(yes, the Church chapters are over, as he's back at the estate!)
He could have wept with relief when he heard the basement door open, heard the halting and limping steps and the steady tapping of crutches, had he the blood or the energy. Instead, all he could do was lie silent, part of him rejoicing that Master was alright, part of him ravenous and anxious for blood, cold and clotted and old as it might be. The tapping approached, and then the light of a candle or dim lantern illuminated his room...but the door did not open?
"Alucard, show yourself." That was Master, but he could not obey. Frustrated by his immobile state, he was simply incapable of movement. The light flickered about, and he realized that Master must be looking in the other windows. Well and good, but he didn't need Master outside in the hallway, he needed Abraham IN the room, preferably with a half-dozen or more bottles of blood! "Vampire, show yourself!" He would if he could, and he wanted to whine with his frustration...but he was simply incapable of any sort of sound or movement, trapped in his body.
Trapped. Unable to move. In his coffin. Demons of vicious memory clawed at his mind, but he forced them down, watching the candlelight dance on the ceiling. He was not alone, Master was there, speaking to him. He was not trapped in the coffin, but able to see, to watch, to hear. This was not the same. NOT THE SAME. Still, the fear pushed on his chest, smothering him...and all he could do was lie still, listening to Abraham becoming angrier and angrier at his apparent disobedience.
Master was now calling on him to answer.
If only he could.
x x x x x x
The vampire was hiding, most likely tucked up against the door, or just out of site against the wall. It refused to show itself, refused to respond to his demands. It had already started, the rebellion he had feared. At least it was locked safely away in the cell.
It would be staying there, too, for a very long time to come. A new set of fetters had to be fashioned, perhaps a different set of controls entirely, before it could be allowed out again. He'd wanted to thank it for healing him, but the vampire had nixed that with its intransigence. The guilt he'd felt at leaving the vampire locked in the room was evaporating rapidly.
Scowling, he placed the small bottle of blood in the window. He'd planned to feed it more than just the one, but if the vampire felt well enough to ignore him, it would only be getting the one bottle. It WOULD learn to obey, WOULD recognize its dependency on him, fetters or not.
"Here is your dinner. I will be back tomorrow."
What he wouldn't be doing was entering that room. Arthur and John had returned to their respective homes and jobs, and until they returned, he would not be placing himself at risk. He'd found the vampire lying awake and waiting for him once already, though the sun was high in the sky...no, he'd not be going in there, not without the other men beside him and armed.
Grumbling at the vampire's bad behavior, he maneuvered his awkward way back up the stairs on the crutches.
x x x x x x x
Tomorrow. Could he make it that long?
He'd heard the clink of a bottle...and it might as well be waiting for him in Romania. There was no chance of him reaching it. Frustration and starvation roiled in the vampire, and he tried to ignore them, ignore the slow creep of unchanging time.
An enterprising rat found the bottle, smelled the blood on the cork, and worked at the bottle's end with busy rodent jaws. Its efforts rocked the bottle, sliding it slightly...and with a dull crack it landed on the floor inside the cell.
A feast for the rat, and it sated itself while the starved vampire listened helplessly from his coffin. It wandered off after eating, leaving the broken glass and red puddle on the floor, and a little trail of footprints and a dragging tail extending from the spill for a few inches.
It vanished down the drain in the floor, unbothered by the silver or the wards, and left the vampire alone in the black, tormented by the thick smell of blood and the fear of Abraham's apparent anger.