Disclaimer: Stephen Summers owns this version of Dracula.
He woke from his icy tomb, screaming, with anguish, the name of his dead bride.
"MARISHKA!"
He cried out for her, raged against the inevitable. She was dead. And this time, there was no saving her. Bats twirled around him, fleeing from their master's sorrow and grief.
His face twisted with anguish. "Why can't they just leave us alone?" Grief and sorrow swiftly turned to anger. Anger at the townspeople who had slain his bride. "We never kill more than our fill, and less than our share. Can they say the same?" Anger against the villagers was not enough. He began to vent his spleen on his two remaining brides.
"Did I not stress how important it was to be finished with Anna Valerious before she destroys what we are trying to create?"
Verona and Aleera cringed from him. "We lost Marishka!"
"Master!"
Dracula went to them, trying to calm them. "There, there, my darlings. Do not worry. I shall find another bride!" He sought to console them, but he failed.
"What?" Aleera stared, horrified, "Do we mean so little to you?"
"Have you no heart?" Verona pleaded.
Rage. All consuming rage. Against the brides. Against the villagers. Against himself.
"No!" Dracula shouted, turning from them, "I have no heart!"
Inside, the organ that once made blood course through his body was still and dead. He had a heart… just not a soul.
"I feel no love…"
The taste of their blood on his tongue. The scent of their bodies. The whispers of the wings. His brides. The women he had chosen for their beauty and strength. He could not claim that it was merely his blood in their veins that connected them. It had to be something more…
"Nor fear…"
The crucifix. A painful reminder of everything he had revoked just for an eternal lifetime on Earth. He feared it - it was a sign of the God he had turned his back on… and the judgement that awaited Dracula if he was ever to be slain.
"Nor joy…"
The thrill of the hunt, the smell of prey on the evening breeze, the feeling of wind beneath one's wings as human form was no longer earth-bound…
"Nor sorrow…"
He may claim that Marishka's death was merely a setback, that it would be easy to replace her. But it was the news of her death which woke him, screaming, from his crypt.
"I am hollow…"
Hollow… but not empty.
"And I will live forever."
Dracula hung his head in his hands, and started to weep.