I have returned! Lol I was in Boston for 5 days so no time to write...so anyway this is where the story really takes off in my opinion, I will update in a few days but until then read and review!
In his troubled dreams, Dracula felt that there was a heart beating loudly. It was irritating, yet a lovely sound. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. He felt…happy, blissful. He had found something for which he had searched for a long, long time, and it had come to him at last. Blood. He wanted it, the beautiful red flowing darkness of it. The heartbeat got louder and louder until Dracula awoke, sweating. He looked down at his bride, who was intertwined in his arms and he in hers. Her hair was swept away from her neck, and he could see her pulse throbbing faintly below her ear.

He had a strange desire, almost a compulsion, to kiss her. He reached for her and kissed her lips softly, but almost immediately moved down to her neck, setting his mouth against the soft skin and moving his lips over the warmth to the place where her pulse throbbed steadily, putting his tongue against her skin and licking her neck. Kissing it again. Dracula could not get close enough to her neck. It was so beautiful, so…so delicious.

Suddenly realizing what was happening, he sat bolt upright, horrorstruck. It couldn't be.

Tatiana shifted in her sleep, smiling. Dracula carefully untangled her arms and covered her warmly, not daring to look at her neck. Then he tiptoed out of the bedroom and ran out into the nearby forest to a favorite clearing of theirs.

He cried out in agony when he put his hand over his heart and did not feel any beat. Summoning the hellbeast that had resided in him for over two hundred years, he fell to his knees as the wings exploded from his back and he felt his whole body expand into the grotesque form of a winged monster.

"Oh, God Almighty, what have You done!" he screamed, looking up into the night sky where the stars glittered coldly.

There was no reply from the heavens. Dracula shuddered and got to his feet as the bloodlust came upon him. He had forgotten how horrible it felt to desire—no, crave—the blood of a fellow human being. When it passed, he raised haunted eyes to the sky. "God, why? How have I broken our covenant?"

His face went rigid with sudden, horrible understanding. "Surely you do not consider those two men…Lord, I was protecting my wife! They would have come back and killed her, and our child! Surely, God, you must understand!" He fell to his knees, this time from overwhelming grief and pain. "I cannot live without her, God! I cannot be immortal, please, you MUST understand, God, have mercy upon me! I cannot harm her, I cannot make her of my kind, nor our child, but it is impossible that I live without her!"

"You have seen that I am not all evil, God, I have tried, oh so very hard, to do Thy Will throughout our covenant, I have helped others, I have not harmed anyone! Be the forgiving One that you are said to be, Lord! I did not do it but to save Tatiana and the child! Have You no mercy?"

I have mercy. You shall keep your emotions, Vladislaus Dracula, until Tatiana and your child have lived out their lives, so that you shall never allow harm to come to them. Then, if you wish them, you shall keep your emotions, but it will be painful.

"I…but…" Dracula looked up into what was, for him, an unfeeling night sky. "Is there no forgiveness?"

Your sins are too many, Vladislaus. I cannot forgive them.

"No, Lucifer, you cannot. I know who you are." Dracula looked up into the sky, his voice suddenly resuming all its old power and cunning. "Only you would deny what is recorded in God's Word."

Lucifer laughed, and the sky rang with the cold, brittle sound. My son, you ARE clever. Dracula clenched his teeth, imagining Satan sitting—or whatever it was that Satan did—with a grin on the human version of his face.

"I made a pact with God!"

No, you did not. I am your god now, Vladislaus Dracula.

"But God exists! And He is all-powerful!"

And I own your soul. Do not toy with me, Dracula. You cannot win. However, just for the fun of it—you must know by now that mercy is laughable to me—I will let you keep your emotions. To see how you…react to the next few months.

"What?"

The brittle laughter came again. You will see in time.

Something vanished from the sky, and the stars became bright and soft again, as they were supposed to be. Vladislaus Dracula looked to them with a haggard face and grief-filled eyes and whispered, "Lord God, Thou who helpst the sparrow, abandon not Thy servant in his time of greatest need."


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