Shortly after eleven o’clock in the morning on Monday, April 27, 1863, the steam packet RMS Anglo-Saxon, an iron-hulled mail ship of the Montreal Ocean Steamship Company out of Liverpool, was beating around the distant rocky point of Cape Race, Newfoundland, in a heavy, concealing fog of a type all too common for that bleak and lonely part of the world. The sun, almost directly overhead, was nothing more than a dull copper disk casting little light and no shadow. The world was a flat gray expanse, the sea a dark undulating mirror, reflecting nothing.
The man in the dark frock coat and heavy wool walking cape stood at the port deck rail smoking an Egyptian cigarette and staring out into the fog. He was tall and pale, long black hair framing a narrow face with high Slavic cheekbones. The nose was aquiline, the nostrils slightly flared above full lips. His teeth were naturally very white. His eyes were a startling shade of jade green. His name was Count Vladislaw Draculiya, once a Prince of Walachia, now a fugitive from British justice, wanted for a crime he did not commit: the brutal murder of the noted Dutch philosopher and naturalist Abraham Van Helsing.
He knew of Van Helsing, of course, and the strange little scientist’s obsession with him. It was Van Helsing who had followed him to England, and it was Van Helsing who had convinced Thornton Hunt at the Daily Telegraph that he was a terrible threat to the population of London. Some sort of archvillain, tantamount to a demon in human disguise. He had left his home in Bohemia in the midst of just such a panic, and it had happened again in England, with Thornton Hunt snapping at his heels like the snarling dog that he was. Rumor, always rumor, and then the fear followed by the never-ending hunt. Like the Judensjagen, the Jew hunts of not so long ago.
The Count continued to smoke his aromatic cigarette and thought idly of his future. He’d moved so often, lived in so many worlds and times, that it often seemed nothing but a blur or half-remembered dream. All he knew of Montreal was that they spoke an old sort of French there, and having himself lived in Paris for a time many years ago, he knew he’d have no trouble acclimating himself to the city.
It certainly seemed an unlikely place for Van Helsing’s people or the police to come looking for him. He sighed and pinched out the remains of his cigarette before tossing it over the rail. All he really wanted was peace and quiet. And to be left alone.
He lifted his head, suddenly alert, his sensitive hearing picking up a distant warning. His nostrils, equally sensitive, twitched to the familiar waft of earth and land when he knew they should still be well out to sea. He peered ahead into the fog, but there was nothing to be seen. There was only the urgent, deeply felt sense of imminent danger.
“Breakers!” a terrified voice screamed from high above him in the crow’s nest atop the mainmast. “Breakers dead ahead!” There was barely time to make sense of the words. Seconds later the ship lurched into a sudden turn to port as the helmsman on the bridge threw the wheel around. It was too late.
The Count was suddenly thrown against the rail with stunning force, and he only just barely managed to keep himself from being thrown overboard. An instant later there was a terrible crashing sound as the stern slammed into hidden rocks and a sheer black wall of stone appeared out of the fog directly in front of them.
The stern of the ship pounded even harder into the rocks. The Anglo-Saxon was hard aground, the terrible grinding waves of the North Atlantic pushing broadside against her hull, forcing her inexorably toward the massive granite cliffs of Cape Race, a frail ship of wood and iron trapped between an unstoppable force and an immovable object.
Panic and unholy terror gripped the entire ship within seconds as the rudder, sternpost and propeller were torn away with a ghastly screeching sound like Hell’s fury. Water began rushing into the forward stokehold, putting out the fires and filling the engine room. There was no way the ship would ever move under its own power again. The bow and stern anchors were dropped in a vain attempt to hold the dying, sinking ship in place, but water steadily began to pour into the ship.
Several observant and nimble members of the crew, seeing that the jib boom actually jutted above the cliff face, ran along it with ropes and made it to the shore before the whole sail tore away and fell into the foaming sea. First-class passengers were beginning to swarm up from below, and lifeboats were prepared for lowering on the port side of the ship, away from the rocks that hemmed in the boats on the starboard side. There were only six lifeboats available, and all of those were used by first-class passengers and crew since the steerage passengers, more than three hundred of them, had not yet been allowed on deck.
As the boats were lowered, they were almost immediately hammered against the side of the ship, some overturning, some breaking up and some simply swept away to smash to pieces on the rocks. The fog still hung thick, the air full of the noise of the dying ship, the sobbing and screaming of desperate passengers and the shouted orders of the crew, all set to the horrible rolling drumbeat of the unceasing waves.
Suddenly the decks were even more crowded as the first steerage passengers forced their way onto the upper deck, adding to the melee. There was another great lurch as the remains of the ship settled in the sea and the mainmast fell, killing a dozen people and tangling twice that many in fallen rigging.
The main deck was now fully underwater, and people were being carried off in all directions, some clinging to debris, others flailing, almost all eventually being thrown against the stark black rocks of the cliff only a few dozen yards away. Some people clung desperately to the rigging, but even they were eventually swept away or drowned when the Anglo-Saxon suddenly rolled away from the rocks as her waterlogged weight shifted, almost turning turtle as she was totally dismasted, sinking fast. Parts of the deckhouses and the bridge were ripped away, their remains used as rafts by people clinging to them.
Fights broke out between survivors, passengers and crew alike, as they fought for space on the makeshift life buoys. More fell from the rigging to be dashed on the rocks; still others were crushed or simply drowned. To make things even worse, a slanting rain began to fall. All this happened within fifteen minutes of the first shouted warning.
It was hours later when the Count awoke from a dark, dreamless sleep to find himself on the upper edge of an angled piece of the main deckhouse roof, now a life raft tossing easily on a heavy swell. Above him the fog had partially lifted in the cold night air and he could see a sliver of the risen moon.
Far ahead of him he could just make out a distant phosphorescent line where the swell broke on the face of a sloping pebble beach. Above the beach, like a dark pillar, was a lighthouse, its beam sweeping in a regular pulse across the wide black sea. He heard a beating heart close by and then a groan. He turned his head and saw that he was not alone.
A young man, fair-haired and perhaps twenty, was curled up on the lower edge of the raft. His leg was broken, awkwardly bent, and he was pale and shivering. The Count edged down until he reached a point just beside him. The Count’s wool cape was sodden with rain, but it would offer some warmth to the shivering boy. He gasped when he breathed, and the Count could see a huge wound in his side where a splinter from a falling piece of one of the masts had pierced his flesh. The young man was clearly dying, slowly and in great pain. The Count drew the cloak over him, tucking it below his shoulders.
“Thank you, Father,” the boy whispered, seeing the black-dressed figure above him.
“I’m no priest,” answered the Count gently, smiling at the irony of the young man’s mistake.
“I was on my way to make my fortunes in the gold fields,” said the young man. “Now, isn’t that a laugh! I didn’t even make it ashore!” His accent was Irish, probably one of the steerage passengers they’d picked up at their brief stop in Londonderry the day after leaving Liverpool.
“Ma told me to stay, but I wouldn’t listen. Stubborn like my da—that’s what she said I was.” The boy gave a great shudder and his eyes stared. “Jeez, Father, but ain’t it cold?” he managed. He blinked. “Christ! I could use a smoke!” He realized what he’d said. “Sorry, Father.”
The Count felt around in his pockets and miraculously found his cigarette tin and box of wax vestas. He lit a cigarette and placed it between the young man’s lips, holding it for him. The boy drew deeply, coughed and then exhaled.
“Jeez, but that’s good, Father!” He shuddered again and winced. “Christ, it hurts!”
“What’s your name?” the Count asked quietly. They were much closer to shore now.
“Enoch, Father. Enoch Bale, from Ballynew, near Castlebar in County Mayo.”
“Enoch. A good name,” said the Count. “Lots of brothers and sisters and cousins to greet you when you arrive?”
“None, Father. I’m alone. All the family, what there is of it, is back in Ballynew. I was one mouth less to feed, so Ma didn’t complain too much in the end.” The boy shuddered horribly and his teeth grated with the pain of the spasm. He gripped the Count’s wrist hard and moaned, rain sheeting off his upraised face like shining tears.
“Would you like the pain to go away, Enoch?” the Count asked quietly. “Would you like me to take away your pain?”
“Oh, jeez, Father, yes. It hurts so bloody much!”
He gave the boy another draw on the cigarette, watching as his chest heaved. The Count looked toward the shore. It would be only a few minutes more until the floating deckhouse broached and they were thrown into the sea, but for the boy it would be an infinity of agony and a drowning death. There was a better way. A gentler way.
The Count bent low over the dying boy, his voice pitched peacefully and very softly. “Think of your mother, Enoch, and think of home.”
“Yes, Father, oh, yes! Pray for me, Father, dear Jesus God!” The young man’s back arched and he screamed in pain.
“Home, Enoch, you’re going home now.” The Count bent over the boy’s shattered body, and with his long pale fingers he turned the young man’s head aside, exposing the frantic pulsing of the great artery in his neck. The Count leaned down, his mouth parts shifting in their familiar way, the shining eyeteeth descending in twin saber arcs like great snake fangs, the hollow razor points shining with the silvery emission that would dull the boy’s pain and ease his inevitable death. “Home now, Enoch. Home to Ballynew.” And the long fangs slipped deeply into the soft, waiting flesh, and the young boy sighed in sweet relief.
An hour later, the Count, alone, made it to the beach and staggered up the long, winding path to the lighthouse. He hammered on the lighthouse keeper’s door, and his knock was answered by a thin-faced man dressed in boots, sweater and oilskins.
“What place is this?” the Count asked.
“Cape Race Light. I’m John Halley. Who are you?”
Count Vladislaw Draculiya—son of no mother, raised by no man, once a Prince of Walachia in Bohemia and now a shipwrecked fugitive—barely hesitated before answering.
“My name is Enoch,” he said firmly. “Enoch Bale.”