Amazon's Dracula

By Richard Stoker

Early in the story, Dr. Drake (Dracula) and his three former brides, operate a night only dental surgery in a poor district of Los Angeles. They prefer down-and-out patients who won’t be missed if they disappear.

They take and analyse blood samples from their patients, looking for diseased blood which they collect and store in approp

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stratton Press
• Release date: May 30, 2019
• ISBN: 9781643455600

Book preview

Foreword

We’re living in a world that is vastly different to that which existed when the original Dracula novel was first published in 1897. Women are now rightly playing much more proactive roles, including heads of countries and large corporations and are sports champions.

Regularly in news broadcasts, we hear of the ecological importance of rain forests. We’ve also heard that some news media releases/broadcasts may be fake.

Author Richard William Stoker gave up on the mental health industry when many years ago, he started a university course in psychology and was taught that women aren’t as smart as men because their brains are generally smaller. At that time, he had a girlfriend whose head was much smaller than his own but whose IQ was much higher, even though his own IQ is above average. Additionally, as an adult, the author could not accept the standard religious teachings of his childhood, he could not unreservedly accept Darwinian-type theories.

He wanted to bring the above elements together in a fiction novel that was relevant to this day and age and found the Dracula concept to be the perfect vehicle.

In order to get the details of the locations reasonably accurate, the author visited Los Angeles and Las Vegas and traveled by bus from Venezuela, down through Brazil, and into Argentina.

Introduction

The notion as to which historical figure, if any, was used by Bram Stoker as the original model for his fictional character Count Dracula has never been adequately resolved for some fans. Some argue it was his boss at London’s Lyceum Theater while others show cause why it was a composite of the landlord class during Ireland’s potato famine.

Sean Robert Curran, however, the expert in Celtic history and folklore who lectured at the University of Ulster, stated that Dracula was probably based on the fifth-century Celtic chieftain Abhartach from Derry, who drank tainted blood and subsequently died. According to Dr. Curran, Abhartach supposedly rose from his grave as an undead and demanded bowls of blood from his subjects. The word for tainted blood in Gaelic is droch’fhoula pronounced droc’-ola (Agence France-Presse).

Since at a young age, Bram’s mother introduced him to Irish folklore, and later he became a student of history, there’s every chance he would have known about Abhartach.

Whoever the original model was, it is later explained in Bram’s novel when, in the second entry in Mina Harker’s journal of September 30, Van Helsing is quoted thus: I shall then make it known to you something of the history of this man…I have asked my friend Arminius of Buda-Pesth University, to make his record.

The reply Van Helsing received from Arminius, as recorded in Mina Harker’s journal, was he must indeed, have been that voivode (military ruler) Dracula…for centuries after he was spoken of as the cleverest and the most cunning, as well as the bravest of the sons of the ‘land beyond the forest’ (Tran(s)-sylvania). The Draculas’ were, says Arminius, a great and noble race.

Historically, this fits the bloodthirsty Vlad III Tepes (one of the meanings of tepes was impaler) a.k.a. Vladislaus Dracula (or to be patronymically correct, Drăculeşti), who in Eastern Europe was a knight and who, following on from his father, was a member of the Sacred Order of the Dragon.

The word drac in fifteenth-century Romania had two meanings: one was dragon and the other was devil. Some suggest that Stoker’s Dracula refers to the devil. They also assert that he was modeled off the Tepes Drăculeşti family. They can’t have it both ways. This prominent dynasty fought under the Christian banner of a Sacred Order. No such order would have tolerated a name that meant devil. It follows therefore that the Tepes family surname of Drăculeşti meant dragon and never devil.

The definite article ul when added to Drac, of course, gives Dracul. Vlad III’s father was known as Vlad II Dracul, which interprets as Vlad II the Dragon. The suffix ea, following on from the definite article, indicates the son of. So Vlad III Draculea or the shortened version Dracula signifies the Son of Vlad II the Dragon. Vlad II may have used the suffix ea or a on the end of Dracul, but the author had never seen it written so. In the days of Vlad I, the full version Drăculeşti was probably used exclusively, but the point has been too moot for the author to pursue to its end.

The word dragon goes back through Latin to the Greek word Draco. Draco was the name of a bloodthirsty lawmaker from whence the reference to Draconian laws emanates.

Meanwhile, back from the ranch—or should the author say aiOpeov (Greek atrium), the word dragoon, which means an elite military unit, is from the Old French word dragon, which traces back as above.

Bram, whose great-grandfather Richard was a member of the Green Horse Dragoons, traveled from Newcastle upon Tyne with Prince William III of Orange to Dublin. William III (William Henry) was and sometimes still is referred to as King Billy, and the interrogative/accusative phrase/question can occasionally still be heard: Who do you think you are, King Billy? Richard had one son William, and so from the Newcastle clan, a family branch was established in Ireland.

In his formative years, Bram was cared for to a large degree by his uncle William, who was a medical doctor with a penchant for phlebotomy (bloodletting). So the dots can be joined back from Bram to his uncle Bill the Bleeder, through his great-granddaddy Ricky of King Billy’s Green Horse Dragoons, to the Sacred Order of the Dragon wherein we find the voivode, Prince Vlad the Impaler, and thus the final and probably original model for the bloodthirsty bad guy.

It’s not uncommon for novelists to look to their milieu to interweave names, professions, and interests; and there’s no doubt that in Dracula, Bram not only did this when seeking his main characters but also his supporting characters.

The name Stoker is a Dutch name. The name Van Helsing is a Dutch name, and his domicile address in the novel is Amsterdam. The name Mina (Wilhelmina) was the name of the Queen of the Netherlands at the time Stoker wrote Dracula. It’s also the feminine form of Wilhelm and an abbreviation of the equally feminine Williamina. Bram is short for Abraham. Bram’s father’s Christian name was Abraham, and Van Helsing’s Christian name is Abraham. The name Godalming traces back from the town in Surrey to the geographical location in Lower Saxony, which shares a border with the Netherlands; King Billy was born in the Netherlands.

Professor Arminius was a real person and a guest at the Beefsteak Room (see later reference). One of Stoker’s brothers was named Thomas. In Bram’s novel, the name of the zookeeper who cared for the wolves at London Zoo is named Thomas.

Three of Bram’s brothers were medical doctors as was his uncle William, and they all seem to have had their specialties. In Dracula, Dr. Seward is a medical doctor, and his specialty is the mind, and Professor Van Helsing is a lecturer in medicine and a medical researcher, as well as Dr. Seward’s mentor.

Bram was a barrister. Again, in the novel in addition to his medical qualifications, Abraham Van Helsing is a solicitor (see Dracula, ch. 13, Dr. Seward’s Diary); and Bram’s character Harker is a solicitor. Harker was the name of the artist who painted scenery for Bram at the Lyceum Theatre. Linguistically speaking, the names Harker and Stoker are not that far removed, but obviously, Bram couldn’t use his own surname as one of his novel’s characters and so he stayed close to home when it came to choosing the names of his characters and, one might venture, even themes.

Bram for a while was a journalist (drama critic) with a Dublin newspaper. The Dracula novel was written in journalistic style with entries chronologically recorded and dated as a series of journal or diary entries, notes, telegrams, letters, and quotes from newspaper cuttings, as presented by some of the main characters.

Notwithstanding that Bram missed several of his early school years through what was thought might have been asthma (from which the author has lifelong suffered), he made up for lost time by obtaining master’s degrees in both science and arts and later another in pure mathematics, an honors degree in history, as well as (according to the Times newspaper, April 1912), honors in composition and oratory; and as previously stated, he was also a barrister.

In addition to his academic studies, while at college, Bram found time to participate in rugby, rowing, and swimming and won weight lifting and athletic contests and became an accomplished ballroom dancer as well. His university named him Overall Athletics Champion.

Stoker was an avid reader of anything and everything he could get his hands on. He was also a persuasive orator within a parliamentary debating group and invited to join the Philosophical Society, whose members included the distinguished medical eye-and-ear specialist, Sir William Wilde (Oscar’s daddy). Against considerable intelligentsia, Bram rose to become its president. One of the passionate oratory subjects for which he argued in the affirmative was the necessity for political honesty. He was also a member of and the auditor of the esteemed College Historical Society.

Bram’s mother was a cutting-edge social reformer and considered to be ahead of her time and naturally had an enduring influence upon him. One of his brothers became the president of the Royal College of Surgeons and duly received a knighthood. Bram was a confidant of Prime Minister William Gladstone who consulted him (Bram) on such matters of state as the Irish question. Also, for a while, Bram was the financial adviser of the great American painter, James Whistler.

Stoker initially followed his father into the civil service and could have remained there enjoying a comfortable and conventional lifestyle while climbing the government career ladder. Prima facie evidence suggests that had he continued this safe and conservative career path at Dublin Castle, he would have gone far.

In lieu of remaining a government employee, he chose the more spiritually uplifting but less financially secure road and followed his aesthetic impulses into the unstable industry of show business. This was at a time when errors of life choices could not be fixed by a simple click of the Undo button. Already married, this change of direction took courage.

His cousin Dacre also did this when in peace time, he could have remained secure in his government job as an officer of the Royal Navy, which after WWI had no enemies to battle, but Dacre also chose the theater.

Before leaving the civil service, Bram wrote up the Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions into a 248-page manual so as to make the job easier for those who followed. Prior to that, no such guidelines had existed.

Being an inquiring spirit, Bram even took the occasional excursion outside of the established religion into which he was born, an act of individuality that people in intransigent societies seldom contemplate. Even in today’s more liberally oriented environment on this small planet, it would be unthinkable for many people to look outside the religion into which they were born or think of it as anything but the only true and/or senior one, even if they dislike and/or disagree with their own families about most other things.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, or should the author say British Empire, during its heyday, Bram was the de facto manager of one of London’s premier theatrical/social venues: the Lyceum Theater. In its famous Beefsteak Room, he played host to kings, princes, and peoples (to turn a marine insurance phrase from that era). While managing the Lyceum, Bram modernized theater administrative procedures in several areas, many of which were copied and are used by theaters around the world today.

Even before his Lyceum years, Bram partook of stage acting and improved his understanding of the many technical skills necessary to present live performances. This was in the days when gaslight was the most popular form of illumination and before the general use of microphones and other burgeoning electrical aids to theatrical productions.

Stoker’s personal connections apart from those already mentioned included many of the great playwrights, novelists, poets, actors, and literary giants of the day on both sides of the Atlantic, including the luminous Mark Twain, as well as those who emanated from Ireland’s famed Trinity College, which was his own alma mater.

The above collective summary seems to indicate that Stoker had many interests and was in the unique position of being at the literary, scientific, legal, philosophical, medical, technological, sociological, political, theatrical, sporting, and intellectual cutting edge of modern living as it was back then. This certainly came through in Dracula, if not in others of his eighteen published works.

In Dracula, Stoker introduced the wider world to typewriters, shorthand note-taking, wax voice-recording cylinders, a medically supervised blood transfusion technique, trephine (a neurosurgical procedure), psychotherapy, and associated subjects including hypnotism. Since then, these have advanced greatly with the possible exceptions of psychotherapy and associated subjects.

In that, the post–Jack the Ripper era, Bram was a gentle giant; and if he felt disposed to dramatize having been cared for by a phlebotomist, he would not have done so by spilling blood himself but as a drama critic, theater manager, actor, and author, portraying this in literary form.

There have been countless novels, plays, films, comic strips, cartoons, ballets, operas, animations, imitations, interpretations, children and adult comedy and drama television series, rock music groups, clubs, and competitions in many languages that are based on Stoker’s original Dracula or corruptions thereof. The number of Internet sites that mentioned Bram’s Dracula extends into the millions.

One can also purchase clothing, makeup kits with or without fake blood, dolls, games, and puzzles etc., based on the Dracula character. Especially at Christmas (Christ + mas) and the author doubts that many parents have placed much significance to the purchase of Antichrist facsimiles for their children, although they are only copies of a fictional character.

Of the 118 species of Dracula orchids, there’s one with large black cloak-like leaves that encompass a white center, known as Dracula vampira.

Introduced in 1939, the silhouette of the Batman costume and the Bat Signal reflected high in the sky above Gotham City are both very much like the silhouette image behind the opening credits of the Bela Lugosi film Dracula, released eight years earlier in 1931.

When the author’s son was very young, one of his favorite characters was Count von Count, the Muppet from Sesame Street. Count von Count speaks English with an Eastern European accent, and his visual appearance appears to be modeled on Bela Lugosi’s 1931 film of Dracula. Likewise was Grandpa Munster in the smash-hit television series The Munsters, right down to the white bow tie and star-shaped medallion, handing around the neck of Lugosi’s Dracula.

The author has even seen a character who looks a lot like Bela Lugosi’s 1931 Count Dracula character rise from a coffin to advertise torch batteries. The parallel is no doubt to help people find their way in the dark, as nocturnal creatures such as bats do.

On Queensland’s exotic Gold Coast and again in Melbourne, Australia, there are two excellent nightspots, both of which have won tourism awards, both named Dracula’s Cabaret Restaurant.

Additionally, the author has attended masquerade balls where, to gain access, guests must present themselves as characters from the Dracula novel. And who on this planet today doesn’t instantly recognize the vampire teeth made most famous by the late Sir Christopher Lee’s superb interpretation of Stoker’s Dracula?

The author doubts that Bram’s direct heirs ever received much by way of royalties for any of the above although in today’s merchandising environment, this might be vastly different.

Let’s not forget the 1922 German film Nosferatu, which, after several years of international court battles for plagiarism at the instigation of Stoker’s widow Florence (who before marrying Bram had been engaged to Oscar Wilde), an unsatisfactory outcome resulted. Also, early Hollywood film studios made shiploads of money from Dracula and similar-type movies and avoided paying royalties to Florence due to the exploitation of a then weakness in the international copyright laws.

This short century alone, there have been copious numbers of books, television shows and episodes, and feature films in many languages that make direct reference to either Dracula, Mina Harker, Van Helsing, Vlad the Impaler, vampires, etc., or concepts thereof; and I’m sure they were and are all well patronized.

Additionally, the author has read several novels in the last couple of decades that have had their chapters chronologically exposed in a similar manner as arranged by Bram, in his original publication of Dracula in 1897. The mind boggles at the continuity of it all.

The Dracula novel and the characters therein, as well as other aspects of Bram’s best-known work, may well be the most copied if not outright plagiarized of all time in this or any other age, on this or any other planet.

Gothic vampire tales, of course, predate Stoker considerably, but he popularized the concept beyond anything that had gone before it and gave the genre a slingshot into the twentieth century.

Vampires (I’m using the word here as a singular proper noun) has evolved into an entirely separate genre as distinct from Gothic or other horror, and there’ve been more vampire books and movies, etc., made than all other horror combined. And it all started with Bram’s Dracula.

Indeed, if not for Stoker, Vladislaus III Tepes may have remained little known outside of Eastern Europe. Although the author hasn’t visited there yet, he’s advised that the Carpathian Mountain range and the Arges River have become popular tourist destinations, which feature regular tours to two Dracula castles and which generate millions of dollars of overseas income. It seems that that part of the world has benefited greatly from Bram’s literary creation, which the local inhabitants, the author is informed, readily acknowledges and warmly welcomes tourists.

In his declining years when Oscar Wilde lived in France, Bram helped him out financially on the occasions when he (Bram) reportedly visited a lady friend across the channel. By not following the crowd and shunning Oscar in a frenzy of homophobia (although this concept had not been articulated back then), Stoker showed himself to be a hundred years ahead of the game.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch—or should the author say bat cave—Stoker’s best-known work is a well-written multilayered love story, a horror story, a religious story, a chase story, an erotic tale, and a good-versus-evil drama that contains philosophic insights and paranormal concepts and is generally considered to be a genuine piece of high-quality literature, if not a magnum opus.

In the early part of the 1990s, the accomplished television and feature film writer James V. Hart complemented the original Dracula novel by writing a screenplay, which gave it what could be called its true beginning and thus added depth to the story as a whole.

It commences in Eastern Europe in the fifteenth century, at the time when Vlad the lad was historically doing his thing and explicates how Drac baby became transformed from a good guy into an Antichrist. The story then continues through to the late Victorian era in which Stoker’s work is set, and they both conclude there.

Hart’s screenplay was superbly brought to the big screen by the multi-award-winning director Francis Ford Coppola, and the author of this volume unreservedly endorses this film.

Other versions are undeniably good, but the original novel and the Coppola-Hart feature film, along with the 2009 novel Dracula the Un-Dead, cowritten by the Canadian Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt, are surely the best-telling of the tale at this time of writing.

The original novel was written in the nineteenth century and, although complete in itself, could be said to comprise the middle section of a trilogy. The Coppola/Hart film was created in the twentieth century (there’s also a novel of the movie, cowritten by Jim Hart and Fred Saberhagen and which contains photographs from the movie) and could be said to comprise the true beginning and middle sections of a trilogy.

Notwithstanding that this true beginning takes only about five and a half minutes of screen time, it’s not only an excellent hook but also germane to the whole Coppola-Hart movie since without it, the postclimax would be considerably reduced in impact and significance.

The author’s effort here in the twenty-first century has been to extend the story line past the Victorian era into the moods, mores, and conditions of our present global village while remaining true to the original concept. This is to return Dracula in contemporary times, back from being an Antichrist into a good guy but not as has been done previously.

Meanwhile, back from the ranch, or should the author say medieval castle, as a further tribute to Bram and as a legacy to his faith in the human spirit, it should be noted that at the end of most novels, the bad guy is thoroughly defeated without a single word of compassion while in Dracula, the bad guy as well as the good guys all go out winning when in Mina Harker’s journal of November 6, she wrote, I shall be glad as long as I live that even in that moment of final dissolution, there was in the face a look of peace, such as I never could have imagined might have rested there.

The Coppola-Hart film artfully and tastefully portrays this through metamorphic means.

Stoker’s novel has now traversed the borders of three centuries, and its longevity appears to be assured for some time to come. With this current version, the author hopes to have provided you with some good-fun entertainment as well as directing your attention to the destruction of the rain forests and, if you dare, to maybe question some of our sacred cows.

Prologue

Out of the darkness, they came in numbers that would confound a supercomputer. Out of extreme blackness at Formula One speed and suddenly into the glaring sunlight, which fazed them not in the least, as they infinitely trusted the clicking echo sounders located in their beaks, which, if synthesized, would render the present generation of stealth bombers obsolete.

Directly outside the mouth of their ancestral cave, predator birds and springing snakes hungrily awaited. This too fazed them not in the least as the comparatively small number that would be taken in this manner would be of no final consequence.

Once outside, they spiraled skyward through a funnel of green as the reverberations of their beating wings shook the very soil beneath the foliage and sent monkeys screeching and leaping from tree to tree in blind confusion and other mobile life-forms scurrying for the safety of their abodes.

More and more of the flying missiles exited their communal homes and stacked higher and higher into a solid pulsating mass, columned some two miles above the canopy of the Mexican jungle.

When they were all out and assembled in this formation, they climbed even higher and took bearings somewhat to the north. They then moved off as a single disciplined throbbing dark cloud on their 1,100-odd-mile journey to the American states of Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas.

Only the females would return.

1

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, thus spake God unto Moses.

Elizabeth, Mina, was now one with her husband, Jonathan Harker. The Ghost, the Soul, the Spirit that in life had been known as Count Dracula, knew that he, after having been forgiven his trespasses as a result of the brave and loving actions of Mina in concert with her brave companions, had so quickly offended once again, against a sacred commandment.

Looking down from high above the tallest battlement of Castle Draculea, the very tower from which his bride had thrown herself some four hundred years earlier, the Prince of Darkness took stock. He reflected that his Elizabetta, grief stricken, not willing to be parted from her prince even by death, committed the sin for which their church granted no forgiveness.

The warrior prince, a royal knight in the Sacred Order of the Dragon, with his sword unsheathed, had performed his duty unswervingly and unquestioningly. He’d given his all in defense of his homeland, his church.

The deception of a message attached to an arrow, shot truly by the strong arm of a Turkish bowman into the high private chambers of Princess Elizabetta in Castle Draculea, bore false witness to her beloved’s death. Back then, the count’s love for his church almost rivaled the love for his bride.

Elizabetta’s body smashed on the rocks of the river below the castle wall, condemned to unconsecrated earth. His confusion, his church, his overpowering all-consuming instantaneous hate. It guided his hand. It foreshadowed his future. It begat his destruction.

All of these things he knew as he looked down from high, through the thick stone walls and into the chapel with its imposing wooden cross, neglected for centuries. Still plainly visible at its epicenter like a trademark to evil, the deep scar of his sword attack inflicted, following the discovery of Elizabetta’s treatment by their church.

The scar now returned as a result of the breaking of a sacred commandment, as if to defy all that is holy in a bid to preserve a permanent record of his foul deed.

Now in the reign of Her Royal Highness Queen Victoria of England, on the steps below the mighty cross lies Dracula’s soulless body. The final assault having been delivered by Mina—his Elizabetta. He knew she did it out of love so as to secure his salvation that he may once again be at peace with his god. But there she is now, outside the chapel walls, clinging to her husband.

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife. He had offended again.

The warrior prince—his peace, his salvation—where was it?

The blood is the life...

These words reverberated through the darkening clouds as he relived that moment so long ago. His hatred again swelled toward all but one below. And it shall be mine.

He began to hurt. It was the hurt pride of defeat in battle. It was the emotional hurt of losing his Elizabetta yet again, and yes, the physical hurt of both Jonathan’s kukri knife and Quincey’s bowie knife. It was the accumulated hurt of eons of bitterness and misery, all built into one massive overpowering all-consuming unconquerable mountain of physical and mental pain.

I shall rise from my own death to avenge hers with all the powers of darkness. These words came to him from somewhere out of the past.

He thought about summonsing the forces of nature to smite them. But no. Elizabetta was among them. There would be another time.

The blood is the life…

The clouds surged angrily. Professor Abraham Van Helsing and Arthur Holmwood (Lord Godalming) glanced fearfully at the restless sky and then at each other. It isn’t over, is it, Professor?

Van Helsing looked away toward Jonathan and Mina, who, as the darkness fell, were dropping stones over the precipice of the sheer cliff to the lee of Castle Draculea, counting the seconds and trying to glimpse and hear the splashes in the river far below. The river into which they’d both plunged from a great height, but now there they were laughing, experiencing relief, lost in each other.

It is for now, Van Helsing asserted sternly as he turned toward Dr. Jack Seward, who, having set right the body of poor Quincey P. Morris, was now recovering a shovel from among the gypsies’ implements and starting to dig a crude grave in a patch of exposed soil where the cobblestones had been disturbed but still within the outer wall. It was all he could do under these trying circumstances.

Mina and Jonathan returned hand in hand from above the sheer cliff. The scar on Mina’s forehead, inflicted unintentionally by Van Helsing when he applied a sacred wafer so as to protect her from the evil influences of both Dracula and his brides, had now disappeared.

Jonathan set about to recover the horse-drawn wagon that had been deserted by the few surviving gypsy horsemen from when they’d run off after surviving the crusader’s attack, as well as their own frightened steeds, which he tethered to the rear of the wagon. Mina noted that his white hair had returned to its natural silky blackness as that of the young man he’d been before the living nightmare of his encounter with the Master of the Undead.

The children of the forest whose murderous howls even now ringed the darkening castle walls gave notice that they instinctively knew that their benefactor walked among them no more.

Jonathan walked the wagon to the rear of the castle where he located the stables. Still in harness, he fed and watered the horses then loaded extra feed into the center of the wagon for the return journey. This done, he led them back to the front courtyard.

Mina gathered strewn equipment, which she thought might be of use during the long and arduous trip back through Eastern then Western Europe to their final destination, or at least to the railhead where they hoped that Godalming’s hired railroad carriages still awaited. She loaded the assorted items onto the wagon.

Van Helsing, his mission completed and carrying one of Quincey’s Winchester rifles for protection, dragged his worn and weakened body back to his and Mina’s previous night’s campsite outside the safety of the once-great walls. He needed a moment of private reflection. How he had been tempted. How he almost weakened. How close it had been.

Mina, who, watching him go and feeling more than a little embarrassed and ashamed, recalled the part she’d played in the previous night’s activities, was relieved when he returned with the remains of their frozen stew, tea, brandy, and a lantern.

Somewhat protected from the weather under a lean-to in a corner of the courtyard by the castle’s ever-crumbling wall, Mina found some dry wood and raised a fire and, after heating the stew, insisted they all eat.

So with spirits heightened and the realization that after eight grueling months their ordeal was finally over, the friends consumed a much-needed, but in deference to Quincey, subdued meal. The men were relieved to discover that Mina could once again eat proper food.

Replenished and in the lantern’s glow, they loaded the wagon with the remaining equipment and gathered around the makeshift gravesite.

A chilled Carpathian wind strenuously objected to the proceedings and harbingered a grueling journey ahead. Van Helsing’s voice was drowned as the raging wind elevated itself even as the words left his lips, as he said a rude prayer to the courage of their fallen comrade. The night’s fury failed to detract from the reverence of the occasion as the group, welded together by their holy mission, was of one mind.

Amen! they mouthed together when the prayer ended.

As they mounted the wagon, light snowflakes began to fall at an acute angle to cover the frozen ground. Dr. Seward cracked the whip, and the wagon moved slowly out through the great stone arch and away from the relative safety of the castle.

Van Helsing, now wearing his fur coat and fur hat, moved forward to sit next to Jack Seward, thereby leaving Mina and Jonathan settled on the bed of hay in the center of the wagon, holding tightly on to each other, truly as one.

Lord Godalming sat riding shotgun at the rear and, using a Winchester, shot a wolf as it gamely approached ahead of the pack. One of the startled horses that was tethered to the rear of the wagon broke free and bolted into the blackening domain of a hundred pairs of vengeful eyes.

In the darkness, the group could only listen in horror as the frightened animal ran blindly through the forest thicket, pursued by determined pack hunters, who in their own environment easily outflanked and toyed with their prey for a while, savored the moment as they easily paced along both sides. Once they had their victim completely surrounded and disoriented, the wolf pack viciously attacked from all directions at once.

The terror-filled whinnying, mingled with bloodlust growls, quickly diminished and was replaced by howls of victory as the hunters tore at and consumed the ragged meat, long before the struggling animal was dead.

The cubs caught up to the main pack and joined in the spirit of the proceedings by tussling over the warm offal, including the still-beating heart, and then with thin voices, mimicked the howls of their elders as the noble steed’s scarlet syrup spread over the thin carpet of white snow, mingling with patches of brown muddy earth and occasional tufts of green grass.

The children of the night. Vengeance was theirs.

No one looked back, each with their private thoughts of the recent events and anticipated future. They had faced and conquered a powerful evil and were eager to once again be among the crowded streets of mighty London—to be in the midst of the whirl and rush of its humanity, to permeate its life.

From the night sky, Dracula became aware that he was not alone. From the center of a stratocumulus came the resentful discourse of his three castle companions. With remorse, they looked down upon their own headless bodies that lay grotesquely in their caskets.

They shifted their attention to their severed heads, which at first light that morning, Van Helsing had flung over the castle wall. Now sunk to the bottom of the river and a mile downstream, they bumped along, coaxed by the flow of the icy waters, their hair occasionally snagging on rocks and sunken branches, then freeing with the current while the open eyes and waterlogged bloated flesh was being pecked at by darting trout and bass.

Look what you have brought us to, O mighty one! What say you now?

Be very careful, the count warned.

What can you do, O mighty one! You without form or gender are but one while we are three! they challenged.

An instant of unbridled fury distracted what little moonlight was visible through the snow clouds, as the warrior prince hurled the three luckless souls onto a distant, barren rim star in a remote outer galaxy. Stay there until I beckon your return! he commanded.

It lasted less than a single frame of high-speed film. The travelers below felt rather than saw it and peered as one, questioningly, toward the heavens. Jack Seward cracked the whip, and the frightened steeds needed no further encouragement to pick up the pace.

Drifting higher for a final view of the domain over which he had once ruled, Count Dracula lamented the events of centuries past. For more than four hundred years, he’d been its master and protector.

Even before that, his proud bloodline had guarded its borders, but now, those majestic mountains, the distant forests, the unique fragile flowers, the winding pristine rivers ever replenished by melting snow, Castle Draculea itself and his howling children of the night now lay undefended and at the mercy of scurrilous gypsies or worse—twentieth-century governments.

Farther away in a fleeting cirrocumulus, the count sensed yet another presence. Was it the essence of that young foreigner just mourned and buried below? What manner of being is he? He, who fought and died at the side of the man with whom he competed and lost for the hand of his true love, Lucy.

He, with his strange clothing and Western boots. He, whose lonely grave would never be tended by his own family. He, who while mortally wounded was still deft enough with his American steel to inflict a telling wound upon the person of the mighty Prince of Warriors.

He, from the New World.

2

Having vindicated himself in battle against a formidable foe and thereby having supported not in a small way his chosen friends in their just campaign, Quincey P. Morris was not at all unhappy. To the contrary, he was satisfied with the final result as he watched and waited as his mortal remains were dealt with, with respect and dignity.

For a while, he was mystified as to why they didn’t respond when he wished them well. Then he realized as he looked down that this time, Mina and Jonathan in unison glanced skyward and then at each other but said nothing. Did they perhaps? Could they perhaps?

His travel ambitions fulfilled and with no particular reason to linger further, in leisurely Texan style, Quincey moseyed across the heavens, farther eastward through the steppes of Central Asia, marveling at the complex tapestry of cultures, customs, religions, foods, and languages before turning southeast toward the Americas and his beloved Lone Star State.

Unknown to Quincey, following higher up and at a safe distance behind and curious about the inhabitants of the new world, stealthed the Prince of Darkness. Upon reaching the coast of Northern California, Quincey set a course straight for Texas. No more detours, he’d seen enough of the world for the time being. He was home.

Dracula, still hurting and now tiring, lost interest in the final destination of his guide. He reached the northern coast of California and followed it south for a while and then entered a hillside for a well-earned long rest.

Quincey P. Morris relaxed in familiar surroundings and was awestruck anew at the untamed beauty of the vast Llano Estacado grassland plains of the West Texas panhandle.

Just for fun, he stampeded a majestic herd of bison, which he spotted grazing in a river basin. He scared the catfish bathing in the Colorado River in Central Texas and, farther south, played tag with the gulls as they rode the breeze above the Gulf of Mexico.

Just once more, he longed to be able to savor a longhorn steak, cooked on the old grill out back of the bunkhouse behind the family ranch while listening to the outrageous tales of travel and adventure as told by the itinerant workers. Come to think of it, his tale was pretty outrageous. Perhaps it was just as well that he considered he had little means by which to communicate it.

In due course, a letter arrived at the family ranch. It was written on fine English parchment, bearing the crest of a nobleman. His family speculated that it concerned Quincey. Urged on by her spinster sister Mabel and Juanita the cook, how hard it was for his mother to resist opening it, but it was specifically addressed to Mr. P. Morris Sr.

Maybe he biin to de palace an’ miit Quiin Vitόria, Juanita speculated.

Enough of that. Get back to work. Mabel shooed Juanita back into the kitchen.

Quincey watched from above with dread, as later that evening, all the occupants of the household had returned from their day’s toil and were seated at the elegant Chippendale dining room table, with its delicately edged rococo ornamentation visible through the exquisitely crocheted Southern tablecloth.

His parents sat at either end. His older brother, Earl Gordon, and younger sister, Ethel May, sat next to each other on one side. Mabel sat on the opposite side next to Juanita, who always dined with the family. Mabel and Juanita were in their usual places closest to the kitchen.

Traditionally, social talk did not begin until dessert was served. Up until then, the diners tried to disguise from each other their impatience concerning the contents of the letter. They devoured the main course in quick time, interrupted only by the occasional pass the ketchup please.

Juanita hurriedly served the blueberry pie. With high expectations, Quincey’s proud father, a man among men and not given to emotional displays, as casually as possible with fumbling big hands more used to branding cattle, opened the fragile envelope and, so as to distract attention from his shaking hands, firmly enunciated that Quincey should be at home where he belongs, working the ranch with his brother and the cowhands, instead of gallivanting around Europe, ingratiating himself like some stagedoor dandy to the lords and ladies of noble lineage.

Privately, he was proud of Quincey for having done so and hoped someday to make the trip himself and be presented at court by Quincey to the odd duke, earl, or king or whoever and introduced with his own title as the cattle baron from Texas. Then while in Europe, to follow up his own Morris genealogical tree.

He dramatized donning his reading glasses but nevertheless needed to hold the letter at arm’s length. It was short and to the point, and with his lyrical and authoritative Texas drawl, he read its contents to his waiting audience:

Mr. Q. P. Morris Snr.

Dear Sir,

It is with deep regret that I must inform you of the untimely death of your son Quincey.

England and the Continent were confronted by a dark evil that you will not read about in the newspapers.

By circumstance, a group of us could not shirk our duty to meet this evil head-on and do battle until the final victory. Your son played no small part in this victory. We who survived saw firsthand the courageous spirit that is making America a great nation.

Please be assured that Quincey received a dignified Christian burial. He will always be with us in our hearts.

Yours respectfully,

Lord Arthur Godalming

As Quincey watched from high, the stunned silence was unbearable as all sat with heads bowed. It was finally broken by Ethel May, whose silent sobbing quickly transformed into uncontrolled crying and pounding of the table until she was led away by Juanita.

Quincey’s mother said nothing. She just stared at her plate with its untouched blueberry pie. At times like this, it was usually Mabel who could be strong and take charge, but on this occasion, she was at a complete loss and remained silent. She feared to say a word lest her voice should break.

For the first time, Quincey regretted having become involved. He moved from one to the other, trying desperately to give a sign that he was all right. None responded.

The grandfather clock in the hall had not struck for many years, not since Quincey and Earl had crashed against it while fighting when they were not yet teenagers. Now it struck eight times, which was the hour of the evening. It gave them all quite a start, but Earl, who didn’t generally waste words, calmly asserted, He’s with us now—he’s okay.

The mood lightened slightly as they furtively glanced from the clock to each other and, although skeptical, desperately wanted to believe Earl.

Mr. Morris Sr. knew he must say something, and so he took a deep breath and mouthed, Damned foreigners! He then addressed his remaining son. Earl, tomorrow, take one of the hands and round up the strays that have wandered out onto the open range through the northwestern pasture and then mend the boundary fence.

Then to his wife, Mother, it’s best you let everyone know and contact the preacher to arrange a memorial service.

On the following morning in the hour before sunup, as the ranch stirred to begin its day’s activities, Mr. Morris Sr. stole down the stairs, following the muted sounds in the hallway.

Well? he demanded of Earl who was examining the inner workings of the grandfather clock.

Still damaged beyond repair—it couldn’t possibly have struck of its own accord.

Over the next few weeks, Quincey watched helplessly as his family and friends grieved. He again tried desperately, but in vain, to communicate to them, to tell them he was fine, that he was happy. Time now had a different meaning as he watched for a full year and remained in limbo.

On the verge of the twentieth century, the pace was picking up. Texas was changing fast. Oil was becoming the coin of conversation. Although the great Spindletop field had not yet been discovered, it or fields like it were confidently predicted. Crude buildings and unrestrained dirt roads were springing up, crisscrossing each other in no apparent order on the open ranges surrounding the Morris spread.

Quincey wished to not lose the fast-fading memory of his last adventure. Europe had had an immense effect upon him. Deep down, he came to realize that as an adventurous spirit, he was no more interested in raising oil from under the ground than he had been in raising cattle above it, even though he’d been an excellent cattleman.

Twelve months to the day of his final encounter with the Prince of Darkness, from high among the silvery clouds, Quincey beheld a final view of the family ranch. His family had recovered somewhat from the shock of that letter from Lord Godalming, as they prepared for an anniversary memorial service to be held in his memory and spoke of him with lessened pain.

Quincey said a silent farewell and was instantly in England: Denn die Todten reiten schnell (For the Dead travel fast). It was the very day upon which the Harkers had born unto them a son whom they named Quincey.

A few short years passed, and an offer was made by a large London law firm to buy out the Exeter law office of Hawkins and Harker. Out of deference to their benefactor who’d bequeathed the business to them, Jonathan and Mina had retained the name of the late Mr. Hawkins as part of their firm’s title.

They had worked hard and prospered, taking on several new solicitors. From having started as Jonathan’s shorthand typist, Mina had become the office manager and now employed her very own stenographer. The principals deliberated for some weeks and finally, with the proviso that their existing staff be retained, decided that the offer was a good one and that they needed a sea change.

Shortly thereafter, the Harker family, comprising of Jonathan, his wife Wilhelmina, and their young son Quincey, booked passage on the maiden voyage of the steamship Luisitania.

The date was September 1907, and the ship was bound for Queenstown, New York. After touring around America for a bit, they settled in Chicago and opened the law firm of Harker and Associates. Mina obtained her law degree and was admitted to the American Bar.

Late one night in the Roaring Twenties, Jonathan, while walking home from work, was an innocent victim, killed in a firefight between two rival gangs outside a speakeasy. Mina lived only long enough to hand the business over to their son Quincey, who had only just graduated with his own law degree. She then died of a broken heart.

As a successful lawyer, Quincey Jr. dedicated himself fully to the business. He married late in life and had one son, Jonathan, named after his grandfather, but young Jonathan preferred to be called John. John grew up with a strong sense of social justice rather than merely that which was right and wrong according to the black and white of the law. He often didn’t agree with his father who argued from the point of law, whereas John argued from the heart. After a couple of years of college, he dropped out of law school and headed for the West Coast.

Dracula eventually emerged refreshed from his hillside slumber to confront a beautifully mild, sunny afternoon and a large sign near the top of a hill, written in English of all languages, he puzzled. Slowly, he recalled that he was no longer in Eastern Europe but had indeed traveled to the New World.

He marveled at the vast number, shape, and speed of horseless carriages, endless roadways ribboning off in all directions and tall buildings with glass walls, and quickly realized that some considerable time must have passed.

His next action was to recall his three former castle companions from their exile on that barren rim star in the remote outer galaxy to where he’d dispatched them, at this stage he couldn’t quite remember how long ago.

He again peered at the large sign written in English. It read, hollywood.

3

Dr. Vladislaus Drake: Doctor of Dental Surgery, Master of Science, Doctor of Philosophy, Fellow of the American Institute of Orthodontic Surgeons (Los Angeles Chapter), Managing Director of the South Central Dental Clinic for the Financially Disadvantaged, CEO of the Bel-Air–registered companies of Vladislaus Drake Dental Practitioner Ltd., Lance Laser Surgical Instruments Ltd., Vlad Advanced Dental Equipment Ltd., Vance (South America) Land & Investment Holdings Ltd., and author of published texts on the Fourteenth- and Fifteenth-Century Crusades, as well as Central and South American winged mammals, arose to deliver his acceptance speech upon being invested as the twenty-eighth president of

the americas dental hygienic awareness

foundation inc.

It was the culmination of an intense week of lobbying, entertaining, cajoling, and debating so as to win the voting support of the seven hundred and fifty convention delegates, who represented many dental practices and authoritative industry bodies throughout North, Central, and South America.

Throughout his campaign, Dr. Drake had attempted to befriend his fellow candidates in order to secure their primary votes where possible and then their preferential distribution votes should that become necessary. This demeaning choir was particularly distasteful.

After all, he mused, wasn’t he the obvious choice? Didn’t his bearing shine through? Was it perhaps the twenty-first-century drugs that prevented his fellow delegates from observing these things?

No matter. He had played their silly games and was now being invested into the prestigious position of their foundation’s top job, a position that opened many doors, permitted travel with entourage and equipment throughout the Americas without inviting undue suspicions, as well as desensitized customs officials. Additionally, it carried a large financial grant.

The vast majority of the attendees were fine, upstanding, dedicated professionals. Well-meaning and well-motivated and who displayed a genuine desire to improve the standard of dental health wherever possible. However, as in most industries and in most walks of life, for a small minority of attendees, the personification of their incoming leader was relatively unimportant at this triennial convention. Business would continue as usual, they supposed, and listening to a bunch of hopeful candidates expounding their own virtues seemed boring in the extreme.

Overall, the sojourn was fun as it should have been. The attendees liked the diversionary interlude from the daily grind of drilling incisors and injecting procaine hydrochloride (lignocaine), the replacement for novocaine but still belonging to the cocaine family.

Deep in the Nevada desert, they especially liked being pampered and entertained by the professional staff of one of the largest hotel complexes in the world, the incomparable

mgm grand – the city of entertainment.

The resort was proudly overlorded by the king of the jungle, the MGM lion standing all of seventy feet high from the sidewalk, the complex with its one-mile walk from east to west and again from north to south, its six-thousand-odd hotel rooms, over six acres of swimming pools and waterfalls, some sixteen excellent restaurants, superb shops, food courts, convention and business centers, plus much more. All this was set amid the electric excitement that visitors and locals alike recognized as the emotion called Las Vegas. And of course, as a side issue, the tax deductibility of this business convention was most acceptable.

The social aspect, however, was no more than a means to an end for Dr. Drake, who exacted his pleasures by other means. Seldom seem in the light of day, he avoided the brightness wherever possible and was occasionally spotted glancing longingly into dark alleyways, into which he occasionally allowed himself to be lured by unsavory characters whose bodies were found later in most puzzling states.

Dr. Drake, aged thirty-something, six feet five inches tall, slim build, straight back, sharp facial features defined by a long aquiline nose. His anemic complexion gave a false impression of physical weakness. Several LA street gangs could testify that this was not the case, if they ever recovered. Always a little overdressed for this modern age, his contemporaries considered him eccentric. His clothing would have been considered fashionable a little over a century ago. Some speculated him to be color-blind since he exclusively wore black and white. Some of his patients considered him to be cool.

Ever flanked by his three female employees—his receptionist, nurse, and bookkeeper, all of whom seemed to react instinctively to his moods and gestures as much as to his words the way animals do—he participated in most of the official functions and suffered through some of the social activities, so as to present his case for presidency.

Resistance to his persuasive manner was difficult, as he exuded an aura of mystical urgency to which the individually targeted delegate felt somehow privy. Ever aided by his three assistants whose sensuous bodies radiated erotic and dangerous delights, available perhaps to those who favored their votes upon the candidate from Bel-Air and South Central.

His stated platform was uncomplicated: The need for the foundation to salvage the teeth of, and dentally speaking, educate our impoverished Central and South America cousins, as well as some of our own socio-eco-disadvantaged North American citizens. His manner of expressing the same, however, indurating smile, the indefinably sinister undertone, were diametrically opposed to his honorable words.

For some attendees, the words were enough. To others, the combined effect that included the sensuality of his staff was overwhelmingly intoxicating, akin to that of a gambler, who, as post time approached, inwardly knew he couldn’t win but was yet compelled to place another bet on the forthcoming race.

Of course, there was opposition. As he lobbied, he became increasingly aware that a small number of the delegates who represented various areas of the USA and neighboring countries didn’t give a tinker’s cuss about his or even their own stated programs for that matter, but were solely dedicated to the pursuit of their own hidden agendas.

Furthermore, it became obvious that several cabals had already formed alliances for the purpose of preferential vote distributions and, of course, the inevitable follow-up favors. The strongest such alliance had its nucleus in the Midwest. Long before the convention started, the outgoing president had commenced number crunching for his business partner.

Not everyone who lives in San Diego serves or has served in a branch of the armed services. Robert Hastings’s father, who stumbled through to complete two years of high school, was authoritatively advised by his school counselor that his IQ was low and he was seriously dyslexic and therefore stuck with these afflictions for life. Consequently, he felt privileged to have a lifelong job as a janitor in a warehouse that supplied cleaning equipment to the navy.

To help make ends meet, Robert Hastings’s mother took in washing. Robert was the second son in this God-fearing family of five children. At school, he excelled academically; but when it was his turn to go to college, his father, with a tear in his eye, apologetically stated that which Robert had already suspected: I’m sorry, son, I’m so very sorry.

Robert’s brother Leroy was not so academically inclined but was older by three years. At the insistence of their father and at great financial burden, Leroy scraped through college until the final year of an arts degree and then dropped out. He left home ashamed, never to return, but the meager family savings were gone. University was not possible for Robert.

The recruitment officer looked over Robert’s high school results and commented, Son, I’m impressed and I’m glad you came to us because right now, the navy needs dentists.

But I want to study computer engineering, Robert protested.

The experienced recruitment officer saw the desperation in the eyes of his mark and knew that the navy had fewer problems recruiting computer people these days than dentists. He continued as if Robert hadn’t spoken, Your grades are up to the point where you’d easily be accepted into dental school so when you eventually reenter civilian life, son, your dental qualifications and the experience gained with us will stand you in good stead anywhere in the world and provide you and your family with a very good living.

So Robert relented and spent the next twenty-odd years practicing his involuntary profession. He also paid the college tuitions for two of his younger siblings.

Robert Hastings was a tad under six feet tall, with wavy dark brown hair and fair complexion. He had the square build of a light heavyweight boxer, complete with the obligatory broken nose: a legacy from when he’d been a member of the navy’s boxing team.

By his midforties, he’d served on aircraft carriers that provided several thousand mouths upon which to practice. Later, he requested a shore posting and was transferred to the National Naval Medical Center, otherwise known as Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland.

At Bethesda, he taught and supervised work experience for new dentists while they waited for a ship posting. A couple of years later, Robert resigned. Part of his discharge from Uncle Sam was a respectable pension check and a low-interest loan to help rehabilitate him back into civilian life.

Along with a navy buddy in similar circumstances, they combined their financial resources to purchase a largish dental practice in the Midwest. Maintaining the navy work ethic, they offered cheaper rates for night visits and soon expanded into a thriving 24-7-365 dental factory.

As with the navy, they dispensed with privacy in their practice in favor of an open floor plan that contained eleven chairs on the outside ring of an ellipse-shaped configuration and seven chairs on the inside. Ceiling-mounted television screens showed continuous DVDs featuring dental hygiene, intermingled with calming scenes of tropical fish, with deer and antelope playing in rain forests. Bird calls provided the background music.

Alternatively, patients could choose to plug headphones into an appropriate jack on an arm of the dental chair and, using a remote, select from a large variety of music CDs or DVD movies of whatever genre.

The air-conditioning replaced the stale air with a slightly higher-than-normal proportion of oxygen, negative ions, and the smell of fresh pine forests; but the real difference in their business was the dental equipment, the ultimate in user-friendly chairs, and no drill sounds.

The silent drills were laser cutters that needed very steady hands. So to this end, Robert and his partner employed only former navy-trained dentists who could drill, fill, and pull teeth on rolling ships in heavy seas.

All eighteen of their state-of-the-art chairs as well as all of their other dental equipment had been purchased from the one group of manufacturers that was relatively new in the field. One company was called Vlad Advanced Laser Dental Equipment Pty. Ltd. Another was called Lance Surgical Instruments Pty. Ltd. Robert and his partner had no idea of and couldn’t care less about who was behind these companies. Maybe things would have turned out differently if they’d taken the time to find out.

After two financially rewarding terms as president of the Americas Dental Hygienic Awareness Foundation Inc. and then the mandatory retirement, Robert Hastings relished being the numbers man, lobbying for his business partner. Their business had benefited greatly from his presidency. He could see no reason why with his partner soon to become the foundation’s newest president, this should not continue for a further two terms.

They would win. They were navy. Life was good.

Treat it with reverence! Never pollute it with water! If at any time you must add water or ice, it should be distilled three times and blessed by an Irish pope! Robert Hastings had the chair while the immaculately attired waiters finished refilling the glasses in the room full of guests and their partners. The waiters then unobtrusively retired to the perimeters of the private banquet room