At some point, I'll finish the two stories floating about needing an ending. But this idea grabbed me. One or two chapters left; I know where it's going, I just need the time and inclination to ignore what I should be doing around the house and write instead ;)
TAMED Ch 1
He'd learned to ignore the monster.
Chained to the wall, movements limited to a matter of a few feet, vision restricted to the cell and a glimpse of the hallway wall, Dracula still entertained himself. For the full month of his captivity, the vampire had taunted Abraham, quickly and gleefully discovering which buttons to push to get the strongest reaction. The deaths of Quincy and Lucy, of Abraham's son, the damage to Mina, and finally the end result were ample grounds for amusement. After all Abraham had done, all he'd really accomplished was the death of a fine young man and the captivity of a single vampire. He hadn't even saved Lucy.
It was harder to ignore the vampire while he slept. Although Dracula would not admit to causing it, the entire household was plagued by nightmares of blood and death. Abraham had finally been forced to resort to renting rooms at a nearby inn and moving servants there at night, rather than in their own rooms on his estate. With nearly everyone else gone, Abraham had been on the receiving end of very vivid and horrifying nightmares until he began to stay awake at night, sleeping during the day, and dealing with the discommodation of living like, well, a vampire!
Still, the vampire was his responsibility. Abraham was not going to abandon it, no matter how hateful its actions. Each night, he brought a bowl of blood. Horse, sheep, pig, cow, goat...even chicken and goose blood. Each night, his demonic captive ignored the blood in favor of ridiculing its captor. Abraham would force himself to stay in the room for several minutes, providing some form of company for the beast, and then leave with its taunts and laughter ringing in his ears.
Tonight was no different. Dracula had become quieter, his voice more cutting and cunning, limiting his insults and provocations to a choice few sentences and simply grinning at the frustrated man! The vampire no longer bothered to even stand, simply lounging insolently against the wall, legs stretched in front of him, looking almost obscenely comfortable and relaxed. The only expressions Dracula bore were of a gleeful evil followed by one of repugnant satisfaction.
The monster had to be hungry; Abraham just wished it would eat! Arms and legs were withered sticks, the skin dry and stretched to near-cracking across the grinning face, glossy black hair now thin and white. Dracula still managed his taunts; tonight's subject was whether Abraham's God would approve of his deliberately interacting with a demon, and whether they'd actually encounter each other in Hell or if it was too vastly packed with damned souls to allow such an encounter. The voice was quiet but rich with amusement and perfectly audible in the tomblike silence of the former dungeon.
Ignoring the monster's taunts, Abraham briefly stooped just out of reach of the monster's possible grasp, setting the shallow bowl on the floor. A slender stick with a branched end was used to push the bowl towards Dracula...for it to be ignored, yet again. A few more minutes, waiting for the vampire to eat, and Abraham turned to leave, but not without a parting shot of his own.
"If you won't eat, then I suppose there may not be any sense to my returning tomorrow with food."
He didn't turn around, but the soft, angered hiss of the vampire was just barely audible before the door closed solidly behind him.
-v-v-
Damn that man. That human. Bad enough he actually thought himself capable of hunting a vampire, but to have successfully captured HIM? Degrading, humiliating, and more than enough reason all on its own to carefully pull the bastard into a thousand small and bloody bits. The deaths of Lucy and his Brides? Certainly cause to take his time during revenge. The man would not be allowed to die quickly but would spend what would seem a near-eternity wishing he had. Worst of all...Van Helsing had CAGED him like a mere animal! Weakened him by stakes and beheading and the loss of his coffin (still somewhere near, he could FEEL it...but that did him no good at all), chained to a dank wall, sitting on a filthy floor, and taunted with putrid animal blood in a clumsy clay dish?
He was a LORD. A prince, then a war leader, master of his own lands! He had lived in a castle, slept in a feathered bed when not in a military tent, dined on fine dishes from silvered plates, worn silks and velvets when not in armor on a battlefield. He'd taken his revenge on those that had dared imprison him in life, demanded respect upon pain of death from that time on. Van Helsing treated him as the lowest slave, chained and starved and surrounded by filth, and the man would suffer eternally for that folly.
Rage could only keep him functional for so long. With Abraham gone and the room back in blackness, the only sounds the occasional distant squeak of a rodent or drip of water, Dracula glared into the dark. The floor was filthy, but better to choose how to rest on it than to wait another day and simply collapse into the grime. Grumbling, he allowed himself to slide down the wall onto the cold and rough floor. A minimum of movement, and he slipped into a half-aware, starved state of near-suspension, arranged as comfortably as he could manage. No, not comfortable, not at all...but with the discomfort as reduced as possible.
The wall behind his back and legs kept him from rolling backwards, allowed him to stretch out on his side. One arm crooked under his head, pillowing it from the hard stone floor. The other rested, bent, hand nearly to his chin, and preventing him from unintentionally rolling forward. A slight hiss, all he could truly manage (and how that rankled!), Dracula let himself slip into as peaceful a near-sleep as he could.
-v-v-
Dracula had responded to the previous night's threat by now ignoring HIM. The beast lounged insolently along the back wall, stretched out with its head resting on one of those bony arms, body lolling backwards against the wall. No insults tonight, no taunts, merely the steady and hateful regard of half-closed eyes. The bowl (horse blood tonight) scraped across the floor towards the vampire only to be ignored beyond the slightest flaring of nostrils.
This wasn't working. Not at all. Tempting the beast with its coffin, with a journey out of the cell...he'd given up on those long ago. Nothing, nothing at all, seemed to tempt the beast, encouraged it to any sort of cooperation or obedience. He was loathe, so very, very loathe, to offer the beast human blood. It was nearly sacriligeous, grotesque and horrifying...but it was the only temptation Abraham had remaining.
Turning, he left the vampire alone in the dark again. Dracula no doubt expected him to return sometime during the next day, carefully retrieving the bowl while the vampire slept. Tonight, he'd surprise the monster.
-v-v-
His return within the hour did so. Dracula had been asleep, or as close to asleep as to make no difference, choosing to sleep the night away and thus escape boredom. The noise of the door, the brightness of the lantern, had drawn those red eyes half-open, staring at him in a vague sort of sleepy shock. Dracula didn't move beyond that, watching Abraham with eyes that switched from drowsy confusion to a cold and glittering anger under half-closed lids.
The second bowl was placed on the floor. As small, mean, and shallow as the first, there was one important difference. The blood, just barely enough to coat the bottom of the bowl...was human. Harvested mere minutes ago from a servant, it steamed slightly in the chill air.
Dracula's eyes moved immediately to the bowl, nostrils flaring as the beast took a shallow sniff of the air, then eyes widening in near shock. Grinning, Abraham used the same stick to push the bowl nearer the vampire, and stepped back to wait.
The grin faded, and fell, replaced by concern. Dracula's entire attention was on the bowl, eyes unblinking. A soft clicking noise came from the beast's direction, and Abraham watched as the jaw trembled, shivering up and down ever so slightly, then the visible swallowing. The hand on the floor twitched, moving a few inches over the crusted grime towards the bowl, then stopping. Dracula...he couldn't possibly be that weak! Could he? The eyes changed, lower lid lifting slightly, expression shifting to a frustrated desperation. Nothing else moved...only the soft chattering of the monster's mouth and the eyes. Minutes ticked past, and Abraham reached a decision.
He had not gotten within the monster's possible reach since capturing him. The length of its arms and chains and been calculated, the limits delineated on the floor, and Abraham never crossed that link, never even approached to within a foot of it. With great trepidation, he crossed that line, branch extended, pushing the bowl to rest against the cheek of the vampire, then rapidly retreating to safety.
Dracula hadn't even looked at him, all attention on the bowl and its sticky red contents. The tongue, so dry it was cracked, lolled awkwardly into the bowl. Within moments the bowl was empty, the eyes had sagged shut, and the vampire was motionless. Perhaps sleeping, perhaps "playing possum" (a phrase Quincy had once used that had stuck with Abraham all these long weeks) to lure him within reach from a false sense of safety.
Starved? Pretending? Taking the "game" of taunting his captor to a new level? Well, at least the vampire had finally eaten something. Frowning, Abraham went upstairs, turning over options in his mind.
-v-v-
It had been just enough to revive him, not remotely near enough to actually help him recover. That bastard. Hate for Van Helsing flared to new life, but quickly died down to glowing embers. He simply didn't have enough energy to hate the man...but was no longer so depleted that he could be unaware.
Instead, he spent every moment aware of the gnawing, unending, intense starvation, of the putrid (and now cold and clotted, too) animal blood reeking nearby, of the unforgivingly hard and cold floor and the pain of his joints as they pressed into it, and the long, long, slow dragging passage of time. Had he the ability, he would have wept with gratitude as the rising sun pushed him into sleep and out of the unending misery of weeks of captivity. He'd held out as long as he could, far longer than Van Helsing must have ever expected...but knew that he would break, soon.
Not even Dracula could bear this forever.
-v-v-
Dracula hadn't moved, bowl still against the thin dry lips, and horse blood still untouched. Stubborn beast! The bowls were hooked and pulled away from the slumbering monster to be cleaned and refilled yet again. The sun would be setting within the hour, and Abraham had something new to try. Dracula would eat human blood, and its starved and miserable appearance was wringing pity and guilt from him. Probably deliberately...but if the vampire would eat human blood, he'd give him human blood.
Easy enough to draw his own blood, and much more convenient than attempting to convince one of his staff to allow a bloodletting before everyone left to the inn. More blood tonight, too, enough to cover the bottom of both bowls to a finger-width or more in depth. He'd feed the beast the first bowl, and then use the second to try and obtain its cooperation. With hunger awakened by the first bowl, the second might seem all the more tempting, worth obedience to obtain.
Windows glowing orange with the setting of the sun, Abraham took the bowls down into the blackness of the underground cells.
-v-v-
Blood, again...no. HUMAN blood? Yes... Dracula's eyes opened past the merest of slits as he stared at the bowl in that damned man's hands. A small bowl, still not enough, never enough. Just enough to keep him from the peace of insensibility, but he could not refuse it any more than a man in the desert could refuse a sip of water.
-v-v-
The vampire was awake, red eyes staring at the bowl, clawed hands scrabbling at the rock floor. By the time Abraham had the stick, the vampire had pulled itself to the limits of the chains. Still prostrate, head still lying on the floor, but the eyes following the bowl with a voracious hunger. Sure enough, as soon as the bowl was within reach, one of those long, bony arms had flopped gracelessly out, wrapped a hand around the container, and scraped it across the floor to be greedily devoured. Face-first into the bowl; had the beast needed to breathe, it would have choked! Within moments, the rasping of the tongue on a bare surface ceased, and the vampire slumped to the side.
And ignored him. Eyes closed, the beast feigned sleep, pretending to be oblivious to his presence! The mention of a second bowl of blood didn't even draw forth a twitch.
Perhaps later. With a resigned, philosophical shrug Abraham left his captive to its rest. He'd try again after eating his own meal.