Disclaimer:

Only Iona is mine. Maybe someday I'll be kidnapped by Dracula and toegtehr we'll take over the world, but I'm not holding my breath.

Chapter 1: Meet Iona

Iona was used to not fitting in. It seemed to be her place in life to wander from person to person as idly as a mayfly alighting on them only to die seconds later. It didn't bother her. She pushed it from her mind an idle thought, smiling faintly as she hoisted her precious few belongings over her shoulder as a passerby crossed himself and continued
walking. Villagers could be so flight. One would think they would be used to her, having lived there all her life but apparently…she shrugged.

It was her first time leaving the village. In Transylvania your life was set, you were born in your village, you married you produced more peasants and then you died. She highly doubted that it would be much different elsewhere. She wasn't a cynic per say, but people everywhere tended to be the same. She knew where she was going, though how exactly
she would get there remained a mystery.

It shouldn't be too difficult. The merchants came through all of the time. If they could do it, so could she. She sighed and pushed her straw blonde hair out of her eyes, someone had to warn them.

It had been an odd vision, not like the normal cat being hit by a runaway cart, but something…big. She was surprised that no one had come to check out the screams, but then she sighed, shaking her head. No she wasn't. But she felt like she felt like she ought to be; that it should be some grand shock to realize everyone was terrified of her. That was the funny thing. They came at night whispering at her door about love spells and begging her to tell the future of their sons, their harvests. She told them whatever suited her at the time; often simply what they wanted to hear. It was all they would have listened to anyway.

This was different however. She had never seen the man in the vision, and he fascinated her in an odd sort of way. It wasn't physical; she had seen the village girls and their swains roll around in the hay before and examined with a clinical eye exactly what it was that made them so friendly in the winter months. He was attractive enough she supposed, but cold in a way that chilled her thoroughly.

Something wasn't right, and she intended to find out exactly what it was. All she had to go on was a name and a face. The face was unkown…but the name was Dracula.