The hunt reaches its terrible climax at Castle Dracula. Van Helsing, guarding Mina in a holy circle through a night of snow, withstands the three weird sisters who materialize from the mist calling her 'sister'—Mina's horror proving her soul still her own—then enters the castle by day and, resisting the brides' voluptuous fascination only by the memory of Mina's cry, beheads and stakes all three, who crumble to dust, and seals the Count's own lordly tomb with the Wafer. Rejoining Mina, he brings her to a rocky shelter above the road as the three parties converge. Below, the Szgany race the Count's earth-box toward the castle, flogging their horses against the sinking sun. At the last light the hunters surround them: Winchesters level, Jonathan and Quincey force through the ring of flashing knives to the cart. Jonathan hurls down the great box and prizes it open; within lies the Count, waxen and pale, his red eyes turning from hate to triumph as he glimpses the setting sun—an instant too late. Jonathan's Kukri shears his throat as Quincey's bowie plunges into his heart, and the whole body crumbles to dust, a look of peace upon the ruined face. The scar vanishes from Mina's forehead. But Quincey, mortally wounded forcing the ring, sinks into the snow and dies rejoicing, 'the curse has passed away!'—a gallant gentleman. Seven years on, the survivors look back without despair: Godalming and Seward happily married, and Jonathan and Mina raising a boy they name Quincey, in whom his mother believes something of their brave friend's spirit lives. They keep the unprovable record, needing, as Van Helsing says, no proofs—only the knowledge of how much men dared for the love of one good woman.