(I had four reviews wanting another chapter...I ought to be getting other stuff done but that gave me an excuse to procrastinate and get another chapter up!)
Sun well up in the sky, Abraham went down again to look in on the vampire. There was a chance it would be awake and more cooperative, and if not, he might be able to see it sleeping by the coffin. Alucard had taken the bottle at some point during the night, alleviating the niggling concern Abraham had been experiencing, and the small meal should be both a bribe and a threat. Abraham didn't need to keep him well-fed and functional, after all. Just intact.
Tomorrow, the Harkers were planning a visit and he was hoping that Seward would be able to stop by as well. With them as support, he'd see about opening the room.
It had been given a bottle after it healed him, and a bottle last night, but Dracula had to be very hungry. Perhaps that hunger could force obedience out of it? With his command to "Show yourself" he hoped the vampire had mad an effort to be visible today, but he had no such luck; it had chosen to sleep behind the coffin and out-of-sight.
Frowning, eyes blazing with irritation, he placed the bottle on the ledge where the first had been. He'd have to retrieve the bottles once the Harkers and Seward were here; as it was, they'd be far too handy for the vampire to throw at them. He wouldn't rip his coffin apart for weapons, but the chamber needed to be bare of anything else. Just because Dracula couldn't reach out of the room didn't mean he wouldn't still be looking for ways to hurt or kill them.
Grumbling at the uncooperative beast and his own disappointment at its refusal to obey, his loss of its forced obedience, he made his awkward way back up the stairs. He'd feed it again this evening and hope that it began to cooperate again, however grudgingly.
For now, it was still staying out of sight and silent. The vampire might have a predator's patience to wait for the door to open and to escape, but Abraham had a healthy sense of self-preservation to go along with his courage. And the beast, no matter how clever it was being, would stay in that room.
x x x x x x
In the dark of his cell, the starved vampire remained still, a motionless husk. Frustration had faded into an agony of hunger, confusion, and a deep despair.
Master was angry, and he was so hungry, so hungry, and trapped.
x x x x x x
Rats were clever creatures, and it had returned to see if there was food again tonight. The bottle's cork reeked of blood, and the busy creature worked at it, forcing it off the shelf to shatter on the floor near the first. Halfway through its meal, it was joined by another rat, then a third, following the scent of blood.
Their squeaks and scuffles as they fought over the feast of blood tormented the vampire. They could eat, they could move, they were not alone. And they had consumed and spoiled the blood he so desperately needed.
If he could have wailed his anguish, he would have. The madness nibbled at his mind again, and he was too weak, too faint, to repress it.