everything that would harm me. We won’t part again, will we?”

He stood and offered me his hand. “I want to show you something,” he said. “There is a place near here for which you once had great fondness.”

I started to walk toward the carriage, but he stopped me. “If we take the carriage, we will miss twilight time.”

He picked me up in his arms and started walking back toward the house. But soon, his feet were off the ground and we were moving at great speed, so fast that the landscape whizzed by me in a blur of browns and greens. I was exhilarated and afraid. I had experienced this once before with him, but not at this speed and not for this lengthy a distance. We seemed to be following the river, the wind whooshing past my ears. Beyond was the great glassy dark of the sea, and behind us, the outlines of a mountain range. It looked as if we were going to collide into the side of one of the tall cliffs, when we suddenly were standing inside one of its alcoves that overlooked the bay.

My heart was pounding from the elation of flying, but I was thankful to have my feet on something solid. The alcove was dark and not very deep. I turned around to look at the sea, but panicked when I saw that my feet were on the precipice. I cried out, losing my balance and falling forward, when his arm caught me from behind and pulled me to safety. I fell back against him, looking over the bay. On one side, the gilded moon, brilliant though days past its fullness, hung over the water, while on the west side, the sun’s orb had almost sunken into the sea, and the last violet mist of daylight was fading into darkness.

He wrapped his arms tight around my waist and put his lips to my ear. “Have you forgotten this place?”

I closed my eyes, and in my mind’s eye, I saw us lying on a blanket of fur in the little cave, a cube of peat burning in the corner, lighting up the craggy dome. “Of course I remember it. This was our secret place, our eagle’s perch. This is where we came to be alone and to stay dry when the rains poured outside.”

“Yes. Do you remember what we used to do?” He put his hands on my temples. It is still happening, right here in this very place. We are still here making love. We never left.

I let myself rest against him, willing my mind to go blank. Then I saw myself on top of him, looking down at his face while I rode him, his blue eyes watery with pleasure and made translucent by the light of the fire burning in the deep end of the alcove. My hair was long enough to cover the length of my torso, and he moved it aside so that he could see my body. In my memory, I saw his younger face-eager and innocent-as he tossed his neck aside, baring it to me.

Do it now.

I ran my finger along his tender nape, making an incision in the skin, which burst with crimson color, drawing my lips to it.

He interrupted my memory now with his lips on my neck, kissing it gently, taking my flesh between his teeth, not breaking the skin but igniting every nerve in my body. I turned around to face him, knowing that he had read my mind and revisited the memory too. Wordlessly, he opened the collar of his shirt and exposed his neck and throat to me. His tendons and muscles were prominent, like sculpted ivory, and inviting. Together, with our thoughts, we opened the skin, and the cut filled with a peculiar pool of red-brighter than ordinary human blood, and glimmering. He was perfectly still, and I knew that he could not encourage, nor could he force. I had to do this entirely of my own volition.

I covered the wound with my lips, taking in his essence, and it assaulted my senses. The blood flowed into my mouth, and, like the rest of his being, it hummed with a life of its own that was palpable to my lips and tongue as I took in more of it. At first it was a challenge to get enough of it, but I sucked harder, letting the stream fill my mouth and slowly slither down my throat. I kept my lips tight on his skin; and he pressed my head into his neck, encouraging me. At one moment, I began to feel weak from the hard work of getting the blood from his vein, but I continued, sucking like a baby at its mother’s breast. Something inside me drove me on-desperation to have him in me, to make him part of me, to have his blood mingling with mine, and this time, forever. I imagined it coming into my body and integrating with all that I was. I drank furiously, oblivious to him and to all things outside of what my lips were doing. I was in the thrall of taking him this way, feeling unleashed, as if I could go on forever, when he pulled my hair, detaching me and snapping my head back so that he could look at my face.

I tried to free myself so that I could go back for more, but he held my hair firmly in his grip. His shirt was torn and the skin on his neck broken. A trickle of blood leaked out of the corner of the wound. He passed the two fingers he always used to take my pulse over the wound, closing it and sealing my source.

At sea, 15 November 1890

From the moment that I took his blood, until days later when we left Ireland, he did not let me out of his sight. He treated me like a baby, bathing and dressing me himself, bringing me my food, feeling my pulses, listening to my heartbeat, and giving me potions to drink. I did not welcome this pampering. My energy was so high that my ears buzzed. Something had ignited inside me, something that I did not know how to quell, and I tried to get him to let me drink from him again.

“Too much could poison you. We must be careful.”

“I have been careful all my life,” I said, hearing a new strength in my voice. His blood was animating my body, heating me up from the inside and infusing me with an unfamiliar vigor.

At those times, he held me close, not to demonstrate his love but to contain me. “We must proceed slowly, Mina. Let us see how your body responds.”

“How is it supposed to respond?” I asked.

“Responses vary. Some humans become very ill; some die. You were born with the Gift, so we know that you will survive, though you may experience some very unpleasant symptoms. On the other hand, you may not. We will observe you to gauge whether your powers are intensifying. If you take sick, then it means that we have moved too quickly.”

“How long before I become immortal?” I asked.

“You are getting ahead of yourself. It will take a long time to tell whether or not you are aging. You must be patient.”

“I do not want to be patient. Now that we are together, I want to gobble up life with you. I want to go everywhere and experience everything, all that life holds for us.”

He laughed at my enthusiasm. “My love, I am confident that we will have forever. Believe me, there is no rush anymore. One needn’t ‘gobble’ life if one has an eternity to explore its mysteries and to experience its pleasures.”

We set sail for Southampton on a glum Saturday afternoon, standing in the steamer’s glass promenade silently bidding good-bye to the land where we had first met. Black smoke sat like a wide-brimmed hat atop the great mountain that presided over the green-blanketed county. We glided out of the harbor and into the sea, where from our vantage point, barren stone slabs stood like sentinels guarding the coastline from the wind-whipped breakers. As the Irish coast receded, we looked ahead to the silver-gray ocean that had begun to shimmer with rain.

We intended to close the mansion in London and travel the world. The Count wanted to show me the lands where we had spent lifetimes together. He said that we had lived and loved in many countries-England, Ireland, Italy, France, but he would only tantalize me with snippets of information. “You said that the past was dead to you and that you only cared for the present and the future,” he reminded me.

“But now I want to remember,” I had replied. “I want to recapture the time we have lost.”

“There is no such thing as recapturing lost time. But much of it will come back to you when we return to these places, as you saw happen in Ireland. I hope that it will be a joyous discovery for you, Mina.” He added with a rueful smile, “I will try to avoid the locations of our past discontent.”

“At some point, I will remember all of it,” I said. “But past hardships are inconsequential now that we are together again.”

As Ireland receded into the mist, the rain, and the waves, he wrapped me in a blanket, and we lay on lounge chairs inside the promenade. “I have been thinking, Mina. There is so much of the world that I want to show you, so many places that I traveled in the years that I was alone-India, China, Arabia, Egypt, Russia. It would take lifetimes for me to tell you about my adventures. Let us go there, and let it all unfold before you. Only then will you truly know me as I am today.”

“I want to know everything,” I said. “Though now that I have you inside me, I feel that I know you like I know myself.”

“I have been a merchant, a soldier, a diplomat, a physician, a scholar, and many other things. I have served princes, kings, warlords, and usurpers; and I have also, at times, served no one but myself,” he said. “I have known thousands of people, and have had numerous alliances and intimacies, but my heart was a place of desolation until now.”

“But we have been together before,” I said. “We have spent decades together.”

“Yes, but it was never for forever, and I was always painfully aware of that fact. I always knew that sooner or later, I would lose you to one of the causes of mortal extinction. At least now, you have made the choice to try to be with me forever.”

“You will never have to be alone again, my love,” I said, wondering what would have made me choose life without him. But we had agreed not to discuss it, at least not yet. “I am strong and determined. We must never be apart again.”

In the first few days of the voyage, I noticed that my senses were gradually heightening. My night vision became sharper and my hearing more acute. The sensation was strange and not always pleasant. The pots and utensils used by the kitchen staff clanged loudly in my ears even when I was on the other side of the vessel. One of the servants stirred sugar into a cup of tea, and the sound of the spoon against the fine bone china irritated me and gave me a headache.

My olfactory sense too was dramatically affected. The smells of the ship were often intolerable to me. From the timber scent of the hull’s planks, to the polish on the finely wrought woodwork in the interior, to the ropes on deck and the oil used to maintain the machinery-scents I had once found fresh and exotic-were now abhorrent to me. Even the musky sweet tar that filled the plank’s seams was sickening to me. The cozy parlor and library now carried a fusty air, and I smelled evidence of mold everywhere, which turned my stomach.

By the third day at sea, I began to turn my face away from the look and the aroma of food. Though the table was set three times daily with many varieties of dishes, I had lost my appetite and only wanted tea and toast. The Count did not say that he was worried, but reading his thoughts, I learned that I should not be losing my taste for food, at least not yet. In the evenings, my senses calmed and my nausea subsided, and I lay on the big bed in his cabin, listening as he regaled me with stories of his life. Though he fascinated me more than ever, and I could no longer imagine life without him, the passion I had for him, the physical craving for his touch, was nowhere present. While he did not sleep at all, I often dozed off in the middle of a story, and he would carry me to my own bed, where I slept long hours.

After days of this, I awoke to fierce nausea. I rushed to the basin to vomit, but it did not calm my stomach. I had not been seasick on the last trip, though the waters on the return trip were rougher. But today the weather was clear and the sea rocked us gently. I sat on the bed, wondering if I did not have this ability to assimilate his blood after all and if I was being poisoned by it, just as the blood of their donors had poisoned Lucy and Vivienne. I was pondering the irony of this when the Count, hearing my thoughts, came to my quarters to allay my fears.

“It does so happen that some have a toxic reaction to the blood of my kind. I did not anticipate that it would happen to you,” he said.

It will not be fatal.

I heard his words in my mind, but they sounded less like a statement and more like a command to the gods, more a wish than a certainty. His uncertainty frightened me. Was I, in fact, going to die?

He must have felt my moment of terror. “I will not leave you again,” he said. “I wanted to let you sleep uninterrupted, but from now on, I will stay by your side through the nights.”

I was grateful for this; I was afraid and did not want to be left alone. But I also wondered if he would always be able to read each and every one of my thoughts. Would I never have the privacy of my own mind again?

This too he heard, and smiled. “As I have previously explained, as you develop your powers, you will be able to shield your thoughts from me,” he said. “After all, it is a woman’s prerogative to dissemble with her lover.”

“I have nothing to hide from you,” I said. It was true. I had spent my life dissembling before others, hiding my secrets, denying my abilities, and feigning demureness. Why would I hide from the one who had shown me my true nature?

“Good. Then allow me to examine you thoroughly,” he said. I lay on the bed and he took my pulse, scrutinized my tongue, felt me for fever, and listened to my heartbeat. He put his hands on my diaphragm and asked me to breathe deeply and to exhale. Then he lowered his hands, cupped my pelvis, and closed his eyes. I watched his face as he concentrated. I imagined that he had been a superb physician and I wanted to know more about the time he spent studying and practicing the medical arts. I was about to ask him to tell me about those days when I saw his face begin to change. The serene and objective air of the physician gave way to a shadowy expression. His hands began to quake beyond the normal hum and vibration, and he pressed me harder. A strained look came over his face as if he had to work to control himself. I felt the atmosphere in the room change. The little path of light streaming in from the porthole dimmed, and I could no longer see the details in his face but felt a roar building inside him.

“Damn the gods,” he said, hissing the words.

“What is it?” My voice sounded timid and weak. Had he detected a violent illness inside me? He did not answer me but kept his hands firmly on my body. Dark thoughts skirmished in my mind, making it impossible for me to have any clarity about what he was thinking or seeing. Perhaps the fluid that ran through his veins was slowly poisoning me. No matter that in other lifetimes, the blood of the immortals had coursed though my body; in this life, I was a mere mortal, and I could die from the exposure. And by his quivering hands and the palpable ire rising up in him, I knew that he felt responsible.

How could it be that after the wild invigoration I had felt upon taking his blood that I was now weakening so rapidly? I had once wondered if the Count was my savior or my destroyer. Now I feared that I had the answer.

He opened his eyes and looked at me, but instead of sadness or self-recrimination, his expression was full of scorn. “Damn the gods and damn you,” he said. He stood over me for a brief moment, looking as if he had to restrain himself from committing violence, and then he walked briskly out the door.

I rolled myself off the bed and stood up. Though I was dizzy, I waited until it passed, and I slipped into a dress and shoes, and left the cabin to look for him. Was he angry with me or with himself? I had taken his blood of my own volition, even after he exposed the truth of having killed my father to protect me. I was his willing accomplice every step of the way. I was responsible for my own fate, and I wanted to assure him that I was aware of it.

The unpredictable weather at sea had shifted and the water had become turbulent again, throwing me from one side to the other of the hall as I searched for him. I grabbed onto a rail, remembering that I did not have to look with my eyes so much as with my mind. I closed my eyes and brought his face into my mind’s eye to locate him. At once, I felt commotion and turmoil more vivid than the sea’s turbulence, and I knew that it was emanating from him. Slowly, I let the feeling direct my footsteps, guiding me toward him, bracing myself along the hallway as I walked. I went up the stairs to the glass promenade, where I saw him through the window, standing on the deck in the rain and looking out to sea. The steamer rolled in the violent green waves, but he stood as still as stone.

With no care for my condition or for the pouring rain, I ran outside onto the deck. He sensed me coming and turned to look at me. Anguish and ferocity glared from his rain-streaked face. The vessel’s bow plunged deep into a wave, throwing me into his arms. I wrapped myself around him, desperate at the thought of losing his love. I yelled over the roar of the sea and the pounding of the rain. “We knew that there were no guarantees, my love. I do not care if I die tonight. This short time with you is worth my life and more.”

He grabbed my arms and held me away from him. Even though the boat rocked madly, his grip was steady. He looked so angry that I thought he would throw me overboard and be done with me. How had I disappointed him so with something that was out of my control?

“Get inside before you hurt yourself,” he said. He was so full of rage that I could feel it in every cell of my body.

“Not without you,” I said. “Never again will I be without you.”

“Mina, don’t play the fool. You are not being poisoned and you are not going to die. You are pregnant.”

The words came from his lips with such force and precision that though I was shocked to hear them, there was no mistaking what he had said. Before I could respond, he said, “It’s a boy. A very human boy. It is strong and healthy, and it is Jonathan Harker’s son.”

The rain beat down on our faces, and the sea tossed the vessel about at its will, but the Count’s stance was firm, and he held my arms so tightly that we did not sway with the ship. I had no words to speak so I just stood there in his grip, letting the rain pound the words into my head. An enormous wave splashed over the deck, spraying spume over us. For one brief instant, I caught a look on his face that made me wonder if he was going to let it wash the two of us overboard and into the sea, where life would have ended for me and the child. Instead, with his preternatural speed, he moved us in a split second back inside the promenade.

“Why did you not just let the sea take us?” I asked, trembling in his arms.

“I considered it.” He let go of me and stepped back. “I will leave you now. The staff is at your service.”

“Please do not leave me like this,” I said. “I do not think I can live without you.”

“Damn you, Mina. Damn you and damn your womb.” He said this with a frostiness that chilled my already shivering body. I felt him put a shield around himself, cutting me off from his thoughts and his feelings. And then he literally disappeared from my sight, and I was overtaken with a profound loneliness.

I ran to my quarters, throwing the wet clothes off me as quickly as I could. Even with the shocking news and the Count’s bitter response, I was frantic to get warm so that no harm came to my baby. I got into the bed under two blankets and wrapped my arms around my abdomen to protect the small, vulnerable thing growing inside me, and trying to absorb the new development and its ramifications. Though he was angry, I knew that the Count would not harm either the baby or me. Perhaps after he pondered the matter, he would want to resume our love affair. That was all that I wanted, but on the other hand, even if he wanted me to stay with him, would it be morally right-or lawful, for that matter-to deprive Jonathan of his child? I belonged to my lover, body and soul. Surely it was our destiny to remain together forever. But could I reconcile that destiny with the condition of being pregnant with another man’s baby?

Fear gripped me and sadness weighed on my heart. Some part of me wanted to rejoice at the miraculous gift of being pregnant, yet this miracle was rapidly reshaping my world in ways that I could not control. Questions rose up to confront me, and I could answer none of them. What if I had harmed the child by taking my lover’s blood so early in my pregnancy? The Count had said that the baby was human, but did that mean that the child would be mortal? The fetus had had exposure to the Count; was it the breed of mortal who could survive the intensity?

What if Jonathan found out about the child and tried to take him away from me? With the cooperation of the doctors, he could easily portray me to the authorities as an escapee from an asylum for the insane, unfit for the duties of motherhood. But with the Count’s protection-if I still had that-and my newfound powers-if they were indeed intensifying-was I above all that?

I had no answers. The new life I thought I had forged was shattering into tiny crystal shards and disappearing into the atmosphere. Thoughts of my son’s welfare quickly subsumed yesterday’s fantasies of endless travel and adventure and eternal love. I did not know if the Count would leave me, and I was completely unprepared to be left on my own with a child. What would I do? Kate thought that I had the potential to work as a journalist, but no newspaper-no employer, for that matter-would hire a pregnant woman. Perhaps I could see Headmistress about returning to my teaching position. But how would I explain being an abandoned expectant mother? As much as I had been Headmistress’s pet, realistically, she would not consider a pregnant woman in need of work to be a suitable example to her students, whose parents were paying to train their daughters to attract financially advantageous marriage partners. As far as I could see, I was soon to be alone and penniless. My only source of income was the stipend that I had been receiving since the age of seven. And why would the Count continue that? None of the skills I had so scrupulously absorbed in Miss Hadley’s School for Young Ladies of Accomplishment was going to help me now.

I let the day and evening pass, fitfully ruminating on these irreconcilable thoughts. After a night of little sleep, I decided to try to talk to the Count. He had completely shut me out of his consciousness so that I could not read his thoughts or emotions, or feel him anywhere around me. Though I had no idea what to expect from him, I sent him a note by the steward, explaining that I wanted to seek his advice. I thought this was the best approach. No matter how much wisdom and supernatural ability he had acquired over the centuries, he was still a man and susceptible to a woman’s helplessness.

In the same precise script that I recognized from the note he had written to me in Whitby, he sent a reply for me to meet him in the library. Though I felt dreadful, I dressed with care. My hands shook as I rolled my stockings up my legs. My skin was cold and clammy, yet perspiration covered my armpits and burst out on my temples. I did not want to let him see me feeling or looking so pathetic, even though he had access to my thoughts and undoubtedly knew the state I was in.

I sat in a chair to compose myself and to remind myself that no matter what my circumstances, I was not powerless. Months ago, before he had announced himself to me, the Count had asked me to remember who I was, and he had been successful in helping me to do that. Somewhere in my essential being, I was still the woman who had given him the gift of immortality, the mystical priestess who had enchanted him and for whom he had waited long centuries. I closed my eyes, and in my mind’s eye, I wrapped myself in a celestial cloak of gold, letting it tingle as it caressed the length of my body, calming me and constructing a shield of protection around me and my unborn child. I could not recall where I had first learned to do this, but I knew that I had done it many times in the past to shroud my intentions, to arm myself with additional power, and to guard myself from harmful things. As the shimmering light surrounded me, I remembered a truism that I had always known: no woman need let a man know the contents of her mind. I certainly learned that from Headmistress, but I was positive that I had also known it from somewhere deep in my past. Our mystery was our power. It was an elemental certainty unchanged through the ages. Though my stomach was still slightly unsettled, I felt alive and rejuvenated. I checked my appearance in the mirror, threw a paisley shawl with incarnadine silk lining around my shoulders, and went to face him.

He was in the room, staring at the bookshelves, when I walked in, and I was pleased to see that my shield had worked. I had surprised him.

“You wanted to see me?” he asked as if responding to a request from a stranger.

“I want to know what is going to happen to me, to us.”

“By ‘us’ you mean you and the baby?”

“I also mean you and me,” I said, trying to emulate his impersonal tone.

“Why are you asking me? Are you not aware by now that we create our own destinies? Is this baby not what you want? What you wanted since you met Jonathan Harker?” He said that name with such disdain that it made me cringe. He must have thought that I wanted to go back to Jonathan, when I had barely considered it a possibility.

“How do you know that the child is a boy? And human? How do you know that the fetus is not on the path to immortality like its mother?”

He seemed utterly exasperated with me. “He carries the vibration of Jonathan Harker, which I know very well. The fetus has Harker’s frequency rather than yours, which is sharper and more intense. That is because of your immortal heritage, which you will have no use for now.”

“What do you mean? How do you know that?” I had come to him feeling powerful, but he was quickly deflating me.

“Because I have lived your past so many times that I can predict your future. You are incapable of change, Mina. Do you think this is the first time you have done something like this? No, you have destroyed our love time and again with your foolish choices.”

His voice was low and steady, but the words themselves had some kind of force attached to them that made me quiver.

“I do not know what you mean,” I said, hugging myself. “I did not choose to be pregnant.”

For a moment, his eyes flickered, turning pale and then dark again. “Your human tendencies are tedious, Mina. They have always been so. At your level of evolution, you should be weary of feigning helplessness, when you are a master at creating and attracting the very things you most desire. Every time you come close to reclaiming your power, you do something to sabotage it.”

“You are wrong,” I said. His words confused and offended me. I did not see how I had asked for any of the things that had happened to me, including my reunion with him. “I have barely thought of Jonathan, or anything else but making a life with you, since you took me from the asylum. I have wanted you and nothing but you. I took your blood so that nothing would ever come between us again. I did not ask for this.” I put my hands to my face, not wanting him to see my confusion.

“I am sure that this is what you truly believe, at least at this moment. But it frustrates me that you refuse to look deeper into your memory, where you would see what happened in the first cycle of our lives together.”

A feeling of dread began to creep over me. I knew that I was about to hear something that I would have preferred never to hear again, and I knew that I could not stop him from telling me.

“After we met, you very quickly got with child. Surely you can imagine that having revisited our time together. It was a joyous time, but because I was just beginning my transition, and because your father was a human, the child was mortal.”

I did not know what he would say next, only that I did not want to hear it. I waited for him to speak, but he was silent. He looked at me with the smallest hint of sadness.

“Nous l’avons appelé Raymond.”

When I heard the name of the baby in the language that we used in those days, I felt my body go weak.

Ah, tu te souviens.

“I do not remember, and I do not wish to remember,” I said. But I had begun to remember, not facts or faces but the feeling of that lifetime and of this experience that he was going to force me to relive.

“You give me no choice but to remind you. Otherwise, you will not understand my ire at this present situation,” he said. “I am not a cruel man, but I can only endure so much, even at my advanced state of development. I must continue, Mina. Do you understand?”

I nodded. Whatever he would say had happened in another lifetime and to another woman. How much could it hurt me now?

I suppose that he heard that thought because he answered it with a bitter smile.

On verra. We shall see.

He continued: “Raymond was born healthy and strong. He resembled your father, and we had every hope that he would be as strapping as that great warrior, who, after all, had withstood mating with a fairy queen. We believed that with time, and with our guidance, our son would make the transition to immortality. But when he was three years old, a plague swept through the land, and he contracted it. Even with your superior knowledge of herbs and cures, you were not able to save him. You could not live with that, and so after one year of despair and self-recrimination, you tricked your sister into revealing the ingredients for a deadly potion that would kill one who had the blood of the immortals, and you drank it. You did not give me the option of taking it with you.”

“And you?”

“I was already powerful when we met. Your blood flowing through me was apparently the last component I required to live on eternally, or at least for as long as I have.”

What good is this gift of immortality if it forces us to sit by helplessly watching those we love die?

Those had been my words; they had tumbled from my own lips, and I could hear their echo. I started to shake, doubling over, trying to hold back the tears. I wrapped my arms around my belly as if to protect the mortal child inside, so that I would not lose him too.

The Count, on the other hand, was unmoved. “Forgive me if I cannot share your grief, Mina. I lived it for many years, while you, with your selfish actions, escaped it rather quickly. At this point, it has been completely wrung from me. And do forgive me if I seem a little angry with both myself and with you at finding us once again faced with a similar challenge.”

He stood in front of me and took my hands in his, exposing my face and defying my anguish with his eyes. “Mina, what do you want?” Each word felt like a blow to me. I had come here to ask him what I should-must-do, but he was not going to give me any instruction or direction or offer comfort.

“No, I will not offer you comfort. I have offered you comfort and every other sort of gift over many lifetimes, and I have found no reward in it. It is up to you now to decide your path.”

What do you want?

The words were even more deafening and insistent than when he had uttered them aloud. I shut my eyes against him and reminded myself that I had power in this situation.

“Yes, Mina, that is what I have been trying to tell you. You have all the power in this situation, so please do not play the victim with me.” A modicum of feeling crept into his voice, though I am certain that he would have preferred to hide it.

Remember who you are, remember who you are. I repeated this over and over again. I wanted to be wise enough to know exactly what to do, but I could not access whatever knowledge I needed, particularly with him staring at me and denying my vulnerability. I closed my eyes, drawing my invisible golden cloak around me until I felt it caressing my body, buoying me.

“You cannot shut me out,” he said, but the mere fact that he had to say it aloud made me think that, with effort, I could shield my thoughts from him and divorce myself from his influence so that I could think. I opened my eyes to see that he was searching my face with the same curiosity of any man.

“Until yesterday, I wanted nothing but you,” I said. “But what I want is no longer as significant as what I must do for the child. I was an unusual child, a misfit rejected by my own parents. Now you tell me that though you and I are of the immortals, my son is mortal and carries the blood and the frequency of his father. What will that make him?”

He was much quicker to know my own mind than I was. He dropped my hands. “You want to tell Harker about his child. Is that correct?”

“I do not want to, but I believe that I must,” I said.

There was one moment when I felt at peace for having discerned and confessed what I felt that I must do, one moment when I believed that he understood my plight and would help me through it. But in the next instant, I saw in his face that that was not to be.

“Well, then, let us make haste,” he said angrily. “We do not want to keep you from him. Let us settle this business once and for all.”

He glared at me for an interminable amount of time, but even with my new confidence, I could not read him. I could feel his anger, but, because of his greater power and because he wished it so, his thoughts were his own and not to be shared.

Without the Count uttering a word, a steward appeared with two heavy cloaks, handed them to the Count, and then left the room. The Count wrapped one around himself and tossed the other to me. I felt energy swirl around him, some force that he seemed to gather at his command. I could not see it, but I could feel it as surely as I could feel my own body, and it threw me off balance as I tried to put the cloak around me. The room and its furnishings went blurry as time seemed to speed up. In a whirl of movements, he had wrapped the cape around me and wrapped me in his arms. My body went limp, overpowered by his greater force-not any physical strength he was using but the very power of his being, that great stream of energy that he had summoned from somewhere deep in the universe.

Quickly I succumbed to the excitement of being in this strange, overwhelming aura. I wondered if this mad energy would be harmful to the baby, and in a split second heard him answer with a resounding no. It seemed as if the walls were falling away for us, and soon we were gliding through the promenade deck, moving faster and faster toward the glass doors, which burst open in front of us. A frigid blast of sea air hit my face, but we were soon above the water out of range of its white crests and its spray. The rain had stopped, but the winds were still fierce. He flew us so fast through the air that we were not hit by the air current but somehow slinked through it. I could hear the blustery gales around us, but we slid through them like thread through a needle’s eye. I clung to him, watching the gradations of gray-the sky, the sea-blend together as we sped along going faster and faster until the blur of land appeared in the distance.