Clinging carefully to stone in the autumnal night, I altered back to man-form right on the windowsill. I drew mass and weight unto myself-from nothing? Say from the great reservoir in which God kept such things before deciding to enact Creation, and to which some of his creatures are allowed a limited access still. How do I do it? Let me ask how you sort out the myriad atoms in your lungs each time you draw a breath to oxygenate your blood.
Now I tapped at the window with a long fingernail and spoke aloud. Lucy rose up in bed, with a startled look that soon changed to joy. She got up as quickly as she could, and came to the window, and was about to speak the words that would have let me pass in to her; but on the instant the door of her room opened once more and Mrs. Westenra's figure was plain in my field of vision-and mine, alas, in hers.
Lucy had already drawn the blind full back. When the unsuspecting old woman looked over her daughter's shoulder into the night it was my visage that she saw peering in at both of them.
I expected shock, but not what happened. Mrs. Westenra extended her arm for a second or two, pointing at me in silence, her face contorted with her fright; and then there came from her throat a gurgling noise and she fell as if an ax had struck her down.
"Mother!" Lucy cried out, and hurried to try to lift her aged parent from the floor; but in Lucy's weakened condition the shock and the exertion were too much for her, and she crumpled over also, in a faint.
Mrs. Westenra's heart and lungs had already ceased their labors and I was not sure that Lucy's would not shortly do the same, so feebly and irregularly were they now working. She had called to me for help and I was anxious-nay, almost desperate-to fly to her aid, but I could not. I had not yet been bidden directly to enter the house wherein she lay. I, who might pass like smoke through barriers impossible for breathing men to penetrate, was held back by a law as inexorable to me as gravity.
Another low wolf howl rising from the shrubbery at last jogged my slow brain back into action. I dropped lightly to the ground, which was some twelve feet below the windowsill, and called Berserker to me. For a moment I held the big gray wolf tightly, one hand gripping his muzzle, my eyes locked on his, trying to force into his willing brain knowledge of the service that I required of him. I wanted him to force his way into that room above, and lick at Lucy's face to rouse her; failing that, to drag her by her nightdress or her hair to the window where she might come within my reach.
Why did I not go instead, in my most suave and reassuring style to knock at the front door? All this was in the middle of the night, remember, and the house was isolated. Lucy had once mentioned to me in passing that no male servants slept in the house-the pantry at Hillingham was evidently a place of impeccable morality. Were the women within likely to open a door for me, under whatever pretext I came? I thought not. My instincts argued for direct action, and I have learned to trust my instincts in emergencies.
It took me two, three, tosses to cast the heavy wolf up to the windowsill above. Its surface, though broad enough for a lean and rather acrobatic gentleman to sit on at his ease, offered but scanty purchase for Berserker's paws. He whimpered at the treatment I accorded him but seemed to realize that in adopting me as master he had acquired an obligation to carry out my orders. In a moment he had swung his heavy forequarters round and smashed the glass panes of the window in.
I was leaping up to catch the windowsill with both my hands just as the wolf fell back. As we passed I saw the red cuts on his muzzle and the small gleam from a bit of broken glass that had stuck in his fur. I meant to tend his wounds, who had served me faithfully, but I would see to Lucy first. I will be human, I will be, I kept repeating to myself.
I crouched on the sill again, my face framed in the broken-edged aperture of glass. "Lucy!" I called in, quietly but fiercely, using mind as well as voice.
On a carpet littered with broken glass and garlic flowers Lucy stirred and sat up slowly, not seeming to realize that she was half entangled with her mother's corpse.
"What… who…?"
"Lucy, your Viking is here to aid you. Call me to come in. Call me to come to you."
Her eyes lifted slowly, puzzledly, to behold my face. Now belowstairs I could hear some of the housemaids stirring; no doubt they had been awakened by the crash of glass. Outside, the wolf howled once again, this time in pain. Lucy raised a hand to try to put back the blond hair from her face, but she was too weak and the gesture failed halfway through.
"Lucy, my name is Vlad. Bid me to come in, quick."
"Oh. Come, then, Vlad. I feel so sick, I am afraid that I am going to die." Then, when I had lifted her in my arms, she made a gesture toward the still form remaining on the floor. "Mother?"
"Your mother is not suffering," I said, and put down Lucy on the bed. Then, before I could do or say anything more, a multitudinous shuffle of feet in the carpeted hall outside the bedroom door announced the arrival of the housemaids in a frightened group.
"Miss Lucy? Are you all right?"
"Answer carefully!" I whispered, gripping Lucy's arms. My eyes burned into hers, my voice commanded, and she seemed to regain a little of her strength.
"I am all right," she called out weakly, "for the moment."
"Is your mother in there, Miss Lucy? May we come in?"
I nodded.
"Come!" she called out, and the handle of the door began to turn; before it had completed its motion I was under Lucy's bed, stretched out at full length and ready to melt to mist or shrink to bat-form in an instant.
Eight bare girlish feet paraded into the room and round the carpet near my head, accompanied by dancing nightgown hems, outcries, and lamentations. Mrs. Westenra's body was lifted to the bed, the broken window marveled at, and horror expressed at the continued howling of the wolf outside. Injured-and thinking himself betrayed, for he went home before I could get out to tend his wounds-he had better cause to howl than they did, and he made less noise.
And there were those garlic flowers on the bedroom floor, now crushed almost into my very nostrils. Vlad, I asked myself, reviewing the situation as I lay beneath the bed; what is the world, the great breathing human world which you expect to join, going to make of all this?
Lucy sat exhaustedly in a chair whilst the maids were laying out her mother's corpse. But despite her weakness and illness she retained presence of mind enough to realize that a man was in danger of being found concealed in her boudoir, a state of affairs less tolerable than death. And she retained the wit to do something about it. I saw her suddenly get up and leave the room, and heard her soft feet descend the stairs, whilst the maids remained gathered round the bed with the dead woman on it and the live vampire out of sight beneath. The maids did not note their young mistress's departure or her quiet return a minute later. During this minute I heard, faint but distinct, the sound of a brief trickle of liquid being poured somewhere downstairs.
Lucy was now standing upright, with an effort, just inside her bedroom door. "All of you," she commanded, having to raise her voice slightly to cut through the maids' continuing babble, "go down to the dining room and take each a glass of wine. Take only the sherry, mind. Then come back when I call."
There was no problem in obtaining prompt obedience to such an order. In a moment the whole moaning and cooing herd of them was gone, and Lucy had closed the door behind them and locked it. I wriggled out from concealment in a trice and found her once more on the point of swooning. She would have thrown herself upon the bed already but that her mother's clay lay there. I put her down there anyway, after moving the old lady next to the wall.