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several others, including Purdy, crowded around our table while refreshments were
provided. Sasha smiled with a rather superior indulgence from across the room and
started to undulate toward us, but at that moment Blake entered with Giselle on his
arm, and she rapidly recalled something that needed doing elsewhere.
My other preoccupations melted away quickly as Lomax began reading, at first
haltingly and in a sort of monotone. His voice quickly picked up color and vibrancy
as he continued, though sometimes he read too quickly to be understood. I listened
breathlessly, for the longer he read, the more I realized that this book was far more
pertinent to my present difficulties than anything I had encountered so far. The rapt
faces of the circle of miners, the sinister pulsation of the lamps across their features,
and Lomax's voice all faded as my mind's eye recreated the beginnings of a tale of
monstrous power and subversion of the human spirit.
Lomax took a swallow of sarsaparilla at the end of the first chapter in which the
hero was surrounded by ravening wolves who seemed, in a very familiar way, to be
under the control of some force greater than themselves.
Wild Miles shifted uneasily. "The way those wolves are acting. That's not natural,"
he said.
"Loup garou, Miles," his partner, Emile Piersee put in. "Werewolves, as you say. Oh
yes, that is how he act, the loup garou."
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"Yessir, that's right," Purdy added. "Not just wolves people turn into either. Why, I
used to have me a little Mexican girlfriend whose gramma could turn into a puma."
"Will you shut up so the man can read?"
The last words of chapter four "At least God's mercy is better than that of these
monsters, and the precipice is steep and high. At its feet a man may sleep as a
man. Good-bye, all! Mina!" died away, and Dag paused to take a sip of one of
several more sarsaparillas that had miraculously appeared at his elbow. I had not
noticed the approach of Drake, who with Giselle in tow stared at Lomax with
undisguised disgust. I turned sideways and scooted protectively closer as Dag began
to read from Lucy's letter to Mina.
Drake's voice, which betrayed the amount he had had to drink before he entered our
premises, cut through the story. "What you runnin' here, darlin'?" he called across
the room to Sasha, "a saloon or a library? These boys gonna go loco mixin' drink
with that kinda horseshit. Werewolves, blood-suckin' ladies trottin' around in their
nighties, vampire counts. Hell, ain't no blood-suckers around here 'cept ol' Bleed-
Enough hisself."
Vasily Vladovitch chose that inauspicious time to return. Shaking out his cape and
placing his fur seal hat on a nail by the door, he asked, "Were you referring to me,
Consul Blake? I fear you mispronounce my name. It has what you would call a short
e eh eh. Bledinoff."
Drake backed down. "No, no, amigo, not you. Least, not seriously. I was just tellin'
your little filly here she shouldn't be havin' this hook-handed codger usin' your
establishment for tellin' bedtime stories. Vampires! You ever heard anything so
crazy?"
"Vampires?" Vasily Vladovitch asked, his left eyebrow raising and his mouth
quirking with amusement. "Captain Lomax, I would see the book, if you please."
He examined it scornfully, then tossed it back so that its pages riffled. "Really, such
garbage. And it is quite insulting to my people my family comes from
Transylvania, you know and my class. I don't know why anyone would print such
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utter trash."
"We thought it was a good yarn, V.V.," Wild Miles said. "Kind of spooky."
"Hmph," said Vasily Vladovitch and turned his back on us.
Dag shrugged and picked up the book again, and the prospectors resumed their
postures.
Drake snarled and swept the lantern from the table, almost immolating Emile and
infuriating Loki, who sprang for the raging consul's face. And Vasily Vladovitch
turned back toward us, his eyes bugging out and glowing, reflecting the red flames
beginning to run through the Tine of kerosene, his lips retracting in a ghastly grin.
At that moment, Sergeant Destin, whom I had not seen enter, flew forward with a
coat in his hands and began trying to smother the flames. The others followed his
example and battled the blaze while Lomax and I tried to pull the cat off Drake, who
was trying to throttle it. When the flames were extinguished and Loki back on
Lomax's shoulders, there was a charred place on the plywood floor in the shape of a
giant serpent, a lot of parkas that would need extensive mending, and the sickening
odor of singed fur in the air. The new Dracula book had been so badly burned that
none of it remained legible save the middle of the pages in the middle of the book.
Drake broke free of the restraining arms of Sasha and Giselle and bolted out the
door, snarling, with an outraged London, who still hoped to get in a punch or two,
hot on his heels. Again I thought how Drake had changed, the charming veneer that
had formerly characterized him even when he was bent on some barbaric deed had
become pitted with madness and scored by the man's inner beastliness.
Lomax stooped and gently lifted the ruins of his new treasure. Some of the men who
had been listening looked as if they might bawl. Loki licked frantically at a singed
spot on his belly. Sasha Devine glared at me as if I'd done something in shockingly
bad taste, and Vasily Vladovitch had disappeared without another word.
Only Lane behaved sensibly, appearing with mop in hand to undo as much of the
damage as possible. "Next time you bring a book in, Captain, I'd sure as hell
appreciate it if it wasn't one that got reviewed in such a goddamn messy way," he
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growled.
Lomax looked like a child who had spilled his ice cream. I tugged on his arm and led
him out the back door. He shook his head in stunned disbelief once we were outside.
"Doggone it," he said angrily. "Pardon me, ma'am, but he didn't have to do that.
Claim-jumpin' bastard. Do you know I went into the recorder's office today to
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