When I woke again, after perhaps moments or days, the Count was sitting beside me, looking at me with a disconcerting longing. Scattered memories ran through my mind; whether of dreams or reality I could not tell. I hazily remembered those women crawling over me, lusting for my blood, and the tiny, mewling cry of an infant. And the Count... warning them that I belonged to him...
I felt a sudden, incapacitating stab of fear, and the need to get out of this God-forsaken castle immediately, no matter what the cost. Finding myself too weak and overcome with vertigo to sit upright, I foolishly began to struggle from my supine position, succeeding only in nearly rolling off of the bed. The Count caught me before I could fall and placed me almost gently on my side with my back facing him. My terror was not helped by the fact that I now could not see him, nor that he caught me as lightly as if I had been a child.
I felt him run one sharp fingernail across the curve where my neck met my shoulder. "You've lost far too much blood to be up and running about."
It was true. I felt very ill from the loss of blood--dizzy, nauseated, and cold, mostly cold. My own hands felt like ice as I drew one up to my, happily, still-clothed chest. I knew I had to speak, to prove to him that I was not an animal to be devoured, but my throat was uncooperative; paralyzed, like the rest of my body, with fear. Finally I closed my eyes, steeled myself, and managed to ask, "What did they do to me?"
"They will not touch you again. You are mine now, Jonathan Harker." I could feel him behind me, cold hands on my throat, in my hair. The night I remembered had not been a dream. I realized immediately exactly what he had meant: I was his prey, his plaything, and not theirs. He would do what he wanted with me; perhaps kill me or something even more unspeakable if I protested. The thought horrified me more than I can express, but I dared not show it, lest he take it as a sign of uselessness and kill me on the spot. At that moment, I believe I still wanted to live.
An unexpected twinge of pain pierced the tendon of my neck, and without thought I cried out as the Count's nail broke my skin. Blood trickled down from the wound, across my throat, and soaked into the bedsheets where I lay. He widened the cut still more, dark red rivulets streaming across my flesh and nearly drenching the pillow, and I felt the smoothness of glass beneath my throat. I had no idea what he was doing to me, was terrified of what he was about to do to me, and trembled in combined fear and weakness as his tongue slid across my neck, tasting me, but stopping the flow of blood. Alive. I was alive, at least for now.
He turned me onto my back again, so that I was forced to look up at him holding a wine glass full of blood--my blood. I wanted to scream for the horror, but I was drained, and again my voice would not obey me. My eyelids became heavy as he drank his fill, completely emptying the glass, and bit into his own wrist to fill it again. It seemed to me that I was in fact floating near the ceiling, looking down at my limp body as the Count lifted my head, held the glass to my lips.
"Drink." His tone was not harsh, not demanding, and yet I felt I had no choice but to obey. I closed my eyes and drank his blood. The taste was unexpectedly metallic, but not unpleasant, and it seemed to restore some form of life to me as I hovered on the brink of death, recombining my body and soul. The trancelike lethargy was gone, and I was awake and alive, if still drained nearly dry.
I licked the traces of blood from my lips. "What--"
He was gone before I could finish my sentence, leaving only a faint greenish mist in the air, and I was alone. Even as I record this I want so badly to believe that everything leading up to that point was a dream, a night terror, but the bloody pillow forces me to confront my fears: that he plans either to kill me and drain my body completely, or to turn me into whatever demon creature he is. I am not sure which outcome would be less horrific.