Fitz was in daze. He could hear the wolves quite clearly tearing apart those who would do him harm. He opened his eyes. The sky was red with a ruin looming ominously in the foreground. It was icy cold too. He managed to open his mouth, "what? Where..."

AND THE VOICE THAT REPLIED TO HIM WAS IN HIS CONSCIOUS. IT WAS DARK AND UNSETTLING.

Or it should have been. It calmed him as well,"You are protected from seeing such sights"

Fitz turned in a circle. He felt that this unnatural land was sapping the life force from within him.

"Who are you? Why am I here...I ask you again...WHERE?"

Fitz waited for a response, but another voice evaded his head. This one was female. Wise.

"Open your eyes boy...it is he whom you fear most that will be your salvation"

It was only now that Fitz realised that he had his eyes tightly closed. He forced them open and saw the carnage. The wolves looking up at him with blood stained jaws. The gypsy man who threatened to do him harm lying ravaged to pieces. Eyes wide in lifeless horror.

"I did this", he whispered, almost horrified of what had happened. Then he noticed the ring of women in dark robes around him. Captain Kronos was standing with the old hag.
"You are an abomination...you must be destroyed", told the old hag.

Captain Kronos nodded, "I have always known there was something unnatural about him"

The hag of the red gypsy flame pointed her wizened finger, "he has no place in this world...he should not exist to taint this time"

Captain Kronos looked at him with eyes that bore the resemblance to understanding hatred, "yes...your very existence endangers all of us...even the whole world"

Fitz stood close to the blood thirsty wolves, "what are you talking about...?", he looked towards the red gypsy hag, "...and you, my people used to talk about you...why do you will me harm?"

The leader of the red gypsy flame was almost outraged by the boys words, "they are no people of yours boy"

Fitz didn't know how to respond to that. He backed away and the wolves parted for him to let him pass. Captain Kronos stepped forward, "they speak the truth boy...I have always known that there was something not quite right about you"

1885

Sister Agatha was concerned as Sister Mary paused in her story telling. She could only hazard a guess that this point.

"Did Kronos turn on him?

Sister Mary was shaking her head, "this is where my dream keeps changing. One dream he is seen burning alive on a stake, that like a witch"

"As like burning in hells fire?"

The older nuns eyes were glazed over, "the boy has ripped a tear through time"

"HIS FATHER SURELY?", Agatha corrected, "it was him who spirited him away to the past"

Sister Mary reached out and cupped her cheek with fingers that looked as old as time itself, "I can only tell you what I know now...it is you who will find the true ending...and that is the end of my dream and what I know"

1863

Fitz ran for his life. Even captain Kronos had turned against him. The low Sun was lost behind the mountain, as he smashed into a pine tree and fell to his knees. The wolves followed him at a safe distance.
He stood up and heard the sound of galloping hooves and a sword being drawn. He had no choice but to run.

LONDON 2020

Dracula climbed the high wall and saw into the old churchyard. There they were. The coven of gypsy witches that bore the symbol of the gypsy flame. They were chanting something.

"Sacred fire...Sacred flame...Sacred fire...Sacred flame..."

Dracula looked at the harpies with contempt his eye's dark and cold. These witches needed to be destroyed. The poison his son faced was tied to these miserable females.
He broke into a charming smile and leapt to the ground in front of them, incense wafted the air.

They were immediately silenced from the sacred chant and looked at him. Dracula rested his hand to his chest, "oh I must apologise for the uninvited interruption, but I came here to return you your friend...we met on the tube you know"

And with that said, and the horrified looks on the covens faces, Dracula threw down the severed head if the girl on the tube.
The grisly remains rolled and stared up at the sky, eyes wide in horror. The lower part of the face almost skeletal where something had tore the skin right away.
Dracula smirked, "that wasn't my doing, that was the train she didn't see coming"

The leader of the group stepped forward and raised a silver cross, "stay back..."

Dracula tilted his head, "but why must I? I was looking forward into joining you in the singalong...Sacred flames was it?"

The leader stood firm and defiant, "don't be fooled by his idle charm...he'll break your neck if you give him chance"

Dracula laughed, "Oh come now, what's with all the bad vibes...am I really that much of a bad date?"

The leader pulled back her flame red hair and wrinkled her freckled nose. He stepped forward one stride and she raised the cross.

"The cross is irritating me now girl..."

"It's meant to"

Dracula suddenly leapt forward and snatched it out of her tight grasp. The cross scolded his skin, but he tossed it aside like a piece of litter, "you will have to try harder than that, ladies"

The leader backed away. The clan of witches stuck together closely. Dracula couldn't smell a whiff fear from them.

"What do you want?, she asked, Dracula licked his lips. Eyes dark, but seemingly friendly for the time being,"Your son?"

"I am a vampire of many powers, I have the power to spirit him away to the past...but I do not have the ability to look to the past...but I know your coven has...information that has been passed down over the decades"

The leader was almost amused, "the red gypsy flame cherished the day your son was..."
"Was what?", cut in Dracula a little more venomous than intended.

"Yes...we have come far from our homelands to finally destroy you and what you stand for...but your only weakness is your son...The gypsy boy that lived out of the realms of time itself...or so the scriptures told us"

Dracula swallowed down, "what happened to him? Tell me!"

The witch was amused no longer fearing the dark soul of the immortal. She stood tall, "I will tell you what the scriptures say...it will be a pleasure to see your face dark one.

1863

Fitz was still running. Even captain Kronos was after him now. The legendary and fearless vampire Hunter had set his sights on him. It was finally dawning on him that he really was an oddity. He wasn't just charmed a life, his life was being mapped out in some unfathomable way.

He was an abomination. He had no place in this world, that's what the hag gypsy witch said.

And then there was that unnerving voice. The one that evaded his mind. Deep dark unsettling. But he knew the voice and that fact terrified him the most. It was him. Count Dracula.

But why was he protecting him? What did he want with him? He had killed him before. But against all the odds, Fitz somehow managed to resurrect himself.

Fitz came to the mountain river. He hated the water, how was he going to be across?
"You can not cross it boy? There is nowhere else for you to run to"

Fitz swung around to see captain Kronos come crashing out the trees with his sword poised out.

"Why? Why do you seek harm to me, cried Fitz.

"As they say, you are abomination...dark blood runs through your veins"

Fitz nodded, "it's him...Count Dracula...am I..I mean...what's he to do with me"

Kronos had some sympathy in his stance, "you and him are related boy...you are his..."

Fitz shook his head and backed away to the waters edge, "no...I will not believe it...he killed me remember...he wouldn't of killed his own flesh and blood"

Kronos tilted his head,"yes he would, because he didn't know who you were...but you healing yourself and rising again just prove how much an enigma you are"

Fitz closed his eyes. He didn't want this...He just wanted to be normal. He could the wild river gush. From as long as he could remember he had been afraid of water. Somehow now, he wasn't.
"My mother and father died...when I was young...this is all lies, I am a gypsy boy", he was now trying desperately to convince himself.
"And a mere gypsy boy can resurrect himself from the afterlife can he? The old hag has told me...you were brought here from beyond the yonder God knows where...I can only guess at the future, and some how you have ended up here in this time. You being here cannot be...time has been breached and that is no good for any of us"

Fitz closed his eye's and then let himself fall back into the river. Like where all this had begun when he had been rescued by Kronos. But not this time. This time deaths dark arms would let him into it's fold.

Kronos watched him being swept away by the torrid of the mountain current. The red gypsy followers had joined him at the riverside.

"Hes gone...the river will take him now"
The gypsy hag looked at him, eyes burning like fire, "no...He will seek death in the thing that he's afraid of most...the water...but through that, he will find finally have to accept where he belongs"

Kronos frowned in puzzlement, "how can you know of these things?"

And she only smiled.

1885

Sister Agatha looked at the old nun with her eyes firmly shut. Sister Mary had passed on. The Sun lit her pale face up for a split second through the window, before a cloudy veiled it. Slowly and carefully, Agatha pulled the bed sheet over the elders head and said a prayer.
Sister Mary had spent her entire life chasing this vile man. A creature that would live on to destroy the world if he was allowed. The truth of the matter is...and it was just mere speculation on her part...that Fitz's whereabouts from the river were now just rumour spread from folklore. He was part human and part vampire. An individual living in a time before his actually birth, put there by his father through protection.

She sighed. The future would reveal all, and now she pictured herself trapped on a sinking boat. Sister Mary insisted she would be the one who would find the truth. Put the pieces to the puzzle together. All she could do was wait.

EPILOGUE

2020

Dracula had torn the flesh away from the coven of gypsy witches. The running, still warm blood from the leading witch, trickling down the gravestone that bore his son's name.
Fitz was dead. Of course the waters never severed his life. It was the very realisation of who he really was. That and his body ravaged by being out of his time. Dreams tormenting him from a life he should have had. Allowed to of lived.
The witch told him what the scriptures said. That Fitz somehow made passage to England to discover his birth land.

Dracula looked at the date. 1897. The same day he boarded the Demeter to England, Fitz had taken his own life. Forcing a stake through his own heart. In London, Fitz knew Jonathan Harker. Was there a link? Did Fitz fear Jonathan would really bring him back to England.

Dracula closed his eye's. The Sun was starting to show its first ray's as Zoe looked down at him. She carried an infant in her arms. And she smiled, "you should join us Count Dracula, you don't have to live with your grief. It's we who matter now"

And Dracula, experiencing a tear on his cheek for the first time since he was human so many centuries in the past, looked up to the fresh burning Sun. To the blinding light of his own death.

END