Séance for a Vampire by Fred Saberhagen

Author:Fred Saberhagen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Titan

Eleven

Holmes in his debilitated state evinced no particular surprise at Dracula’s presence. Turning his head slightly, he murmured a word or two of greeting to his cousin, to which the prince responded calmly.

Even before we had lifted him from the earthen-floored pit, he gave orders that we must thoroughly search the narrow space in which he had been confined, looking for any evidence that Louisa Altamont had at least briefly—after her supposed drowning, but before her funeral and burial—been confined in the same place.

“You have reason to suspect this?” I demanded.

“Logic suggests it, Watson. I was unable to search properly myself. Do look carefully. Perhaps a ribbon or some other small item from her clothing—”

We lay Holmes at full length on the crumbling medieval mosaics of what had been the chapel’s floor. I then went back, as commanded, to search the pit, but could find nothing useful. Meanwhile, Dracula’s sharp nails worked like metal picks, his pale, resistless fingers tearing to shreds the ropes that bound his cousin. As he did so the prince muttered something about psychic vibrations—these were quite imperceptible to my no doubt cruder senses, but to the prince they indicated that indeed a vampire had recently been here.

“No,” he amended this opinion. “I believe there have been two vampires, one of them only a young girl.”

But further investigation would have to wait. In a moment the bonds had been completely torn away, and Dracula, lifting his cousin as easily as a small child in his arms, carried him to our waiting carriage, where I wrapped him in a robe.

Before leaving the site, Dracula insisted on taking a few moments to lower the great stone slab back into place, and to replace most of the fragments he had broken free around its edge, leaving to a casual inspection no visible sign that a rescue had been effected. Holmes agreed that this was a good idea.

We drove at a good speed back to our inn—at Holmes’s request, keeping as much as possible to little-traveled roads. My patient, drawing deep, grateful breaths of the fresh air, already sounded a little stronger when he announced his wish that the fact of his rescue should be kept secret from the public for as long as possible.

By the time we had reached the inn, Holmes was actually able to stand unaided, and, with a little support, to walk into the building, through a rear entrance. Dracula suggested carrying his cousin up and in through a first-floor window, directly into our reserved rooms, but such heroic measures proved unnecessary. We managed to reach the rooms by normal passages, without encountering anyone.

In only a few hours, when food and drink and fresh air had been allowed to begin their cure, Holmes had rallied wonderfully, though something of a chill still lingered, as he said, in his bones. At dusk, he was seated in his dressing gown, warming his hands and lighting his familiar briar pipe at a fire in our sitting room. When his

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