Mina Read Online Free PDF Page B

youth after a long and hopefully fruitful life, as my bride.
    "Instead Van Helsing came and knew what she would become. My
only hope for her future was to claim her and take her away. Do you think she
died in Van Helsing's absence by accident? No, I chose the night of her death
carefully, so that I would have time to find a new and safer resting place for
her body before Van Helsing persuaded the others to help him destroy her."
    "But the
men found her in her own coffin," I said.
    "I
would not have a slave for a bride! Lucy did not lose her will when she
died. She was confused, yes, but stubborn, and she
    would not go with me. Had there been no Van Helsing, she would have learned to understand
the need to exist under my protection, and to choose my life over true
death."
    "To
harden her heart to killing," I responded.
    "You
are so perceptive. Had there been no Van Helsing, she could have risen, could
have stumbled from that cold tomb into the
    beautiful night and slowly
learned what was necessary to survive. Instead, instead . . ."
    His pale hands were clenched with
rage, the nails digging into his palms. I saw him as he would have been when he
was alive, the savior of his people, slaughtering the enemy, rejoicing in
battle. Seeing him like this made him more human, and somehow more powerful.
"Instead they killed her," he said bitterly. "They destroyed one
who had done nothing to deserve that end."
    I lowered my
head to the table and cried.
    He looked closely at me as if he had never seen such sorrow
before. "You grieve for her?" "I grieve for her, and for the men
who did that to her," I replied.
    He shook his
head, and again he seemed so wise, so good. His words did not surprise me.
"No, Mina, you must not. In time she
    would have had no choice but
to be as I am. No will is stronger than our power and our need."
    "And yet you say that you can release my soul." "If
you follow your desire."
    I had always
prided myself on being independent. What he asked was no more than what I would
have done. "I agree," I
    whispered.
    I waited to
hear him acknowledge what I had said, but he had already begun to fade into the
misty shadows of my mind ...
    Now that I
have put the words I wrote of my dream in their proper place, I begin to
understand Dracula the man and I pity him.
    Of course, he may be lying
about freeing me. He may mean to kill the men and take me, willing or no, to be
his eternal companion.
    And yet I feel a strange sense of peace and acceptance of an end
that can only be inevitable. If Dracula passes us by, what recourse will we
have but to pursue him? I can only trust him as I trust Van Helsing. Neither of
them will destroy me until this struggle between them is over.
    And if the
choice becomes Van Helsing's stake or an eternity of blood, I honestly do not
know which fate I would desire.
    It is his blood
tainting me. Can I ever be truly free of it?
     
    October 28. The telegram
I had expected came. During last night's fog, the Czarina Catherine bypassed
Varna and went
    directly on to Galati.
    "Galati!" Quincey Morris spoke the city's name as if it
were a curse. "How could he have known we were here?" Of all of the men,
he seemed the most surprised by the news, the least willing to give up the
chase. The others were merely disheartened that Dracula's ship had been swept
on to the Romanian port some hundred miles north of Varna.

 
    My face grew
white with the realization of the vampire's power. I said a prayer of hope that
what Dracula asked of me was for
    the best, then looked at Van
Helsing as I spoke. "It was a chance we had to take," I said.
    "We
know much, thanks to Madame Mina," Van Helsing responded. He would have
taken my hand and patted it, as is his way,
    but I had my fingers clasped
together. I did not want to touch him, or any of them, now. I am dying and
their life calls out to me.
    "The train," I whispered
to him and told him that one would be leaving for Galati in the morning, for I
had recently looked up the