Chapter 1: Ghost is Back
The vampire Mina held up Dorian's portrait and ripped off the cover. Dorian Gray, pinned to the wall rather uncomfortably by his own sword, stared in fascinated horror at the hideous creature staring back at him from the canvas. Soon Dorian's eyes were fixed on the picture, unable to look away, and he began to scream. He felt his face melting and dissolving, too old to leave even a skull.
With his throat gone, it was hard to scream. But Dorian could still feel the rest of his body evaporating painfully, turning to ash before his blackened eyes. Then it was done, and he could suddenly see everything quite clearly and without any pain. He stared at Mina in a detatched sort of way as she snorted triumphantly and strode quickly away around the corner. What was she so happy about?
Dorian looked down at himself, curious about what had happened. Ashes on the floor... but that wasn't him. His usual gray-jacketed self seemed silvery and translucent, and this worried him but not overly so. He stepped away from the wall experimentally and found that he was free of the sword. Dorian examined the sword closely and found that it looked the same as ever, except for the fact that it was stuck in a wall rather oddly, and he grasped its handle to pull it out. It was quite a bit heavier than he had remembered.
The dead immortal shrugged and shucked the sword into a scabbard he had buckled at his waist. He looked around the bedroom and laughed at the sword slashes in the curtains. He had never liked those curtains, and he thought the gaping holes to be a big improvement. The bed had a gash in the mattress surrounded by blood; that was from Mina. He had pinned her there before she had surprised him. Imagine, surprising an immortal.
Dorian remembered something very important to him... something he had to betray the rest of the League to get back... he spun around and looked into his own face. The portrait had apparently been restored, for Dorian's own features looked back at him arrogantly from the canvas, mouth smirking at something that Dorian didn't see.
He felt suddenly very angry with the portrait and with all the pain and problems it had caused him throughout the course of his long life. Impulsively he drew his sword again and slashed at the picture, cutting an ugly gash across his own flawless features. He brought it down again, harder this time, and the canvas fell apart in two pieces which immediately curled and shriveled and blackened and, at last, turned to dust. Dorian felt triumphant and free without his sins staring coldly at him wherever he turned, and he felt his own mouth curve into the arrogant smirk that had previously belonged to the lifeless creature who had mirrored him in all but his age -- and now would trouble him no more.
Dorian's gaze drifted to the second dark spot on the floor, the small pile of his own ashes, and the smirk slowly faded. He was dead, he knew that. Was this normal? For your spirit stay in the world after your body has gone forever?
Dorian Gray, the immortal, had died at last. But he wasn't going anywhere.