Destiny

"For the Little Woman, who didn't overly like jewels, but was always hoping to find a better party."

By Jim Beard

It began with remembering.

He remembered everything about her. Every bit of her was indelibly ingrained upon his memories and senses. He recalled most vividly the color of her eyes, the sound of her voice, her odd mélange of scents, and the aristocratic construction of her features.

He also remembered how vulnerable he at first believed she was, and then later how cruel she could be. She was a confluence of things, much more so than any other person he’d ever known…but then again, it wasn’t exactly fair to compare her to any mere mortal. She was, as he discovered after being dragged to the conclusion kicking and screaming, much, much more than that.

She was the daughter of Evil itself.

He remembered falling down this particular rabbit hole of remembering when the painting arrived at his home in Scotland. His wife had been gone only for a short time and he’d shut out most everything he ever found of interest in his life. Nothing seemed to matter anymore. His wife, so much younger than he was, so beautiful, was now dead and buried, a warrior lost after the ravages of illness had taken her body and soul…

The painting. It arrived wrapped and bound one gloomy Monday morning, and the butler announced it to him as he was finishing a late breakfast. Something about it spurred him to addressing it sooner than later, and he had it brought into his study to be opened. The butler helped him with removing the outer wrappings—curious that it wasn’t in a wooden crate, as if it had been sent not from someplace far off, but nearer—and once the work was revealed, he sent the manservant away and sat down heavily in his chair to stare at the framed image.

It was one of hers. He’d first seen it at a dear friend’s home, in her living room, some twenty-two years ago. He’d asked his friend, an inveterate party-thrower, who the artist was, and just as the devil had been spoken of, up she popped. He was immediately intrigued by the painter, a woman, much to the chagrin of his then-secretary, now-late wife, but he brushed it off to focus his attention on the utterly exotic, utterly queer female who’d walked into the room both demurely and royally, as if she owned the place as well as wanted nothing more than to go unnoticed.

He remembered it all, as if it was just yesterday, and he remembered how intoxicated he’d begun to feel with the mysterious woman from that moment on.

Yes, the painting was the start of it, and then there it was in his own home, staring back at him and dredging up not only memories, but nightmares, too. It was a whirlwind of a bad dream, a cat-and-mouse game that led him from London and finally to the wilds of Eastern Europe and a confrontation with something only dreamt of in his philosophy…or in the manner of which she herself had mocked him, his psychiatry.

Seeing the painting only added to the weight placed on him by the death of his wife. How had she acquired it? The original owner was also deceased, but he hadn’t heard that her possessions were auctioned off—why was it sitting in his study? What meaning was he to wring from it? Why had she sent it to him?

He then realized what he’d done. He assumed it was her who’d sent it. No, he couldn’t revisit that time in his life. He couldn’t believe the past was haunting him. She was dead, and for the second time, in fact. And the last.

Try as he might to put it behind him—he ordered the painting taken out and burned—it wormed its way like a cancer into his brain and only an hour later he’d had his fall down the staircase. Waking up some time later, days he was told, he found his body was no longer his servant to be commanded as always. He was seventy-three years old and he was bedridden, perhaps permanently.

So be it.

#

She came to him in a dream a few nights after the painting had arrived. He’d had trouble sleeping following the fall, but that night he drifted off into a deep slumber, one that promised true rest, but soon turned dark and foreboding.

He found himself walking in a vast, empty house, completely unfamiliar to him. At first there were no signs of anything amiss, though an underlying feeling of unease sifted in and out of the background, mocking him. Then, at the top of an immense flight of stairs, she appeared, beckoning him with her eyes and her statuesque form. He made an effort to resist, telling himself he was a married man, but the hook was in him and she reeled him in, slowly, her eyes never blinking, always upon him, every step of the way.

As he mounted the stairs, other visions came to him, dreams within dreams. He saw a mother singing to a child in a cradle in a dilapidated ruin of a castle, and then a horrified young girl cutting into the pale skin of her own arms with her long fingernails. Then the same girl somewhat older and terrorized by a large bat, a furtive trip to London under cloak of night, a mysterious funeral in a gloom-filled glade… Those scenes then faded to reveal an even older era and a man with the same eyes as the girl standing on a stone balcony, looking out over a desolate kingdom.

He realized the man was behind the woman he approached on the stairs, not physically, but in all other ways. It was he whom she had originally sought succor from, the spirit from beyond the grave who made her do the things she did…or so she said. In the end, she’d embraced her heritage, her legacy, her calling as the Daughter of Dracula.

By the time he reached the top step to ascend to her level, he recalled that she was dead, killed by her own servant. When she stepped closer to him, he teetered on the edge, the staircase behind him like a magnet. Falling backward was certain death, but moving forward into her arms and her lips was much more—it was undeath, and that was far, far worse.

With every ounce of will he possessed, he chose to fall.

#

Pain lanced through his body, jolting him awake. A figure hovered over him; the butler, saying his name over and over again.

Seems he’d fallen out of bed, except he wasn’t the sort of person to fall out of bed. What was happening to him? Frail, infirm, unable to stand on his own two legs, at least according to his red-nosed doctor. Had it come to that?

And the dream—he made a conscious decision not to think of it again. It was ridiculous. He knew what dreams were; after all, he was one of Europe’s most eminent psychiatrists, wasn’t he? Or at least he once was. Still, the thoughts that filled him as the butler lifted him back onto the bed were enough to make him ashamed, and everything he knew, everything he was, came into question as the starkness of it stared him in his face: She had returned.

No, ridiculous! He knew why the thought came to him—the painting, the fall, the dream, the memories. Hadn’t he a thousand patients with the same problem? Mind over matter. Think about it hard enough and long enough and you’ll believe it. Ghosts and phantoms made flesh and bone. It was all psychiatry. It was his career to tell others they were just being foolish. Look under the bed and cow the monster back into the netherworld.

Well, he thought: psychiatrist, heal thyself.

The butler was assured he was all right, nothing to fret about. Once the man could see that for himself, he announced a letter had arrived for him and would he care for it now?

He looked at the return address as he handled the envelope and saw it was from his daughter.

#

His daughter. Even now the very idea of it filled him with immense joy and satisfaction, even in the face of his illustrious career and the winning of the love of his life…even in the face of the dread which now hung over him.

Within a year of finally discovering the love between him and his headstrong, beautiful secretary and marrying her, they were blessed with a child. Much older than his wife, he imagined children were something for other men, younger men, but the universe allowed the further happiness. Yet, it was a difficult birth and his wife nearly died because of it. Those memories were painful, but seeing the little face of their cherub seemed to make it all worthwhile. The little girl was a beacon of light after the darkness they’d endured.

They named her Destiny.

It was something of a family name, though no one in his lineage had ever worn it. It had become a sort of private joke, that generation after generation had intended to name a child with it, but for one reason or another had set it aside. In time it had become a placeholder, a new baby’s designation until the real name produced itself. Many years passed with family after family welcoming female newborns with the temporary name of Destiny.

His wife took to it immediately and insisted they follow through where no others in his family had the conviction. He smiled and saw no harm in it; his wife looked upon it as supremely fitting. After their wedding she had told him it was destiny they be together, and now the girl-child was the ultimate expression of that. She was their Destiny.

Twenty-one years later and he was without both his wife and his daughter. Destiny was seized with a kind of wanderlust while she was away at the University of Edinburgh and she somehow managed to fly off on little trips at every opportunity. Currently she was in—where was she this time? France? Italy? Morocco? He couldn’t recall. But she always wrote him letters to illustrate her journeys and maintain her connection to home.

Holding her latest missive in his hands, he realized it had been longer between entries than usual. Aching all over, he opened the envelope. It was the usual travelogue, though oddly truncated. The letter ended with Destiny’s vague mention of having “met someone” abroad, and that she’d be bringing them home to meet him and won’t it just be grand?

The notion struck him poorly and he tossed the letter down on his bedstand. Ringing for the butler, he ordered his breakfast be brought up and continued to sour to the idea of having to endure meeting a friend of his daughter’s—or God forbid another of her seemingly unending string of paramours. He loved the child—she was hardly a child now!—without question, but she did have a flighty streak in her that sometimes tested his patience. Still, she was all he had left now of his dear wife, and he would grumble quietly while meeting the new chap instead of biting his head off like the lion he once was.

Breakfast was flat and uninteresting, and the morning newspaper even more so, leaving nothing much but to await his daughter’s return home the next day. As it turned out, she was late by three days, more than enough time for him to sour even further on the concept of entertaining a suitor.

His feeling of an overlaying dread increased, also. The house was too quiet, and the storm clouds that produced no rain only served to drive his thoughts to darker depths. The book he’d been trying to read, the latest from an acquaintance of his, an eminent Hungarian professor, remained open and mostly undigested on a nearby reading stand.

On the early afternoon of Destiny’s arrival, he sat at a small desk in his bedroom, having been helped to it by the butler. There was some correspondence he wanted to take care of, but his mind wandered and his pen only hovered above the writing paper before him, never truly setting down upon it. He heard some small commotion downstairs, a clicking series of footfalls on the staircase, and then Destiny was through the bedroom door and leaning down to embrace him.

The girl—no, the young woman now—always reminded him of her mother, dark-haired and with a slight saucy look to her eyes and mouth. He sighed inwardly—it should come to no surprise to him Destiny should garner the attention of boys and men. It was only a matter of time, of course, that she should finally acquiesce to one, as he well understood the underlying persistence of males within the presence of such a catch as his daughter.

She began to tell him of the trip back to Scotland, and apologize for being later than she’d thought, but honestly, why anyone would set a timetable to travel was simply beyond her, etc., etc. He looked at her animated face and it dawned on him it wasn’t as animated as usual. In fact, there was something different about her that he couldn’t quite put a finger on. He’d rallied a bit when she came in, but all of a sudden his lingering darkness returned to infuse him again with its doubts and fears and worries.

Destiny smiled and asked if he was ready to meet her companion. He’d almost forgotten the man in the sweep of little events, but he frowned and nodded, telling his daughter he wasn’t ready to meet anyone at the moment, but when did that ever stop her from doing what she wanted? Destiny kissed him on the cheek and then an odd look came upon her face when she told him not to be too shocked. He couldn’t fathom what she meant, but when the girl arose from his side and traipsed over to the door to lean through it and beckon someone beyond to approach, he somehow knew what was about to happen.

The person stepped into the room, tall and regal, and utterly composed. It was her.

“Hello, Doctor,” she said, her eyes gleaming with feral delight. “It’s so very nice to finally meet you.”

#

It continued with remembering.

The woman looked exactly the same as when he last saw her, as if more than two decades hadn’t passed. The dark, raven-shadow hair pulled back severely, the aristocratic nose and cheekbones, the all-too-pale skin, and the eyes…the eyes were quite the same. As he stared at her, he recalled he once felt sympathy for her, even pity, before he’d discovered her true nature. Then, any feeling he’d had for her of warmth, of a desire to help her, be with her, evaporated into the ether.

Why didn’t Destiny see it? How could she have missed the unnatural hunger that lurked within the woman? The innate cruelty? How could she be his child and be so blind?

And yet he was once blind to it. The woman had fooled everyone around her as she hid the mantle of evil that had been set upon her shoulders long, long before.

Fighting back the old familiar feeling of pity, of sympathy, he stared at this guest in his house, and asked himself the most important question of all: How was she standing before him, apparently alive again? He wanted to shriek the question at her, wanted to rise from his invalidity and place his hands around her throat to…

But, no. He knew he couldn’t say or do anything of the sort when he saw the look in his daughter’s eyes as she gazed upon her…paramour?

“Dad,” Destiny said, taking the woman’s arm in her hands, “I’d like you to meet Anya Grazke.” She turned her face to him, beaming. “She’s a countess! Isn’t that simply amazing? We met in Budapest.”

Anya…? Of course she wouldn’t use her real name—if the name he’d known her under before was her real name. At least he had the presence of mind to bite down on a retort, on an accusation that would have raised the roof and alarmed his daughter to set her against him. How would it sound for him to suddenly—and loudly—proclaim he knew the countess all too well and that she was one of the undead, not to mention the spawn of one of the most evil creatures to have ever walked the earth?

Instead, all he could manage was a strangled “How…do you do?”

The woman smiled, piercing him with her eyes. “Very well, thank you, Doctor,” she replied.

An awkward silence descended upon the room. Destiny issued a small chuckle and gripped the countess’s arm even tighter as she leaned into her, almost setting her head on the woman’s shoulder.

“Dad—I see that look in your eyes. I told you not to be so shocked!” She looked up at the woman, smiling sweetly. “It’s not the thirties anymore!”

The countess patted the girl’s hand with her own. He noticed how long and sharp her fingernails were. “Those times were more…permissive than you know, my dear,” she said, then looked back to him. “Weren’t they, Doctor?”

Ignoring the barb, he told his daughter he was feeling very tired and asked if they could talk later. Destiny rushed over to him, the dutiful daughter full of concern, but he assured her he was fine and simply wanted to rest. Finally, the two women exited the room and shut the door behind him and he was alone with his thoughts, a prisoner in so many more ways than he was even a half-hour before.

He reached for the book he’d ignored for days and began to page through it in animated fashion, as if a man clutching at a lifeline.

#

Sleep eluded him that night. He’d listened far too long for sounds of his daughter and her guest—the word was sour on his tongue—and by the time he’d decided to try to rest, it was too late. He was wide awake, unable to slumber, and so he propped himself up in his bed and awaited what he knew would surely come.

Beside him, on top of the covers, rested a crucifix. It was a simply fashioned thing, made of wood with an impressionistic Christ figure affixed to it, something he’d barely looked at over the years as it hung on his bedroom wall. Both he and his wife had little use for such symbols, but the first maid who had come to work for them not long after they’d moved into the house was a stout Scottish Christian, a woman who announced she wouldn’t stay unless her Savior was represented in each room. The woman had passed on a few years back, and while some of the crucifixes had been taken down—most notably in Destiny’s room, it occurred to him—the one in his own room remained, simply due to no one caring very much whether it went or stayed.

He was glad for it now. Picking it up, he felt its weight in his hand, a presence that carried more than just a physical component. He hoped it would carry more power than just the slight damage it might do if he were to hurl it at someone. After gazing at the cross for a moment, he set it down and placed part of his blanket over it.

The minutes dragged on as he sat there in the dark, waiting. Then, as he’d predicted, the door to his room began to open very slowly. He tensed, every nerve-ending on high alert. The door completed its arc and she drifted through it to stand just inside the doorway.

He had to admit to himself that she was strikingly beautiful as his heart thudded in his chest. What was he feeling? Dread, which is what he should be feeling, or the old attraction? The dichotomy made him sick to his stomach, but he held his face in a composed state.

She stared at him for a long while, a Mona Lisa smile painted upon her perfect, almost man-like features. If it was to be a battle of wills, he thought to himself, he’d press through and give a good show of it, though questions flooded into his brain.

“You’re debating with yourself, Doctor,” she said coolly, the slight trace of the European accent he once found quaint playing in and around her words, “as to what to ask me first—how, or why?”

Damn the woman! If she could read his mind…

“Why?” he croaked.

Her smile broadened. “Very good! I assumed wrong.” She paused as if composing her own thoughts.

“For revenge, of course. Yes, I am not so far above such a base desire, if I’m to be honest.” Her eyes narrowed. “My father wielded revenge like a sword…or a scalpel. You should appreciate that.”

The image of one of the most horrific men to walk the earth cutting down his enemies as he went along sprang up before his eyes, and he saw every bit of that creature in his devilish daughter. Trying once more to quiet his mind, he swallowed and tasted bile. How much more of the conversation he could endure was a mystery at that moment.

“We…once meant something to each other.”

The look of amusement mingled with surprise on her face felt like a small victory, and he relished it for a second or two before the sound of her voice washed it away.

“Ah, I see—you’re attempting to use your psychiatry on me. I’m afraid that just won’t work, Doctor. I offered you life immortal many years ago, an opportunity to be at my side through eternity, but that is in the past. I no longer crave your assistance, your sympathy…or your love. I only desire, as I said before, revenge for your part in stopping me from embracing my”—here she looked like the cat that ate the canary—“destiny.”

“How?” he asked.

“How what, Doctor? How did you play a part in my—”

No,” he cut in, “how did you not die? I saw you there, with a shaft of wood through your heart, and—”

“And that is what kills a vampire?” Her eyes grew colder, if that was possible. “Is that what you mean? You saw what you believed to be a living, breathing woman shot down by a well-placed arrow, yes, through the heart, and later learned it wasn’t an accident that I was felled in such a way…”

She took a step and then another toward his bed. “Well, let me tell you something, Doctor. Before you were even born, I discovered I wasn’t truly alive after all, not like what someone like you would designate ‘alive.’ No, I existed in a middling state, standing on a plateau between the waking world and the deepest darkness…and the arrow pushed me over the edge. But we Draculas aren’t so easily dispatched. My father learned long ago we may be slowed for a time, but it takes much sterner stuff than a shaft of wood to stop us for good… ”

He paled in the face of her victorious countenance. It began to change from beautiful to hideous, as if a gate was being open and evil itself was being allowed to fill up her body.

“But I’ll have you know I spent what you laughingly call two decades clawing myself up from Hell itself!”

He reached for the crucifix, alarmed at the pure vitriol that flowed off her. She saw the movement of his hand to pull back the blanket, and then spied the holy object. Her eyes narrowed again, and a small, stiff, mirthless smile appeared on her lips.

“There’s no such thing as Hell,” he told her, not feeling very courageous.

“Isn’t there, Doctor?” she spat back at him. “A part of me that once felt charitable toward you would like to say I hope you never have to find out for yourself…but the daughter of Dracula can very easily, and willingly, arrange it for you if you wish.”

She raised one arm to gesture at the open bedroom door. A figure stepped into the room, as if bidden by some silent force. He’d been conversing with the woman mostly in the dark, and he did not clearly make out the figure until it came closer.

“Destiny! No!”

The scion of the vampire lord brought his daughter to her and snaked one arm across the girl’s shoulders to draw her into an intimate embrace. Destiny wore a filmy nightgown which showed off the smooth skin of her neck and her upper chest. The woman’s hand flicked the collar of the gown with her fingers and it slipped off one of the girl’s delicate shoulders. Destiny took no notice of any of the actions. She’d walked into the room as if in a trance, apparently oblivious as to where she was, what she was doing, and what was being done to her.

Her father quailed, fighting to hold on to some shred of his sanity and dignity, but the sight of his child, his only child and only remaining part of his wife left on Earth in the hands of the female monster before him was nearly too much to bear.

“Don’t…” he whispered. “Please, not her.” He caught the woman’s eyes with a look of abject destitution. “Take me…you once were going to take me. Please, not Destiny.”

His tormentor continued to smile at him, her lips parting to show her perfect teeth. Had she ever looked so animalistic? Had the veneer of womanhood, of a beautiful, noble woman, ever existed before? At that moment, one would be hard-pressed to have recalled it.

“By taking your daughter,” she explained, “I do take you.”

She turned her head to Destiny and lowered her face to the girl’s neck. He could see her opening her lips wider, and he willed himself to look away, but could not. He watched as she fed, and Destiny’s face twisted in a mélange of ecstasy and pain.

It was then he was absolutely certain the woman must be destroyed beyond any ability to ever return again. And he believed he knew how to do it.

#

At some point the torture ceased, temporarily no doubt, and he did actually fall asleep. The very feeble rays of a cloudy dawn greeted him in the morning, and after a telephone call from his nightstand to send a telegram, he turned to face the day. A tiny shred, the minutest particle of hope, took root in his breast that he could beat her, and if so, the telegram would set such a victory in motion.

But, he reckoned, he would have to be very, very careful.

A ring at the bell for the butler to bring him his breakfast brought his daughter instead, and he learned the manservant had been sent away, “perhaps for good,” and Destiny would be taking care of him from now on.

The girl was more like her usual self as she flowed into the bedroom with a sparse tray—she never did grasp much of the culinary arts—and while she talked about inanities such as school and her travels across the continent, he watched and looked for signs of her subjugation. Besides a slight paleness to her skin and a scarf wrapped around her throat to hide the two reddish pinpricks he knew would be there, she seemed fairly normal…and oddly happy.

He didn’t dare say anything about the events of the night before. There were moments while Destiny spoke that he wanted to suddenly scream at her, shock her into realization of her plight, but he knew it would be useless. He’d seen her effect on another young woman, long ago, and cringed inwardly on what was to come for his daughter: blood and memory loss, crippling weakness, resistance to medical attention, and then…death. And beyond that? He couldn’t bear to think of it.

Instead he thought of his telegram and what it might bring. A weapon, he hoped; the only means he could see to ultimately defeat his Nemesis.

A mention of the woman by Destiny brought him back to the matter at hand, and he wondered where in the house she’d been sequestered during the daytime. It was an abhorrent idea, utterly sickening, to picture the creature sleeping away during the day somewhere in the house in a box that contained some of her native soil, though as strident as it was in his mind, it made him all the more determined to drive her away.

His daughter eventually retreated from his room when he told her gently he wanted to get some reading and correspondence done. She leaned over to kiss him, and he thought her lips lingered a fraction too long on his warm-to-her cheek.

When the door closed, he mentally laid out his feeble plan. Would his target be at home in London when the telegram arrived? How long would it take for action? How long could he forestall the inevitable under his own roof? There were too many variables. Time; it would take time. He must calm himself and be patient. Yes, that was it—he must be patient by being his own patient. There were many hours of daylight to come, and he must be ready for news of his weapon to arrive.

Night arrived all too soon, there was no response to his telegram, and she came to his bedroom as she did the evening before. The torture continued anew. First she reminded him in a mocking tone of the things he said to her back in London, during the days of her agony traversing the border between light and dark. He recalled that he acted aloof immediately after their initial meeting, but came to the point of real investment in her condition…until he uncovered the foundation upon which it festered.

In the present, she brought Destiny into his room once more and fed on her while she watched the blood drain from his face as he watched the further mutilation of his daughter.

Once again, he swore to destroy the woman, utterly.

Hours of lying in his bed followed, and of both time and any semblance of his normal life eluding him. He was vaguely aware of the next day’s sunlight filtering around the edges of the curtains on his windows, and it growing dark again. When a rumble of far-off thunder rolled into his ears, a tiny splinter of hope wedged in his brain: Perhaps it wasn’t night already, but merely a storm darkening the day?

Not truly asleep, yet also not fully awake, he heard the door to his room open very slowly and his entire body felt like it was under a great weight of immediate apprehension. A third feeding would surely rob his daughter of life, and she would be as her new mistress—undead.

“My friend,” said a heavily accented voice somewhere near and over him. He rallied, believing it to be his old teacher come back to save him, but when he opened his eyes he saw it was something nearly as good.

The portly little professor stared at him with great concern in his eyes. “Can you hear me?” the man asked, leaning down, perhaps to ensure his voice wouldn’t carry outside the room. “I am here. I received your telegram. I came as soon as I could.”

“Is…is…?”

The man sighed as he adjusted the glasses on the bridge of his nose. “Possibly, my friend. That is the best I can tell you. Inquiries have been made, a request has been sent—but at this very moment I cannot tell you with any conviction the weapon you desire is on the way here…”

Destiny’s father tried to sit up, grasping at the slim straws offered him by the professor. It was a gamble, yes, and the odds were stacked against him, but he hoped—no, perhaps it was all in vain.

“What—what time is it?” he croaked, looking around the room.

His visitor pulled out an old-fashioned pocket watch and glanced at it. “Nearly eight o’clock, I’m afraid.” He shot a look at the windows. “And night is falling.”

“No, it is here, Herr Professor.”

The voice was like freezing ice water down the doctor’s back. He struggled with his bed clothes, pulling them aside, trying to escape the inevitable, but the woman was upon them in an instant and he was pulled from his bed while the professor was flung aside like a child’s stuffed animal.

“I’d thought to make this evening a special one, Doctor,” she told him with an evil smile, though her actions were anything but kind. “To have you as witness to the final marriage between your daughter and me, but it appears you’ve invited unwanted guests to the ceremony.”

He was half-dragged, half-lifted across the bedroom floor to its open door and tossed through it, striking the balustrade opposite the doorway. Dazed, his body racked with shooting pain and his heart thudding dangerously in his chest, he saw the woman looming over him, an ice queen stunningly beautiful in her hard-edged fury.

“What did you hope to accomplish with this little man?” she inquired, jutting her chin toward the crumpled professor. “Really, Doctor; I would have thought you’d realized by now that anything you could devise to stand in my way would be futile.” She smiled so as to show off her perfect teeth. “Any shred of the forlorn, feeble countess you once knew is gone.”

She reached down to curl her fingers in his pajama blouse and lift him to his feet. He felt the top rail of the balustrade against his lower back, and with a shock of awareness saw what was in her mind.

“I…I know…what you fear…” he told her with gasping breath.

She cocked a perfect eyebrow at him. “Do you, Doctor?” she said with a little laugh. “Of course, the eminent psychiatrist again—always diagnosing. Well, this is your last such prescription. I’ve had my fill of your brand of medicine.”

He closed his eyes, sorry for everything he’d done since meeting her all those years ago, save for marrying his wife and producing a fine child such as Destiny. If only he’d been even more callous than caring to the countess back in the day, perhaps…perhaps…

Thunder boomed again. Lightning lit up his house like small explosions of fireworks. He was vaguely aware of the professor having gained his senses again and mounting a useless assault on the woman. With one hand holding him up against the balcony railing, she held off the attack masterfully with her other. She was supreme in her triumph. Both men would soon be dead and Destiny would be forever in her arms, locked in an eternity of undead torment.

It would end, apparently, with remembering. He saw himself as a younger man, happily grouse-hunting before a storm rolled in and dragged him into a darker world. He saw his secretary whom he’d pushed away from him for years until her life hung by a thread and he realized what she meant to him. He saw the two of them married and then expecting a child. He saw the quiet life they embraced after he’d retired…but in hindsight he saw how the shadows had followed them from Transylvania and hung over them like a Sword of Damocles, a sign of a spirit trapped in Hell but fighting to be free for revenge…

He hoped the professor would survive. He hoped his own heart would give out before he hit the floor so far below him there on the landing. He hoped his wife would come for him as he drew his last breath.

He hoped Destiny would somehow be able to bear her new, frightening existence and understand he’d tried to save her.

Downstairs, the front door of the house was flung open—by the wind?—and the storm whipped into the foyer and up the staircase to swirl the woman’s long skirts around her. Her eyes widened as if in surprise, and the air then abruptly stood still. Dead still.

“What?” she said in a small voice. Then louder, “Who is there?”

He attempted to crane his neck to see the front door. Something was moving just beyond it, coming closer to the threshold, a dark shape…

Before he knew it, he was leaning over the railing and no longer in the grip of his enemy. She was at the top of the staircase and then descending it, step by step, walking as if in a trance. He could see very clearly that her lips were moving, mouthing silent words.

The professor was suddenly beside him helping him off the balustrade and to the floor of the balcony that overlooked the front door and the foyer. He was weeping.

“My friend, my friend,” he was saying. “I think your weapon, the only weapon that could defeat the witch, has arrived. My summons was answered—no, your summons!”

It was a gamble, one offering odds no bookmaker would ever accept. A plea shouted out into the ether, into another world: Come and take your child. You are the only one who can.

She stepped off the bottommost stair and faced the open doorway, the wind having started up again. Then, with unnatural, one might even say supernatural, clarity, he saw her face with its widened eyes, its ghostly white cheeks, and its expression of abject horror. She opened her mouth to scream, but the wind whipped it away.

The figure in the doorway spoke, the voice chilling in its grave tone.

“Good…evening, daughter. Won’t you invite your father in?”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jim Beard became a published writer when he sold a story to DC Comics in 2002. Since that time he's written official Star Wars and Ghostbusters comic book stories and contributed articles and essays to several volumes of comic book history. His prose work includes the novellas GREEN HORNET: HOW SWEET THE STING, and KOLCHAK: THE LAST TEMPTATION; co-editing and contributing to PLANET OF THE APES: TALES FROM THE FORBIDDEN ZONE; a story for X-FILES: SECRET AGENDAS; three books of essays on the 1966 Batman TV series; the SGT. JANUS occult detective series of novels; MONSTER EARTH, a shared-world giant monster anthology series; and CAPTAIN ACTION: RIDDLE OF THE GLOWING MEN, the first pulp prose novel based on the classic 1960s action figure. Jim also provided regular content for Marvel.com, the official Marvel Comics website, for over seventeen years.

Look for Jim on Amazon at www.amazon.com/author/jimbeard, on Facebook at www.facebook.com/thebeardjimbeard, and on Twitter at @writerjimbeard.