16 October 2027
Saturday. One year ago tonight my catacombs opened under Collins Street. I have marked the occasion by re-reading my own letter, the one that says I have failed.
I have not failed. I have been delayed. Since that night, parties of recruits have taken my relics into the cemetery and gone below to free the souls the Count left there. I do not keep their score in this diary; the house does that, and does it better.
The Count’s graveyard in Perth marks its own anniversary at the end of this month. His seventh. He will write something grand about it. I will read it, out of professional interest.
If you are in Melbourne and have not yet been below: the letter is waiting, the relics are wrapped, and I am, as ever, slightly dead and entirely ready.
— Prof. Van Helsing
