"Countermine" - Dracula fan fiction
Title: Countermine
Fandom: Dracula (novel)
Character/Pairing: Jonathan Harker, Mina Harker, Count Dracula, Vampire Brides. Jonathan/Mina, implied Dracula/Mina
Summary: Dystopic AU. In a new world order, Jonathan receives an invitation. Taking the basic Anno Dracula premise and running with it in the other direction.
Rating: PG/PG-13
Warnings: References to violence, lightly implied sexual violence.
A/N: I don't know. I really don't. This is so weird. Enjoy?
The invitation came on heavy paper, printed in dark, curling lines of ink. To Mr. Jonathan Harker…
He knew, of course, that he would accept. One did not refuse such invitations. One did not refuse such invitations even if to accept would mean one’s death, a fact of which Jonathan could not be sure in his own case.
(The invitation was signed voivode, not count, not king, as if his trappings of English society had been only a temporary affectation. Jonathan wondered at that. He wondered at what his country could become, streets alive with Romanian words. Would his language become a dying thing?)
He readied himself, invitation open on the dresser, sorting through his waistcoats and cravats for something that might pass as even faintly appropriate. He could have asked Arthur for advice, but that would have required seeing Arthur, contacting Arthur, which itself would have required that he leave the house. He tended not to do that in recent days.
(Instead he smeared his windowpanes with garlic and curled up beneath the cold sheets of his empty bed with the barely sufficient comfort they must be invited in, they must be invited, I have not invited them, I have not invited him.)
He chose the waistcoat that seemed the most formal, its colors best to disguise the new gauntness which made his old clothing hang loosely from his frame. Around his neck, the silk cravat felt comforting, as meager as that safety might be. He regarded his face in the mirror: he was himself, he was recognizable, despite the changes which the past months had wrought in him.
With no protection but the silk around his neck and the invitation folded in his pocket, Jonathan made his way to the new-crowned Voivode Dracula’s palace.
At the tall gates he showed his invitation to the guards and was given directions to the ballroom, where he again took the invitation from his pocket before the doors were opened and -
The light inside was odd, he realized, hazy. It took him several moments before he could place its strangeness - it was entirely from candles, he saw, not gas. Even the towering chandeliers flickered, unreliable, as though a gust of wind could have blown the whole place to darkness. Beneath the chandeliers, there were dozens, perhaps even hundreds of people. Jonathan tried, from the top of the steps, to ascertain how many of them were human and how many vampire, but the unsteadiness of the light made the task impossible at such a distance. He descended the stairs then, without knowing.
The rest of the guests, whether mortal or not, were better dressed than Jonathan. He was not surprised, but the fact made him feel conspicuous as he stood awkwardly on the sidelines of the ballroom. He did not know why he had been invited here, unless it was to be killed. He should ask someone to dance, he knew (the music was a waltz, and he could dance to that, he remembered dancing to that, his cheeks flushed, looking at her bent head as she tried to remember the steps - but no, not now, no room for those memories) but he did not know how he would do so in this unfamiliar place. Should he ask some mortal girl, as innocently there as him? Or, in this new world order, did species take precedence over gender, leaving him expected to wait for a vampire to ask him to dance? He did not know, and so he waited, eyes open, wary.
He heard her before he saw her. She was laughing. He could not believe it immediately - he thought it a trick of his memory, a cruel conjuring. But he heard it again, persistent, daring him.
He followed the sound through the crowd of deadly immortality until he found her. He saw her only from the back, but, in the first flash of familiarity he absorbed every detail he could of the fall of her dark hair, the straightness of her spine, her bare shoulders, her long black dress. She was talking to two vampires, one a woman with pale hair tied up and the other a man with olive skin (she was laughing. Why was she laughing?)
“Excuse me?” he asked, before the heady joy of the knowing had run its course, before he could lose himself in watching.
She turned around. For a brief instant, like the flicker of the one of the candles over their heads, he saw recognition in her face. And then, smoothly, it was gone, as though it had never existed.
“May I have this dance?” he asked her, savoring the old, worn words. They had no affect upon her still, immortal face.
“Of course,” she said, her tone courteous, polite. She apologized to her companions in soft words which made the pale-haired woman look at Jonathan in condescending amusement. He wished, suddenly and foolishly, that he had cut his hair before coming.
She stepped forward, and Jonathan clasped her hand, placed his other palm at her waist(he registered the pliability of the flesh there and realized, suddenly, that she was wearing no corset - he had not been able to tell, she was so thin now. Had no one given food to her in her last days of mortality?). He listened for a moment to the music’s rhythm, felt it in his legs - right left right, left right left.
And he met her eyes and they began to dance, under the flickering of the chandeliers. Her face was so calm. He felt a sudden reluctance to speak, to breathe, to do anything that might disturb the unexpected harmony of the moment.
He leaned in close and whispered in her ear, “Is there somewhere we can talk?”
She laughed, as though politely flattered, and for a moment Jonathan was baffled, until he imagined what sort of impression she might wish to project. She murmured back, a smile fixed upon her face, “Only for a little while. I shall be missed.”
He nodded, and they danced till the end of the song. She touched his hand then, with a cold, light touch, and he followed her to side of the room as she moved towards a small door, unobtrusive in the shadows. He could see her fingers upon the doorknob, and then -
From behind them, Jonathan heard a voice.
“Mina, my dear.”
She turned immediately, automatically. Jonathan did as well, though with some reluctance, for he knew with a terrible certainty who he would see.
The Count - for so Jonathan would always think of him, whatever he chose to be called - was hardly changed. Jonathan registered the eerily still face, the too-red lips, the long-nailed fingers. He stood beside a man with thinning hair, who smiled at Mina as though the courtesy would win him favor.
“The ambassador wanted to meet you,” he continued.
Mina curtsied deeply, her head low, her skirts sweeping across the floor. “A pleasure, of course,” she said, her voice soft, deferential.
The ambassador took her hand in his own and kissed it. “You are as beautiful in person as the voivode boasts,” he told her.
Mina lowered her head again. “You do me too much kindness.”
The Count took a step to stand between Mina and Jonathan, and Jonathan felt the weight of his hand upon his shoulder with a surge of revulsion. “This,” he said, “is Jonathan Harker, the solicitor who sold me my first house in this beautiful country.”
Again, like clockwork, the ambassador smiled. “How honored he must be to have performed such a service.”
The Count lifted his hand from Jonathan’s shoulder and touched Mina’s cheek. Jonathan saw her lean into him, sudden exhaustion in her eyes. “Dearest,” he said, “you seem fatigued. Please do sit and rest awhile. There will be time enough for you to dance later.”
Mina’s expression did not change. “You are, as always, most reasonable,” she told him. And, with another curtsey, she left, vanishing in the gleaming crowd. Jonathan could not help staring after her, even when her dark form was no longer visible.
“Mr. Harker,” the Count began, turning to Jonathan with a curious expression, half formal, half intimate. It perplexed him until he realized that it was only unsettling because it was so deeply familiar. “you must forgive me for depriving you of your dancing partner. I shall be certain to supply you with a replacement immediately.” Jonathan had no time to object before he saw the Count catch the eye of a woman across the room and gesture to her. Immediately, she abandoned her own partner and strode towards them. Panic unsettled Jonathan’s stomach before he could even manage to recall where he had seen her before.
This woman did not curtsey, as Mina had, but bent her head briefly. “You asked for me?” An accent shadowed her words, and Jonathan at once placed the gleaming skin, the thick dark hair. It almost made him laugh, to see her dressed in a green gown beneath the glow of the chandelier, when he had last seen her with her mouth bloody and savage hunger distorting her features.
“Mr. Harker requires a partner,” the Count said with a small smile, “and I thought that both of you might enjoy an opportunity to renew your acquaintance.”
The ambassador chuckled. “A lucky man indeed, to dance with two of the most beautiful ladies present.”
The woman (he had never learned her name) looked at him coolly, appraisingly. “I would of course be glad to, if Mr. Harker is willing.”
Jonathan tried not to wince at the white of her teeth. “Certainly,” he said. It was, he realized, the first word he had spoken that evening in the Count’s presence. It came out hoarse and shaky.
“Go, then,” the Count told them, “to my oldest English friend I would not now begrudge a dance with any of my wives.”
(Was that a promise? Or a threat?)
As it turned out, they danced badly together. He was too preoccupied with fear to keep with the music, and she was clearly impatient, uninterested in waltzing. More interested, no doubt, he thought bitterly and with an edge of hysteria, in his blood.
“It has been a long time,” the woman said, her voice low. She did not whisper in his ear as Mina had, but her words were not intended for idle eavesdroppers. “Why have you kept yourself from us? My lord says that your home reeks of garlic from a half a mile away. Why so unfriendly, Jonathan Harker?”
It was difficult to speak - he had not addressed this woman before, only lay beneath her, trembling with arousal and terror, while he waited for her lips to close upon his throat. He wanted to grit his teeth. He was very aware of her waist beneath his hand, the fact that he could not remove it without upsetting the pattern of the dance and drawing notice. “Perhaps I was waiting for an invitation.”
She threw back her head and laughed, the wild sound startling him. “Clever. Fine, I’ll stop needling you.” He found himself noting that her English was very good. “My name is Ileana. I know yours, of course.”
He would not tell her it was a pleasure to meet her, though the words were at his lips. To hell with those long-trained habits of politeness. To contain the impulse, he looked down at the floor, and their feet upon it.
“You would like to speak to Mina.” He looked up and met her eyes. They were brown and steady. She had not asked him a question, so he did not answer. “You’d be wasting your time. She is loyal to my lord now, as loyal as any of us. They spend hours speaking together, as you and he used to do. He asks her everything he wishes to know about this country, and brings her with him when he meets with the diplomats, for she can speak softly in the language of your age, and still has the stink of humanity on her. It comforts them.”
She could not harm him, for Jonathan had had months upon months to create such images for himself.
The waltz ended. He stepped away from her and bowed. “It has been a delight, Miss Ileana.” Better to not add the surname; it would be too much.
What next? If he left now, he might preserve his life, but what was he preserving? Endless days in an empty house, a mind stirring only in paranoia? He wanted to be home, he wanted the walls secure around him, his fortifications. If he were Jack or Quincey he would take this moment as an opportunity to explore the palace, search for strategic weaknesses, but he could not bring himself to care about their plans. Their trinkets were nothing against the fearful power contained within the single ballroom where he now stood. They could never win, ransacking graveyards with stakes concealed beneath their coats.
He made his way along the wall, warily eyeing the other guests. It was probably not a good idea to try and speak with Mina again, but he could at least attempt to watch her for a little while longer. He was ravenous for the sight of her, as though those scant minutes of interaction had only made him aware of a hunger that had been growing for months.
She was seated, and did indeed look tired, as the Count had said. He was standing behind her, a hand idly resting upon her shoulder as he spoke to another man. A pale woman was sitting at her side - with a start, Jonathan recognized another of the trio who had assaulted him in the castle so long ago.
Jonathan stood in silence a few feet from them and watched Mina’s face.
He saw her tilt her head up, reach to grasp on to one of the Count’s wrists. He leaned down over her chair and she whispered in his ear, one hand unmoving in her lap. Her fingers used to fidget, when she was nervous, but perhaps that too had changed. The Count nodded to her and rose, touching her hair. “Of course,” he said, “you may have what you need. Do you have a particular object in mind?”
Mina smiled. “Perhaps the dancing partner you stole from me earlier this evening?” Her voice was light.
She looked directly at Jonathan. He could not move.
The Count laughed. “You mean the one who has been gazing at you so intently?” He, too, turned to look at Jonathan. “Mr. Harker, if you would do me the favor of coming here.”
Jonathan was struck with the sense of a code to which he was not privy. He went.
The Count regarded him calmly. “Mina is in need of nourishment, and since you have been enjoying her beauty so freely, I expect that you shall be willing to provide it to her. I understand that you have both been introduced?”
What the hell was he doing?
Mina’s voice was dry. “Indeed we have.”
Oh. The other guests must know nothing of Mina’s marriage, or the story of how the Count had found his way to London. That was interesting.
Jonathan did not trust himself to speak.
“Kneel.” The Count did not move as he gave the command. Jonathan looked into Mina’s eyes and did. It was a curious sensation, to feel himself beneath her, the black fabric of her skirt before his face. Then her hands were in his hair and he would not have cared if she had killed him there and then.
Abruptly, “I cannot do this.” Jonathan started to look up, but Mina’s hands tightened in his hair, like a warning. “My lord, you know that I have lived all my life in a culture that values discretion. To perform such an intimate act before strangers would be abhorrent to me. May I ask that you grant me half an hour of privacy?”
Jonathan could hear no anger or distrust in the Count’s voice. “As I have told you before, you will outgrow your embarrassment soon enough, but, tonight, your request is granted. Avoid killing him if you can manage.”
Jonathan followed her from the room without protest. All the way across the ballroom and through the bright hallways outside, she led him slowly and idly and he could see only the back of her head, the long line of her skirt. But then they turned a corner and she grasped his hand. “Come with me, Jonathan,” she said softly.
They were nearly running then, her heels clattering against the floor, down staircases and through twisting hallways, until they came to a door of dark wood. Mina took out a key (where had she kept it?) and pushed it gently open.
The room was dark, and it took his eyes a moment to adjust. When they did, he saw a desk, scattered with papers, a bookcase, a closed coffin. He suppressed a shiver of nausea. Mina paid none of these things any mind, and pushed open another door. Inside there were more coffins, women’s clothing, a string of pearls.
He could no longer contain himself. “Mina, what -”
“Trust me.”
In this room, Mina found a door in the wall that Jonathan had not noticed, and beyond that there was a darkened hallway. She pulled him inside, shut the door, pushed him against the wall, and kissed him.
Her kissing had changed very little, though he was aware of the new shape of her teeth against his lips. When they paused he asked, “Are you going to kill me?”
She drew away, enough to regard his face steadily. “Of course not. Did you really believe all that?”
“I haven’t seen you for months,” he said simply, “I did not know what to believe.”
“This passage leads out of the palace,” she told him, and he was startled by the abrupt subject change, “when you get outside, you’ll see a man standing beneath the streetlight. Tell him that you need directions to Abraham Van Helsing’s office. He’ll bring you to the headquarters of the resistance. You can work out from there what you need to do next. Or,” she added, as an afterthought, “you can go back to your garlic-ringed house and keep hiding. It’s up to you, love.”
“Jack and the others -”
“I was hoping you might be able to get word to them.” Her expression was serious. “Only if you think it’s safe. Don’t tell me where they’re living.”
Jonathan took a deep breath. The image of the empty coffins in the locked room returned to him. Much had happened in a very brief span of time. “And the Count - how can he not know?”
Mina had been so calm before that point; now her expression faltered. “He does know that I am working against him. He won’t kill me; he keeps me close and under his eye. I think he enjoys my rebellion; it amuses him, having an adversary.”
“And does he know what you are doing with me right now?”
She laughed. It wasn’t the same laugh he had heard her give in the ballroom; this one was tight and bitter. “He knows that I’m not feeding on you. It was my idea to invite you here tonight.” At his dubious expression she added, “Please, Jonathan, you can’t expect me to explain all of it. I’ve been playing a very complex game. I am careful, of everyone’s safety. I don’t know where the man you meet will take you tonight, for example.”
The Count’s hand at her face, her exhaustion as she leaned into it. “You shouldn’t have to do this.”
Mina shook her head. “Perhaps not, but thinking that way isn’t useful.” This sounded so much like her that Jonathan kissed her again; this time, the shape of her teeth did not bother him nearly so much. “I’ve missed you,” she said softly when they separated.
“Yes,” he said, and realized that was not in fact a response, “I’ve missed you more than I can possibly say. I didn’t know if I would ever - I love you.”
“Yes,” she answered, “I love you.”
They stood for a moment, silent in the dark corridor.
“I’ll have to get back soon,” Mina said, “and you should leave now if you want to get there safely.”
“I understand,” he told her, “Can we see one another again?”
Mina bit her lip. “I’ll try. I don’t know how long it will take, though.”
“Be careful.”
She smiled. “I am.” She kissed him one final time and slipped out the door, back into the palace.
Jonathan watched her leave and then began making his way down the hallway, into an uncertain future.
Fandom: Dracula (novel)
Character/Pairing: Jonathan Harker, Mina Harker, Count Dracula, Vampire Brides. Jonathan/Mina, implied Dracula/Mina
Summary: Dystopic AU. In a new world order, Jonathan receives an invitation. Taking the basic Anno Dracula premise and running with it in the other direction.
Rating: PG/PG-13
Warnings: References to violence, lightly implied sexual violence.
A/N: I don't know. I really don't. This is so weird. Enjoy?
The invitation came on heavy paper, printed in dark, curling lines of ink. To Mr. Jonathan Harker…
He knew, of course, that he would accept. One did not refuse such invitations. One did not refuse such invitations even if to accept would mean one’s death, a fact of which Jonathan could not be sure in his own case.
(The invitation was signed voivode, not count, not king, as if his trappings of English society had been only a temporary affectation. Jonathan wondered at that. He wondered at what his country could become, streets alive with Romanian words. Would his language become a dying thing?)
He readied himself, invitation open on the dresser, sorting through his waistcoats and cravats for something that might pass as even faintly appropriate. He could have asked Arthur for advice, but that would have required seeing Arthur, contacting Arthur, which itself would have required that he leave the house. He tended not to do that in recent days.
(Instead he smeared his windowpanes with garlic and curled up beneath the cold sheets of his empty bed with the barely sufficient comfort they must be invited in, they must be invited, I have not invited them, I have not invited him.)
He chose the waistcoat that seemed the most formal, its colors best to disguise the new gauntness which made his old clothing hang loosely from his frame. Around his neck, the silk cravat felt comforting, as meager as that safety might be. He regarded his face in the mirror: he was himself, he was recognizable, despite the changes which the past months had wrought in him.
With no protection but the silk around his neck and the invitation folded in his pocket, Jonathan made his way to the new-crowned Voivode Dracula’s palace.
At the tall gates he showed his invitation to the guards and was given directions to the ballroom, where he again took the invitation from his pocket before the doors were opened and -
The light inside was odd, he realized, hazy. It took him several moments before he could place its strangeness - it was entirely from candles, he saw, not gas. Even the towering chandeliers flickered, unreliable, as though a gust of wind could have blown the whole place to darkness. Beneath the chandeliers, there were dozens, perhaps even hundreds of people. Jonathan tried, from the top of the steps, to ascertain how many of them were human and how many vampire, but the unsteadiness of the light made the task impossible at such a distance. He descended the stairs then, without knowing.
The rest of the guests, whether mortal or not, were better dressed than Jonathan. He was not surprised, but the fact made him feel conspicuous as he stood awkwardly on the sidelines of the ballroom. He did not know why he had been invited here, unless it was to be killed. He should ask someone to dance, he knew (the music was a waltz, and he could dance to that, he remembered dancing to that, his cheeks flushed, looking at her bent head as she tried to remember the steps - but no, not now, no room for those memories) but he did not know how he would do so in this unfamiliar place. Should he ask some mortal girl, as innocently there as him? Or, in this new world order, did species take precedence over gender, leaving him expected to wait for a vampire to ask him to dance? He did not know, and so he waited, eyes open, wary.
He heard her before he saw her. She was laughing. He could not believe it immediately - he thought it a trick of his memory, a cruel conjuring. But he heard it again, persistent, daring him.
He followed the sound through the crowd of deadly immortality until he found her. He saw her only from the back, but, in the first flash of familiarity he absorbed every detail he could of the fall of her dark hair, the straightness of her spine, her bare shoulders, her long black dress. She was talking to two vampires, one a woman with pale hair tied up and the other a man with olive skin (she was laughing. Why was she laughing?)
“Excuse me?” he asked, before the heady joy of the knowing had run its course, before he could lose himself in watching.
She turned around. For a brief instant, like the flicker of the one of the candles over their heads, he saw recognition in her face. And then, smoothly, it was gone, as though it had never existed.
“May I have this dance?” he asked her, savoring the old, worn words. They had no affect upon her still, immortal face.
“Of course,” she said, her tone courteous, polite. She apologized to her companions in soft words which made the pale-haired woman look at Jonathan in condescending amusement. He wished, suddenly and foolishly, that he had cut his hair before coming.
She stepped forward, and Jonathan clasped her hand, placed his other palm at her waist(he registered the pliability of the flesh there and realized, suddenly, that she was wearing no corset - he had not been able to tell, she was so thin now. Had no one given food to her in her last days of mortality?). He listened for a moment to the music’s rhythm, felt it in his legs - right left right, left right left.
And he met her eyes and they began to dance, under the flickering of the chandeliers. Her face was so calm. He felt a sudden reluctance to speak, to breathe, to do anything that might disturb the unexpected harmony of the moment.
He leaned in close and whispered in her ear, “Is there somewhere we can talk?”
She laughed, as though politely flattered, and for a moment Jonathan was baffled, until he imagined what sort of impression she might wish to project. She murmured back, a smile fixed upon her face, “Only for a little while. I shall be missed.”
He nodded, and they danced till the end of the song. She touched his hand then, with a cold, light touch, and he followed her to side of the room as she moved towards a small door, unobtrusive in the shadows. He could see her fingers upon the doorknob, and then -
From behind them, Jonathan heard a voice.
“Mina, my dear.”
She turned immediately, automatically. Jonathan did as well, though with some reluctance, for he knew with a terrible certainty who he would see.
The Count - for so Jonathan would always think of him, whatever he chose to be called - was hardly changed. Jonathan registered the eerily still face, the too-red lips, the long-nailed fingers. He stood beside a man with thinning hair, who smiled at Mina as though the courtesy would win him favor.
“The ambassador wanted to meet you,” he continued.
Mina curtsied deeply, her head low, her skirts sweeping across the floor. “A pleasure, of course,” she said, her voice soft, deferential.
The ambassador took her hand in his own and kissed it. “You are as beautiful in person as the voivode boasts,” he told her.
Mina lowered her head again. “You do me too much kindness.”
The Count took a step to stand between Mina and Jonathan, and Jonathan felt the weight of his hand upon his shoulder with a surge of revulsion. “This,” he said, “is Jonathan Harker, the solicitor who sold me my first house in this beautiful country.”
Again, like clockwork, the ambassador smiled. “How honored he must be to have performed such a service.”
The Count lifted his hand from Jonathan’s shoulder and touched Mina’s cheek. Jonathan saw her lean into him, sudden exhaustion in her eyes. “Dearest,” he said, “you seem fatigued. Please do sit and rest awhile. There will be time enough for you to dance later.”
Mina’s expression did not change. “You are, as always, most reasonable,” she told him. And, with another curtsey, she left, vanishing in the gleaming crowd. Jonathan could not help staring after her, even when her dark form was no longer visible.
“Mr. Harker,” the Count began, turning to Jonathan with a curious expression, half formal, half intimate. It perplexed him until he realized that it was only unsettling because it was so deeply familiar. “you must forgive me for depriving you of your dancing partner. I shall be certain to supply you with a replacement immediately.” Jonathan had no time to object before he saw the Count catch the eye of a woman across the room and gesture to her. Immediately, she abandoned her own partner and strode towards them. Panic unsettled Jonathan’s stomach before he could even manage to recall where he had seen her before.
This woman did not curtsey, as Mina had, but bent her head briefly. “You asked for me?” An accent shadowed her words, and Jonathan at once placed the gleaming skin, the thick dark hair. It almost made him laugh, to see her dressed in a green gown beneath the glow of the chandelier, when he had last seen her with her mouth bloody and savage hunger distorting her features.
“Mr. Harker requires a partner,” the Count said with a small smile, “and I thought that both of you might enjoy an opportunity to renew your acquaintance.”
The ambassador chuckled. “A lucky man indeed, to dance with two of the most beautiful ladies present.”
The woman (he had never learned her name) looked at him coolly, appraisingly. “I would of course be glad to, if Mr. Harker is willing.”
Jonathan tried not to wince at the white of her teeth. “Certainly,” he said. It was, he realized, the first word he had spoken that evening in the Count’s presence. It came out hoarse and shaky.
“Go, then,” the Count told them, “to my oldest English friend I would not now begrudge a dance with any of my wives.”
(Was that a promise? Or a threat?)
As it turned out, they danced badly together. He was too preoccupied with fear to keep with the music, and she was clearly impatient, uninterested in waltzing. More interested, no doubt, he thought bitterly and with an edge of hysteria, in his blood.
“It has been a long time,” the woman said, her voice low. She did not whisper in his ear as Mina had, but her words were not intended for idle eavesdroppers. “Why have you kept yourself from us? My lord says that your home reeks of garlic from a half a mile away. Why so unfriendly, Jonathan Harker?”
It was difficult to speak - he had not addressed this woman before, only lay beneath her, trembling with arousal and terror, while he waited for her lips to close upon his throat. He wanted to grit his teeth. He was very aware of her waist beneath his hand, the fact that he could not remove it without upsetting the pattern of the dance and drawing notice. “Perhaps I was waiting for an invitation.”
She threw back her head and laughed, the wild sound startling him. “Clever. Fine, I’ll stop needling you.” He found himself noting that her English was very good. “My name is Ileana. I know yours, of course.”
He would not tell her it was a pleasure to meet her, though the words were at his lips. To hell with those long-trained habits of politeness. To contain the impulse, he looked down at the floor, and their feet upon it.
“You would like to speak to Mina.” He looked up and met her eyes. They were brown and steady. She had not asked him a question, so he did not answer. “You’d be wasting your time. She is loyal to my lord now, as loyal as any of us. They spend hours speaking together, as you and he used to do. He asks her everything he wishes to know about this country, and brings her with him when he meets with the diplomats, for she can speak softly in the language of your age, and still has the stink of humanity on her. It comforts them.”
She could not harm him, for Jonathan had had months upon months to create such images for himself.
The waltz ended. He stepped away from her and bowed. “It has been a delight, Miss Ileana.” Better to not add the surname; it would be too much.
What next? If he left now, he might preserve his life, but what was he preserving? Endless days in an empty house, a mind stirring only in paranoia? He wanted to be home, he wanted the walls secure around him, his fortifications. If he were Jack or Quincey he would take this moment as an opportunity to explore the palace, search for strategic weaknesses, but he could not bring himself to care about their plans. Their trinkets were nothing against the fearful power contained within the single ballroom where he now stood. They could never win, ransacking graveyards with stakes concealed beneath their coats.
He made his way along the wall, warily eyeing the other guests. It was probably not a good idea to try and speak with Mina again, but he could at least attempt to watch her for a little while longer. He was ravenous for the sight of her, as though those scant minutes of interaction had only made him aware of a hunger that had been growing for months.
She was seated, and did indeed look tired, as the Count had said. He was standing behind her, a hand idly resting upon her shoulder as he spoke to another man. A pale woman was sitting at her side - with a start, Jonathan recognized another of the trio who had assaulted him in the castle so long ago.
Jonathan stood in silence a few feet from them and watched Mina’s face.
He saw her tilt her head up, reach to grasp on to one of the Count’s wrists. He leaned down over her chair and she whispered in his ear, one hand unmoving in her lap. Her fingers used to fidget, when she was nervous, but perhaps that too had changed. The Count nodded to her and rose, touching her hair. “Of course,” he said, “you may have what you need. Do you have a particular object in mind?”
Mina smiled. “Perhaps the dancing partner you stole from me earlier this evening?” Her voice was light.
She looked directly at Jonathan. He could not move.
The Count laughed. “You mean the one who has been gazing at you so intently?” He, too, turned to look at Jonathan. “Mr. Harker, if you would do me the favor of coming here.”
Jonathan was struck with the sense of a code to which he was not privy. He went.
The Count regarded him calmly. “Mina is in need of nourishment, and since you have been enjoying her beauty so freely, I expect that you shall be willing to provide it to her. I understand that you have both been introduced?”
What the hell was he doing?
Mina’s voice was dry. “Indeed we have.”
Oh. The other guests must know nothing of Mina’s marriage, or the story of how the Count had found his way to London. That was interesting.
Jonathan did not trust himself to speak.
“Kneel.” The Count did not move as he gave the command. Jonathan looked into Mina’s eyes and did. It was a curious sensation, to feel himself beneath her, the black fabric of her skirt before his face. Then her hands were in his hair and he would not have cared if she had killed him there and then.
Abruptly, “I cannot do this.” Jonathan started to look up, but Mina’s hands tightened in his hair, like a warning. “My lord, you know that I have lived all my life in a culture that values discretion. To perform such an intimate act before strangers would be abhorrent to me. May I ask that you grant me half an hour of privacy?”
Jonathan could hear no anger or distrust in the Count’s voice. “As I have told you before, you will outgrow your embarrassment soon enough, but, tonight, your request is granted. Avoid killing him if you can manage.”
Jonathan followed her from the room without protest. All the way across the ballroom and through the bright hallways outside, she led him slowly and idly and he could see only the back of her head, the long line of her skirt. But then they turned a corner and she grasped his hand. “Come with me, Jonathan,” she said softly.
They were nearly running then, her heels clattering against the floor, down staircases and through twisting hallways, until they came to a door of dark wood. Mina took out a key (where had she kept it?) and pushed it gently open.
The room was dark, and it took his eyes a moment to adjust. When they did, he saw a desk, scattered with papers, a bookcase, a closed coffin. He suppressed a shiver of nausea. Mina paid none of these things any mind, and pushed open another door. Inside there were more coffins, women’s clothing, a string of pearls.
He could no longer contain himself. “Mina, what -”
“Trust me.”
In this room, Mina found a door in the wall that Jonathan had not noticed, and beyond that there was a darkened hallway. She pulled him inside, shut the door, pushed him against the wall, and kissed him.
Her kissing had changed very little, though he was aware of the new shape of her teeth against his lips. When they paused he asked, “Are you going to kill me?”
She drew away, enough to regard his face steadily. “Of course not. Did you really believe all that?”
“I haven’t seen you for months,” he said simply, “I did not know what to believe.”
“This passage leads out of the palace,” she told him, and he was startled by the abrupt subject change, “when you get outside, you’ll see a man standing beneath the streetlight. Tell him that you need directions to Abraham Van Helsing’s office. He’ll bring you to the headquarters of the resistance. You can work out from there what you need to do next. Or,” she added, as an afterthought, “you can go back to your garlic-ringed house and keep hiding. It’s up to you, love.”
“Jack and the others -”
“I was hoping you might be able to get word to them.” Her expression was serious. “Only if you think it’s safe. Don’t tell me where they’re living.”
Jonathan took a deep breath. The image of the empty coffins in the locked room returned to him. Much had happened in a very brief span of time. “And the Count - how can he not know?”
Mina had been so calm before that point; now her expression faltered. “He does know that I am working against him. He won’t kill me; he keeps me close and under his eye. I think he enjoys my rebellion; it amuses him, having an adversary.”
“And does he know what you are doing with me right now?”
She laughed. It wasn’t the same laugh he had heard her give in the ballroom; this one was tight and bitter. “He knows that I’m not feeding on you. It was my idea to invite you here tonight.” At his dubious expression she added, “Please, Jonathan, you can’t expect me to explain all of it. I’ve been playing a very complex game. I am careful, of everyone’s safety. I don’t know where the man you meet will take you tonight, for example.”
The Count’s hand at her face, her exhaustion as she leaned into it. “You shouldn’t have to do this.”
Mina shook her head. “Perhaps not, but thinking that way isn’t useful.” This sounded so much like her that Jonathan kissed her again; this time, the shape of her teeth did not bother him nearly so much. “I’ve missed you,” she said softly when they separated.
“Yes,” he said, and realized that was not in fact a response, “I’ve missed you more than I can possibly say. I didn’t know if I would ever - I love you.”
“Yes,” she answered, “I love you.”
They stood for a moment, silent in the dark corridor.
“I’ll have to get back soon,” Mina said, “and you should leave now if you want to get there safely.”
“I understand,” he told her, “Can we see one another again?”
Mina bit her lip. “I’ll try. I don’t know how long it will take, though.”
“Be careful.”
She smiled. “I am.” She kissed him one final time and slipped out the door, back into the palace.
Jonathan watched her leave and then began making his way down the hallway, into an uncertain future.