*I was berated for the cliff hanger... And so I wrote another one. ;) I just might get this wrapped up in a third post tonight where he encounters Abraham, but no guarantees. Thanks again for all the great reviews and suggestions!*

Bitter

He moved along the corridors, slowly and quietly. The quiet was deliberate, but the slow was in deference to his poor physical condition. He'd wanted more blood, needed more blood, but taking any more from that human would have been noticeable. It was enough to function, enough to move about freely, but not with any speed.

Sniffing and listening, he tracked down the first human. Humans. Two heartbeats, and the speed of the heart and the scent drifting under the door claimed that room to be Mina's. The other...probably that foul louse of a husband. Unseen by others, the vampire hissed. He'd heard the sincerity in Mina's voice when she refused him again; he reluctantly accepted that he might have lost her entirely.

The idea of killing Harker and stringing him up by his intestines was appealing, especially if the man was still screaming at the time. He'd stolen away the woman that Dracula wanted. Honestly, if she'd accepted mastery over him, he'd have been willing to deal with the presence of her husband as part of the price he'd need to pay.

But Johnathan would never, ever accept him, and Mina had already made her choice.

Unable to resist, the vampire pushed the door open slightly, watching the two forms sleeping on the bed. Mina was curled up in Johnathan's arms, and the...aroma...of recent intimacy was strong on the air. She seemed so content, and it was with a sense of finality that the vampire closed the door, withdrawing into the hallway and leaving the two lovers asleep.

Gone, gone, she was gone, she would never be his Master. It was such a bitter pill to swallow, and the Count found himself petrified by the loss. He curled up in the hallway, back against the rough wooden door, utterly miserable, weeping quietly to himself.

Several minutes of self-pitying misery passed, and then the instincts of self-preservation kicked in. He was falling too perilously close to listening to those voices, of falling into a rage and despair and ripping out throats, turning the peaceful sleepers into shrieking victims and then bloody corpses. And that was not what he wanted, not at all.

He didn't know what he wanted anymore, not really. There had been three people able to serve as his Master; Quincy, Abraham, and Mina. Quincy had died, fallen to the blades of the Romani as they struggled to protect their lord. Mina had refused him, with a vicious and cold finality underscored by her clear love for Johnathan. That left Abraham.

And as appealing as a Master would be, to help shelter him from the voices, to provide companionship, to rescue him from madness and loneliness and the loss of self, he did not want a male Master. Never again.

But he might not have much choice.

With a shudder, hunched over in an outward expression of his internal pain, he wandered down the hall away from Mina, looking for the final missing member of the party of humans that had so drastically altered his existence.