Mina tried to call out, but her throat was dry, her voice scratchy from lack of use. She coughed, swallowing against the dryness in her mouth.
“Hello,” she called weakly.
The voices carried on, as though they were fighting with one another.
There was a thud. A metallic rattle.
“Hello?” she called out again.
She thought back to the man she’d encountered the night she’d tried to go to the watchtower. The memory of his question burned like acid down her throat:Are you here of your own volition?How different it all would have been if she had just gone with him. Perhaps he would have harmed her, but at least she would have been free from this castle, from the terror inside these walls.
Another thump echoed through the halls, and she began to shout.
“Help!” she cried, her throat raw. The exertion made her feel lightheaded almost instantly, but she didn’t care. It didn’t matter who those voices belonged to or what they might do to her—anything would be better than this eternal dark, the cold seeping into her bones.
The voices echoed in the distance, but they seemed to be moving farther away, growing quieter each time she heard them.
Had they not heard her? Were they unaware that she was here, locked away in this dungeon? That her own husband had been the captor?
Then another possibility set in, filling her eyes with tears—what if they’d heard her calls and were pointedly ignoringher? What if these were not raiders, but men brought by the Count for some unknown purpose? What if he had warned them of the mad woman in the dungeon—had told them to ignore her ramblings in the dark?
Her chest seized painfully as the realization sank in: No one was coming.
“Help me,” she whimpered. Her throat thickened with emotion, but she had cried herself dry. She slid onto her side, pain pulsing through her ribs for a moment before the chill of the stone sent a shiver down her spine.
Mina closed her eyes, welcoming the darkness of her own making over the darkness she could not control.
CHAPTER 30
London,England
Abraham Van Helsing leaned back in his seat, trying to ignore the tightness in his chest. When his old colleague Dr. Seward had first requested his presence in London to see the Westenra case, he’d known something was wrong. Every symptom the doctor had outlined could be dismissed as nothing more than anemia, except for the matter of its intensity. It was as though Lucy Westenra’s body was breaking down its own blood cells, leaving her worse than before.
Dr. Seward had moved beyond tonics, into more drastic measures—blood transfusions. At first, they’d seem to do wonders for the poor girl, but then it always took a turn. From a scientific perspective, it should be impossible. How was it that she could receive these transfusions and have her body react positively, only for it to appear as though she’d never received the transfusion at all a few days later? It was as though she was continuously being drained dry.
That’s where Van Helsing came in.
Van Helsing had seen cases like this before. He’d travelled all over Europe, dealing with cases that could not be explained bythe scientific. The oddest part about Miss Westenra’s case was that this had taken place in London. All prior incidents he’d investigated were in low-population areas far outside the city hubs. But then, he supposed it was possible that these supernatural crimes were committed in cities as well but dealt with as though they were simply absurd murders by mass killers.
After spending several days with Dr. Seward and Miss Westenra in London, he’d felt surer than ever that this was no medical phenomenon—this was something occult.
This was the work of a vampire.
The thought of discovering yet another vampire was dreadful enough, but then he’d uncovered something far more shocking—Lucy Westenra was connected to the newest Dracula bride.
Van Helsing’s jaw must have dropped open completely at this bit of information. He thought back to the woman he’d encountered that night at Castle Dracula, her dark hair and eyes, her distrust of him palpable in the mere moments that they stood in one another’s company.
He hadn’t been there for her. Hadn’t even expected to come across the woman. He’d been looking for Father Petru, the priest who’d been abducted by Count Dracula some weeks prior. After the failed raid that resulted in several deaths—he’d warned them not to attempt such a thing—Van Helsing had decided that it would be up to him to find the man and set him free.
That is, if he was still alive.
After all that time, it hadn’t been likely that Father Petru wasn’t sacrificed to the Count’s wicked wives, but Van Helsing had promised to try. That was when he’d seen the woman running from those wolves. He could tell right away that she had not yet been turned, and that had been most surprising to him. In all the years he’d studied the man, the Count had never been a patient man. So why hadn’t he turned his newest bride?
Van Helsing had pushed all questions aside and ran down those steps, grasping onto her cloak as she ran past and pulling her to safety.
As soon as they stood there in the dark, each of them breathing heavily, he knew he’d made a grave error. This woman was the Count’s newest bride—she would reveal Van Helsing’s presence in the castle, putting his entire mission at stake.
But what was he to do? Let the poor thing die?
