Verona, Marishka and Aleera watched Dracula warily as he paced the floor, before making a full circuit of the walls and ceiling.
After pacing like this for a few minutes he returned to the window and looked out into the night, before resuming his pacing.
"Does something trouble you, Master?" Verona ventured, watching as Dracula started pacing the ceiling.
"She should be back by now," Dracula stated simply, with something that sounded suspiciously like concern in his voice.
"Perhaps she lost track of time?" Marishka suggested.
"Perhaps you should remind her of it," he suggested in a low, dangerous voice.
When he spoke in that tone his brides knew better than to argue and they immediately took flight towards the village.
"Don't let anyone see you, just find her and report back to me!" he called after them.
As he watched them wing out of sight he cursed the fact that he had loosened up on his supervision of her visits to the village. Mostly for the reason that she went in the daylight, but he usually sent one of the brides, or went himself, to make sure she made it safely back in the dark.
Again he wondered what made her safety so important to him, she was no longer a child, or was that it?
Was it her being hurt that he feared or her leaving?
He growled his frustration, for a supposedly hollow being he was certainly being churned up by enough emotions.
But then, he had been emotional ever since Tryphaena had walked into his life. Taking her in had been a purely emotional decision.
He remembered his amusement when the little girl had bumped into him, falling backwards from the impact. As they spoke he had been debating with himself what to with the child, when one of his brides had flown over head and she had taken an instinctive step towards him as a source of safety.
The movement had intrigued him, as had the trust in her eyes as she regarded him. No one had looked at him with that much trust in a very long time, so long in fact he had almost not recognized it. That trust had made him feel a sense of responsibility for the girl, his brides had just destroyed her family and here she was expecting him to somehow keep her safe. So he had brought her into his life and had never looked back.
With the memory, what little patience he had left him and he made up his mind to go and find her himself.
It took him much longer than he had anticipated but he eventually found her, lying in a bed in one of the houses in the village.
Cautiously he changed into his normal form and stepped closer to the bed.
She looked very pale and if he had not been able to hear her steady heartbeat he would have feared that she was dead.
Still he could not resist the temptation to make sure, tentatively he reached out and shook her shoulder, almost afraid that she would break.
She moaned slightly and opened her eyes, when she saw him she sat up in shock and retreated a little to the other side of the bed. "Master?" she asked, looking furtively around, "How did you get in here? What are you doing here?"
Dracula noted that for the first time her heartbeat continued to hammer in his presence, if anything its pace increased.
Testing a theory he stepped closer to the bed and noticed her heart skip a beat and he could smell fear.
This was a bad idea, he decided, he should have seen her and gone, not woken her.
"Why do you fear me?" he asked, noting that the trust seemed to have gone from her eyes as she regarded him, something that bothered him more than it should.
Why should he care if a human woman trusted him or not?
"Is it true?" she asked finally, still looking fearfully around.
"I'm afraid you're going to have to be more specific than that," he said dryly.
Tryphaena took a steadying breath, "Are you a vampire?" she asked.
Dracula stared at her, his mouth open slightly in surprise. "Why should you think that?" he asked, recovering from his surprise.
"Jan...he said...he said that you were a vampire...that you were more than that, you were their lord," as she spoke she watched him carefully. "He said that he was going to kill you," she finished.
Dracula wasn't sure which bothered her more: that he was a vampire or that her friend wanted to kill him.
He decided on the former.
"I am a vampire," he said, noticing the way her heart started to race even faster, if that were possible, "but do not fear me, my dear one, I don't want you to fear me."
He came a little closer, but stopped when she shrunk from him, "How can I trust you?" she asked finally, he thought for a moment.
Finally he gave a small shrug of his shoulders, "That is for you to decide, but I will never harm you, Tryphaena, I give you my word." He smiled a little at a memory, "In fact, I believe I have promised that all ready," Tryphaena regarded him closely and he noted that her heartbeat began to slow.
Something of the way she used to look at him formerly returned to her eyes, "Then I guess that will have to be enough," she said finally.
He bowed his head in acquiesce and was about to say something more when he was interrupted by footsteps in the corridor outside the room.
"Return home tomorrow," he said, his tone was commanding but his expression betrayed the fact that he feared she would not.
The look was enough; she actually smiled at him.
"I will," she said and watched in morbid fascination as he took flight and left her. Just in time too for in the next moment Jan entered the room to check on her.
