Before I let you read the chapter, there is something that the muse has insisted I warn you about:
The coming assortment of chapters are going to get heavy. There's a lot of hefty drama coming our way with the latter half of this story. Things are going to get darker and everything is going to be unraveling for a number of characters. We don't really get a break from the drama, come to think of it, until much later - like in the last quarter of the story and that's right before the big finish. Because of this, I feel the need to maintain a certain pace with the updates so the tension/atmosphere doesn't get lost between chapters (if that makes sense?).
My hope is that if I continue to update twice a week, you will all continue to give me feedback. Especially because radio silence during the next set of chapters will have me wondering if I've lost you all and that would make me sad if I had, since the last half of this story was so difficult for me to write. Come to think of it, this last half of the story is where I'm going to need your feedback the most.
Remember in my first author's note of this story when I told you I had done a lot of experimentation and risk-taking with this story? Well, although you've seen some of that in the first half of this story, those risks and moments of experimentation increase a great deal from here on out. Now, don't let that scare you. Keep in mind that everything I've written has been intentional and always part of the "master plan", and as a writer, I'm still very pleased with how this story turns out. But I'd still love to hear your thoughts on the matter as we move through the last half of this story.
So I guess what I'm saying is - if I officially update twice a week for the remainder of this story, promise you won't abandon me. Okay? Okay.
Oh! And many thanks to Angels in Parachutes, Shawny.a, BelieverofManyThings, Angel of Beauty, invisible reader, She-Devil Red, and Scarlet Empress for reviewing the last chapter.
And now we return to our regularly scheduled program.
XXI
Nothing soothed a troubled soul quite like music did for Lailah. And there were few things she enjoyed more than the sound of the human voice, unaccompanied, with the glorious notes and words of praise and veneration to a God so many thought was dead, echoing off of walls made of ancient stone.
The angel had come to love the Istovar cathedral. In many ways, this place had become her refuge, a reprieve where she could rest and recharge her weary soul. She never did see the singers personally, but they rivaled any angelic choir that she could recall. Despite the growing darkness in the city, and even in her own heart, this single structure, which was being devoured by nature, had become a beacon in this never ending night.
The church's choir, the voices spread out through all corners of the church, were singing a gorgeous rendition of Gregorio Allegri's Miserere. And how fitting were the words, which had been taken from the fifty-first Psalm – a plea for mercy. The words simultaneously pacified and shook the angel to her very core as she stared at her empty hands that rested in her lap.
How far she had fallen, and how much farther she was still to go.
The weight she had been carrying all alone for so many years now seemed to crush her in her seat. For the first time in her life, when she looked around at the few other visitors in the chapel, she didn't just see sinners and lost souls – she saw herself. But all hope was not lost – life had taught her as much. The fact that she was still seeking refuge in the comforting swath of light that the music provided was evidence enough that there was still hope and she clung to it with all her might as she closed her eyes and soaked in the music.
Unbeknownst to her, a gentlemen had just arrived in the cathedral.
He could barely recall the last time he had entered the walls of a church. Usually, the religious artifacts repelled his very presence, and there had once been a time when he could not even set foot on holy ground – not that he ever really wanted to. He had spent the better part of his existence despising the church and the God it so passionately worshipped, a God he had cursed and abandoned so many centuries ago. The music had always bored him and the piousness and self-righteousness of the believers irritated him to no end.
And yet, here he was – Count Vladislaus Dracula – willingly visiting a church.
Granted, his reasons were anything but admirable, but no one needed to know that. The call he had received from Helena had been a wonderful surprise to him. Hearing that he had affected Lailah so much and how Azazeal's dark whispers and influence were only weakening her resolve – it was the best news he had heard in weeks.
He was so close to the finish line; so close to possessing her, heart, mind, body, and soul.
His eyes scanned the length of the chapel in search of that one person in particular – he found her in one of the pews hidden in the shadows, dressed in her usual black, her brilliant golden hair in a loose and luxurious side-braid, little wisps of it framing her face. As he moved nearer to her, careful not to make a sound, he noticed that her eyes were closed, her brow furrowed in what appeared to be a deep kind of distress.
He stood there beside the pew for a few moments, silently observing. She looked lovely even when she was tired and not fully put together as he was accustomed to. Come to think of it, this was the first time he had seen her outside of their usual visits. He was so used to the polished and meticulously assembled Lailah that had been driving him wild these last few months.
But this Lailah – this one seemed so human, so fragile and even a little helpless, and yet still so stunning. Perhaps it was the ethereal atmosphere of the foliage-consumed cathedral and the haunting music – or maybe it was just that strange feeling he got whenever he was around her, that feeling of déjà vu, as if everything about her was familiar. In fact, the more he pondered on the feeling, the less roguish his original intentions for visiting this place became, particularly when he saw just how troubled she seemed and a small part of the heart he had so often denied possessing was moved.
He did not wish to cause her pain and though he rationalized it immediately by telling himself that it was necessary in order to break her, a small part of him felt guilty.
He wanted to make her feel better.
Before these foreign feelings could run away with him, he quickly steeled himself in his purpose and cleared his throat, announcing his presence. "Fancy meeting you here," he said, the sound of his voice yanking her violently out of her solitary reverie as her eyes snapped open and she looked over at him with utter disbelief. He offered her a charming smile and that seemed to help her quickly recover from the astonishment at seeing him there.
"What, are your stalking me now?" she asked, half in teasing, though half in truth. What was he doing here? And so close to the place where she kept Ana and Eva hidden away. She hoped that he had no idea just how close he was.
"Not at all," he assured her. "Actually, I've been hearing rather good things about this choir and had to hear them for myself," he said – though that was only partially true. Azazeal had mockingly told him to go listen to the invisible choir that haunted Istovar, but his real reason for coming was to see Lailah.
"I didn't know you were an enthusiast for religious themed music," she replied, arching a suspicious brow in his direction.
"I may not care for the theme, but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate the composition. I've always had an appreciation for Gregorio," he explained. "I can still remember the time when transcribing this particular piece of music was punishable by excommunication. The Vatican always did decide on the most peculiar things to punish people for," he mused, pretending to be intrigued by the surroundings of the chapel. "You don't mind if I join you for a moment, do you?"
"I suppose not," she answered, albeit a bit hesitantly, and she slid over on the pew so he could sit beside her. She quickly diverted her gaze forward as he took his seat, desperate not to allow her eyes the chance to linger on him for too long. But even though she kept her gaze forward, it was impossible not to be aware of him sitting beside her.
Despite the gorgeous music and its oh-so relevant theme, she found her thoughts still managed to slip into the sticky abyss that was sexual desire. Lailah wanted to pretend that she had no idea where such desire came from, but she knew and knowing only seemed to make it worse. She could still recall those times, all those centuries ago when the two of them were different people and they would attend church services together. She remembered the night they were married in secret, the things the priest said, and the blissful days and nights that followed as they worshipped each other in a cathedral of their own – back when the woods and tall grass of the sun-kissed hills were their chapel.
Lailah was alarmed at how easy it was for her mind to wander thus and she couldn't help but feel humiliated and ashamed at how little control she seemed to have over herself these days. But she would not give in. No – he knew exactly what kind of affect he had on her, though he didn't understand the why like she did – but she understood perfectly well that he didn't come for the music. He came to torment her, and her resentment allowed her to keep her lust in check. After several moments of silence, Dracula finally leaned back in his seat a little more casually, his arm resting over the back of the pew on his free side as he looked about the place idly.
"It's amazing, really – how stubborn this structure is," he commented. "I mean, this place has been standing for decades, maybe even a couple of centuries – and after all the years and the wars and the generations that have passed through its walls, here it remains, willfully enduring the slow, torturous process of being devoured by nature, an inevitability really. Yet here it still stands – resilient, steadfast, and breathtaking, with its otherworldly beauty. Wouldn't you agree?"
Although on the surface his compliments were on the structure, his hidden meaning was not lost to Lailah who had to fight the amused grin that left the corner of her mouth twitching. Despite the fact that he had taken root in her just as nature had to this edifice, she remained steadfast and resilient, regardless of her ever-growing urge to crumble. His admiration of her stubbornness pleased her perhaps a little more than it should have, and, oddly enough, it even strengthened her resolve to continue in her defiance of him, but only a little bit.
"It is rather impressive," she finally agreed, looking up at the ceiling that was all but consumed in ivy.
"So tell me," he said, glancing over at her for a moment before fixing his eyes on what remained of one of the stained glass windows to his right, "how is Ana?" He could feel the look Lailah was giving him and he found it amusing that he didn't even need to see it to know what expression adorned her lovely face.
"She's fine," was all Lailah said on the subject, but that was not what he wanted to hear. He turned his head to look at her and he took in her profile as he spoke.
"Is she happy?" he asked, sounding strangely genuine. This seemed to soften the guarded expression on Lailah's face as she thought about her answer for a moment.
"Despite everything that's happened and everything that inevitably will, yes, I do believe she is happy," was her answer. "Though there is still a great sadness in her," she added, albeit a bit warily. "She longs to be free of this prison you've created. We all wish it."
"I am sorry that it had to come to this," he confessed. "In retrospect, I suppose things could have been handled differently, but they were not and I apologize for the inconvenience I've caused you – both of you."
His sincerity startled her and she found herself looking over at him, though his eyes had diverted into another direction now.
She did not respond to his comments, only let them hang in the air like judgments that began to weigh upon his soot-stained soul.
"Does she ever mention me?" he asked, his query causing her to look at him questionably.
"Not often enough for it to be of note," she said, neither confirming nor denying anything. "She has taken great pains to warn me about you, however," she added. "Insists that you're the worst kind of manipulator because you make it all so convincing, like you care when really you only have your own interests at heart. So when one does surrender to you, at the end of it all, they have no one to blame but themselves – as if you take painstaking efforts to make sure you are always free of responsibility."
"Do you believe that?" he asked her and their eyes finally met. She held his gaze for several quiet moments before answering.
"I do believe that you are very much aware of what you are doing," she eventually replied. "But what makes it even worse is that you've gotten so good at convincing people that they're important to you, I believe sometimes you mistakenly convince yourself of it."
"You must think me devoid of any proper feeling."
She shrugged.
"No, not completely," she insisted. "You certainly were when we first started this game, Vladislaus, but I think it has been some time now since the game has altered. With the change of rules has come a change in stakes as well, with consequences that neither of us can fully comprehend at this moment. But your actions do carry weight – past, present, and future."
She paused for a moment, allowing him to chew on her words before continuing.
"I think every creature that is born, is born with the tendencies for both good and evil. Neither of us is born wholly bad. If anything, I believe our natural instincts are to do what we feel is right and just. It is our choices that help shape who we are – not just the major decisions, but the seemingly inconsequential ones as well."
Lailah shifted in her seat so she could face him a little better, and though he was clearly avoiding eye contact with her, she knew he was listening. It was written all over his face.
"You have dedicated so much of your life to convincing the world, and perhaps even yourself, that you are wholly evil, that you have no heart, no feelings, no conscience. Your actions have been deplorable, Vlad – ever since the death of Helle, you have been utterly lost. And not because God abandoned you or Valerious mistreated you or your second wife was in love with your best friend. But because you pushed everyone away, because it was easier not to feel than to deal with the immense loss of losing the one person in your life that had been there for you from the beginning."
Her words were like daggers in his chest.
It was as if she was peeling back layers of his flesh, one truth at a time – until she was looking at his soul, bare and black before her, acknowledging it for what it was.
But she was not done with him just yet.
"You forget, Vlad, that I know your history," she continued. "I know that you were once an honorable, God-fearing and God-loving man. You were a champion of light in a country that had been threatened by darkness for so long – and you threw it all away in bitterness and anger and exchanged the soul-consuming love you felt for Helle for a hatred that has since blackened nearly every aspect of your being. Yet despite all of this, I know that there is still a degree of honor left in you," she answered boldly. "For I have seen it – I have felt it, and I know that as much as Ana despises you, she has seen it too.
"You went to extraordinary lengths and put so much effort into wooing her, into winning her affections, when you could have just taken her on the spot without a second thought – and I know you've done that to many unfortunate souls in the past. But you did not do so with her. You didn't just want Ana to bear you a child, you wanted her to take the place of the wife who betrayed you, the wife who abandoned her own children and her marriage vows for the embrace of your friend. I genuinely believe that if you were devoid of proper feeling, Vlad, you would not have gone to the lengths you have gone to just to have a family or to save your species or even to attempt to win the heart of an angel prophesied to have a hand in your destruction.
"There have been so many moments when you could have just taken me, and I have no doubt that you could have convinced me to want it, to give in to it – but the fact that you haven't done so, despite the apparent temptation, speaks volumes to your character. Don't mistake me, Vlad – you are evil," she added with a hint of teasing in her voice and he smiled in response, though his eyes were still diverted away from hers. "But you are not lost to it. Not completely," she continued with great earnestness, "and I know I probably shouldn't be telling you this, but it is that part of you, those remnants of the great and honorable man you once were, that makes you so dangerous to me. You are literally sucking the light out of me, Vlad."
When her little speech had ended, she paused, watching his face for some sign of recognition or understanding of what she had said, and though his face was, for the most part, expressionless, she could see by the far-off look in his eyes that her words were having an effect on him.
"If that's true, then why are you letting me?" he finally asked, the expression on his face one she had not seen him wear since he was a mortal.
"Because I have to believe that you won't let that light go to waste," she replied, her voice notably softer. "I don't want to be your enemy, Vladislaus," she whispered. "I don't want to be some obstacle you feel the need to hurdle."
"Then what do you want?" he asked, his voice equally low.
He watched her closely as she pondered her answer, searching for the right words and he saw something strange pass over her face – a look of knowing, mingled with a deep sadness that he found he could not fathom or account for. Her gaze left the intensity of his as she looked ahead of her, shifting in her seat so she was leaning against the back of the pew again.
"I don't want you to feel lost anymore," she whispered, her voice barely audible.
Her answer stunned him.
So much so, in fact, that he couldn't help but stare at her for several lingering seconds before he could finally pry his eyes away.
Who was this woman and why did her words move him so much, he wondered to himself.
He could feel the truth of what she had said piercing his very soul in ways it hadn't been pierced in centuries. For the first time in what had been several lifetimes, Dracula could feel the weight of his own immortal soul and the chains of depravity and darkness that he had forged with the deeds of his hands over the centuries – and he did not care for the sensation.
In that moment, in the dimly lit chapel with this heavenly angel beside him, he wasn't just Count Dracula, Prince of Darkness and king of the vampires. He was Vladislaus – and it was a sensation he hadn't experienced since he had been human.
As they continued to listen to the music in silence, Dracula turned to look at Lailah and found that her eyes were once again closed as she surrendered herself to the music, betraying for just an instant a hint of euphoria and serenity in her countenance. It was as if the words and that glorious high C that rang in the air from the hidden soprano's lungs was lifting her spirit and easing her troubled mind and he found himself envious of her serenity.
She could enjoy the music, with its pleas for mercy and it's longing for redemption; but for him, the words cut to the quick, leaving a notable ache in his silent heart. He found himself longing for that kind of peace and he envied her for it. Maybe even hated her a little, too.
But what was even stranger to him was that the longer he took her in with his eyes, the more pronounced that sense of déjà vu became. Although he was certain he hadn't seen her face before that fateful evening his daughter had been born, he couldn't shake the feeling that he knew her on a much deeper level than the superficial one they had been sharing for so long – like a piece of him was knitted to her, though he couldn't for the life of him understand why.
He also noted how familiar her presence had felt to him from the beginning, how soothing it had become, having her beside him, even if they weren't touching. In fact, he became so entranced just silently observing her, so drawn to both her alluring light and even that stunning potential for darkness, that a foreign and rather disturbing thought crossed his mind.
For so many centuries, Dracula was convinced that he was beyond saving.
But that wasn't the case anymore.
If anyone could save him, Lailah could.
And a part of him, the old Vlad he thought long dead for so many centuries, the one that had loved Helle so deeply and now felt something alarmingly similar for this angel sitting beside him…
That small part of himself wanted her to save him.
And the acknowledgement of that feeling shook the Count to his very core.
It was so unnerving, so foreign, and so terrifying to him that it almost felt as if the wind had been knocked right out of his lungs and as much as he suddenly wanted to, he couldn't pull his eyes away from her. In fact, he could feel a startling swell of warmth growing in his chest where his heart had been and tears he had not shed in so long were now prickling his eyes.
What was she doing to him, he wondered in silent desperation.
What was she doing and how could he make it stop?
In that very instant, the Count then recalled the warning Azazeal had given him upon their first meeting about Lailah – that she would get under skin, that she would find what little good was left in him and that she would tug at it sneakily until it was tearing through the surface. And then it would spread in him like a weed.
The realization of what was happening to him, of his uncharacteristic questioning of his identity mortified him, and instead of staying in Lailah's presence – as part of him wanted to – he quickly and silently rose to his feet without disturbing her and began to make his way to the door, each step full of desperation. He could feel the that small untarnished part of his soul reaching for Lailah, the mixture of her presence, coupled with the holy setting and the heavenly music like invisible hands, trying to snatch onto him as if to pull him back, but he would not be overcome so easily.
He shoved the doors to the chapel open as the night air quickly enveloped him, and though it allowed him to push down his urge to return to the angel's side, he could still hear the music echoing behind him, even with the door shut and he covered his ears like some kind of madman as he shifted into his hell-beast form and took off into the sky, desperately flying as far from the place as he possibly could.
It took an orgy of blood, sadism, and mindless sex for the Count to feel even remotely like himself again – or maybe it was just the exhaustion. Either way, though the alarming desires to be spiritually saved by Lailah were now suppressed in the back of his mind, he still found the woman lingering in the foreground and no matter how hard he tried to get her out, it was there she remained.
While the majority of his household slept during the late hours of the day, the Count wandered the halls of his palace until he found Zane in the quarters reserved for his private army. Dracula woke the man from his slumber, giving him explicit instructions that he wanted the Istovar cathedral demolished at sundown – empty or otherwise, he did not care. That cursed building was to be burned to the ground until it was flattened.
Although puzzled by the seemingly random command, Zane obeyed his master, awakening a group of hybrids from their slumber and taking them out into the city to carry out the Count's orders.
As the sun set in the sky, Dracula stood on the balcony of one of the taller towers of the palace, his eyes fixed on the devil's district where the flames of the burning Istovar cathedral could be seen. Yet, even as the ancient building burned, still he was plagued with thoughts of Lailah, that heavenly music, and the insuppressible desire that was rapidly growing inside of him to worship her like the deity she was.
Fun fact about this chapter: this was the first scene I imagined when I originally started planning out this story. I was listening to this mix of acapella music on YouTube when literally the BEST rendition of Gregorio Allegri's Miserere Mei Deus came on and I had to just stop what I was doing so I could watch the video. It was of a group called The Sixteen. They had been on a program on BBC Four and someone had been kind enough to upload this particular song and my God... that high C. The woman in the video who sings that note does it so clearly and so effortlessly, that it has this gorgeous ringing quality to it. No other rendition that I've come across has compared. If you're interested in listening to it for yourself, the video is called Miserere Mei Deus on the AnglicanDiest channel, uploaded October 31st, 2009.
I highly recommend it.
Thank you for stopping by, be sure to leave a review, and I'll see you in the next chapter!