Okay… don't kill me since I'm taking some liberties with this story. I'm trying my best (and somewhat distracted… I'm watching Sweeney Todd, hehheh). In the film, it seems Dracula was in some sort of icy slumber, but I prefer to think he was actually doing things during that year gap between the opening scene and Van Helsing's assignment to help the Valerious family. He did kidnap Boris Valerious and use him for an experiment, after all. Also, the brides' ages and personalities. For instance, I see Verona as a matronly type, and I think there's a good possibility she was the count's first wife (she dresses in the oldest style).
So, to round this dreadful introduction off, here's chapter two.
I didn't remember having fallen unconscious, but it didn't really matter. It was probably just sometime during the journey. I had been dreadfully tired, so tired that even the rapture of being taken to Castle Dracula by the great vampire himself couldn't keep me awake. I awoke with a start, shivering from cold. It was freezing.
I was lying on a stone slab in a cavernous room, covered by a thin blanket of woven thread. The room was made entirely of stone, so cold I could see my breath manifest as fog. Old, long-since abandoned spider webs hung in the rooms dark corners. In one corner, a porcelain tub sat, filled with water. I could see a thin vapor of steam rising from it. On the opposite end of the room, in an enormous stone hearth, a fire flickered. I gathered the blanket around my thin shoulders and crossed the room, sitting in front of the fire and holding my hands out before it, rubbing my arms and breathing into my fingers, trying to relieve the bitter cold.
I finally got enough of my senses about me to wonder where everyone else was – the wives, Dracula, anyone. I was alone in this room. I entertained a ludicrous fantasy that I had truly been brought here as a pet, which the vampires would keep for a while, slowly watching me freeze, before devouring me, but any thoughts like that vanished when a heavy door to the right of the hearth swung open and two of the brides glided in. Aleera and Verona.
"The human girl is awake," Verona smiled at her sister bride, seemingly amused. "Your name was Luminitia, was it?"
I nodded, suddenly struck mute.
"Look, Verona. She's cold," Aleera said, scanning me with her gaze. "I forget that humans feel warmth and cold. We should have the master try to warm the castle up a bit."
"He won't need to. He plans to keep her in Budapest for a while, at the summer palace. It is warmer there."
I swallowed hard. I hated being talked about as though I wasn't in the room, but what I was about to do was possibly suicide. "I'm sitting right here. You could tell me, instead of just talking about me."
Verona laughed, a reaction I was not expecting. "Our lord has certainly changed his taste in brides. We were not so blunt as you when he found us."
Aleera sighed. "I thought surely Marishka was sarcastic enough for him."
Verona was suddenly right next to me, running my brown hair through her fingers. "I can see why he wants you. You really are an exquisite creature. Aleera, you brought what we will be needing?"
Aleera vanished for all of five seconds and reappeared, holding a basket. "It is here," she assured Verona, carrying it over and setting it down. She offered me a smile and informed me, "The master has tasked us with preparing you."
"For what?"
"For the journey to Budapest," she said. "He will present you as his fiancée to the others of our kind there, marking you as his. That way, should any have the chance to steal you, they will dare not act upon their hunger. Our master must have what he wants."
"Come here, dear," Verona said, lifting me up and guiding me to the tub in the corner. "It has been decades since either of us has drawn a bath. When you are immortal, you will not need to bother with such mundane human rituals as this."
Before I knew what she was doing, Verona ripped my tattered excuse of a dress clean open and stripped it off of me, leaving me entirely naked but for my socks.
Neither Aleera or Verona seemed disturbed by my nudity. Verona only gestured to me feet and told me to slip out of my socks, which I did, and she took my hand so I wouldn't slip as I lowered myself into the bath. "Poor thing," she mumbled as I let out an irrepressible sigh of satisfaction. I had never before had a hot bath. "What sort of life you must have been living for sixteen years…"
Despite my insistence that I could wash myself, Verona and Aleera hovered over me. Verona paid special attention to my feet, which I found embarrassing for some strange reason, and Aleera washed my hair with various soaps, running a comb through my hair, working out years of tangles (the only hairbrush I've ever owned I sold one particularly cold winter when I was ten).
"Where's Marishka?" I asked after Aleera released my hair and told me to dip my head under the water.
"She is with the master," Verona told me. "She was… not happy about his decision to make you his betrothed. He is… reassuring her."
I knew what that meant. Vampire sex.
Out of the bath, I nearly froze to death. My teeth chattered as I rubbed myself with a towel the vampire brides gave to me, and the wives threw clothes on me faster than I could register, which didn't do much to warm me up but left me feeling much less exposed, even though the neckline was so low it was quite prominently displaying what little cleavage I have.
Aleera rubbed my hair vigorously with another towel, admiring it. "Such pretty brown hair," she sighed. "We should probably cut it a bit, though. It's too thin near the end."
"Do that now," Verona said. "While her hair is still wet."
We sat by the fire and Aleera clipped off about two inches of my hair evenly with a silver pair of scissors and then turned me so my back faced the fire so that my hair would dry faster.
Verona and Aleera both began to apply powders and what seemed like paint to my face, over my eyelids and lips and cheeks.
"I certainly see why the master was taken with her," Verona said contemplatively, staring at me to assess their handiwork. "Once your hair is dry you will want to look in a mirror for the first time, no?"
I nodded eagerly, brushing a strand of my still-damp hair out of my face. Verona lowered herself to the floor and sat in front of me, sighing. "Sometimes I miss being able to feel the warmth of a fireplace," she smiled nostalgically. "I haven't felt anything like that for almost 400 years."
"Dracula changed you first?" I asked.
"The lord made me his first wife, yes," she smiled, emphasizing the title for Dracula. I suppose we were supposed to be submissive to him. I could do that. Being entirely submissive to one person, in exchange for immortal life, for eternal youth, was only too easy. "I was the wife of a dreadful man. The master found me, thank the devil. He changed me. I've been with him ever since."
I turned to Aleera. "What happened to you?" I asked quietly.
She smiled. "My story is not so sad. I was the daughter of a duke, valued for my beauty. I could have almost anything I wanted. Oh, I knew I was beautiful. And when the lord found me, he thought so too. Now I truly can have anything I want. And I do."
"Marishka?" I asked.
Verona sighed. "Our sister… she did not have so good a life. She was an orphan like you. A horrid human woman found her. Used her as a slave. And when Marishka was old enough, she sold her into a whore house."
I gulped. That could have happened to me. Almost has, a couple of times. But I'm faster than I look. "That's terrible."
"She killed a man," Aleera added. "One of the men who tried to… take her. And then she ran. The master found her half dead in the forest as she tried to escape to the next town over. The only way to save her…" Aleera smiled. "Well."
The only way to save her was to kill her. I understood completely.
"Come, dear," Verona said, standing and pulling me to my feet. "Your hair should be dried enough. Have your first look in a mirror."
I went with her more than willingly. This was like my initiation. Seeing myself, for the first time, as I was truly supposed to be. As a vampire's betrothed. A future creature of the night. Seeing myself as someone beautiful, waiting for the promise of life eternal.
Verona pulled a white sheet off the wall, revealing a reflective surface. I gasped, suddenly frightened, and shut my eyes. Maybe I wasn't really beautiful. Maybe if I looked I would shatter the illusion, and lose everything. Maybe the minute I realized I had been deceived, they'd kill me, and I would never see Dracula again.
I felt Verona's cool hand on my bare shoulder and she guided me a few steps to the left. I heard Aleera's voice, close to me, murmur, "It's alright. You should look at yourself. You are so lovely." She sighed longingly. "I have not seen my reflection in such a long time. Cherish the moments stolen in front of a mirror, my dear. You shall not have them for long."
With a shudder, I opened my eyes. In front of me was the mirror. I tried not to look at myself at first, noting that, even though Aleera was on my left and Verona on my right, I could not see them in the mirror. Taking a deep breath, I looked at myself, for the very first time.
I had no idea. No idea I was so…
My eyes were green. I'd never known that. The color of spring grass, with flecks of amber dotting my irises. My hair was brown, of course, but I had no idea it was so thick, so wavy. I pinned it back every day, to keep it out of the way. Usually when I took it out, it was so damp with sweat it hung limp down to the base of my spine. Now it was down to my mid back, two inches shorter in length and rippling. My lips were dark, because of the paint the brides had put on them, but I'd no idea they were so full. My nose was in the exact center of my face, my cheekbones were high, my eyebrows were thin, and my jaw and neck were slender.
I looked like a vampire. And I hadn't even been turned yet.
"You will be more beautiful even than me," Aleera said enviously, as though reading my thoughts. "The lord will be pleased with you."
"You are lovely, my dear," A deeper, male voice resounded through the room, and I jumped, startled. I turned around and saw Dracula standing right behind me, causing me further shock. I hadn't heard him come up behind me, and how could I have known he was there, since he had no reflection in the mirror? "Drac – My lord," I corrected myself just barely in time, my voice breathy. "You startled me."
He smiled and wrapped an arm around my slender shoulders, turning me towards the mirror. He stared at my reflection. "Don't we make a lovely couple?" he asked.
The corners of my lips twitched. "I think you are far more handsome than I, my lord."
"We shall find out," he said, turning me towards him. "You have done well, my brides. Now leave us."
Verona and Aleera whispered submissions to him and bowed from the room, leaving me and the king of vampires alone. He stepped away from me, folding him arms behind his back. "Stay still," he whispered, beginning to walk slowly in circles around me. Obviously satisfied, he approached me once more and placed a hand at the base of my neck, over the place where my pulse surged. He let out a sigh. "I can feel the blood running through your veins. So strong… so steady." His other hand cupped my cheek and he caressed me, running his fingers down my neck, his palm resting at the hollow of my throat.
I let out a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding.
He smiled and raised the hand resting over my pulse slowly, his fingers cupping my chin. "You torment me already," he breathed. "The smell of your blood… it is lovelier than that of any human I have ever had the pleasure of encountering."
"Then have a taste," I whispered, extending my neck and shutting my eyes. Why did we have to wait until I was eighteen? I was ready now. I felt his lips press against my neck, over my pulse, and he began trailing kisses up, planting the final on my lips. His were surprisingly soft… warm, even, although that may have only been because I was so cold.
"The more ravenous I am," he whispered into my ear, "the more succulent the meal." He lifted me into his arms like he had before, when he was carrying me away from the village I once called home. "We travel to Budapest tonight," he informed me. "You shall be revealed there. And all will know you belong to me."
Oh, how I loved the sound of that. "What about your brides?"
"They shall remain here," he said. "They deserve the rest, after the nightmare they've just been through."
"Nightmare?"
"You will know soon enough," he murmured, placing a hand over my eyes. "Sleep, now, my Luminitia. When you wake we shall be in Budapest."
Vampiric hypnotism, perhaps. I felt drowsy just to hear the words. I suppose that solved the mystery of how I'd fallen unconscious on the flight here.
Total submission, I reminded myself.
I gave myself to sleep.
Chapter two, done! Now, as of October 2, I have 38 views, which is not bad for a fanfiction of an old-ish, more obscure movie, but I was maybe hoping for a little more than two reviews? Please? =3
Anyways, I'm thinking of writing a Sweeney Todd fanfiction, and I was wondering if any of you 38 readers would be interested in reading that, if I wrote it? If you know that movie, of course…
Thanks you for reading, everybody!
Phantom, out!
