As Dracula quietly led Johnny and Elisa down an empty hallway, it was Elisa who noticed that the Count looked unusually quiet and deeply saddened.
"Hey, thanks for saving us back there," said Johnny. "That guy's crazy. Trying to eat us. This only happened to me one other time with this weird dude at a Slipknot concert."
"Drac...are you okay?" Elisa asked the Count, concerned.
"There's something I need to show you," replied Dracula, very sadly.
Dracula opened a door and entered a dark dusty room. Johnny and Elisa followed, yet they coughed lightly at the thick dust around them. Once they opened their eyes, the only light to be seen were from candles of a candelabra held by Dracula.
"Wow!" gasped Johnny, in pure amazement. "Hey, are we at a funeral right now?" Johnny noticed the coffin and walked up to touch it, amazed he was actually touching Count Dracula's coffin. "Oh, wait, no, it's your bed. So creepy and cool."
"Um, why did you bring us to your room?" Elisa figured this must be Dracula's private chambers judging by how dark and cold it was. It fit his taste as all she could see was the coffin. Two stone fire basins on both ends looked like guardians of the coffin. Above the coffin were draped curtains. One of the curtains covered half of a giant painted portrait, where Dracula stood before the image of a beautiful gothic woman. While looking at the painting, she stroked her fingers over the bottom of the portrait. "She's beautiful."
"Yes, she is." Dracula agreed, managing a little smile.
As he glanced up at the picture, Johnny gasped in surprise recognition. "Wow! I know her. I've seen that picture at the ruins of Lubov." Dracula glanced at Johnny in nostalgia as he spoke. "That's my favorite castle. There's a whole legend around that lady."
"A legend?" Dracula asked, puzzled.
"The Lady Lubov," Johnny said as he took the candelabra from Dracula and told the story he heard. "The story goes that she met a lonely Count by chance, and they say no two souls were ever more meant for each other. Eventually, they settled down at Castle Lubov and had a child. But then, a horrible tragedy happened. A fire started mysteriously one night, and it killed both of them. When I was at the castle, I could still feel their powerful love. They say it's as if a soul is still trapped in the ruins themselves."
Elisa sighed, romantically. "My mom used to tell me that bedtime story when I was little. It was always my favorite."
As Johnny held up the candelabra to the portrait, Elisa gasped as she took a closer look at the woman's image. "You were right, Johnny. She does look a little bit like me." The woman was very beautiful with long wavy black hair and pale skin and wide gleaming sapphire eyes, and she wore a long black dress and a black choker with a pink jewel. What really stunned Elisa was how strongly the woman resembled her...except the woman's eyes were crystalline blue and her hair a raven black color. Her facial features were slightly different from Elisa's, the woman's face looked long and oval shaped while Elisa's own face looked short and circle shaped.
"The legend is wrong," Dracula spoke quietly, his figure silhouetted in pitch black near the giant picture confusing the two humans. "It was only... the wife that died."
The Count suddenly pulled the curtain down hard, revealing the rest of the portrait. Elisa gasped at what she saw, and she understood why everyone thought she was this Martha person, which meant the woman in the portrait had to be this Martha she kept hearing about. Johnny gasped in surprise. Count Dracula, in the portrait, was smiling and lovingly holding hands with the Lady Lubov. He was the lonely count in the story.
"And it was no mystery who killed her," Dracula grit his teeth and his eyes glowed a menacing blue as he snarled, "She was killed by your kind!"
In a high window of Castle Lubov, two figures could be seen looking out at the angry mob now gathered at the front gates. Dracula stood with Martha, holding a precious bundle close to her while she worriedly held her husband's hand. Why the villagers were here, or even why they were attacking them, they didn't know, but it frightened them nonetheless. They had tried to stop the fire set to their home, but there were too many humans with too many torches, and it had spread very quickly.
"Honey?" Martha looked into her husband's eyes, not sure of what to do. "I'm scared."
"Go hide," Dracula said reassuringly while he gently touched her cheek with tenderness. "I'll take care of this."
He lovingly kissed her on the lips, attempting to reassure her that everything was going to be alright. As soon as their lips parted, he whispered, "I love you, Martha."
"I love you too, Dracula," she replied, brokenly.
Their hands slowly parted, neither of them knowing it will be the last time they touched and kissed.
Dracula had made his way to the front door and stood in full view of the enraged human villagers, farmers and shepherds. When they saw him appear, they started shouting insults at him.
"VAMPIRE!"
But Dracula remained calm as he tried to reason with the mob. Suddenly, he heard a high pitched scream of pain and death. His heart missed a beat as he feared who made it.
"MARTHA!"
Martha had fallen to the ground; her left arm seemed to be the last to fall in slow motion to Dracula's eyes. He knew at once he was too late.
Dracula picked up the little bundle and, using his cape to shield the baby, the Count burst through a shattered glass window, just as the flames engulfed all of Castle Lubov. Safely on a hillside, Dracula could only watch the remains of his once beloved home burn away while baby Mavis began to wail loudly, as if sharing his thoughts.
"THEY are the real monsters."
Saddened and shocked by this tragic story, Johnny sighed deeply, while Elisa felt a pang of guilt within her heart.
"I built this place for my love to protect her child," Dracula added sadly. "As a father, you do everything to keep your family safe, even if you have to break their trust. But now, Mavis has feelings for you."
"What? I just…" Johnny stammered in surprise a bit, and then sighed with a dreamy look in his eyes. "Awesome."
"It's alright, you are a good one. And I…" Dracula continued slowly with a sad smile, glancing at Elisa, "I believe I have...feelings for you, Elisa."
Elisa became stunned by this revelation, not knowing what to think. "Huh? You...you like me?" He nodded, and her guilt evaporated and she blushed with such flattery. "Oh...I don't know what to say, except thank you."
Dracula smiled and chuckled at her, but he grew sadder again. "If the world was different, maybe it would be possible."
"Drac, this is the 21st century," Johnny said. "People aren't the same as they were back then."
"Maybe not all people," Elisa mumbled under her breath as she fidgeted with her hands. "But, you never know, there are people out there who love monsters."
"Can you tell me for certain that if we came out in the open everyone would accept us? Everyone?" Dracula questioned, desperately.
Johnny looked back up at the portrait of Dracula and Martha. His face dropped in sadness while he considered what Dracula had told him. Elisa had a sick feeling in her stomach for she knew the answer was yes for some people. But the true answer was a hard one. Not everybody is a fan of monsters, especially her father. Johnny and Elisa now understood the pain Dracula felt all those centuries.
"No, you're right," Johnny replied, brokenly. "We understand. We'll go for good this time. You can just say I had some emergency, or the gremlin lady ate me, or something." He handed the candelabra back to the Count.
"No, no, no, no." Dracula shook his head and placed a hand on Johnny's shoulder to stop him from going. "I don't want to ruin her birthday party. You both can sneak out after it's all done."
"I'm sorry," Johnny said in sadness. "The last thing I wanted was to hurt her. Or you."
"I never meant to cause any problems for you...and your daughter," Elisa apologized, truly she meant it, and how she wished she could take back her horrid advice to Mavis of standing up to her father and leaving the hotel.
To make him feel less upset, Dracula decided to cheer them up. "You know, you would make a better vampire than a witch," he kindly told Elisa, as he tenderly stroked her cheek to brush some hair out of her face.
Looking up into his face, Elisa felt her face heat up by his gentle touch. "You think so? Because I'm terrible at making potions."
Chuckling, the vampire turned to the red-headed boy. "You're not the smoothest Frankenstein, but you'd make a great vampire."
Johnny's eyes lit up. "For real? Cause I think I kind of got your hypno eyes down."
Dracula rolled his eyes in amusement. "Oh, boy. Here we go. Let me see it."
Johnny backed up in the shadows before he emerged into the moonlight, his arm covered his face to make him look sinister as he spoke in an imitated Dracula accent. "Beware! For you are in my power. I command you to be the werewolf man!"
Dracula let out a long howl. "I have too many kids."
The two friends started laughing, enjoying their fun as Dracula exclaimed, "Someone scratch me, I have fleas!"
"Cause he's a wolf, he'd get those!" Johnny laughed.
"Yeah, no, don't explain it. It's not funny when you do that," Dracula chuckled, placing a hand on Johnny's shoulder.
Behind them, Elisa chuckled awkwardly at their joke, although she didn't find Wayne's pain amusing at all. She cherished the revelation of Dracula's feelings for her, but she would miss him terribly when she left him forever. When he recently said he had feelings for her, did this mean the two of them zinged? Her thoughts were interrupted by the vampire's clasp on her shoulder as he escorted her and Johnny out.
"Come on, I'll get you private rooms for you two to rest for the day," Dracula offered, leading his new friends out of his chambers.