Mina Read Free

own chest and, using one sharp nail, opened a wound above his
heart. I recoiled at the sight of the blood welling across it, dark beads on
the skin that seemed so white in the cold moonlight. Then he drew my head
forward with such force that I had no choice but to press my lips against the
wound, to drink.
    His blood tasted familiar. I
wondered if he had done this to me before. He had called me his vengeance, yet
as I drank, I knew that I could be more than that. I sucked greedily. I tilted
back my head so he could drink. I undid the rest of the lacings of my gown and
pressed my bare breasts against his waiting hands. For the time that he held
me, all the restraint I practiced in my nights with my husband vanished. For
the time he held me, I was as wanton as the vampire women Jonathan had met in
Dracula's castle. The women - my blood-kin.
    This could
not be damnation. But if it were, the fire was far too sweet to resist.
    "Jonathan,"
I whispered, looking back at my husband sleeping so innocently beside the place
where I had lain. "He will not
    wake," Dracula whispered
and kissed me.
    I tasted my
own blood. I tasted his. I reveled in both. I would have died and gladly that
night, prepared to awaken into another
    life, had there not been the
pounding of feet on the stairs, the trying of the locked door.
    Dracula gripped my wrists to push me
away, but I would not be denied one more taste of his dark eternity. As my lips
pressed against the wound, he held me close for one final moment. I heard him
draw in breath, then let it out in a human sigh of fulfillment.
    Then the door slammed inward,
and Quincey, Dr. Seward and Arthur rushed into the room.
    With deliberate scorn, the count
pushed me back against my sleeping husband. As the men advanced with crucifixes
held out like swords against a mortal enemy, I watched Dracula slowly retreat.
Was their faith so much stronger than mine, or did he only toy with them,
making them think such trinkets could repel him?
    The moon
which had given the only light to the room vanished behind a cloud. When
Quincey lit a match, Dracula was gone. The
    faint tendrils of mist curling across the red carpet on the floor
gave the only sign that he had been anything more than a terrible dream among
so many others.
    I covered my face with my hands,
trying to hide my shame. I recall nothing else, though Dr. Seward wrote that my
expression was dazed and filled with terror, my moans pathetic to hear. Ah, if
he had only known the guilt that was the cause of them. When at last Van
Helsing and Dr. Seward managed to wake Jonathan, he comforted me without the
slightest thought that I might have deserved some blame for my fate. It was in
that moment, with his arms circling me with such fierce affection, that I
decided to keep the terrible knowledge of my passion a secret forever.
    Nonetheless, we were allies against
the monster. In the morning, I told them what I could recall of the night and
the nights before it. The half-truths added to my guilt. In the hour that
followed, as Jonathan held and comforted me, I found myself thinking of the future
and the hopelessness of the men's task. I thought of the risks they would take
for me, and death seemed suddenly the

 
    sweetest, easiest means to
end my curse.
    It was not
like me to be so despondent. Nonetheless, the rightness of my decision seemed
more clear the more I considered it.
    Later that morning, when I hinted to the others that I would kill
myself rather than harm any of them, Van Helsing said aloud what I had already
suspected. "It is his blood already tainting you. In death, you would
become as he is, condemned as he was. No, Madam Mina. You must not die.
Especially not by your own hand."
    Could they stop me? I suppose Seward
could have put me in one of his padded cells, but otherwise the decision was
mine. A single stroke of a knife would end my life. Or I could go to the river
and throw myself from a high point on the bank. The water is brackish. My