handful_ofdust (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
handful_ofdust) wrote2013-04-23 02:18 pm
handful_ofdust) wrote2013-04-23 02:18 pm
Entry tags:
Two Weeks!
...and I'm not going to break my entry drought today either, except with some slash. Enjoy.
The Narrow Bed, Part Two
Fandom: Hammer Horror
Van Helsing/Dracula
“Why should I be able to rest here?” The hunter asked the prince, staring down into the sarcophagus they had both spent their day in, as he dressed for dinner. “This is not my native soil.”
“It is now. We run counter-clockwise to His design, Templar, remaking the world around us; death into vampirism constitutes a fresh baptism, a literal rebirth. Besides which, man and wife are one flesh, are they not?”
“I am NOT your—”
“Consort? Oh yes, you are; I told you as much, when we made our pact. Too late for forbearance, or regrets. My blood runs in your veins now. We have only to consummate our bargain, and the metaphorical becomes literal.”
“You will wait a very long time for that, Count.”
“Of that I have no doubt. But you forget, proud man: I can afford to...”
(...as can you.)
***
“You will quickly have no shirts left at all, if you do not apply yourself to learning better table-manners,” the prince observed, in a tone so patronizing it made the hunter flush—a far easier task than usual, to be sure, now that he had finally managed to feed on his own.
This promised nest of brigands they had descended upon lay scattered, groaning and broke-backed around them. The hunter had just extricated his teeth from one man's neck, even as the prince cracked two more's skulls together and treated one's jetting scalp-wound like a boiled egg, while somehow keeping the other caught with only a gesture, rather than any hint of direct eye-contact; the man hovered nearby even now, white-faced and rigid, unable to run even in the face of his companion's all-but-drained coma.
“Try to bring this one your way,” the prince said. Then repeated, as the hunter shook his head: “Try, Templar.”
“I am perfectly satisfied with what...nourishment I've found thus far, thank you—”
The prince shrugged, snapping his fingers—an action which appeared to sever the mesmeric bond entirely, letting the man loose to leap the hunter's way, knife up and roaring. Before he could think to do so, the hunter found he had already grabbed the brigand throat-first, willing him hypnotically slack; the pulse beneath his fingers pricked him like an electrified needle, making them twist subconsciously in such a way as to pry skin and vein apart, drawing a scarlet flood that hosed straight into his open jaws. And no matter how he fought to stop himself, he nonetheless gulped and gulped like thirsty lion, only ceasing when the blood pumped itself to a trickle.
With a hiss of disgust, the hunter dropped his drained victim to the mud, and turned away.
Walking alone back to the castle (while the prince rustled twice as quickly through the sky above, no doubt, practicing his favourite trick) took longer than expected, so much so that the horizon had already begun to blanch when the prince open the door for him and beckoned him inside, impatient. “You risk yourself,” he chided, “and for what? You might brood just as ably here, as elsewhere.”
“I keep your bargain, damn you—and me too, given it pivots on my own damnation,” the hunter replied, through his gore-sticky teeth, brushing past him and letting the door slam shut behind, separating himself from sunrise's impending promise of of release. “And I will point out that even when the terms were set, you never at any time stipulated I was required to like it.”
“Who is it that plays the Devil's advocate now?” the prince asked, lazily. But when the hunter would not bother to answer, he stepped in front of him, blocking his way; stared down at him hotly, with all the poise granted by a difference of both perhaps five inches and five hundred years, and ordered, voice gone suddenly low as a bass fiddle growl: “Look at me. Look! I made you, Van Helsing—gave you the communion thousands scrabble for, freely, because I thought you merited it. Does that mean nothing?”
“To me? Less than: undo your blasphemy, if you feel cheated. Besides which, God made me, you—”
Again, the Holy Name burnt the hunter's tongue as he said it, making him cry out—yet another indignity which the prince seemed bent on treating as a species of victory. Since: “Oh yes, indubitably,” he snapped back, leaning in still closer, unwisely so. “As he made us both. What a conundrum, eh? The wolf as well as sheep, and for all you claim otherwise, he made you far more predator than prey. Which renders your resistance just as blasphemous, I'd venture...”
The hunter felt a growl of his own building, and for once, was perfectly happy to let it come. “Be silent, for once, in either life,” he warned the prince, “or—”
“Or what, Man of God?”
The hunter lunged up, meeting the prince's next satiric smile with a bite, only to find himself both horrified and oddly cheered by how much he came away with: blood, flesh, naked fangs gleaming out through crimson ruin, shadowed by a hanging flap of jowl. But far from being shocked, the prince made an answering noise deep in his throat, satisfied, lecherous—what was left of his face's bottom half twitched into a newly widened, momentarily lipless grin before he came leaning in for his own bite-turned-kiss, far too fast to block or parry, and smeared his torn mouth's mess everywhere, hot and sweet and smothering. It was meat and fine liquor in one, intoxicating, undeniable bliss and terrible, soul-grinding despair—and though the hunter continued to beat against it until both their bodies were broken in truly dreadful places, he could not save himself from being overborne at last.
At last, science took over, his observations sharpening as though he were already composing a fresh monograph on the subject. Granted, he himself was no virgin, in the ordinary way—celibate a long time, if not entirely chaste—but this mess he found himself enmeshed in was the very definition of difference, so far beyond simple human perversion it approached the truly alien. For vampires, it ensued, part of the change reframed their terrible teeth as the body's sole penetrative organ, rendering every pleasure-source a wound, and vice versa; focus shifted permanently from groin to mouth, forever seeking for a hint of stolen blood and borrowed warmth, and thus nothing was ever over and done with. Instead of a natural climax, there was only the constant dance of unsatisfied appetite, laid aside only when consumption's scale had tipped so far in one partner's favour that further struggle—along with the damage it did—was no longer a risk worth taking.
Eventually, spiked and spasming, he lay there panting with his eyes blood-cataracted, knowing there was nothing left in him to plunder—felt his teeth turn sidelong in surrender, blunt themselves once more with a bruisy strain, and collapsed back into the prince's grasp, allowing himself to be solaced in his defeat. With his lids closed, he suspected he might look almost human again, but knew the process for pure camouflage, a bitter trick to fish new victims in. And the sad fact that none of it really hurt, all this carnage—not for long, at least—was the worst pain of all.
“You have a wife, your debtors tell me, in the village,” the prince began, much later on, once he had the free use of his mouth again. “A madwoman, or so the story goes...”
“Do not speak of her,” the hunter warned him.
“A wife of mine went mad with grief, once,” the prince continued, without caution. “She threw herself from that tower, there—you can just see it through the window, looking towards the river. And all over a rumour! Women can be weak, though some men are no better.”
“I have heard this story before,” the hunter muttered.
“Yes, many have. Just as I learned how many times you tried to cure your wife, and failed—tried with surgery, with drugs, with exorcism. But you and I could make a remarkable change in her now, you might find, were we to extend the same bounty I've granted you her way—”
“I told you not to speak of her!” The hunter snarled, showing his teeth by instinct, before snapping his lips shut upon them once more when he saw the prince smile. “Besides which, I do not recall noticing your—attentions to have much cured poor Mister Renfield of his various manias.”
“Renfield wanted to go mad,” the prince replied, mildly. “For he was weak as well, and in much the same way; a little knowledge was a dangerous thing, in his case, as the poet says. But I do not think any woman you fell in love with would choose to cast her sanity away, rather than facing suffering head-on—no, she would be made of sterner stuff by far, thus making her insanity a derangement of the humours rather than an escape from unbearable truth.”
The hunter snorted. “And on what do you base this assumption, exactly?”
“On my observations of you, Templar, of course—a man with an iron core, for all your outer gentility. You may be wounded or fall ill, but you will not be long laid low; horror is your meat, and though not fearless entirely, you can certainly brush fear aside when the task set calls for it. And since, for wahtever reasons, you have been set a crusade to follow which has consumed almost your every waking moment thus far, you would therefore want someone equally strong for your mate, equally driven and committed...as I do.”
“Hah! And then again, perhaps you are setting the chicken before the egg,” the hunter responded, shivering with sorrow and rage, his hands re-knitting into claws, “thus making a mistake that brands you not so terribly Satan-clever as you wish to seem, by far.”
“You should enlighten me, then—show me where I went wrong, exactly, that I may know the very depths and perameters of my error.”
“Perhaps. And perhaps I decline.”
The prince laughed. “A hundred years,” he reminded him. “And this has been...five nights, now. Whenever it ensues you find you cannot, in fact, do without conversation forever, I may well remind you of this exchange.”
“Then do,” the hunter ground out, turning his back, nails piercing his own palms like spikes. “But until such time—for He whose name I cannot mention's sake, be quiet.”
“If you allow your faith to die away,” the prince pointed out, “it will cease to hurt, eventually. I can tell you this from experience.”
“Remembering how often I have seen you yet affected by cross, Host or holy water, I believe you may be being somewhat specious in your argument.”
“The Dragon's sons have always been Christian, Professor, true enough—and I am no exception, as the Turk learned, to their cost. Yet the truth is that I would have slain them regardless, even if they'd been raised under the same banner as I. And so it is that I soldier on even in my reduction to heretic and pariah, regardless, because my own vendetta with Him has come to mean more to me than the occasional discomfort.”
Now it was the hunter's turn to follow his own advice, which he did, for some long minutes. Until—
“Is is not Him I blame, for anything,” he said, at last. And closed his eyes once more.
***
Three nights on, the hunter attempted to enter another village's church, marching determinedly forward even when his skin began to smoke and the weight of anathema drew tears of blood from everywhere at once. Dimly, he saw a priest run to help him even as the parishioners ran the other way—tried to wave him off, but only succeeded in splattering the stubborn fool with his own slow-cooking decay. This is the end, he thought, and sank down into nothing, thanful for that oblivion beyond all discarded dreams of Heaven.
But when he came back to himself once more he was lying on the steps with his rot-smeared head cradled in the prince's lap, feeling his body reorder itself once more: become hard and white and obdurate, proof against every sort of menace but its own innate horror. And when he turned his head only to feel it flop sidelong instead, being yet too weak even to lift it, he saw that same poor cassocked idiot who'd blistered his hands trying to give him Last Rites prawled beside them with his throat ripped open, sucked-dry wound glinting pale pink and blue in the moonlight.
“You needed healing,” the prince said. “What was I to do?”
The hunter swallowed, tasting the priest's blood, and wanting to retch it out. “Anything...but that.”
“But I do not have your scruples, Templar, as you know; indeed, as chief of our kind, I cannot afford them. But tell me: whose fault is this, really?”
Another swallow, still more painful.
“...Mine,” he said, and found the salt in his mouth was already turning to tears.
“Yes. So—will you try this again?”
“...no...”
With terrible sympathy, the prince enfolded him, letting his cloak descend like wings to hide the hunter's grief; licked the blood from his face like a mother cat under its shield, and told him, as he did: “Things improve, Templar—this is all I can tell you, and all you need to know. All passes away eventually, though we do not.”
But the hunter ground his messay face in the dust and wept, hopeless, 'til he could weep no more.
“Why did you do this to me?” he made himself ask, finally, hoping to be spared an answer.
But: “Because you let me,” the prince replied. Which was, in the end, only the truth.
***
Afterwards, the hunter lay in the dark a long time, no longer bothering to rise from his narrow bed, even when prodded by instinct's howl; longer than was wise, probably. The prince absented himself in the main, ocasionally coming back to lie beside him and put one cold, long-fingered hand lightly over his breaat-bone, cupping the hollow where his heart once used to pound. The hunter felt hunger build in him, filling him steadily 'til at last it seemed to engulf every bone of his skeleton, every muscle of his corpse, every pore of his skin—immeasurably painful and inexhaustibly vital, continually crying out for its own cure.
Eventually, he could hear, see and taste nothing but blood, a red film settling over everything, yet he lay there still and refused to move, eyes open but unfocussed, while the prince folded him steadily closer until the top of his skull fit just underneath that jutting predator-aristocrat's jaw, and those great conqueror's arms became his cage. And in that state he did not speak, or dream, or dare to try to pray, not even after almost one full moon had come and gone, waxing full and shrinking back down 'til nothing remained to hunt by but the barest silver sliver.
“I would not have you broken, Abraham,” the prince told him, at last, in one ear. “That was never how I wanted you.”
So he has known my Christian name all along, the hunter thought. But still he did not answer.
“Abraham Van Helsing,” the prince repeated. “Doctor of Medicine, Doctor of Philosophy, Professor of Comparative Theology; yes, I know your name. Do you hear me, Templar? What have you to say for yourself?”
The hunter cleared his throat, and the taste intensified. The inside of his own larynx grated. He felt his teeth extending, longing to savage whatever they met—his tongue, his lips, the prince's hand. If his beloved wife had suddenly appeared before him, wedged in with the two of them and suddenly cured of all ills, he had a queasy moment of doubt that he could have refrained from killing her where she lay—simply bitten in, pulled back out and bathed in her spurting blood 'til his skin felt warm again, just as he had with that long-ago brigand whose criminal status the prince had expected to salve his moral standards.
“That I am...not broken,” he managed, eventually. “Not...quite yet. But I must deal with things in my...own way, at my own pace, and I will not be...hurried, even by you. So if you do not like the...results of your bargain, you may feel free to...extract yourself from it: kill me, and start over, if who and how I am does not...please you. Or wait, and...see what happens. You have...all the time in the world, supposedly.”
He could not see the prince's face, of course, and scorned to turn and look. But he felt the monster who cradled him grow rigid, contemplative, ceasing even to ruffle his hair with those beautifully-shaped claws. He might have thought Count Dracula was holding his breath, had either of them still been able to breathe.
But: “Ah, yes,” was all the king of all vampires had to say for himself in return, finally. “There is that.”
***
Three nights on, a ragged convoy of undead arrived, throwing the prince's gates wide to march inside without even a by-your-leave—perhaps thirty strong, their attire ranging from trailing, mud- and blood-stained grave-cerements to the height of modern fashion, with a coterie of various human minions, thralls and dupes trailing in their wake. “Voivode!” The one in front called out. “We have come to discover if rumour holds true that you have made Van Helsing into one of us!”
“And if I have?” the prince asked, appearing at the castle's doors. “What then?”
His subjects gaped at him. “How could you?” Cried one further back, a woman, beautiful and proud, to which the prince replied, with a shrug: “Because I do as I please, woman. I am Dracula. Who else amongst you can make the same claim?”
“Give him to us, then!” the first vampire demanded.
“On whose command?”
“Mine. He killed all my clan, all my blood; I will have recompense. I am owed!”
“You are owed nothing I do not choose to give you, bag of dust. The Professor and I have come to an agreement, fledgling, making him mine 'til I say otherwise.”
“Kings have been overthrown before,” another one hissed, though making sure to do so only behind his hand. At which the prince drew himself up, a towering figure, black with rage, and roared—
“Who dares? You small fools, you conscripts, each but the merest microbes of the same plague you spread! While I am the source of that plague, never its victim—since of all vampires ever born and re-born, I and only I am he who made himself.”
“As a scientist, I do not believe this can possibly be so,” said a torn and weary voice, from behind him. “Yet it is of little immediate matter, I suppose.”
And here, with a small, odd smile, the prince drew aside—cloak furling in his wake—to disclose the very man they sought: “his” hunter, upright and dressed once more in his final suit of clothes, almost as neatly unfashionable as the night they'd first met. In either hand he held a stake, new-cut; his blue eyes were already purpling, cilia flooding with blood, and his teeth gleamed both white and sharp.
“So I killed those you love?” He addressed the first vampire, with little affect. “Well, I must admit I do not recall it. Yet since you are what you are, no doubt that was indeed I...and when I was only human, too. Yet tonight, I stand here younger, stronger—not to mention most assuredly your better, seeing I was sired by the master of you all. What chance can you possibly think you have against me now?”
Though a few on either side of him either paused or made some slight retreat at the hunter's tone, or perhaps his looks, the first vampire seemed unimpressed. “I am owed,” it repeated, stepping forward. “No coffin-burning daytime coward will stop me from—”
The right-side stake went through his eye even as he spoke, however, while the left- went through his heart; the hunter pulled them both free at once, twisting hard enough his kill's ash-devolving body came apart like dirty snow. And then, as the others leapt forward to meet him, he became a storm of movement, a hundred-armed dervish whose every move sprayed blood-become-dust. The prince folded his arms and settled back, at the same time angling himself to best survey the carnage, utterly content to watch.
Minutes later, the courtyard stood mostly cleared, at least of anything undead. The hunter pulled his final victim's heart free and bit into it, draining the thick muscle dry, before flinging it disdainfully down to crumble at his feet. Against the walls, the defeated challengers' concubines and diurnal enablers quivered, visibly aghast—and the prince leaned forward to tap the hunter's shoulder lightly, breaking him from his berserker's trance.
“You are done, I believe,” he said. “For now.”
“Send word to whoever inquires that I will fight them if they come,” the hunter replied, not looking up. “You may lose a fair amount of subjects this way, for which I would apologize, but—” A shrug. “A man cannot elude his own nature for long, I suppose, under any circumstances.”
“I never forbade you to kill our kind, Templar—only me, or yourself. We are one blood, after all, as you have only recently admitted; you may therefore in most cases feel free do as you please, just as I do.” The prince paused, surveying the trembling herd. “Be aware, however, that with each new vampire you kill, you ensure that all those who owe them fealty will come forward to fall prostrate at your feet. These chosen cows, for example—here, there, here again—will claim their bounty is due to you now, and compete with each other for your favour. How does that make you feel?”
The hunter flushed, displaying his new-gained colour. “Ridiculous. I will turn them away, of course, for—the Devil's sake; why would I wish to continue their exploitation? It is disgusting.”
“They may not think so. Nor may they take hindly to being freed, scattered to the winds and left to their own devices, when they have often destroyed everything else in their lives in order to gain such a very intimate sort of submission.”
“This is their own affair. All I know is that I must either disappoint them, or disappoint myself. If they remain so insolubly bent on self-destruction, then let them find their own fresh Hell at their own speed, and in their own way.”
The prince smiled at him. “How very young you are,” he announced, to no one in particular, to which the hunter made a face.
“Perhaps,” he replied. “Yet I know who I am, even so—and a hundred years from now, when my debt is paid, you will no longer be able to require anything of me. I might decide to watch the sun come back up, and if even if you did try to stop me—which, being you, I sincerely doubt you would—I am not entirely sure you would succeed.”
“Nor am I,” the prince agreed. “Which is...different, a rare thing, in my world. So I must enjoy you while I may, I suppose.”
***
The next night, they began to make their plans for travel.
THE END
The Narrow Bed, Part Two
Fandom: Hammer Horror
Van Helsing/Dracula
“Why should I be able to rest here?” The hunter asked the prince, staring down into the sarcophagus they had both spent their day in, as he dressed for dinner. “This is not my native soil.”
“It is now. We run counter-clockwise to His design, Templar, remaking the world around us; death into vampirism constitutes a fresh baptism, a literal rebirth. Besides which, man and wife are one flesh, are they not?”
“I am NOT your—”
“Consort? Oh yes, you are; I told you as much, when we made our pact. Too late for forbearance, or regrets. My blood runs in your veins now. We have only to consummate our bargain, and the metaphorical becomes literal.”
“You will wait a very long time for that, Count.”
“Of that I have no doubt. But you forget, proud man: I can afford to...”
(...as can you.)
***
“You will quickly have no shirts left at all, if you do not apply yourself to learning better table-manners,” the prince observed, in a tone so patronizing it made the hunter flush—a far easier task than usual, to be sure, now that he had finally managed to feed on his own.
This promised nest of brigands they had descended upon lay scattered, groaning and broke-backed around them. The hunter had just extricated his teeth from one man's neck, even as the prince cracked two more's skulls together and treated one's jetting scalp-wound like a boiled egg, while somehow keeping the other caught with only a gesture, rather than any hint of direct eye-contact; the man hovered nearby even now, white-faced and rigid, unable to run even in the face of his companion's all-but-drained coma.
“Try to bring this one your way,” the prince said. Then repeated, as the hunter shook his head: “Try, Templar.”
“I am perfectly satisfied with what...nourishment I've found thus far, thank you—”
The prince shrugged, snapping his fingers—an action which appeared to sever the mesmeric bond entirely, letting the man loose to leap the hunter's way, knife up and roaring. Before he could think to do so, the hunter found he had already grabbed the brigand throat-first, willing him hypnotically slack; the pulse beneath his fingers pricked him like an electrified needle, making them twist subconsciously in such a way as to pry skin and vein apart, drawing a scarlet flood that hosed straight into his open jaws. And no matter how he fought to stop himself, he nonetheless gulped and gulped like thirsty lion, only ceasing when the blood pumped itself to a trickle.
With a hiss of disgust, the hunter dropped his drained victim to the mud, and turned away.
Walking alone back to the castle (while the prince rustled twice as quickly through the sky above, no doubt, practicing his favourite trick) took longer than expected, so much so that the horizon had already begun to blanch when the prince open the door for him and beckoned him inside, impatient. “You risk yourself,” he chided, “and for what? You might brood just as ably here, as elsewhere.”
“I keep your bargain, damn you—and me too, given it pivots on my own damnation,” the hunter replied, through his gore-sticky teeth, brushing past him and letting the door slam shut behind, separating himself from sunrise's impending promise of of release. “And I will point out that even when the terms were set, you never at any time stipulated I was required to like it.”
“Who is it that plays the Devil's advocate now?” the prince asked, lazily. But when the hunter would not bother to answer, he stepped in front of him, blocking his way; stared down at him hotly, with all the poise granted by a difference of both perhaps five inches and five hundred years, and ordered, voice gone suddenly low as a bass fiddle growl: “Look at me. Look! I made you, Van Helsing—gave you the communion thousands scrabble for, freely, because I thought you merited it. Does that mean nothing?”
“To me? Less than: undo your blasphemy, if you feel cheated. Besides which, God made me, you—”
Again, the Holy Name burnt the hunter's tongue as he said it, making him cry out—yet another indignity which the prince seemed bent on treating as a species of victory. Since: “Oh yes, indubitably,” he snapped back, leaning in still closer, unwisely so. “As he made us both. What a conundrum, eh? The wolf as well as sheep, and for all you claim otherwise, he made you far more predator than prey. Which renders your resistance just as blasphemous, I'd venture...”
The hunter felt a growl of his own building, and for once, was perfectly happy to let it come. “Be silent, for once, in either life,” he warned the prince, “or—”
“Or what, Man of God?”
The hunter lunged up, meeting the prince's next satiric smile with a bite, only to find himself both horrified and oddly cheered by how much he came away with: blood, flesh, naked fangs gleaming out through crimson ruin, shadowed by a hanging flap of jowl. But far from being shocked, the prince made an answering noise deep in his throat, satisfied, lecherous—what was left of his face's bottom half twitched into a newly widened, momentarily lipless grin before he came leaning in for his own bite-turned-kiss, far too fast to block or parry, and smeared his torn mouth's mess everywhere, hot and sweet and smothering. It was meat and fine liquor in one, intoxicating, undeniable bliss and terrible, soul-grinding despair—and though the hunter continued to beat against it until both their bodies were broken in truly dreadful places, he could not save himself from being overborne at last.
At last, science took over, his observations sharpening as though he were already composing a fresh monograph on the subject. Granted, he himself was no virgin, in the ordinary way—celibate a long time, if not entirely chaste—but this mess he found himself enmeshed in was the very definition of difference, so far beyond simple human perversion it approached the truly alien. For vampires, it ensued, part of the change reframed their terrible teeth as the body's sole penetrative organ, rendering every pleasure-source a wound, and vice versa; focus shifted permanently from groin to mouth, forever seeking for a hint of stolen blood and borrowed warmth, and thus nothing was ever over and done with. Instead of a natural climax, there was only the constant dance of unsatisfied appetite, laid aside only when consumption's scale had tipped so far in one partner's favour that further struggle—along with the damage it did—was no longer a risk worth taking.
Eventually, spiked and spasming, he lay there panting with his eyes blood-cataracted, knowing there was nothing left in him to plunder—felt his teeth turn sidelong in surrender, blunt themselves once more with a bruisy strain, and collapsed back into the prince's grasp, allowing himself to be solaced in his defeat. With his lids closed, he suspected he might look almost human again, but knew the process for pure camouflage, a bitter trick to fish new victims in. And the sad fact that none of it really hurt, all this carnage—not for long, at least—was the worst pain of all.
“You have a wife, your debtors tell me, in the village,” the prince began, much later on, once he had the free use of his mouth again. “A madwoman, or so the story goes...”
“Do not speak of her,” the hunter warned him.
“A wife of mine went mad with grief, once,” the prince continued, without caution. “She threw herself from that tower, there—you can just see it through the window, looking towards the river. And all over a rumour! Women can be weak, though some men are no better.”
“I have heard this story before,” the hunter muttered.
“Yes, many have. Just as I learned how many times you tried to cure your wife, and failed—tried with surgery, with drugs, with exorcism. But you and I could make a remarkable change in her now, you might find, were we to extend the same bounty I've granted you her way—”
“I told you not to speak of her!” The hunter snarled, showing his teeth by instinct, before snapping his lips shut upon them once more when he saw the prince smile. “Besides which, I do not recall noticing your—attentions to have much cured poor Mister Renfield of his various manias.”
“Renfield wanted to go mad,” the prince replied, mildly. “For he was weak as well, and in much the same way; a little knowledge was a dangerous thing, in his case, as the poet says. But I do not think any woman you fell in love with would choose to cast her sanity away, rather than facing suffering head-on—no, she would be made of sterner stuff by far, thus making her insanity a derangement of the humours rather than an escape from unbearable truth.”
The hunter snorted. “And on what do you base this assumption, exactly?”
“On my observations of you, Templar, of course—a man with an iron core, for all your outer gentility. You may be wounded or fall ill, but you will not be long laid low; horror is your meat, and though not fearless entirely, you can certainly brush fear aside when the task set calls for it. And since, for wahtever reasons, you have been set a crusade to follow which has consumed almost your every waking moment thus far, you would therefore want someone equally strong for your mate, equally driven and committed...as I do.”
“Hah! And then again, perhaps you are setting the chicken before the egg,” the hunter responded, shivering with sorrow and rage, his hands re-knitting into claws, “thus making a mistake that brands you not so terribly Satan-clever as you wish to seem, by far.”
“You should enlighten me, then—show me where I went wrong, exactly, that I may know the very depths and perameters of my error.”
“Perhaps. And perhaps I decline.”
The prince laughed. “A hundred years,” he reminded him. “And this has been...five nights, now. Whenever it ensues you find you cannot, in fact, do without conversation forever, I may well remind you of this exchange.”
“Then do,” the hunter ground out, turning his back, nails piercing his own palms like spikes. “But until such time—for He whose name I cannot mention's sake, be quiet.”
“If you allow your faith to die away,” the prince pointed out, “it will cease to hurt, eventually. I can tell you this from experience.”
“Remembering how often I have seen you yet affected by cross, Host or holy water, I believe you may be being somewhat specious in your argument.”
“The Dragon's sons have always been Christian, Professor, true enough—and I am no exception, as the Turk learned, to their cost. Yet the truth is that I would have slain them regardless, even if they'd been raised under the same banner as I. And so it is that I soldier on even in my reduction to heretic and pariah, regardless, because my own vendetta with Him has come to mean more to me than the occasional discomfort.”
Now it was the hunter's turn to follow his own advice, which he did, for some long minutes. Until—
“Is is not Him I blame, for anything,” he said, at last. And closed his eyes once more.
***
Three nights on, the hunter attempted to enter another village's church, marching determinedly forward even when his skin began to smoke and the weight of anathema drew tears of blood from everywhere at once. Dimly, he saw a priest run to help him even as the parishioners ran the other way—tried to wave him off, but only succeeded in splattering the stubborn fool with his own slow-cooking decay. This is the end, he thought, and sank down into nothing, thanful for that oblivion beyond all discarded dreams of Heaven.
But when he came back to himself once more he was lying on the steps with his rot-smeared head cradled in the prince's lap, feeling his body reorder itself once more: become hard and white and obdurate, proof against every sort of menace but its own innate horror. And when he turned his head only to feel it flop sidelong instead, being yet too weak even to lift it, he saw that same poor cassocked idiot who'd blistered his hands trying to give him Last Rites prawled beside them with his throat ripped open, sucked-dry wound glinting pale pink and blue in the moonlight.
“You needed healing,” the prince said. “What was I to do?”
The hunter swallowed, tasting the priest's blood, and wanting to retch it out. “Anything...but that.”
“But I do not have your scruples, Templar, as you know; indeed, as chief of our kind, I cannot afford them. But tell me: whose fault is this, really?”
Another swallow, still more painful.
“...Mine,” he said, and found the salt in his mouth was already turning to tears.
“Yes. So—will you try this again?”
“...no...”
With terrible sympathy, the prince enfolded him, letting his cloak descend like wings to hide the hunter's grief; licked the blood from his face like a mother cat under its shield, and told him, as he did: “Things improve, Templar—this is all I can tell you, and all you need to know. All passes away eventually, though we do not.”
But the hunter ground his messay face in the dust and wept, hopeless, 'til he could weep no more.
“Why did you do this to me?” he made himself ask, finally, hoping to be spared an answer.
But: “Because you let me,” the prince replied. Which was, in the end, only the truth.
***
Afterwards, the hunter lay in the dark a long time, no longer bothering to rise from his narrow bed, even when prodded by instinct's howl; longer than was wise, probably. The prince absented himself in the main, ocasionally coming back to lie beside him and put one cold, long-fingered hand lightly over his breaat-bone, cupping the hollow where his heart once used to pound. The hunter felt hunger build in him, filling him steadily 'til at last it seemed to engulf every bone of his skeleton, every muscle of his corpse, every pore of his skin—immeasurably painful and inexhaustibly vital, continually crying out for its own cure.
Eventually, he could hear, see and taste nothing but blood, a red film settling over everything, yet he lay there still and refused to move, eyes open but unfocussed, while the prince folded him steadily closer until the top of his skull fit just underneath that jutting predator-aristocrat's jaw, and those great conqueror's arms became his cage. And in that state he did not speak, or dream, or dare to try to pray, not even after almost one full moon had come and gone, waxing full and shrinking back down 'til nothing remained to hunt by but the barest silver sliver.
“I would not have you broken, Abraham,” the prince told him, at last, in one ear. “That was never how I wanted you.”
So he has known my Christian name all along, the hunter thought. But still he did not answer.
“Abraham Van Helsing,” the prince repeated. “Doctor of Medicine, Doctor of Philosophy, Professor of Comparative Theology; yes, I know your name. Do you hear me, Templar? What have you to say for yourself?”
The hunter cleared his throat, and the taste intensified. The inside of his own larynx grated. He felt his teeth extending, longing to savage whatever they met—his tongue, his lips, the prince's hand. If his beloved wife had suddenly appeared before him, wedged in with the two of them and suddenly cured of all ills, he had a queasy moment of doubt that he could have refrained from killing her where she lay—simply bitten in, pulled back out and bathed in her spurting blood 'til his skin felt warm again, just as he had with that long-ago brigand whose criminal status the prince had expected to salve his moral standards.
“That I am...not broken,” he managed, eventually. “Not...quite yet. But I must deal with things in my...own way, at my own pace, and I will not be...hurried, even by you. So if you do not like the...results of your bargain, you may feel free to...extract yourself from it: kill me, and start over, if who and how I am does not...please you. Or wait, and...see what happens. You have...all the time in the world, supposedly.”
He could not see the prince's face, of course, and scorned to turn and look. But he felt the monster who cradled him grow rigid, contemplative, ceasing even to ruffle his hair with those beautifully-shaped claws. He might have thought Count Dracula was holding his breath, had either of them still been able to breathe.
But: “Ah, yes,” was all the king of all vampires had to say for himself in return, finally. “There is that.”
***
Three nights on, a ragged convoy of undead arrived, throwing the prince's gates wide to march inside without even a by-your-leave—perhaps thirty strong, their attire ranging from trailing, mud- and blood-stained grave-cerements to the height of modern fashion, with a coterie of various human minions, thralls and dupes trailing in their wake. “Voivode!” The one in front called out. “We have come to discover if rumour holds true that you have made Van Helsing into one of us!”
“And if I have?” the prince asked, appearing at the castle's doors. “What then?”
His subjects gaped at him. “How could you?” Cried one further back, a woman, beautiful and proud, to which the prince replied, with a shrug: “Because I do as I please, woman. I am Dracula. Who else amongst you can make the same claim?”
“Give him to us, then!” the first vampire demanded.
“On whose command?”
“Mine. He killed all my clan, all my blood; I will have recompense. I am owed!”
“You are owed nothing I do not choose to give you, bag of dust. The Professor and I have come to an agreement, fledgling, making him mine 'til I say otherwise.”
“Kings have been overthrown before,” another one hissed, though making sure to do so only behind his hand. At which the prince drew himself up, a towering figure, black with rage, and roared—
“Who dares? You small fools, you conscripts, each but the merest microbes of the same plague you spread! While I am the source of that plague, never its victim—since of all vampires ever born and re-born, I and only I am he who made himself.”
“As a scientist, I do not believe this can possibly be so,” said a torn and weary voice, from behind him. “Yet it is of little immediate matter, I suppose.”
And here, with a small, odd smile, the prince drew aside—cloak furling in his wake—to disclose the very man they sought: “his” hunter, upright and dressed once more in his final suit of clothes, almost as neatly unfashionable as the night they'd first met. In either hand he held a stake, new-cut; his blue eyes were already purpling, cilia flooding with blood, and his teeth gleamed both white and sharp.
“So I killed those you love?” He addressed the first vampire, with little affect. “Well, I must admit I do not recall it. Yet since you are what you are, no doubt that was indeed I...and when I was only human, too. Yet tonight, I stand here younger, stronger—not to mention most assuredly your better, seeing I was sired by the master of you all. What chance can you possibly think you have against me now?”
Though a few on either side of him either paused or made some slight retreat at the hunter's tone, or perhaps his looks, the first vampire seemed unimpressed. “I am owed,” it repeated, stepping forward. “No coffin-burning daytime coward will stop me from—”
The right-side stake went through his eye even as he spoke, however, while the left- went through his heart; the hunter pulled them both free at once, twisting hard enough his kill's ash-devolving body came apart like dirty snow. And then, as the others leapt forward to meet him, he became a storm of movement, a hundred-armed dervish whose every move sprayed blood-become-dust. The prince folded his arms and settled back, at the same time angling himself to best survey the carnage, utterly content to watch.
Minutes later, the courtyard stood mostly cleared, at least of anything undead. The hunter pulled his final victim's heart free and bit into it, draining the thick muscle dry, before flinging it disdainfully down to crumble at his feet. Against the walls, the defeated challengers' concubines and diurnal enablers quivered, visibly aghast—and the prince leaned forward to tap the hunter's shoulder lightly, breaking him from his berserker's trance.
“You are done, I believe,” he said. “For now.”
“Send word to whoever inquires that I will fight them if they come,” the hunter replied, not looking up. “You may lose a fair amount of subjects this way, for which I would apologize, but—” A shrug. “A man cannot elude his own nature for long, I suppose, under any circumstances.”
“I never forbade you to kill our kind, Templar—only me, or yourself. We are one blood, after all, as you have only recently admitted; you may therefore in most cases feel free do as you please, just as I do.” The prince paused, surveying the trembling herd. “Be aware, however, that with each new vampire you kill, you ensure that all those who owe them fealty will come forward to fall prostrate at your feet. These chosen cows, for example—here, there, here again—will claim their bounty is due to you now, and compete with each other for your favour. How does that make you feel?”
The hunter flushed, displaying his new-gained colour. “Ridiculous. I will turn them away, of course, for—the Devil's sake; why would I wish to continue their exploitation? It is disgusting.”
“They may not think so. Nor may they take hindly to being freed, scattered to the winds and left to their own devices, when they have often destroyed everything else in their lives in order to gain such a very intimate sort of submission.”
“This is their own affair. All I know is that I must either disappoint them, or disappoint myself. If they remain so insolubly bent on self-destruction, then let them find their own fresh Hell at their own speed, and in their own way.”
The prince smiled at him. “How very young you are,” he announced, to no one in particular, to which the hunter made a face.
“Perhaps,” he replied. “Yet I know who I am, even so—and a hundred years from now, when my debt is paid, you will no longer be able to require anything of me. I might decide to watch the sun come back up, and if even if you did try to stop me—which, being you, I sincerely doubt you would—I am not entirely sure you would succeed.”
“Nor am I,” the prince agreed. “Which is...different, a rare thing, in my world. So I must enjoy you while I may, I suppose.”
***
The next night, they began to make their plans for travel.
THE END