Chapter 7: Dark Past
Part II
The little prince strolled down the dimly lit hallway accompanied with his werewolf servant. He was being strolled up to his room for a fresh change of clothes when unfortunately, his father had already awakened and was walking towards them.
He was pleased to see his son and stopped to greet him. "How did your clothes get to be so dirty?"
`D' looked up at the werewolf as if queuing him to answer. But the servant was smart, he wasn't go to lie to Dracula. D was left on his own.
"I, uh..." Dracula looked down on him intently. "It's not mud, I was helping chef Brimma in the kitchen and..."
"Ah, I see." The regal man nodded and dismissed his son. "Go get into your formal wear and meet me in the dining room for supper."
Unfortunately, he hadn't dismissed the servant.
"I'm not going to sit here and let him lie to me. Now tell me why he has mud on him." Dracula said with cold eyes gazing right at his servant.
The boy came into the dining room in a formal attire and took his seat across the long wooden table, gazing at his father. A bowl was placed in front of him by a servant, filled with a dark substance that held a particular smell. Blood.
Not once did his father lift his gaze to meet his young son's.
D took his spoon and only took a few sips of the blood/soup. He started staring at it until his father spoke up.
"So...How did your studies go today?" He asked. His voice not sounding like regular. A few of the servants took this as a sign and started to leave the room.
"Where are you going? I did not dismiss you." He averted his gaze back to his son.
D stared forward. "My studies? They went well...Like any other day."
Dracula didn't look amused and practically gulped down the whole bowl of blood/soup. Not minding his manners at all.
"You're not to associate with that child again."
The boy looked down.
"Junior...let this be your warning. You may be young now, but when you grow older, it won't be like this. Stop your foolishness. You will not go outside again or I will punish you. Severely. "
"Yes, father."
He obeyed his father's rule. And for the next several hundred years, D didn't go outside. He looked around fifteen now. Still young and fresh, but he was mature now, his attitude had changed a bit.
He took his studied seriously and as time went on, talked a little bit less. Now he had more important things to say, but he still held a somewhat arrogant attitude. He bullied his servants however he wished and held his title proud.
Less and less were servants finding him in the grand painting gallery which held the portrait of his mother he so often use to love to stare at for hours.
He had made his father proud.
Little did they know he had started another frowned upon human habit. Many of his servants found that he was loosing his appetite, but in fact, his cravings for blood were now fewer than before. In the middle of the day, D would sneak into the kitchen and help himself to whatever `human' foods were around. He even liked fruit.
One day, he was even caught! The servant found it rather funny how all this time, the strangest food was missing, and it was their young Lord. He was the kitchen thief, and yet, all of the things normal Vampires eat were left untouched. Strange.
With due time, that habit stopped too. But more habits were developing, closer and closer together.
Their lord ordered more candles for his room. He almost had the brightest room in all the castle.
Then one day, Dracula said something to him he never would forget. He didn't understand it at the time either...
The dark man had knocked on his door and invited himself in. He sat down on an elegant chair and studied his son strangely.
"Junior, you really need to be more attentive with your actions," he spoke softly, almost a murmur. "Just do me a favor as well for yourself,"
Dracula knew, no matter how hard he could try and push his son, the human habits were never going to leave, and he couldn't keep on continuing to be mad at his son for them.
"Whatever human-like habits you insist to develop, don't involve anyone else. Keep them a secret, if best, even keep them a secret from me."
The youth studied him intently, but he couldn't understand where his father was coming from.
He was a Vampire that was part human.
`Don't my servants understand that?'
One day, D was studying literature in the Grand Library when he heard shouting from outside. It was the same kind of shouting he heard the met Danielle, and this child-like shouting rekindled a spark of interest in him.
He marked his place in the book and walked over to the window. They were young children about eight to ten - or so D guessed - playing a game of `tag'.
"Hey!" one of them shouted. "Someone's in there?"
D blinked when he released he was the target of their attention. The shadowy figure in the glass panel window stepped back. He was garnished in all black today, with his somewhat curly brown hair back in a ponytail.
His father wasn't going to be awake for a while...
Before D knew it, he braced himself for the outside world, pushing his fathers warning to the back of his mind and was more sly now, as to not get caught.
He adjusted to the brightness quickly and stepped down the steps until he was in clear view of the children. They all stopped their running around and looked at him.
A little girl with red hair, which D instantly knew would be his favorite among the group, shielded her eyes from the sun with one hand and called out to him.
"My mom said nobody lived in this castle."
"Well your mother must have been misinformed." He called back with a soft voice accented with a strange tongue.
"Want to play with us?"
He smiled. The children upon seeing this trusted him. Of course they poked about him with questions of his inhabitance of the castle and paleness, but he politely brushed them off. He stayed close to the red-headed girl as they ran about. He was also careful about his heat syndrome.
Where ever she ran, he ran in pretty much the same direction. She was a cute little thing, almost in his eyes as cute as Danielle was. He was glad the human children had accepted him.
From the last time he had been outside, a wheat field was visible. Now many houses were there where the field once was. The town was getting bigger...
He soon learned their names and again replied that his was `D'. No more, no less.
Day by day he was starting to get away with being absent from his studies and going outside to play with the children. The red-headed girl still remained his favorite. Her name was Kindra.
Sometimes Kindra by herself would come and ask D to play. She would even throw pebbles at his window. D would even sometimes bring his books out to her and teach her a few things about this and that. He was taking the role as a big brother to a human child and...enjoying it.
None of his servants, or his father, ever thought he was up to something.
It continued like this for about two more years, when one day Kindra asked D why he never looked a day older than the day she first met him. She never saw him the next day, or the day after that.
Soon the children found a new place to play altogether.
D was very upset with this.
For a few more years, he stayed inside the castle. Never once bothering to go outside. He even then developed a knack for not liking the taste of blood. The thought of were it came from just disgusted him.
One day, the young D grew intensely bored. He thought about his friends from years ago when a pebble hit his window.
`Could it be?'
D looked out the window to find a maiden in her late teens with firey red hair throwing pebbles at the study window.
Before they both knew it, D was running out of the castle and Kindra running towards him. They crashed into eachother with a hug, of course with D, it was more of collapsing with heat syndrome.
"I barely recognize you, Kindra."
"You haven't changed a bit!" she mused. She had a lively voice and had really blossomed into a beautiful woman.
They used the rest of the day to catch up on whatever gossip they left out on over the years. D was glad he had his beloved friend back. His favorite one of the group. Unfortunately, that was the last day he ever saw her.
The young Lord came down to dinner that evening, with almost a skip in his walk. He seemed rather animated this night, though still kept to himself.
He stopped when he found the Dining Room empty. He wondered where everyone was and walked down the main hallway a ways more until he saw his father.
He was sitting in the throne room looking regal and full of hatred. Servants were around him and many other Lords and Aristocrat Ladies before him. They all stopped and turned to stare at their Prince.
D remembered. He was suppose to be present for a Noble Meeting. It completely slipped his mind.
Dracula stood up, garnished in black before his court and surprisingly, addressed his son, instead of his court.
"It seems my son is found of human childplay."
D stepped backed. His father would humiliate him in front of everyone.
"Well go on Junior. Tell them. What's it like to play with mortals?"
Whispering could be heard throughout the whole room. D waited for it to die down. Perhaps he could humiliate his father as well, making everyone thing he had raised a completely wrong son.
"What my father speaks is true." The Prince said, not once taking his eyes away from Dracula's gaze. "Actually, it's been going on a lot longer than you think. I've been playing with their children for hundreds of years."
The court gasped. Then the question broke out among everyone about how young Dracula could play with human children, when they only played in the daylight.
That was an unexpected turn for both father and son.
The talking soon was hushed harshly when Dracula walked forward a few feet from his son. He spoke directly to him:
"I told you if I was ever to be told that you were outside among inferior humans, mingling with them on the same level...there would be a severe punishment, and you will rightfully take what is coming to you."
The Vampire King turned around and spoke to his court; "If I cannot keep my son away from the humans, then perhaps humans should not live near my son."
"No!" D cried. He didn't care to make a scene. "How can you kill without reason!? You kill for sport!" the young naïve boy took a step forward as Dracula took a step back.
"Punish me, father. Like you said. It's unjustified to kill the innocent!"
He had just offended half the Nobles in the room, they weren't taking a liking to this.
"He's brainwashed!" Heads turned to see who was calling out before their Lord and Prince. It was a werewolf servant.
"They've brainwashed him! They've twisted him into believing that he's their friend so he could protect them from us!"
Indeed this servant had everyone's attention.
"He eats like them! He craves the light like them! He plays like them! He feels like them!"
The crowd was now an uproar. A few even shouted things suggesting young Dracula to never be King.
`If I can't live as a Vampire....' Thought young Dracula.
"QUIET!" Their Lord shouted. "My son, your punishment has yet to come. And so it shall...."
An old voodoo witch, dressed in a filthy cloak walked barefootedly forward. "And so you shall be cursed, my Prince." Came a haggard voice from the shadowed cloak.
The old woman chanted a few words, conjuring spirits that descended from the walls and hovered over the heads of the patrons of the room. The spirits all took one form, and before the young boy knew it, it was dashing towards him!
D barely took a step back when he was thrown across the room. An unbearable pain throbbed through his body, traveled down his arm and coursed into his left hand. The boy screamed from the pain, blood dripping from his hand. A darker tint of blood than that of a human.
D rose to his knees, clutching his hand to his stomach. Laughter protruding from his hand. Blood bubbles splurting out as a hideous mouth took form.
"Dracula my son, Junior, you have caused this curse yourself you know."
The poor boy sat there, letting the pain rip through him. He had to recollect himself before talking, if he ever could.
"I..." he gritted his teeth and knelt over. His vision was starting to feel blurry as a glow illuminated from his eyes.
"My, mother...was a human.."
The whole court gasped in shock. "Our Lord!?"
"I...am part human." He clutched his teeth together, squinting his eyes.
"If...you kill the humans, I...will.." the breathed in the pain. "I'LL FIND A WAY TO KILL YOU!"
His plunged into eternal damnation as his Vampire side took control. He tossed his head back and screamed loudly, more like a Vampire roar. Teeth exposed and all.
His world was gone. He was now hated by his `kingdom' and his father. A betrayer. A disgrace. It pained Dracula, he no longer held a son.
His son was now unconscious, laying on a beautiful imported rug with his dark blood pooled around him. The poor thing was clutching his cursed hand. So young he was...he held so much promise, and now the Vampire race would surely be doomed once Dracula was dead and no longer their King.
The regal Lord of Vampires knelt down beside his son. He was barely awake now and Dracula laid a hand on his shoulder.
"Dracula, Junior, leave. If you do not then you will be killed with the humans."
"Dracula....my name...is not Dracula. I am.." he curled inward on himself and choked a painful cough. "'D'..."
`D' was banished from their historic land. Forever without a home now and forever without peace. Torn between two races of which neither one he was accepted.
He ran from the castle that night dressed in his favorite attire, one that was completely black. He would later wear a cloak to forever conceal himself and a hat to forever hide his identity. D, or so he called himself, was left to wander the world.
In the text of history books, it was written in black and white that on the night Dracula's son disappeared, he led the largest massacre on the humans ever known.
It was also rumored that the King of the Vampires was dead and that his son was a Hunter.
Part II
The little prince strolled down the dimly lit hallway accompanied with his werewolf servant. He was being strolled up to his room for a fresh change of clothes when unfortunately, his father had already awakened and was walking towards them.
He was pleased to see his son and stopped to greet him. "How did your clothes get to be so dirty?"
`D' looked up at the werewolf as if queuing him to answer. But the servant was smart, he wasn't go to lie to Dracula. D was left on his own.
"I, uh..." Dracula looked down on him intently. "It's not mud, I was helping chef Brimma in the kitchen and..."
"Ah, I see." The regal man nodded and dismissed his son. "Go get into your formal wear and meet me in the dining room for supper."
Unfortunately, he hadn't dismissed the servant.
"I'm not going to sit here and let him lie to me. Now tell me why he has mud on him." Dracula said with cold eyes gazing right at his servant.
The boy came into the dining room in a formal attire and took his seat across the long wooden table, gazing at his father. A bowl was placed in front of him by a servant, filled with a dark substance that held a particular smell. Blood.
Not once did his father lift his gaze to meet his young son's.
D took his spoon and only took a few sips of the blood/soup. He started staring at it until his father spoke up.
"So...How did your studies go today?" He asked. His voice not sounding like regular. A few of the servants took this as a sign and started to leave the room.
"Where are you going? I did not dismiss you." He averted his gaze back to his son.
D stared forward. "My studies? They went well...Like any other day."
Dracula didn't look amused and practically gulped down the whole bowl of blood/soup. Not minding his manners at all.
"You're not to associate with that child again."
The boy looked down.
"Junior...let this be your warning. You may be young now, but when you grow older, it won't be like this. Stop your foolishness. You will not go outside again or I will punish you. Severely. "
"Yes, father."
He obeyed his father's rule. And for the next several hundred years, D didn't go outside. He looked around fifteen now. Still young and fresh, but he was mature now, his attitude had changed a bit.
He took his studied seriously and as time went on, talked a little bit less. Now he had more important things to say, but he still held a somewhat arrogant attitude. He bullied his servants however he wished and held his title proud.
Less and less were servants finding him in the grand painting gallery which held the portrait of his mother he so often use to love to stare at for hours.
He had made his father proud.
Little did they know he had started another frowned upon human habit. Many of his servants found that he was loosing his appetite, but in fact, his cravings for blood were now fewer than before. In the middle of the day, D would sneak into the kitchen and help himself to whatever `human' foods were around. He even liked fruit.
One day, he was even caught! The servant found it rather funny how all this time, the strangest food was missing, and it was their young Lord. He was the kitchen thief, and yet, all of the things normal Vampires eat were left untouched. Strange.
With due time, that habit stopped too. But more habits were developing, closer and closer together.
Their lord ordered more candles for his room. He almost had the brightest room in all the castle.
Then one day, Dracula said something to him he never would forget. He didn't understand it at the time either...
The dark man had knocked on his door and invited himself in. He sat down on an elegant chair and studied his son strangely.
"Junior, you really need to be more attentive with your actions," he spoke softly, almost a murmur. "Just do me a favor as well for yourself,"
Dracula knew, no matter how hard he could try and push his son, the human habits were never going to leave, and he couldn't keep on continuing to be mad at his son for them.
"Whatever human-like habits you insist to develop, don't involve anyone else. Keep them a secret, if best, even keep them a secret from me."
The youth studied him intently, but he couldn't understand where his father was coming from.
He was a Vampire that was part human.
`Don't my servants understand that?'
One day, D was studying literature in the Grand Library when he heard shouting from outside. It was the same kind of shouting he heard the met Danielle, and this child-like shouting rekindled a spark of interest in him.
He marked his place in the book and walked over to the window. They were young children about eight to ten - or so D guessed - playing a game of `tag'.
"Hey!" one of them shouted. "Someone's in there?"
D blinked when he released he was the target of their attention. The shadowy figure in the glass panel window stepped back. He was garnished in all black today, with his somewhat curly brown hair back in a ponytail.
His father wasn't going to be awake for a while...
Before D knew it, he braced himself for the outside world, pushing his fathers warning to the back of his mind and was more sly now, as to not get caught.
He adjusted to the brightness quickly and stepped down the steps until he was in clear view of the children. They all stopped their running around and looked at him.
A little girl with red hair, which D instantly knew would be his favorite among the group, shielded her eyes from the sun with one hand and called out to him.
"My mom said nobody lived in this castle."
"Well your mother must have been misinformed." He called back with a soft voice accented with a strange tongue.
"Want to play with us?"
He smiled. The children upon seeing this trusted him. Of course they poked about him with questions of his inhabitance of the castle and paleness, but he politely brushed them off. He stayed close to the red-headed girl as they ran about. He was also careful about his heat syndrome.
Where ever she ran, he ran in pretty much the same direction. She was a cute little thing, almost in his eyes as cute as Danielle was. He was glad the human children had accepted him.
From the last time he had been outside, a wheat field was visible. Now many houses were there where the field once was. The town was getting bigger...
He soon learned their names and again replied that his was `D'. No more, no less.
Day by day he was starting to get away with being absent from his studies and going outside to play with the children. The red-headed girl still remained his favorite. Her name was Kindra.
Sometimes Kindra by herself would come and ask D to play. She would even throw pebbles at his window. D would even sometimes bring his books out to her and teach her a few things about this and that. He was taking the role as a big brother to a human child and...enjoying it.
None of his servants, or his father, ever thought he was up to something.
It continued like this for about two more years, when one day Kindra asked D why he never looked a day older than the day she first met him. She never saw him the next day, or the day after that.
Soon the children found a new place to play altogether.
D was very upset with this.
For a few more years, he stayed inside the castle. Never once bothering to go outside. He even then developed a knack for not liking the taste of blood. The thought of were it came from just disgusted him.
One day, the young D grew intensely bored. He thought about his friends from years ago when a pebble hit his window.
`Could it be?'
D looked out the window to find a maiden in her late teens with firey red hair throwing pebbles at the study window.
Before they both knew it, D was running out of the castle and Kindra running towards him. They crashed into eachother with a hug, of course with D, it was more of collapsing with heat syndrome.
"I barely recognize you, Kindra."
"You haven't changed a bit!" she mused. She had a lively voice and had really blossomed into a beautiful woman.
They used the rest of the day to catch up on whatever gossip they left out on over the years. D was glad he had his beloved friend back. His favorite one of the group. Unfortunately, that was the last day he ever saw her.
The young Lord came down to dinner that evening, with almost a skip in his walk. He seemed rather animated this night, though still kept to himself.
He stopped when he found the Dining Room empty. He wondered where everyone was and walked down the main hallway a ways more until he saw his father.
He was sitting in the throne room looking regal and full of hatred. Servants were around him and many other Lords and Aristocrat Ladies before him. They all stopped and turned to stare at their Prince.
D remembered. He was suppose to be present for a Noble Meeting. It completely slipped his mind.
Dracula stood up, garnished in black before his court and surprisingly, addressed his son, instead of his court.
"It seems my son is found of human childplay."
D stepped backed. His father would humiliate him in front of everyone.
"Well go on Junior. Tell them. What's it like to play with mortals?"
Whispering could be heard throughout the whole room. D waited for it to die down. Perhaps he could humiliate his father as well, making everyone thing he had raised a completely wrong son.
"What my father speaks is true." The Prince said, not once taking his eyes away from Dracula's gaze. "Actually, it's been going on a lot longer than you think. I've been playing with their children for hundreds of years."
The court gasped. Then the question broke out among everyone about how young Dracula could play with human children, when they only played in the daylight.
That was an unexpected turn for both father and son.
The talking soon was hushed harshly when Dracula walked forward a few feet from his son. He spoke directly to him:
"I told you if I was ever to be told that you were outside among inferior humans, mingling with them on the same level...there would be a severe punishment, and you will rightfully take what is coming to you."
The Vampire King turned around and spoke to his court; "If I cannot keep my son away from the humans, then perhaps humans should not live near my son."
"No!" D cried. He didn't care to make a scene. "How can you kill without reason!? You kill for sport!" the young naïve boy took a step forward as Dracula took a step back.
"Punish me, father. Like you said. It's unjustified to kill the innocent!"
He had just offended half the Nobles in the room, they weren't taking a liking to this.
"He's brainwashed!" Heads turned to see who was calling out before their Lord and Prince. It was a werewolf servant.
"They've brainwashed him! They've twisted him into believing that he's their friend so he could protect them from us!"
Indeed this servant had everyone's attention.
"He eats like them! He craves the light like them! He plays like them! He feels like them!"
The crowd was now an uproar. A few even shouted things suggesting young Dracula to never be King.
`If I can't live as a Vampire....' Thought young Dracula.
"QUIET!" Their Lord shouted. "My son, your punishment has yet to come. And so it shall...."
An old voodoo witch, dressed in a filthy cloak walked barefootedly forward. "And so you shall be cursed, my Prince." Came a haggard voice from the shadowed cloak.
The old woman chanted a few words, conjuring spirits that descended from the walls and hovered over the heads of the patrons of the room. The spirits all took one form, and before the young boy knew it, it was dashing towards him!
D barely took a step back when he was thrown across the room. An unbearable pain throbbed through his body, traveled down his arm and coursed into his left hand. The boy screamed from the pain, blood dripping from his hand. A darker tint of blood than that of a human.
D rose to his knees, clutching his hand to his stomach. Laughter protruding from his hand. Blood bubbles splurting out as a hideous mouth took form.
"Dracula my son, Junior, you have caused this curse yourself you know."
The poor boy sat there, letting the pain rip through him. He had to recollect himself before talking, if he ever could.
"I..." he gritted his teeth and knelt over. His vision was starting to feel blurry as a glow illuminated from his eyes.
"My, mother...was a human.."
The whole court gasped in shock. "Our Lord!?"
"I...am part human." He clutched his teeth together, squinting his eyes.
"If...you kill the humans, I...will.." the breathed in the pain. "I'LL FIND A WAY TO KILL YOU!"
His plunged into eternal damnation as his Vampire side took control. He tossed his head back and screamed loudly, more like a Vampire roar. Teeth exposed and all.
His world was gone. He was now hated by his `kingdom' and his father. A betrayer. A disgrace. It pained Dracula, he no longer held a son.
His son was now unconscious, laying on a beautiful imported rug with his dark blood pooled around him. The poor thing was clutching his cursed hand. So young he was...he held so much promise, and now the Vampire race would surely be doomed once Dracula was dead and no longer their King.
The regal Lord of Vampires knelt down beside his son. He was barely awake now and Dracula laid a hand on his shoulder.
"Dracula, Junior, leave. If you do not then you will be killed with the humans."
"Dracula....my name...is not Dracula. I am.." he curled inward on himself and choked a painful cough. "'D'..."
`D' was banished from their historic land. Forever without a home now and forever without peace. Torn between two races of which neither one he was accepted.
He ran from the castle that night dressed in his favorite attire, one that was completely black. He would later wear a cloak to forever conceal himself and a hat to forever hide his identity. D, or so he called himself, was left to wander the world.
In the text of history books, it was written in black and white that on the night Dracula's son disappeared, he led the largest massacre on the humans ever known.
It was also rumored that the King of the Vampires was dead and that his son was a Hunter.