There was a deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive, and as she arched her neck she actually licked her lips like an animal, till I could see in the moonlight the moisture shining on the scarlet lips and on the red tongue as it lapped the white sharp teeth.
Lower and lower went her head as the lips went below the range of my mouth and chin and seemed about to fasten on my throat.
Then she paused, and I could hear the churning sound of her tongue as it licked her teeth and lips, and could feel the hot breath on my neck. Then the skin of my throat began to tingle as one’s flesh does when the hand that is to tickle it approaches nearer—nearer.
I could feel the soft, shivering touch of the lips on the super-sensitive skin of my throat, and the hard dents of two sharp teeth, just touching and pausing there.
I closed my eyes in a languorous ecstasy and waited—waited with beating heart.
But at that instant, another sensation swept through me as quick as lightning.
I was conscious of the presence of the Count, and of his being as if lapped in a storm of fury.
As my eyes opened involuntarily I saw his strong hand grasp the slender neck of the fair woman and with giant’s power draw it back, the blue eyes transformed with fury, the white teeth champing with rage, and the fair cheeks blazing red with passion.
But the Count!
Never did I imagine such wrath and fury, even to the demons of the pit.
His eyes were positively blazing.
The red light in them was lurid, as if the flames of hell-fire blazed behind them.
His face was deathly pale, and the lines of it were hard like drawn wires; the thick eyebrows that met over the nose now seemed like a heaving bar of white-hot metal.
With a fierce sweep of his arm, he hurled the woman from him, and then motioned to the others, as though he were beating them back; it was the same imperious gesture that I had seen used to the wolves.
In a voice which, though low and almost in a whisper seemed to cut through the air and then ring round the room he said:—
“How dare you touch him, any of you?
How dare you cast eyes on him when I had forbidden it?
Back, I tell you all!
This man belongs to me!
Beware how you meddle with him, or you’ll have to deal with me.”
The fair girl, with a laugh of ribald coquetry, turned to answer him:—
“You yourself never loved; you never love!”
On this the other women joined, and such a mirthless, hard, soulless laughter rang through the room that it almost made me faint to hear; it seemed like the pleasure of fiends.
Then the Count turned, after looking at my face attentively, and said in a soft whisper:—
“Yes, I too can love; you yourselves can tell it from the past. Is it not so?
Well, now I promise you that when I am done with him you shall kiss him at your will.
Now go! go!
I must awaken him, for there is work to be done.”
“Are we to have nothing to-night?” said one of them, with a low laugh, as she pointed to the bag which he had thrown upon the floor, and which moved as though there were some living thing within it.
For answer he nodded his head.
One of the women jumped forward and opened it.
If my ears did not deceive me there was a gasp and a low wail, as of a half-smothered child.
The women closed round, whilst I was aghast with horror; but as I looked they disappeared, and with them the dreadful bag.
There was no door near them, and they could not have passed me without my noticing.
They simply seemed to fade into the rays of the moonlight and pass out through the window, for I could see outside the dim, shadowy forms for a moment before they entirely faded away.
Then the horror overcame me, and I sank down unconscious.
CHAPTER IV
JONATHAN HARKER’S JOURNAL—continued
I AWOKE in my own bed.
If it be that I had not dreamt, the Count must have carried me here. I tried to satisfy myself on the subject, but could not arrive at any unquestionable result.
To be sure, there were certain small evidences, such as that my clothes were folded and laid by in a manner which was not my habit.
My watch was still unwound, and I am rigorously accustomed to wind it the last thing before going to bed, and many such details.
But these things are no proof, for they may have been evidences that my mind was not as usual, and, from some cause or another, I had certainly been much upset.
I must watch for proof.
Of one thing I am glad: if it was that the Count carried me here and undressed me, he must have been hurried in his task, for my pockets are intact.
I am sure this diary would have been a mystery to him which he would not have brooked.
He would have taken or destroyed it.
As I look round this room, although it has been to me so full of fear, it is now a sort of sanctuary, for nothing can be more dreadful than those awful women, who were—who are—waiting to suck my blood.
18 May.
I have been down to look at that room again in daylight, for I must know the truth.