Only a small amount of blood and she could already feel the power in her veins. It was so much it hurt. She looked down her arms and saw her wounds healing. It was like her skin was on fire. It seemed her nails didn't fit in the nail beds anymore and were cutting the skin. The weak light of the candles was too bright and she could not discern even her husband features anymore. Her own heartbeat was too loud for her ears, and each blow of her husband calm respiration was like a punch in her healed skin. Living was painful in that moment.
Dracula slightly tightened his hold on her waist, and she felt like she was being constricted. She almost let a small cry escape, when she remembered why she was doing that.
"Pay attention to me, Dracula." She said, and he promptly stilled and looked inside her eyes.
"Do you remember what your father said to you when he was here?"
"Yes."
"What did he say?"
"That I am still worthless and that I don't deserve any of this. And you will see how weak I am and leave." He replied, mechanically.
Martha took a deep breath. He didn't remember exactly all his father said, but remembered some of it with an absurd clarity. Probably what he took as an order.
"Dracula, you will forget he said these specific words to you and will live your life like he has never said them. Do you understand?" She said them.
"Yes." He replied.
"Dear, do you remember what your father said to you when he was here?"
"Something about how childish I am. Nothing unusual." He replied. "It seems, like I am losing something… Did he say why he was here?"
"No love. How are you feeling?"
"I am… Oddly tired." He replied.
"Rest dear… I will too."
Dracula didn't reply, already falling asleep. Martha did not know if he took that as an order or not, but she didn't care, either way. She stayed awake for some hours yet, but as she got used to the feel of the power running in her veins, the weight of the last days grew heavier and she also fell asleep.
.
.
.
Waking was like emerging from the bottom of a lake. Dracula looked around him, and took a while to recognize his own bed, shared with his sleeping wife. He has been awaking like this for a good part of fifty years, how could the situation be so unfamiliar? He knew how. Compulsion. It made sense. His father came, ordered him something that he didn't remember. He used to remember the orders afterwards. No, it was not his father. Through the veil of a dream, he remembered Martha asking for his blood. She wanted he'd forget something. It was this something he did not remember (of course), as well as the days after his father came. What has he done?
Martha was with him. He could feel her heartbeat in his naked skin, pressed against her equally naked breasts. He could feel her breath in his neck, where her face was pressed. In her sleep, she was hugging him. Whatever he has done, she knew it was not his fault. But she thought he should forget it, and was desperate enough to ask for the most precious thing Dracula had to offer: his blood. He knows she asked and knows that he had agreed to it. If she thought it was better for him to forget, he won't try to discover what it was. But, if it was something he should forget, should Martha remember it? Would everything, ever, be fine if she did?
"Martha..." he whispered, while caressing her face with the back of his fingers. "Martha, wake up."
"No." She replied, hugging him tighter.
"I need to ask you something."
"No, you don't. Go back to sleep."
Well, apparently everything was fine. Dracula actually closed his eyes again, trying to relax enough to fall asleep again when something deep in his soul suffered a rupture.
Before he knew what it was he was crying. What started as uncontrollable but silent tears soon enough were loud, gasping sobs. No, no, no... That was so wrong. But so, so majestic! Even before he could understand what he perceived he knew he got everything he never dared to dream for, by the cost of everything he had, everything he was.
In the haze of shattered dreams and broken reality, at some point, he heard his wife pleas for him to tell her what was wrong. And he laughed, and cried, and pleaded for that to be true and for that never happening.
Martha was pregnant. He could feel the new life forming inside her. Already growing, already powerful. It was not the unbalance he would expect of a new heir. It was like a thin beam of light in an eye too long accustomed to the dark, the fist drops of rain in a too dry soil, balm over a too severe injure or air to a drowning man. So frail, and yet so reliving it would hurt.
When he told her, she hugged him. They cried together until the new sunrise.
