Immortality

***
Thirteen

Thrninrning was overcast, the sky at Varna grey with oppressive rain clouds that mirrored in their threat of rain that sense of the impending that Gabriel felt in his dreams. When they left in their hired carriage, Carl fixing the girl Elena with one last longing gaze, there was talk in the town of a drowning – a man had been seen in the harbour, before he’d been pullown own by the currents into the gloomy depths. Word was that they would never know the truth.

It began to rain as they left Varna, and didn’t cease all that day or the next. Elena had seen to it that they had food to last them ‘til they reached their destination and they ate in the coach while they changed horses, while Gabriel told Carl a little of the story of Maria Kurtz’s death and the apparent existence of another Van Helsing; Carl seemed enthused by this, that there could be someone in the world who could expound on Gabriel’s strangely tenuous past and, if Gabriel himself was the standard to judge by, aid somewhat in the Church’s perpetual struggle against evil. Obviously Carl, in his zeal, had trouble grasping the meaning of ‘but he was kidnapped – he’s probably dead’.

They drove on. The roads were all mud from the rain and the horses soon tired from it, but they kept on. It rained harder, and darkened; the driver insisted that they stop, only deterred from it the first three times by the offer of money before the rain grew so bitter and torrential that no sum, no matter how generous, could induce him to continue. They stopped that night in a small inn in a small village where the people spoke a language that he didn’t understand.

It was a place by the Bulgarian border with Romania, the bad weather having slowed them so greatly that they had not yet passed out of the country in which they had landed. Still, with the ache in him from a day’s travel by coach, and from the previous night’s exertions, he was glad of the soft bed and the warm room, the hot meal and the wine. He almost felt it steeled him for what was to come.

His sleep was deep though plagued with dreams, thick and cold as the seas at Varna, and just as tumultuous. When he woke, though, he remembered a new warmth; the idea of it both sickened and compelled him, and he did dwe dwell on it. A long day still lay ahead.

He found, however, not long after his light breakfast in the tavern below his room, that the coachman was still reluctant to continue. The rain had ceased though the day was again overcast, and the roads had frozen; Gabriel was unsure what it was over the border that he dreaded so, but apparently the promise of cold, hard currency helped to alleviate his fears. Within half an hour, spent hunting down Carl who had apparently gone in search of provisions, they were back underway.

They drove hard, growing silent as they passed over the border into Romania, and the region of Wallachia. They changed their horses at Bucharest and moved on, down paths white with a thin, hard snow that crunched under the horses’ hooves and the wheels of the coach. Great wooded hills grew up around them, snow-covered, windswept, and Gabriel could tell even without the view from the window that they were drawing close. It was a clear feeling in him, some strange but definite knowledge that soon they would have returned there, to that place, and the struggle would recommence. He realised as if for the first time that he had absolutely no idea, short of voluntary lycanthropy, of how he was to kill Dracula, and then even less of how to *keep* him dead. That simple realisation was chilling. But before he could break the icy silence to ask Carl his opinion, the coach had stopped. Frowning, he stepped from it, and the driver came down.

He explained with a strange look on his face, conflicted when Gabriel offered him money, that he would go absolutely no further. The tales he’d heard of the terrors that lay in Transylvania were so real to him that he whole pouch of coins that Gabriel offered would not sway him; he took what he was owed and turned back immediately, leaving them there on the edge of a tiny village on Wallachia’s border. It wasn’t suring;ing; the same had happened to them before.

It was early afternoon as they entered the village, their bags shared between them, the mud clinging to the hems of Gabriel’s long coat and Carl’s robes. The villagers looked at them strangely but that too was unsurprising, considering local costume and the large metal crossbow that Gabriel carried slung over one shoulder. But fortunately the two of them were little more than a curiosity there and not seen as a threat; Gabriel had found more than one village where he’d had to fight his way out after a coachman’s untimely withdrawal.

They found a small inn where he left Carl to eat and went in search of a stable. Fortunately the language that the tall, gruff blacksmith who owned the horses spoke was one that he knew, and though he found that there was no coach that he could either hire or buy outright, there were horses with which the blacksmith was willing to part. He bought two – a large black stallion for which the blacksmith made him pay dearly, and a chestnut mare – and they left, quickly. It was four o’clock in the afternoon and already the sky was darkening.

There were wolves in the woods. They could hear them as they rode, the howling back behind the tree line spooking the horses and not exactly effective in spurring on either of the riders, either. The only heartenthouthought was that it was the night of a new moon and not the full, though wolves of any form weren’t a particularly cheerful nighttime companion. They were glad when, just after sunset when there was still a little light in the sky by which to see their way, they saw the lights of a village on the horizon. Perhaps they wouldn’t be fodder for the wolves after all.

It was only as they reached the place, a little way from the edge of the forest and over the river, under the stars and the moon that lit their way, that Gabriel realised where it was they had come to. Not Anna’s village but one nearby, over the river and down the bank a way. If it had been light he was almost sure that Castle Frankenstein, or at least its tall turrets, would have been visible by the line of the mountains. His heart leapt in his chest, and he was uncertain if he felt glad or something else. In any case, he felt as though some great thing were imminent, for good or ill.

They dismounted, tied off their horses to a post in the square and scanned the place for an inn. It was difficult in the dim light cast from the windows of the houses set about the square but they found one and, shouldering their rather heavy bags laden with Carl’s apparently ‘essential’ equipment, they went for the door. Which was, he found, locked, so he set about knocking. It wasn’t long before a small and rather haggard-looking woman came to answer the door.

“What’s your business here?” she asked, her accent clear enough for Gabriel to understand her, as she cast her suspicious gaze over the two of them.

“Well, we’d rather like to let a couple of rooms from you,” said Carl, who apparently understood her also and was feeling particularly courageous.

“And what’s your names?” she asked, now frowning suspiciously, as if asking for a room at her inn wasn’t exactly common practice. Perhaps it wasn’t.

“I’m Carl,” said Carl, “and this--"

“You a monk?”

He smiled slightly, as though pleasantly surprised. “No, just a friar.”

“Ah.” Her gaze shifted to Gabriel. “And you?”

He looked her over quickly; she was short and stout with greying hair brought back from her face quite severely; he guessed that in her younger days she’d been quite a beauty, but there was little sign of it in her now – it had most likely been driven out of her by her long hard life in that land, never far from that village. “Van Helsing,” he said.

She frowned. “Van Helsing?”

He nodded slowly, tipping back his hat so that the light from within shone on his face, so he could look her in the eye. “Yes.”

“We already have a man here by that name,” she said.

Carl looked at him – he could see him from the corner of his eyes. He glanced at him and then back at the innkeeper, a frown on his brow. Another Van Helsing? But… no. “You’re mistaken.”

“No,” she said, with a look of insistence. “I’m not.”

“But…”

“There is already a man here called Van Helsing, I tell you.” She was close to rolling her eyes and throwing the two of them out, he could tell. “He’s been here a week or more. Foreign gentleman, grey hair, ever so polite most times, unlike some. Doesn’t look like *you* at all.” She frowned at him and his dress disapprovingly.

Carl tugged at his shoulder. “You don’t suppose…?”

“*Abraham* Van Helsing?”

“That’s the gentleman.”

Gabriel felt cold, tight at the back of his neck. “Could I speak with him?” he asked.

“I’ll ask, but I’m promising nothing.” She slammed the door and scurried away. Gabriel supposed that the look on his face then wasn’t all too pleasant, judging from the way Carl opened his mouth to speak and then apparently thought better of it. And then the woman reappeared. “Well, you’d better come in, I suppose,” she said grudgingly. “He says that he’ll see you.” And she let them inside.

The room had a low, beamed ceiling and a few old tables scattered over the tiled floor. There were mugs on the bar, a few plates of leftover food, and lamps in the corners hanging from nails or set up in niches. And there was a man in a high-backed chair by the open fire, visible only from his arm and a shining silver ring on the arm of the chair. The scene reminded him oddly of Van… Van… that forgettable man back in London, what seemed an age ago. He had a feeling, however, that he might remember this meeting just a little longer.

“Abraham Van Helsing?” he asked, in a tone much steadier than he felt.

The man moved and stood and Gabriel saw him for the first time there, in front of the fire; he was perhaps his own height with grey hair that fell to his shoulders, dressed in a worn suit and wearing a devilish smile. There was a glint in his sharp blue eyes not entirely due to the lamplight and for a moment Gabriel almost thought that he knew him, knew that glint more than anything, but then that moment was gone. He wished it hadn’t passed.

“I am he,” said the man, stepping forward, and he clapped him about the shoulders with a shocking force. “It is good to see you, Gabriel. I had almost given up the hope that you would come. Come, sit.” He gestured to the seats by the fire but Gabriel didn’t move an inch.

You know me?” he asked instead.

The man nodded slowly, a small wry smile spreading on his wrinkled yet surprisingly youthful face. “Ah, I see that the reports of the loss of your memory were unfortunately accurate,” he said. “I had hoped that my sources would prove to be mistaken. But at the very least you are here, and that I take as a good omen. Indeed, very good.” He rubbed at his untidy grey stubble with one rather tanned, ink-stained hand. “You are late, however.”

“I came as fast as I could.”

“As fast as you could after the Vatican sent you, no doubt,” said the man with a wag of his finger. “I would have had you here faster.”

“If you hadn’t been kidnapped, I suppose.”

“Kidnapped?”

“I was told you were kidnapped.”

“I was nothing of the sort.”

Gabriel sighed loudly and dropped his bags and his bow to the ground with a loud clatter and a stifled protest from Carl. “I should have known,” he said, stepped forward and dropping down into a chair by the fire; Abraham did the same, and Carl went to see if he couldn’t find some wine and soup. “Dorian lied.”

Abraham frowned and crossed his legs at the knee, steepling his fingers. “Dorian Gray?” he inquired. Gabriel nodded. “I had questioned his loyalty, I admit, but found that I had no choice but to trust him once I was called away. So he met you at the ball, as I asked him?”

“He did.” He was confused, and he sighed. “I’m confused; you asked him to meet me, but then he told me you’d been captured. Why?”

Abraham shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said frankly.

“Did he know you didn’t have the book?”

“He knew to where I was going. What book?”

“The black book. The one that everyone seems to be intent on finding, that Maria Kurtz died for and that Dorian Gray stole from me.”

Then Abraham started to chuckle. It was odd, a dry sort of muted laugh down deep in his throat that sounded like a kind of bastardised coughing. It was surprising, disturbing, and more than a little annoying, but Abraham didn’t seem to notice Gabriel’s consternation; he just chuckled.

“I don’t see what’s amusing,” Gabriel said, cutting in on it.

“Oh, my apologies,” said Abraham, still smiling and an inch from laughter. “I don’t mean to suggest that the death of Maria Kurtz is anything less than tragic, but so much effort expended over such a thing as that book is to me hysterical.”

“Would you care to explain *why*?”

Abraham nodded slowly and attempted to collect himself. “It’s a diary,” he said.

“And?”

“No, you don’t see. It’s *my* diary.”

Gabriel rubbed his eyes tiredly and tossed his hat onto a table, raking his fingers through his hair. “Well, I *still* don’t see.”

Abraham sighed. “I wrote that diary. There has a been a circulating rumour for some time now that it does contain some secret method by which the immortal Count Dracula may be banished from the earth, but… it does not. The most interesting page, I am afraid, is a particularly good recipe for goulash.”

“But… a *diary*?” Abraham nodded. “The one in the drawer with…” He fumbled in his waistcoat pocket and pulled out the silver watch; Abraham took it. “…this?”

“Ah, I see you found my pocket watch. I had to leave without it.” He played with it, fixed it to his own worn waistcoat and then wound it, correcting the time. “Yes, the diary that was with my watch.”

“But then why was it in Latin?”

“A Latinate code,” Abraham corrected.

Gabriel bit his tongue. “So, why was it in a Latinate code?”

Abraham shrugged. “Would you want anyone reading *your* diary?”

Gabriel stared at him for a moment in total disbelief, and then he sighed as the truth sank in. “Then all this… it’s been a waste of my time.”

“Not so much.” He looked up; there was a glint back in Abraham’s eye that somehow he knew meant a plan was forming, or coming together. “You are here, after all. And Dracula has risen from the grave. Perhaps this time, now that there are two of us – the Van Helsings together, who would have believed it after all this time! – we shall defeat him. And then, perhaps, we shall rest.”

Gabriel shifted in his seat. He could hear Carl by the bar talking with the lady innkeeper, who seemed far more genial now than when they’d met her at the door. Perhaps nothing that had happened since his arrival in London now mattered, since in the end he was there, and Dracula had risen. Perhaps nothing mattered but Dracula’s death. Perhaps.

“Are you my brother?” he asked, though it wasn’t really what he’d meant to say at all.

Abraham nodded solemnly. “I am.”

“Then you can tell me my past.”

“Perhaps I can.”

“And will you?”

He smiled, seeming suddenly ten years older, wiser, and he nodded again. “I will, if that is what you want,” he said. “But in the morning. You and your friend both need your rest; so sleep, and tomorrow, I will try my best to explain.”

He wanted to protest, to make him say what it was that he had to say *right then*. But he was tired, weary, and at the thought of a bed after his hard ride he weakened. Yes, tomorrow would be soon enough – what was one more night’s wait after all that time? Now he would sleep.

There was a room prepared; he locked the door and pulled off his clothes before crawling naked into the warm bed by an open fire. It was not long before his eyes closed, and sleep took him.

***