“As in I’ve never tried it before. I haven’t had a bleed in years.”
He lifted the edge of the now soaked gauze. Even Mike knew this was bad—the QuikClots were designed to stop bleeding, to save lives on the battlefield, but for Radu, it wasn’t enough to stop a simple IV needle removal. And he believed Isabella’s blood would cure him? She pressed down against the site with all her strength, but it didn’t help, blood still poured out of the wound in his arm. Her hands were red with his blood. But how could that be? Was he bleeding internally?
Mike said, “Your neck is bruising, Radu. It’s almost black.” And she slapped a fresh gauze pack in place, applied more pressure.
Isabella touched his uninjured arm. “We need to get you to a hospital, Radu. Surely they’ll be able to do something.”
Radu said, his voice still remote, almost disinterested, “It won’t matter. The bruising on my neck wasn’t supposed to happen. It means the medicine didn’t work. At the rate I’m bleeding, I’ll be dead soon now.” He raised glazed eyes to their faces. “Roman researched a dozen people, so many that could possibly be of our line, tracked them down, and exsanguinated them to give me their blood. None worked until Isabella.” He gave a laugh so thin and insubstantial it was like smoke. “And now I’m self-exsanguinating.”
The blood was pooling beneath him now, dripping onto the floor.
“We’ve designed a whole life around making sure I didn’t have a bleed. Isabella, you are my only hope.” He spoke to her in that strange, guttural language. She whispered back in the same language, then turned to them. “I’m going to try to hook us back up. My blood—it might help.”
Nicholas said, “I’m sorry, we don’t have the training for that. Listen, the medics will be here soon—”
Radu lifted the gauze from his arm and stared at the pulsing blood. He whispered, “Roman is going to be furious with you. He has tried so hard.” And he slid over onto his side, his eyes closed, his hand pressed against the gauze in the crook of his elbow, now red with his blood. He called, “Isabella? You’re all I have.”
She grabbed the needle adhesive still sticking to his arm and shoved the needle back in, hoping she’d hit the vein. She straightened the tubing on her own arm and lay down beside him. She took his hand in hers. “Lie still and feel my blood come into you, Radu. You will live, do you hear me? My blood will make you live.”
She felt him sigh. Felt him squeeze her hand. He was so cold, shivering now, though it was very warm in the lab. “I’m here, Radu.”
He whispered in Voynichese, “Tell Roman, tell him your blood is the key. Your blood. The potion isn’t important, not the book, not the pages. You are the cure, for me. Make sure he knows. I don’t want him to blame you, kill you.” His voice faded until his last words were a faint whisper.
His eyes closed.
“I’ll tell him, Radu. You must hold on. My blood is flowing into you. You must hold on.”
Nicholas and Mike watched the blood, Isabella’s blood now, flowing out of his arm, pooling on the floor.
Gareth limped up to stand beside them. Isabella pulled the needle out of her arm, applied pressure. They all stood in silence, helpless, and watched Radu Ardelean die.
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
If you stand on the pavement outside the Royal Hotel on Whitby’s West Cliff and look out across the harbour town as the sun goes down, you can pretty much see, in their entirety, the early chapters of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Across the bay, in the shadow of the half-ruined abbey, sits St. Mary’s Churchyard, where Lucy Westenra was attacked by the vampiric count. Below is Tate Hill Sands, where the ship carrying Dracula ran aground, its crew missing, its dead skipper lashed to the wheel. The 199 steps, known locally as the Church Stairs, rise to the East Cliff, up which Dracula, in the guise of a black hound, ran after arriving in Whitby.
—The Guardian
Whitby, England, the Southern Coast
July 1890
The sea looked glorious and smooth as glass. The storm had passed, and the air felt light, as if anything was possible.
He sat on the bench and relaxed. He deserved this holiday, needed to rest and rejuvenate before his family arrived in a fortnight. He’d been exhausted by the work on his latest play.
After he’d moved into his rooms at Mrs. Veazey’s guesthouse at 6 Royal Crescent, he’d gone out to ramble through the town, climbed the 199 steps to the ancient, crumbling abbey. He even wandered through the boneyard, touched by the graves—some of which had no occupants, the stones markers for those lost at sea—writing names in the notebook he always carried in his breast pocket. Finally, pleased, he took a seat on a bench and watched the ships at sail.
Something about this place intoxicated him. Perhaps he felt a certain oppression, a Gothic sort of darkness despite the cheery red roofs and the calls of the gulls over the water. It spoke to his creative mind, his heart. A fog bank rolled in, and he delighted in the sudden coolness, the droplets of moisture gathering on his mustache. He closed his eyes, content.
“Hello. May I?” He opened his eyes to see a stranger standing before him, a great white-and-gray falcon on the man’s fist. Would she get lost in the thick fog if her jesses were removed? “Certainly,” he said, and made room. “What a magnificent falcon.”
“Her name is Mina. She is a peregrine.”
He saw the stranger wore a leather gauntlet, and when he said the bird’s name, he put a chunk of raw meat on the glove. The bird gobbled it down. He asked, “Have you toured Whitby before?”
“Oh, I live here. Over there.” The stranger waved a negligent hand toward the cliffs. “I am called Reuben Stow.”
“I am Bram Stoker. It’s a pleasure.”
Stow asked, “You’re up from London?”
“I am. I’m a writer. Well, and a producer, a financier.”
Stow’s eyes seemed to glow. He leaned toward Stoker. “You are?”
“I am. I wanted to spend some time alone, to relax, to let errant ideas slip into my brain, until my family arrives.” He grinned at what he’d said, shrugged. “A writer is always on the lookout for ideas, for inspiration, I suppose.”
Stow threw his arm forward, and the bird launched into the sky. She pirouetted in the air above them, the long stokes of her wings taking her out of the sea. They watched her dance in and out of the clouds.
Stow said, “Mr. Bram Stoker, writer, for your inspiration, I suggest you look in the Whitby library, at the end of the street below. There you will find a book written by a fellow countryman of yours, Wilkerson, and his travels will give you what you seek. It will spark your imagination, and the rest of the story will come to you then.”
“What I seek? No, you misunderstand me. I’m not looking for anything.”
“Yes, you are. A writer is always seeking. My beautiful Mina is a wonderful example. She seeks the hunt, fresh meat, the ability to fly and to sleep safely. I provide her with all of these, and so she stays with me. You, my new friend, are very much like the falcon. You seek a story, a story to make you famous. A story to both delight and terrorize. A story to make your friend Irving happy, yes?”
Stoker was unnerved. How did this stranger know this? He felt vaguely alarmed, not a little afraid.
“I suppose I am always looking for a good story,” he said stiffly, and he rose. “Perhaps it’s time for me to be off.”
“I know a good story.”
Stoker stopped, couldn’t help himself. “You do?”
“Oh, yes. It is the story of brothers bound by blood. They walk the earth together, never at rest.”
“Oh, I see. They’re ghosts.”
“No, no, not ghosts. They are something very different indeed. Something very old. It is the blood, you see. They have pages from a long-lost book that gave them the knowledge they needed to use blood as food. It’s quite a gruesome tale. I can tell it to you if you like.”