Chapter Text
Night was falling over the mountains.
Above the rich green carpet of pines and trees that spread within the basin of the land, a ring of hulking peaks loomed in a titanic crown bound about the sky's brow. The implacable, frowning, darkened stone was tinted red-gold by the setting sun, like an iron helm lit by flames.
One such mountain peak was marred: like a crack in a flawless diamond, the hand of man made itself known on this vast landscape in the form of a castle, battlements rising sharp and tall against the sunset. The sky surrounding it was not set ablaze in a riot of color, for the horizon was cloudless and still, but the sun's rays still stretched out unbound in a flood of gold across all of creation –for now.
For the light was dying.
Like a dimming oil lamp, the sunlight withered, rolling in a golden-orange flood back and back and back, shrinking away from the courtyard stones of the mountain castle and letting shadows pool dark, silent, and expectant beneath the trees. The road that unspooled beneath those trees twisted and turned like a folded shroud as it made its way up the mountainside, with only momentary flashes of the lurid sky above to relive its stark and ominous gloom, and not a single flame flickered within the gloomy halls of the castle itself.
There was a weight in the air, an expectancy. Birds and beasts twittered and hummed in the underbrush, but quietly, and the more the light shrank, the quieter they grew. Far, far below the mountain, in villages and hamlets clustered in the open spaces gouged between the trees, people moved rapidly, their tempers sharp. Door after door clacked shut and was fastened tightly from the inside, and those who had business abroad –any business at all– kept one eye on the falling sun and hastened their steps.
Smoke rose from their chimneys as the villagers clustered by their hearths, but the castle itself was silent, as dead as the stone from which it was made. No light gleamed behind the mullioned windows, no smoke rose from its spires and halls.
The sun slipped low, and lower still. It glimmered just above the horizon as the cloak of night swept in from the east, held back –however momentarily– by the rim of gold and the reddened sky arching above the west. The world was darkening steadily, however, and only the presence of the sun clinging to the far horizon kept it at bay. Slowly, minute by minute, that light was turning blue and vanishing: darkness and gloom swept in like smoke to cover the land, thickening in the air like a tangible presence when at last the sun held itself no more above the line of the horizon.
There was still light enough to see, still light enough to walk, but no more than that, and doors were closing fast in the villages below the mountains with bang after bang of wood, hinges squealing in protest at the strength of their passage. Footsteps scampered, latches were thrown to, and windows locked from the inside.
At last, the world was still.
Nothing held more stillness than that castle, though, high above the frightened villages and standing alone on its desolate peak. Nothing about its shape seemed portentous, or at least, not more so than any of the other castles that dotted this mountainous region. The clustered spires were there because of the wisdom and, indeed, the necessity of building vertically rather than horizontally on a mountainside, not to give the castle a particularly intimidating air. The stonework was solid and heavy and grey because that was the sort of rock that was available in this region.
Nonetheless, a wise man would stay far, far away from it.
The signs were there, should any traveler have the wit to see them. The portcullis was drawn down, blocking off the courtyard now choked with gloom: and yet, no sounds of stirring animals echoed from within. The darkened stables were empty of both horses and grooms, and even supplies. The paved stones showing pale against the twilight were cold and bare, without even the memory of straw, and the walls equally barren of tack. All seemed like it was long-abandoned and lost, and yet, if that was the case, then who had locked the gates? Who had kept the heavy iron portcullis free of rust?
The signs continued deeper in. Not so much as a breath of air stirred inside the walls of the castle, no footfalls or distant calls of servants: the thick velvety curtains were drawn about the windows, and yet, the bands that once tied them back were free of dust, and unfrayed. Though the drapes covered every flash of outside glass, the sconces on the walls held no candles or torches, the chandeliers carried only cobwebs, and most lanterns were thrown on their side and abandoned.
And yet, the hearths were swept, and the hangings of all the rooms rich enough to give lie to the notion that this place was abandoned. An especially bold traveler, stepping through these gloomy halls with a lantern held in a shaking hand, might see that all the books in the library were well-maintained, free of dust and worms and rot, and they might even, if they dared to creep farther, see that the stairs down to the crypts were free of dust.
But there their courage would fail them, and they would turn and free as though the skeletal hand of Death itself was clutching at their heels, feet pounding through the empty halls and echoing stone of the castle as they ran for the gate, whose lock they had most foolishly ignored.
Some even made it all the way.
Or at least, they would make it out of the castle alive. Dracula was not so clumsy as that, as to let a mouse that had walked into the lion's den simply walk right back out again. Those foolish, unwary, and foreign enough to step into his castle did not step out again if he was awake, but he was not always awake.
He could feel the sun, as it crawled slowly towards the horizon and was swallowed by the earth, but he had not seen the punishing light of day for many, many years. The cloak of night and the moon were more than enough for him, but even if visitors did come during the day, visitors whose courage had failed them and had fled his castle –he still had their scent. And humans could only run so far, especially in these mountains.
No, none who entered his castle, with or without his invitation, left it while they still lived.
But he had not had such visitors in many, many years. Dracula chuckled softly as he thought of that, rising from the darkness of his last dominion and opening red eyes that shone in the gloom. Humans had not necessarily learned better –they had been told better. Travelers came by way of roads and villages, and oh, how those peasants far below feared him, told stories of him, guarded their children against him…
That last was a foolish venture. Dracula knew the rules of his kind, none better. In the unlikely event that one of these peasant brats was plump enough to serve as a good meal –what of their virginity? What of the overwhelming likelihood that he would be siring another of his kind? No, Dracula had no interest in children.
And besides, he was not so foolish as to reap his fields when the wheat had yet to grow. If he slaughtered all the children, what would happen when their parents, too terrified to reproduce again, withered and died of old age, and he was left in a dominion with none to rule?
Bah. Yet another proof that peasants were good for nothing but fulfilling the orders that their lords gave them. If an entire village had a scrap of wits between them, he would be much-impressed.
Shaking off such thoughts, he descended down the steps of his grandiose tomb –he would have nothing else, for he was the lord. His name was carved upon it for all to see, for he had no shame and a great deal of pride in the name Dracula.
More tombs lay within this chapel, sleeping under many years of dust, but they were empty. Though he lived in the castle alone –who knew? Perhaps in time Dracula would find some worthy helpmate to share it with him, some human interesting enough to mold into a new shape.
Thus far, he had found none, and so the other tombs lingered on, empty of everything but dust and ash. Dracula stepped past them without a backwards glance, gliding through the stygian darkness of the ancient chapel with eyes that burned catlike in the darkness. His booted feet rang firmly on the stones as he ascended up into his castle, becoming more alert with every step as the clinging strands of his deathlike daytime sleep fell away from him.
The night poured into him: the cool scent of the air under the vast trees, the peaceful blackness that choked every inch of his mighty keep, the chirps and chitters of the other nocturnal creatures surrounding the castle from the outside. The moon had yet to rise, and the stars glittered yet dimly in the sky far above.
Dracula paused on the threshold of his castle for but a moment, his cloak flowing slightly in the gentle wind. Shreds of it tore away, however, whirling up chittering into the night, and within moments the form of a man wavered, became sticklike, and collapsed as a flock of bats wheeled up over the walls of his castle.
If he had no visitors –if his food would not come to him– Dracula was not averse to hunting it down.
The doors were locked tightly, of course. Every door of every house, and the windows, too, whether they be glass or wooden shutters. Shut and latched from inside, and more than a few bedecked with garlands of wild garlic or clumsily-carved wooden crosses. They thought such measures as this could keep him out.
They were not necessarily wrong, but the wisdom of their ancestors would do them no good here. Dracula was no fool, to attempt the most direct route and burn his hands on holy symbols or foul herbs. And he was no fledgling, either, to be warded off by a bit of mere pain.
He wondered if this particular village was in need of an object lesson. He was smart enough not to harm their priest in order to remove the possibility of holy power –piety was not to be trifled with, after all, and Dracula had learned through bitter experience when it was wise to stop in the matter of cowing his subjects– but neither did he want these peasants to become too comfortable.
After all, fear was a potent goad to keep things moving smoothly, and he had no interest in the monumental effort that re-conquering his own peasants and his own lands would require, if they got any ideas about bucking his rule.
One hand sought his pale throat in an involuntary touch, tracing the line of an ax from so long ago. Yes, Dracula had learned his lesson well. He was not immortal, nor invincible. Such things did not exist in this world.
So carefully, carefully. His subjects must be cowed, but not so terrified that any risk and any punishment was preferable to living in their hell. Controlled, but not crushed. Broken, but not destroyed.
Such rural peasantry might be human, but they were barely more intelligent than their own sheep, and it was as shepherd he would tend them. No wild slaughters, no rampages. A wise sheepherder would take only what he needed and no surplus, so as to leave the flock room to grow –and bring in more profit.
Dracula, of course, did not need his peasants for mere profit, but the analogy was apt nonetheless.
So, so, so… his red eyes trailed the wooden homes and their frames, his footsteps barely a ripple in the night. Dread kept pace with him like a cloak, but none of the villagers were foolish or bold enough to look at him, not tonight. A pity, that: an eye peeping through a crack in window or door was one of the easiest ways to lure a human outside.
Tonight, though, they were all huddled indoors, bedclothes most likely pulled up over their heads, praying with all their strength that he would pick a neighbor and not them for his feed. He did not come to them always, not every night –for the villages scattered around his castle were many– but he came often enough for them to fear him always, as soon as the sun went down.
He stopped in front of a certain home, his cape flowing to a stop around his heels. He knew this house. Oh, not that he was familiar with its inhabitants, but the blood was the vehicle of the soul, and he had fed in this village before.
The stolen memories flowing through him spoke of who lived here, father and son and sister, mother died in childbirth, and a small trade in spun flax outside of their farming duties. It showed him faces he was not interested in, clothes he cared not for, bodies that were unimportant –but there was something else in the memories, something that tugged at his interest.
One of the inhabitants of this cottage was a singer. An amateur, certainly, but supposedly one with a beautiful voice. Dracula wished to hear that voice.
He hummed quietly to himself, letting the sound ripple and roll like a stream tumbling over stones, flowing out into the night and curling into the darkness, seeping up towards the tightly-locked shutters. It was not a musical sound in and of itself, no more than anything else that Dracula could conjure, but the notes of it rippled through the night with a resonance and power that would be hard for humans to define, much less deny. Crosses and garlic would do no good against it: the hum of his voice sank through the bars of the shutters like a drop of water seeping into snow, for it was only a mere sound.
Nothing stirred within the house, but Dracula was patient as he stood there, deep in the darkening of night. He could afford to wait.
At last, amidst the notes of his constant, resonant hum, he caught a rustle. A drowsy stir of blankets in the room above made him smirk around his rumbling coo –it seemed that his prey had felt secure enough to fall asleep. Their breath quickened as the human awoke, as the sound that had been teasing against their ears and winding into their dreams finally broke upon their conscious mind, still dull and disoriented with sleep, and tugged.
It tugged the human out of bed, as he heard the clumsy thump of bare feet hitting the wooden floor of their room, and it tugged them onwards, rising through the drowsiness of sleep as they followed the strange and enchanting sound. Dracula knew this, and never ceased his long, ever-ebbing hum, teasing at a melody, threatening a tune, but never quite solidifying in its rise and fall as bare footsteps padded towards the window.
They couldn't not look. Dracula knew it as well as the human, pausing with one hand in sudden doubt upon the iron latch. They knew exactly what prowled the night, what sort of creature might be standing in the land below this home. Perhaps they had glimpsed him, once or twice, as he hunted. They knew him, and they knew what waited below if they opened that window.
And yet, perhaps, that was most of the reason why they wanted to.
To look, even for a moment, upon the creature that roamed the night with blood-dripping jaws and the pale, icy hands of death- to see through the evening gloom that cast a swirling cloud upon a human's eyes and catch even a glimpse of something that was so very other- it was a powerful attraction, a powerful fascination, fully as powerful as the hypnotic impulse that he put into his humming almost-song.
Even if this human lived a life of drudgery, dirt, and mundane misery, even if their eyes never lifted from the mud at their feet, even if they lived and died like so many other peasants before them –for this one moment, they had the chance to cast their eyes upon something charged with so much mystery that their breath would tremble at the sight.
Curiosity may kill cats, but it had also destroyed more humans than Dracula would care to count.
Even he had been the same at some level, had he not? As he was shoved to his hands and knees in those last moments, felt the rough wood of the pillory catch at his throat and wrists like a collar, as the executioner raised the ax and Dracula saw the blood flowing towards him, disregarding the natural laws of gravity –he had known nothing of vampires, nothing of the revenants that stalked the night, and that trickle of blood was nectar from corpses, flowing through dirt.
So what had driven him to strain and gasp with such desperation, and at last tilt his head to the side and lap up some of the blood like a cat? Had it been despair, as everything he built crumbled around him? Or had it been more: a simple ribbon of sick, terrible inquiry threading through his mind that wondered… what would happen if he did?
What would happen if he stretched out his hand and met this obscenity flowing towards him, palm to palm? He had never seen anything like it. He must have it- must witness it for himself, tangibly, in a way that his senses could not refute.
Priests were wrong, Dracula thought with a purring chuckle. The devil's most powerful tool for damnation was not promises of pleasure or power –no, it was irresistible curiosity, perhaps wrapped up with a hint of pride. Even peasants tried to resist lust or power when it was offered to them –but what man, no matter how superstitious, would shy away from the chance to prove that his world was more than dirt and dust? The chance that something lurked beyond –however terrible that something might be?
That was one interesting boon of his changed condition. If nothing else, Dracula's new existence had proven to him the existence of human souls. For, after all, what else was he taking from his victims aside from blood? What were these memories, these spirits, these bodiless bodies he could call upon, if not souls that he had stolen?
It was hardly the most moral proof, but it was proof, nonetheless, and morals had never swayed him much even as a living man.
The human's hand trembled on the latch, their breath quickening further, and Dracula smirked slightly as his face tipped upwards, baring his fangs to the night as a particularly blasphemous thought flickered through his mind.
And I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying: Come and see.
Come and see.
Wooden fastenings creaked and groaned softly, and Dracula watched as the shutter eased open a crack and one eye was pressed feverishly against the gap, straining to see without being seen, the human's gaze still heavy with sleep. That groggy eye fell upon him –and was ensnared.
Dracula could see his victim ensnared even before that eye found his face and the eyes blazing like hellfire within, saw it in the hypnotized trace over the strength of his limbs and the splendor of his cloak before, finally and alas, the human's gaze traveled up, and their eyes locked.
The shutter, once clutched close as may be to the sill, so that the human could only peer through a crack, eased open with a gentle swing, and Dracula watched as the human's limbs hung slack, their mouth parting. He continued his slow, rumbling hum, teasing their ears and their weakening mind with a hint of music, and the human merely stared.
They stared, forgetting the cold rushing in through the opened window, forgetting to shiver in their nightclothes, forgetting everything but the sight and sound of him. They even forgot what that sight meant, what promises aside from music lurked on his serpent tongue.
Oh, well. It was too late for them to turn back.
Shadows swirled around and through him, and Dracula reformed on the rough wood of their bedroom, his chosen victim taking a step back, as though to invite a guest, as his form solidified before them. The moonlight streaming in from the window behind cast Dracula's face into deepest shadow –all but the red gleam of his eyes, as he extended one pale hand.
"I have heard that you have some vocal talent," he rumbled, the sound that had so enticed the human finally dying in his throat. "I wish to hear it."
His victim, still staring at him full in the face as though they could not tear their eyes away, nonetheless reached out in return, the delicate warmth of their fingers slipping into his cold hand, which clenched around their wrist like a shackle. The human opened their mouth –they could do no less, not even if they possessed a will of iron– and slowly, gathering in strength, began to sing.
The memories flowing through Dracula's blood were quite correct: this was a beautiful voice, even soft and trembling in the night, even thick with more than just natural drowsiness, rising and falling and caressing the words of their chosen song with rippling, ringing notes.
He hummed his appreciation –no hypnotism, here, just wordless approval. Peasant though they may be, this human was the equal of any that he had seen in his courts, back in the days when the sun did not scorch his skin. If a professional ever chanced upon this village and heard the singing, perhaps this human may have become great in the world.
But few people traveled through this remote corner of Transylvania, much less the great singers for noble courts, and so this glorious voice was left to languish with a roughened tongue and clumsy skills for all the owner's life.
Unfortunate for them, but then, that gave him an opportunity he would not have otherwise had, as the song slowly came to an end.
Raising his other hand, Dracula wove his fingers through the human's hair and pulled their head to the side, baring their neck. Perhaps this position might have strained their muscles if they were fully awake, perhaps the warm body in his arms gave a ragged twitch and gasp, but they were too far under his spell to protest completely.
"You have an exquisite voice," Dracula said, his teeth nearing the warmth of the human's flesh, the pulse that was fluttering beneath their skin like a trapped bird. "I believe I shall keep it."
A wet crunch echoed through the room, followed by a straining, hollow gasp as the human breathed their last.
When he was finished, Dracula had the courtesy to lay his victim's remains on the bedspread, arranging the body neatly on its back. It would, of course, turn to dust as the sun rose, but if their family came in before this time, at least he wouldn't have left his meal splattered everywhere like some undignified brat.
The head, torn from its shoulders and resting placidly on the human's stomach, would prevent his victim rising as a ghoul and creating an even bigger mess.
Dracula huffed to himself as his boots glided over the stones of the village square, even as warmth was slowly bleeding into his body from the life had had just consumed, the pleasant coal of heat in his stomach that was slowly diffusing through his dead veins. Really, he had no patience for such clumsiness. Once had been enough and more than enough to teach him a lesson: it was better, far better, to clean up after himself rather than leave his meals sprawled everywhere.
Those arrogant whelps that he occasionally chased from his mountains made him grind his teeth –firstly, they were foolish enough to claim part of his territory, but secondly, their clumsy feeding left swarms of ghouls behind and thinned out the herds of his peasants.
Brainless, overconfident dolts. Dracula had not a qualm with wielding the tyrannical power of his vampiric state over his human vassals, but if he grazed too much, he would wipe them out and then starve. Even a child knew that much, so why were these grown men and women who shared his curse so much stupider?
Pathetic.
He snorted his disdain, then paused. Dracula generally fed perhaps once or twice a night, per village, but that was more than enough to drive every inhabitant of his territory into cowering indoors the moment the sun started grazing the tops of the trees.
If people remained outdoors, they carried torches and whatever weapons they could scrouge up in shaking hands, their hearts thumping loud enough for him to hear a mile away. They traveled in quivering mobs or clusters of two or three, and they never went out for anything less than life-or-death business.
The heartbeat that he was now sensing at the far edge of the village, near the pens for livestock, was elevated but not pumping frantically, was alone, and was not moving.
Intrigued, Dracula drifting in that direction, letting the shadows swamp and cloak him. More revealed itself to his heightened senses as he got closer: faint curses, wood creaking, the clean smell of human sweat, and beneath it all, a prick of human blood. His eyes sharpened even more, and Dracula's feet hastened as he silently made his way across the village. The blood-scent was faint, but unmistakable, and oh, it called to him…
The situation only became even more interesting as Dracula stepped through the last of the houses and the human was revealed to him. He had expected, perhaps, a visitor to the region: some unfortunate traveler who had come to the village after nightfall and been infuriated by how all the inhabitants had stubbornly barred their homes to him, forcing him to camp outdoors while within sight of buildings. Maybe he had been wounded by attempting to force his way in, or perhaps while setting up his camp, and was now swearing colorfully at the strange village he had come to, unaware of how death stalked closer with every moment on silent feet.
In reality, the situation was a lot more intriguing.
There was a man, sure enough –burly and stout enough to have given Dracula pause, had they been fighting as living men– but rather than crouched above the beginnings of a campfire, he was standing. Not only was he standing, but he was standing before a thick wooden post used to tie cattle, with his hands fastened before him. His curses came, not from frustration at the village around him, but from anger at his bonds, and the faint blood-scent was coming from his wrists as he yanked them against the leather ties, both feet braced against the stone and earth of the path.
Dracula's eyebrows slowly crept upwards. If he didn't know any better…
…no. Surely not.
He drifted closer. He did not know this man, who was tall and blond, quite unlike the small and dark-haired Wallachians –both of which points argued that he was a stranger to this village. His clothing was sturdy and dark, harder-wearing than the clothes of most peasants, and also much cleaner.
Expensive spectacles were perched incongruously on his nose, a scholarly image that hardly fit with his massive shoulders and warrior's physique –or the pale scar that slashed over his cheek and jaw. Green eyes flashed behind those spectacles, muttered oaths issuing from the stranger's mouth as he furiously yanked at his bonds.
Dracula's laughter rumbled through the night before he could stop it, an unsettling thing that made this sacrifice stiffen as deep, dark chuckling poured in from all quarters of the compass. The man's head swiveled stiffly, his eyes warily raking the darkness all around him, and Dracula was even more amused to see annoyance and defiance, but no fear in that blistering green gaze.
"I'm not sure whether I should be insulted or flattered." Dracula let the words roll luxuriously over his tongue, curling around himself as he stepped into the moonlight. The man's head immediately snapped towards the sound and movement that he could finally register, and those fierce eyes narrowed. He did not say anything, but Dracula did not particularly care as he slowly paced closer.
"On the one hand, I feel as though I should perhaps resent having my meals tied out for me, as though I were some marauding animal trampling through their fields that would be distracted by a bleating goat," Dracula continued amicably, his eyes running up, down, up, down over the human's stock-still body with appreciation. "On the other hand, they have given me something rather magnificent."
"Take one step closer to me and you'll have more than you can chew on," the human spat, his body bristling with furious purpose. Still no fear, though, despite being tied to a stake and unable to run as a vampire approached. Too proud, or perhaps too foolish?
Dracula grinned, exposing his fangs –and holding the human's gaze with his own, he took one slow, deliberate step closer, his cloak rippling to a halt around his boots.
The human snarled at him and jerked his bonds hard enough to make the post creak, but if it could hold oxen, it could hold him. Barely. His physical strength alone was impressive, and Dracula wondered how the villagers had managed to capture him. Perhaps in his sleep…
"Did they tell you what you would be staked out for?" Dracula asked, still amused, as his eyes glinted crimson in the darkness. "Or did they merely fasten you here and retreat with prayers? Were you given a last meal, at least?"
If this man was as unwilling as he looked, Dracula doubted that they would be able to force him into a sacrificial habit, but he indulged in the whimsical idea for a moment, his gaze drifting idly over the man's impressive physique once again.
He would look rather striking draped in a thin white garment, come to think of it. The short, bristling cut of the man's hair –not to mention his unshaven scruff– gave him quite the wolf-like, feral appearance, and it would be balanced magnificently by the perverse delicacy of a sheer white tunic. Not to mention his body –the breadth of the shoulders and the muscles rippling beneath those serviceable, sturdy garments would look even more breathtaking under the clinging drape of that fabric, especially when he thought of how the man's healthy olive complexion would be contrasted by it.
Yes, quite the Adonis he had here, Classical in every inch of him. Dracula made a mental note to dress his new familiar appropriately after he had been consumed.
"What do you care of it?" the blond spat, his broad hands clenching and unclenching as the leather ties around his wrists strained and stretched. "Don't pretend you're here for anything but blood, monster."
Dracula chuckled a little, stepping closer, because as enjoyable as it would be to put this particular human under a spell of hypnosis, have that defiance buckle and break under the weight of Dracula's will as submissions crawled from that sour mouth, he was more interested in catching the taste that lingered thickly in the air of the man's aforementioned blood. If nothing else, if the passion sparkling behind those emerald eyes was wrong, he was well-built and healthy, much less worn and exhausted than the peasants who toiled in their fields and pastures. He should be quite the delicacy.
He sidestepped the pillar as the human scowled at him, legs tensing, and Dracula smirked. Perhaps he would bend this man's mind under his own –after a quick taste of his blood. His continued and palpable defiance was quite charming, especially when it was so futile. Dracula opened his mouth, beginning to lean in –and promptly lost his head.
Undead he may be, but Dracula would never forget that feeling, the jolt and tearing of muscles as his skull was severed from his spine and thudded down into the dirt. He knew it quite well, which was why he recognized it even as his mind was numbed and blinded and his body almost certainly collapsed into the dirt in two separate pieces.
Oh my. Now that was interesting. Dracula would be the first to admit that his prospective meal had been quite fascinating, but he was not and had never been the sort of person to be so easily caught off-guard by mere beauty and the attraction thereof. If there had been warriors, hunters, hidden nearby as Dracula conversed with his victim, then he would have sensed them. That he had not sensed any such presences told him one thing –the blond was more, far more, than he seemed.
How very interesting.
But alas for him, Dracula was not so easily bested. He called upon his memories of blood, feeling without seeing as his body softened and slagged like melting butter, darkening into pure black shadows. That tarry, sloshing ooze spoke to him, whispered of the moment that his tongue had swiped across the splintered boards and a dark and forbidden flavor had burst upon all his senses at once.
Dracula let it murmur as the two clots of darkness flowed together and rejoined, drawing himself up and up and up as legs –and other things– solidified out of the shadows, dripping unnatural ichor for a moment before it was pulled into his very being and he reformed as the man he had been, just a few short moments ago.
The blond man stood a short distance away, his bonds snapped or slashed, and a fine silver blade clenched in each hand. Dracula looked on those weapons with detached interest as he languidly reformed. That they were blessed, he could feel, but he was more impressed by how those selfsame blades had to all intents and purposes appeared out of nowhere. Any fool with a cleric's collar could bless a weapon. It took real skill to be able to employ spatial magic in any form –especially on demand, as this seemed to be.
"Very impressive," he drawled, making the human whirl to face him. "But, I fear, not nearly enough."
Upon seeing such a sight –a powerful vampire, ruler of a region, surviving decapitation, and decapitation with a blessed blade to boot, reforming himself so easily– other hunters would have blanched, sweated, taken an uneasy step back, or gasped. Some lesser men might even have fallen to their knees. This one merely bared his blunt human teeth in a snarl of challenge, and readied his blades again.
Dracula felt his attention drawn to its sharpest point. This man was intriguing, very much so. It would be a waste and a sin merely to spill his blood and drink him dry. Dracula wanted to study him with all the thoroughness that such a unique specimen deserved.
"Your name?" he asked, eyes gleaming.
"Alexander Anderson," his foe returned, flicking one blade sharply so that Dracula's blood flew from it, his green eyes gleaming with a deadly focus and confidence. "Why? Do you want to know who to curse as you die?"
"Oh, no," Dracula replied, amused. "It is simply considered ill manners not to know the name of your guest, here in Transylvania."
Before this remarkable man could come up with an equally-remarkable reply, Dracula was on him, and despite the ample distraction of a silver blade piercing through the joint of his arm from below, had his hand around the man's throat. He had to be careful not to squeeze too hard, because he did not want to snap the neck of this man –this Alexander Anderson– and kill him.
That would be ruinously wasteful, and so, too, would be merely feeding upon him to feed. The souls that he consumed never acted with their prior intelligence, carrying just a spark and an echo of their living selves into Dracula's stomach. This was not such a problem if he was after them for what they could do, physically –his other meal tonight came to mind– but for a victim as interesting as this, well…
Alexander Anderson marked the vampire well for daring to seize him, but Dracula was the past master of many battles, and it was not long before the human's furious struggles slackened, his grip on his weapons weakening despite his very obvious will otherwise. First one, then the other slid from his hands and stabbed into the dirt, and the purpling human went limp.
Dracula dropped him to the dirt, but not before first seizing and lifting one of those arms as a curious thought struck him. If this hunter had not been properly bound, then…
Ah.
How clever.
The source of the blood-scent that had first lured Dracula to begin with was indeed on the man's wrists. Under the reddened place where the ties had been rubbing at his skin, were several light cuts. They were barely more than scratches, but they were enough and more than enough to spill that scent into the air, with thin lines of smeared blood showing where the man had delicately nicked his skin before suffering the ties to be bound about his wrists. It could and had mimicked the scent of the tears in his skin that would've opened with prolonged struggle, as if he truly had been fighting those ties ever since they were placed.
Careful, canny, bold, defiant… oh, Dracula was interested, very much so.
He pulled his unconscious guest up, draping the massive frame over his shoulders and turning his eyes towards his castle. Dracula had some refurbishing to do, but in the end, he rather thought he would like the results. Whether Anderson did or not, well… that was hardly a concern of his, since, after all, the man had tried to kill him.