Dracula's Guest by Bram Stoker

Audibly Audiobooks

on a visit to Munich before leaving for Transylvania. It is Walpurgis Night, and despite the hotelier's warning not to return late, the young man later leaves his carriage and wanders toward the direction of an abandoned "unholy" village. As the carriage departs with the frightened and superstitious driver, a tall and thin stranger scares the horses at the crest of a hill.After a few hours, as he reaches a desolate valley, it begins to snow; as a dark storm gathers intensity, the Englishman takes shelter in a grove of cypress and yew trees. The Englishman's location is soon illuminated by moonlight to be a cemetery, and he finds himself before a marble tomb with a large iron stake driven through the roof, the inscription reads: "Countess Dolingen of Gratz / in Styria / sought and found death / 1801". The Englishman is disturbed to be in such a place on such a night, and as the storm breaks anew, he is forced by pelting hail to shelter in the tomb's doorway. As he does so, the bronze door of the tomb opens under his weight and a flash of forked lightning shows the interior, revealing a "beautiful woman with rounded cheeks and red lips, seemingly sleeping on a bier". The force of the following thunder peal throws the Englishman from the doorway (experienced as "being grasped as by the hand of a giant") as another lightning bolt strikes the iron spike, destroying the tomb and the now screaming woman inside.The Englishman's troubles are not quite over. As he painfully regains his senses from the ordeal, he is repulsed by a feeling of loathing, which he connects to a warm feeling in his chest and licking at his throat. The Englishman summons the courage to peek through his eyelashes and discovers a gigantic wolf with flaming eyes is attending him.Military horsemen are the next to wake the semi-conscious man, chasing the wolf away with torches and guns. Some horsemen return to the main party and the Englishman after the chase, reporting that they had not found 'him' and that the Englishman's animal is "a wolf—and yet not a wolf". They also note that blood is on the ruined tomb, yet the Englishman's neck is unblooded. "See comrades, the wolf has been lying on him and keeping his blood warm". Later, the Englishman finds his neck pained when a horseman comments.When the Englishman is taken back to his hotel by the men, he is informed that it is none other than his expectant host Count Dracula who has alerted the Maître d'hôtel of "dangers from snow and wolves and night" in a telegram during the time the Englishman was away.

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