ST MARY'S CONVENT 1885

As the storm passed over the Carpathian mountains and over the convent, Sister Mary was drifting in and out of consciousness. Sister Agatha wanted to know ALL the story of the dream, but she had to let the much, much older nun rest a while. There was a bright flash of lightening that lit up the sleeping nuns withered face. Agatha stood up and went to a basin and wrung out a damp cloth, and then gently placed it over Mary's forehead.

She just needed to wait for the old nun to rest a while, before she could listen to the rest of the story...and outside as the storm clouds were now gone, and the moon came out, the wolves sung to the distant thunder.

INTERLUDE:

CAMBRIDGE 2020

Fitz Van Helsing laid back on the university green and gazed up to the sky. The towers of the university campus in the foreground. A group of friends were with him as they joked about their days lectures.

"Old Mansfield needs to dust himself down and get a life...did you hear what he said to me?", gasped a blonde student with a pink T shirt.

Fitz laughed, "What? That you looked like you haven't slept in 3 weeks? That's per norm for a student...", he looked at him, "...and to be fair Robbie, he doesn't know what shit you are snorting up your nose"

A girl with a long braid laughed in her rainbow sunshades as another group of students passed by them, "I cannot believe you said that your parents actually finance the shit you take Robbie"

Robbie laughed, "What can I say...both of my parents are real class...they practically hold high office in the government and snort coke in the evenings"

Fitz raised his eyebrows, "and they say WHY is the county going quickly down the toilet with brexit and all that"

Robbie smirked.

Ellen, the girl, lifted her face to the warmth of the sun, "What about you Fitz? Do your parents let you snort all-sorts"

Fitz's face darkened, "My parents? My late Mother was a scientist and my Father is a monster, I don't think he'd care what I took or snort"

Ellen looked down to him, "but you are so smart...do you get that from them? You are good at everything"

Robbie chuckled, "You are only saying that because you want Fitzie boy to fuck you"

"Fuck off Robbie!"

Fitz gazed up at her, and smiled at her with his dark brooding eyes.

Count Dracula opened his eyes. Eyes that clearly were an inherit match. He leaped out of the bed and rubbed his temples. He looked about the dark room of his apartment and then went to the mirror.

SHE WAS IN IT. SISTER AGATHA. AND SHE WAS AMUSED.

"Ohhh Count Dracula...you are dreaming of him again"

Dracula's eyes were dark and cold as he glared at her, "WHY? IS THIS YOUR DOING? IS IT BECAUSE I HAVE FORCED YOU INTO HELPING ME? THAT YOU'VE DECIDED TO HAUNT ME WITH HIS...HIS..."

Sister Agatha tilted her head in the mirror, "...his life how it should have been? Living in his correct time going to university and becoming someone educated and important in the far off future...?"

Dracula shook his head, "that wouldn't have happened you stupid bitch...HE would have been kept as a test subject in a laboratory"

"that is possible...but not impossible...that's the trouble with destiny...it can go off down all kinds of paths"

Dracula buttoned up his shirt and pushed back his hair, "I did the right thing...it's better he lives in the past...I lived through it, for hell's sake...and so did you", he had to chuckle and his eyes twinkled at her as he remembered, "...that's before I killed you of course"

"You didn't kill me Count Dracula...that is either an act of your wishful thinking or convenient memory loss"

Dracula slipped into a dark suit and buttoned it up. He winked his eye to the mirror, "just hang on in there my sweet...I have dinner appointment to keep"

XXX

Count Dracula was no sooner on the tube train and sitting in his seat when a girl came to sit next to him. He turned his head and looked at her. She was in a rain mac and her long raven hair was soft and shiny, but he was of course more interested in that soft white neck and that delectable little pulse that was an open invitation.

He licked his lips.

Her blue eyes turned to look at him. Oh she was a naughty one. A little minx was the expression he learned. She licked at her own lips and then rested her hand over Dracula's thigh.

"Jenny's friend?", he asked her, with a twinkle in his eyes.

The girl looked about her then slipped of the rain mac to reveal the nakedness underneath.

She stood up in front of him.

Dracula looked up and down at her, and then smoothed his hands over her soft skin. His sharp finger nails probing certain areas where the girl would gasp and close her eyes.

"You are dirty little bitch aren't you", he mused.

She opened her eyes at him, "I will be as dirty and bitchy as you like, lover...Jenny told me the score"

Dracula held her eyes. They were sky blue and his own pupils grew darker as he bore into them, "Ohhhh Jenny...she was a flavour that was sweet...too sweet if I am to be honest...but I can see you are sweet enough"

The girl licked her lips, "I want it...I want ALL what she had and more"

"You want me to fuck you senseless...fuck you hard in the unnatural way...ohhh, there is a time and place for that my little harpy"

Dracula then heard the train come to a halt in a station...somewhere in Central London. The girl looked to the window and Dracula could see the mark on her shoulder...a symbol? He frowned.

Suddenly, quick as a flash, the girl reached down into the rain mac and grabbed out a crucifix, and tried to plaster it flat onto his forehead.

Dracula grabbed her wrist tightly, and forced her away at an arms length.

"YOU MUST DIE! YOU ARE AN ABOMINATION! MOTHER FLAME ORDERED IT! JUST LIKE HOW YOUR SEED DIED OUT OF HIS OWN TIME"

Dracula's eyes turned blood red, and he grabbed her by the neck and forced her head to the ceiling of the train carriage, she gasped for breath as he smashed the crane of her head six times before her eyes began to roll. He then grabbed her by the hair, and dragged her out of the train. The station platform was deserted. He could see the girl was starting to recover slightly. He heard the sound of the other train coming in.

He looked at her and tilted his head in pure amusement, before no sooner had the wind-rush of the train come in...the girl was being tore apart at the wheels, after he had hurtled her in front of it.

XXX

Dracula went straight home and forced an audience with Agatha. The nuns face was in the mirror.

"So...I am summoned again!"

Dracula dismissed her protests, "Never mind all that...I want to know what this means", he then reached for a piece of paper and drew with a pencil a symbol, and held it up to her, "...you have seen this?"

Agatha nodded, "Yes...yes I have"

Dracula shook his head in the soft light of his plush London apartment, "who are they? I met a girl on the tube earlier, she was branded with it, and from a long past of experience, I know this must be a symbol of some sect, am I right?"

"your deductions are correct"

He gritted his teeth, "Who? WHO ARE THEY?"

Agatha looked back at him, "You are getting closer to learning the truth, I think"

"What?"

"The symbol you drew is the emblem of the red gypsy flame"

"My boys clan?"

"No...a cult that acts as a guardian...a foreseer of the clan and it's people"

Dracula realised the truth, "you mean a coven of dried up old witches"

"They are more than that...they are power...they are the ones that would destroy your son"

Dracula found that thought amusing, "They are hellbent in destroying me it seems...but my son was in no real danger from them, was he? If they are so called foreseers of rancid gypsies, wasn't my boy one?"

In the mirror...Agatha thought back to the story Sister Mary told her...

XXX

1885

It was sunrise. The soft yellow beams of light reflected off from the stained glass window-lets of the convent, still wet from the storm.

Sister Mary didn't have long left to live. Her breathing is so laboured, but she was eager to finish the story what she started. The story of the boy who was living out of his time.

A boy that had no right to be living in the time he was placed.

A boy whose destiny cannot be predicted, because his time line didn't fit the constellations of any normal life.

Agatha gathered up her seniors hand and spoke to her in a hushed whisper that disappeared into the shadowy corners of the room.

The candles now burned down to their wicks and smoking.

Sister Mary managed to open her old and wary eyes and look at the younger nun. She seemed to smile at her. A veil of darkness was beginning to take shape in her life, and un-be-known to the younger nun, her destiny was just as much tainted as the boys.

"I will tell you the rest of it...the rest of the dream I had...but it is YOU who has to decide on what happens next...because when you and him meet, and you will, it is YOU who must decide if he is to know the complete truth...

...because changing it will do no good to anyone"