After The Theft
The trip home was long but uneventful. Even exhausted, Abraham found himself unable to sleep. What had killed the first vampire? He was fairly certain that heads did not simply fall off vampires, no matter how young. The vampire had been inches from him, and he'd been caught with empty guns. And whatever had destroyed it had been just as close.
He'd been damn lucky. The first hunt had made him overconfident, especially after catching Dracula. He was too old to be this foolish. No more hunting without backup of some kind. It could have gone so very, very badly. Chilled by the thought, even with the bright afternoon sun shining through his window instead of a black cemetary, with his body worn out by a night spent alert and waiting for danger...he was not going to sleep any time soon.
Far across London, Dracula slept soundly in his coffin, buried in the rich red folds of the jacket, hat resting beside his head.
x x x
Abraham was pinned by the angry stares of his former companions, but he refused to be embarrased by his failure. "I had the Count here for weeks until he escaped. I failed, but my failure was in selecting the men to whom I entrusted the guarding of the monster. Yes, Dracula escaped, but he seems to have fled England. I am looking for him, but I've yet to find a sign of him." Abraham paced, tall and solid form moving stolidly through the room, hands clasped behind him.
"I won't make that mistake again. I cannot locate Dracula, but I have found multiple other vampires." Clear grey eyes pinned the others in place. From Oxford to the Scottish moors through all of Wales, I find deaths and illness and disappearance that point to an infestation, one that predates the arrival of Dracula by decades, perhaps a century. And the number of them continues to increase. I've destroyed two, and their ghouls, but something else destroyed a third before it could attack me." His eyes closed in a brief shudder. "It was a hands-breadth from me. No more. And I was unarmed; loading bullets at the time, in fact. I nearly died on my last hunt."
He turned back towards the group that watched him with anger and fear at his confession that Dracula had vanished from his care. Mina and Johnathan, Seward, Arthur...all of them present, all of them reacting, and badly, to his message that the vampire had escaped and not been found, not killed, not recaptured. "I can't ignore these beasts, can't ignore their depredations, can't consign another victim to the fate of poor Lucy. But I also can't hunt them on my own. I need your assistance; either directly, or by helping locate others that would be able to face down these monsters."
There was anger, dismay, and fear. But by the end of the night, this had been set aside to deal with the problems at hand. How to find Dracula, if he was still in England at all. How to find and fight the other vampires without dying themselves. And finally...what had attacked the vampire on the last hunt, why, and...why in the world had it claimed Abraham's coat, if that was what had happened?
x x x
The creature that had attacked the vampire on the last hunt was currently wearing the coat and the hat. They smelled strongly of Abraham's distinctive scent, a constant reminder of how he had taken it from the human, a fair exchange for his assistance during the hunt. A brief snarl lifted his lip at the thought, that that mere pup of vampire had dared attack his human, had nearly stolen his amusement and laid all his hopes and plans to waste with its impetuous actions.
But it had failed. And he himself had moved right under the man's nose, unobserved, and taken the clothing. Abraham still had not determined or truly even suspected that it was HE who had done so, amusing in and of itself. He'd been very focused on the man for the first two nights after the hunt, obsessively watching him, still upset that his toy and foe and possession had nearly been taken from him.
Now, that distress and anger had eased. Smug in his new red coat, matching hat pulled low over his head, he strode through the theater district, cutting a distinctive figure as he went to watch the high kicks of the dance hall ladies, and possibly grab a bite to eat afterwards.
Best of all, the blood wouldn't show on the red.
Was that why Abraham had chosen the color? Clever human.
Humming happily, he stepped into the dim building to see the brightly-lit, feather-bedecked, glittering ladies on their stage.