Mina Read Online Free Page A

pulled out a short-barreled pistol with a tooled
leather handle. Without asking whether I wanted it or not, he proceeded to show
me how it loaded. "It doesn't have the distance of the rifles,
but if it comes to using it, the bullets are as lethal at close range as those
from a Winchester." He handed the pistol and a box of bullets to me.
"Take these," he said.

He was not suggesting the pistol as
a defense against vampires, for, as had already been demonstrated, bullets had
no effect on them. I knew whom he feared, and I had a perverse desire to force
him to give a name. Instead, polite as the Mina I had been only days before, I
merely said, "Thank you."
    "It
will be our secret," he replied.
    I took
Quincey's hand in one of mine and saw him looking down at my fingers with a
sense of wonder. Had he expected them to
    feel something other than alive? "I am quite all right and
fully intend to remain that way," I told him as brightly as I could and warmed
to his smile. Quincey is so honest, so much more open-minded than the others. I
imagine that the American frontier must be a wild place filled with all sorts
of rare and exotic creatures. If so, it would be quite unlike England, where
everything is so static that it is a wander that only the houses are covered
with ivy and moss. "Why did you come with the others?" I asked him.
    "To
avenge Lucy. To see the last European frontier." He smiled sadly.
"And, forgive me, I mean nothing but respect when I say,
    for you."
    I kissed his
cheek and whispered, "Lucy loved you so much. I understand why. Your
nature is like hers. You give so much."
    I felt his unease, his uncertainty
about what my words meant. Not wishing to embarrass him, I pulled away too
quickly then realized it must look as if I were indeed doing something
improper. He glanced over his shoulder at the door, and I saw the pulse quicken
in the vein in his neck. Dear Quincey. For all his rough edges, he is as
civilized as the rest. I wonder what he would have said had he known that my
only desire at that moment was to lock the door and taste of him. I would have
been chaste, gentle, but no less insistent than Dracula had been with me.
    I wrapped
the gun and bullets in a scarf and put them in my traveling bag. As I did,
Quincey retreated toward the door and I told
    him good night.
    Afterward, I recorded these
thoughts. My odd fantasies. I would never act on them, yet the very fact that
I have them at all fills me with shame and dread. My future is in such
turmoil, my soul in such peril, yet as I write these words, I feel nothing
except a vague affection for my companions and curiosity about my fate.

II
    October 14. This morning, Dracula woke as
I touched his mind. I saw his eyes open to the blackness of the box in which
he rests, smelled the dry earth on which he lies, felt his terrible hunger as
if it were my own. The strength of it, and the pain, forced my immediate
withdrawal, and I found myself suddenly staring, dizzy and disoriented, into
Van Helsing's piercing eyes.
    "What
has happened?" he asked.
    I lied and told him that I did not
know. However, I am certain that at the time my mind touches Dracula's, my
thoughts are known to him. I find this consoling. I still hope that I can
somehow be free of his control without causing his death or the deaths of the
men who travel with me. Though I have never confessed this to the others, Van
Helsing guesses my feelings and reminds me often that my soul depends on our
destroying the vampire. I disagree. My soul is mine to save or destroy. To say
that its fate depends on another's death means that there is no justice to be
had from God. Such blasphemy!
    During the
journey, I find myself thinking too often of Lucy’s true death. When I first
read Dr. Seward's account of her last days,
    I thought that if she had
known the exact nature of the creature that preyed on her, she might have had
the strength to fight back.
    Now I am not so certain. Lucy was always frivolous.
She would have