Ragweed: So, it was the weekend and I had just finished watching Underworld, reading Van Helsing and listening to the entire Evanescence album--all in the same night!--so I was in a pretty damn angsty mood, and I thought, why not write my next Van Helsing chapter. So, this one is really, really dark, given all the vampireness that went into it, and we all know you'll enjoy that. Just so you all know, this chapter's a bit gory (trust me, more is to come) but this is the first chapter with blood (other then the nameless girl who was nobly sacrificed for Dracula, hehe.) But if you made it this far, it shouldn't be a problem.


Crimson-Stained Shards of Memory

Chapter 5: Reminiscence of Lost Joy

"There comes a point when pain becomes so accustom, you forget it is there; you are beyond it."--Revenge of the Whale

.:I:.

The memory he choose was a good one and Dracula eagerly immersed himself in it. The scenario played out in his mind's eye as if he were watching it with his real eyes; detailing down to the last blade of flowing grass. Yes, the memory was a good one. Except for the other memories it brought up. For this memory was one of many glorious times that all ended with the same one. No matter how many times he remembered the best times, it all ended the same. And as the vampire watched and reminisced, Dracula could not help but feel a mix of anger and sorrow well up inside his hollow body.

Summer was in its prime in Transylvania. The normally snow-laden and mountainous country was now alive and sprawling with lush forests. Large leafy trees were broken up by the odd pine or fir tree that poked its deep green branches high above those of the oaks or birch. When the wind blew hard enough, the entire forest would shiver with music and the leaves with rustle and shimmer with every imaginable shade of green. The wind would laugh with shrilling glee as the leaves tugged at it in their summer dance. Animals of all type were out from winter hiding; deer, badgers, wolverines, squirrels. The country was alive with summertime.

Nestled in a steep valley surrounded by the forest, the small village of Vaseria lay hidden from the rest of the world. It was almost impossible to find unless you were looking for it, concealed by mountains and cliffs. The town was young but growing. Small wooden buildings centred around the town's stone well in the middle of the centre square. Shops and taverns occupied most the centre, while houses and farms were scattered at the town's edge. A slow but large, straight river ran along the glade-bottom, hugging close to one of the near, sheer cliff walls. On one side of this river, the village bustled with daily activity, on the other, the beautiful Valerious Manor stood in all its aristocratic and elegant glory.

The Valerious's were a wealthy family in Transylvania, partnered with the Gypsies in many ways. The large manor house had been completed only a few months before yet the large family had already furnished it and were living in the manor. The midday sun shone unhindered down onto a small courtyard off the side of the manor. The small yard was covered with stone, yet tall weed-grass pushed though the cracks of the slate. Rose bushes and rhododendrons were planted in the flower beds and grew massively tall with claret red blossoms as big as a human hand. In the centre of the stone patio, a small yet detailed fountain drizzled water over small polished stones and sparrows and thrushes zipped through the sky, chirping in delight as the wind lifted their wings. A waist-high hedge clipped down to the quick encompassed the courtyard in a perfect square, looking out over a small meadow before it hit the wide river. Two figures stood in the small courtyard; one leaned against the wall of the manor, watching the other who was standing at the hedge, gazing over the sprawling meadow and river next to the building.

"Good God, Vlad. You could stay out here all day if your father let you." said the tall man leaning against the stucco wall. He was unlike the other man, he was unlike any other man in Vaseria. His dark brown hair curled down to his shoulders. His skin was sun-kissed and tanned slightly from many days out in the wilderness. His eyes weren't coloured green or blue, they were a swimming chestnut brown instead.

The other man continued to gaze out over the waving meadow, "It's beautiful isn't it? The sun is so bright today."

The man could not help but roll his eyes at his friend. "It's just a field. You see it everyday. It's just grass growing from the ground. You treat it as if it's some holy ground."

"Yes, but it's beautiful, is it not? The wind whistling through the blades, waving the grass like one sweeping movement. You can hear everything. It's all so pure."

The man leaning on the wall gave a light-hearted laugh again and said, "Sometimes you're more bizarre then even I can imagine."

"You just don't understand," said the man at the field's edge, brushing his hand over the top of the hedge he stood by, letting the tiny, trimmed, stiff leaves of the plant scrape painlessly along his palm. This man appeared to be more like the Valerious family. His skin was fair and flawless. Black silky hair was pulled back of his fine-featured face. Jet back wrapped his body, including a limp, black, cloak that lazily draped his body near his ankles. And his eyes were a shimmering, liquid green that yielded a warm, secure sweeping feeling whenever you would look into their depths.

"No I don't," laughed the other. "I'll never understand you."

Dracula smiled, "You will one day, Gabriel. People like you and my father, you just can't see these things yet, not yet. But I know you will one day. When the clouds around your mind have cleared away and you can see truly for the first time."

Dracula had excepted his friend to laugh at this as well; but instead, there was silence for a brief moment and then Gabriel's voice suddenly was quiet and solemn, "Maybe then the nightmares will stop as well," he mumbled almost inaudibly.

Dracula was silent. He didn't know what to say. Nothing he could say would make either of them feel any better.

"I don't know what they mean," Gabriel continued. "I wonder sometimes if they are sins from my past and God sees it that I suffer for them. Maybe they were sins that I committed and He sees I am to be tortured by them forever as punishment, even if I can't remember what I did. I cannot remember at all. I suppose it is better if I don't remember."

"When memories are broken into shards and distorted, they are sometimes worse then remembering everything entirely," whispered Dracula and he felt a pang of sorrow for his friend. He turned to Gabriel. "I don't know what these dreams are for you, but I know this. You are not a murderer. These horrible things that you describe in your nightmares, they are not your past. You have not seen what I have seen in war. The deadness and coldness in these men's eyes before they kill. They beat their victims and cheer in triumph when they scream for mercy, as if they've won. It's sickening, it's sub-human." He turned back to the field with the rock-bare mountains rising in the background. This was the part of the memory that Dracula would have cherished the most, had he been capable of an emotion so power full as love.

"An animal doesn't do that to another animal once they've killed it," Dracula continued. "Creatures kill swiftly as to not let their prey suffer. Yet these murderers, they kill for the pleasure and thrill. That is not you. You will never become that. You couldn't, not you. For all I know, you could be an angel of some type."

Gabriel smirked at the thought, "An angel? You truly are one of the strangest people I've ever met, Vlad. Probably the strangest I'll ever see in my lifetime."

Dracula smiled. More silence came upon the two. But it was a beautiful, bliss-like silence of understanding of one another. The kind of silence that brothers that are not of blood experience when they need to say something, yet they can find nothing to say. The silence lingered on for a moment, one savoury moment, the Dracula turned to Gabriel and started toward the manor, "Come, you've still got training to complete. You couldn't fire a bow if your life depended on it. Which it probably will when the time comes."

With a joyous laugh, Gabriel followed Dracula into the manor, smiling with a happiness only the greatest of friendship can make. The courtyard was deserted once again. The sun began to set in the western mountain range, casting an unworldly wash of orange and gold over the twilight sky. Clouds became bordered with gold lining as the sun spilled its orange rays over the sky. And soon all that remained outside were the sweet songs of sparrows returning to their nests, and the whistling, pure, rush of the wind in the grass.

Claws of pain scratched at Dracula's mind as the memory faded and the night-darkened corridor came back into view. The Count's eyes fluttered open to meet the dark blue light that spilled in through the open balcony-door window. Propping himself up against the wall, Dracula tried to wake himself up and not waste time muse over the memory. What good would that do? It was the part of the memories, when they ended. It was like waking from a dead sleep: whatever dormant wisp of a heart that lay in his chest filled with a unwanted sensation of half-life when Dracula awakened. But no matter how many times Dracula awoke, the pain of the memories would creep into his mind before he could escape it.

As the memory came to an end, a strange, warm feeling poured into Dracula's body. It confused the vampire, the feeling was alien to him. He looked at his hands; obsidian claws sparkling in the moonlight. What was this unknown feeling? Dracula could feel it swim and move within his body, like it were a living, thriving creature. Spreading in his body like an intoxication wildfire. Then, quickly mellowed to a dwindling ember in his hollow body that left in with the numbing cold that consumed him constantly.

Was this happiness?

No. The answer was easy. Dracula cursed at himself for thinking it. Of course it wasn't happiness. He knew what it was. Reminiscence. Reminiscence of lost joy. Lost. A small electric current travelled down Dracula's nerves as his body awoke to life per sa.

It was only then Dracula noticed the foul stench of dead flesh that filled the corridor. The body of the man he had killed earlier had begun to rot. It was odd, but the smell of rotting flesh was something Dracula couldn't stand.

Quickly, he shook off whatever remaining emotions the memories had upturned and rose to his feet. The corpse of the man still lay by the large balcony window. Not surprisingly, there was not blood spilled on the marble floor. Instead, the dismembered body lay stripped of its flesh down to the bone in some places, the result of Dracula's animal-like fit that he had been overcome with earlier that night.

Dracula smirked down in disgust at the tore-apart body. Pathetic little creature. With a strong clawed hand, the vampire griped the body from where its neck should have been and hosted the corpse from the marble floor. Striding almost gracefully from out onto the small semi-circle balcony, Dracula held his arm out and dangled the mutilated body over the drop of the cliff. He looked over the sheer two-hundred foot drop to the hillside, then returned his gaze to the corpse, smiling.

"At least you shall die have known your death will let more then one creature not go hungry tonight," he said, his voice as smooth as mink fur. The corpse stared back at him, its empty eye sockets shrouded with bits of loose flesh. The body truly looked like a skeleton with shredded bits and pieces of flesh and cloth that happened to grow upon it. Dracula smiled, reviling his fangs, blood still caked on, to the corpse, as if to show the man what had killed him. Dracula always got some sick pleasure out of taunting his victims after they were dead. Then, Dracula released his grip on the neck of the corpse and it tumbled to the forested mountainside below. Dracula hadn't even gone back inside, when the triumphant howls of wolves could be heard rising up from the forest, thanking their master for the feast of meat.

For the first time in many decades, Dracula found he had some sense of his surroundings, instead of wandering aimlessly in the ever-darkness that always inhabited his mind. Striding along the second floor, Dracula arrived at the balcony that over-looked the Great Hall, where his children had once hung in mid-death, waiting in unconsciousness to be brought to life. Now, the grand room was empty, save the lifelessly limp cobwebs and brittle dry leaves that had found their way into the castle via wind or walker's footsteps. The marble floor had been left unkempt and the normally reflective polished stone was now dull and scratched. The large tapestries that once hung in rows on either side of the grand hall were either stolen, torn down, or torn apart. The large mahogany table that used to seat forty, was gone, though it once had been lavishly decorated with sprawling bouquets of flowers for centrepieces, Oriental table-runs that were embroidered with Chinese orchids and lilies had been stolen by now. The massive crystal chandeliers that once hung from the fifty-foot-high ceiling was cracked and some of the crystal strings were completely missing in some places. Funny, the thing that was supposed to bring light was now shrouded in darkness. The oak-panelling along the walls of the Great Hall that had once shined with glossy oils was now dusty and scratched tarnishing the perfect wood, mirroring, perfectly, the marble floor below it.

Carried by an empty wind, Dracula drifted slowly down off the rail of the balcony, lowering slowly until the firm alabaster floor could be felt under his feet. Dracula looked around the Great Hall now, his green eyes darting along each wall, form corner to leaf-riddled corner. He smirked to himself as the memories of what the castle had been faded in his mind and the unkempt, cobweb-covered room replaced the old, regal image. There was something different however, something Dracula noticed that he never had before. Chains. Coils of iron chains lay coiled in the corners and along the floor, each end of the chains, fused to the wall. Literally dozens of the coils lay shrouded in cobwebs as if they had been here as long as the castle had stood.

Paying no mind to it Dracula strode silently through the empty, dusty, deserted hall. Clink. Dracula spun on his heel, eyes flaring, face twisted into a terrible hiss. Nothing. Hawkish eyes searching the Great Hall like a snake. Silence, a silence that put Dracula on edge. Clink. Dracula whirred again to the origin of the sound, on the coils of chain. The vampire mentally kicked himself for being so paranoid. Old restraints of the castle were no threat to him; they were no threat to rats that lived in the castle, never mind the all-powerful King of Vampires.

It was only in the silence that Dracula felt the sting pain in the inside of his arms. Raising his arm he noticed blood on his black robes. Brushing back the long, wide sleeve of his cloak, Dracula revealed red-claret slash marks running parallel with his arm. They were deep, reaching to the bone in some places. Dried, flaky, blood acted as a block for any new blood that was not his to flow from his veins. The vampire's features contorted into another smirk. He knew full-well where the claw marks had come from, it was not the first time he had seen them; they were a common wound for a vampire. When humans were put in a life or death situation, their minds devolve back to mere animals of instinct, slashing and clawing at anything within reach in a feeble attempt to save their own petty existence. More likely then not, these particular wounds were the result of the man he had taken from the town earlier that night. (Dracula's mind strayed at this thought for a moment, it must almost be dawn) but often, if the human still had enough sense in the them to struggle while they were being carried off by the arms of a Nosferatu, they would strike out in animal-instinct at the closets thing--the vampire arms carrying them to their demise. Wounds such as these were not uncommon to any vampire. The vampires who carried their victims by their feet, would more often then not end up with slashes on their ankles. Not that it would hinder the work in anyway, vampire's were headstrong like that.

But it was funny, why had his body not healed these wounds automatically? Dracula's smirk became a confused frown. Perhaps, given he had only been Awake for the last three nights, the Healer in his blood had not awaken with him, and that meant the wound wouldn't heal. Only one way to fix that. Damn it. This would hurt. It had always ironically amused Dracula how the only thing a vampire was aloud to feel was pain. More punishment for being what they were, he thought. But now was not the time for musing, the cut would most likely become infected if Dracula did not tend to it, it would spread and fill his body with burning pain (but of course it wouldn't release him) and drain his body, making him weak and lethargic.

Dracula held up his right wrist and forearm, exposing multiple, narrow, claw marks running from his palm to his elbow, tarnishing his flawless skin in a clearly barbaric way. He examined the wounds. Angry black lines radiated from the claw marks, coursing along what should have been his veins. Infected. Damn it. It was almost pathetic how weak the immune systems of vampire's were, given all the other ungodly strengths they possessed. The Count guessed that if vampire's had the ability to heal themselves, why in hell would they need an immune system of any type? Disease was the answer. This was the problem of a vampire's weak immune system. If a vampire's immune system were too strong, its body would reject the blood every time it fed. With no immune system to produce antibodies, a vampire could drink any blood and survive on it. But no antibodies, also meant no natural defence against infections and disease. And the infected wounds of a vampire are not easily cleansed.

Dracula mentally readied himself, their was no easy way to do this. He brushed back his black sleeve, revealing the grotesque sight of claw marks and black infection. At first, he took his left talons and lined the obsidian claws with one set of five parallel slash marks, attempting to re-open the wound. But their were so many sets of the claws, each crisscrossing and running into the other, the thought crossed Dracula's mind weather it would be easier to simple bite his wrist open. No, that wouldn't work, all the infected flesh that was to whole point of all of this would be lost. Pressing his claws into his own wrist, Dracula quickly dragged them along the closed-over claw marks. Cold claret blood surged from his forearm, and instantly the Count brought his fangs to the blood, drawing in deeply; it vital to keep the wound clean.

Given the fact that the wounds were new, the blood that had hardened to keep them closed sliced open along the original claw-lines with ease, which was a good thing. The infection and dead flesh would be easier to remove. Dracula dropped to his knees, keeping his bleeding forearm below his cold-blood-beating heart. Red-purple blood flowed in streams down the vampire's arm and pools of cold scarlet began to collect on the dusty marble. Drawing in cold blood was not as a pleasurable experience as drawing warm heart's-life, but Dracula couldn't think about that right now. Unhooking his wrist from his fangs the vampire wrapped his other hand in his cloak and pressed hard on his forearm. Icy blood soaked through the black cloth. Deciding it wasn't going to get any better Dracula released his forearm. Five reopened slashes bled without end from his wrist, the amount of blood that began to pool around him was ever-growing and Dracula needed to work fast. Turning his attention to his slashed forearm, he could already see dead, black, flesh along the edges of the claw marks, shrivelled with infection. With two long claws the vampire picked the end of one of these strands of dead flesh. With a quick tug, string of flesh was torn from his forearm and pink new flesh could be seen underneath, before it to, was swallowed up in blood.

Dracula once again brought his forearm to his fangs and drew in deeply. This time, for the blood, not to keep the wound clean. He had only fed twice since he had Awoken and a good quarter of his blood now lay poured out over the marble floor of the Great Hall. With so little blood in his cold body, Dracula could feel whatever existence he had on this Earth slip with each drop of shed blood. Damn it! he cursed at himself. The vampire's breath was coming shallow and ragged as he broke his fangs away and instantaneously tore away another strip of black shrivelled tissue. Another, followed by another. Only now did the pain really begin to sink in, now that his body was slowing and his mind was becoming numb. Kneeling on the floor, Dracula tore away another strip of dead flesh. The last one. All the remained on his forearm was new pink flesh and rivers of blood flowing from his wrist and forearms.

Now for his left arm.

Not bothering to tend to his shredded arm, Dracula tore open his left arm. More blood gurgled up from his arm, washing over the floor. Dizziness overtook the vampire as the full effect of the blood loss began to course through his body. Shaking his head weakly, Dracula hooked his fangs onto his arm and drew in. Cold blood filled his mouth as the vampire fought desperately to keep conscious. Rivulets of crimson poured from body his forearms as Dracula released his wrist but new blood quickly flowed to where the Count had cleaned it away. Through blurring vision, Dracula tore away one of the strands of infected flesh. But the lack of blood in his veins was taking it's toll. Damn it! He'd worked too quickly, to much blood was pooled on the floor around him. Blackness clouded his vision.

His grip on reality slipping away, Dracula leaned forward on his bleeding palms for support. But he had to strength and his arms collapsed beneath him. Lying in blood that was not his, the vampire struggled for breath. He didn't know if it was the blood loss or the infection that was racking through him. Driving his claws into the floor Dracula struggled to raise himself, but found know energy within him to do so.

In the end, Dracula found himself smiling. If he were to die like, it would be such an ironic end to the reign of the King of Vampires. And as darkness and blood finally overtook him completely, the last thing Dracula heard and felt was the clinking of chains on the floor and the cold embrace of metal dragging him down.


Ragweed: Well how's that for a biology lesson on a vampire?! I got the idea from watching Law&Order one too many times. It may be sick but forensics fascinates me. Many murder victims have been able to lead investigators to their killers by skin that ends up under their fingernails after desperately scratching and clawing at their murders out of animal instinct. The investigators can match DNA and skin cells with suspects to find the murderer. But some killers who know this will burn their skin with acid to skew their skin cells. I know way too much about this, don't I? (LoL)

Dracula: That's enough to make me grimace…

Ragweed: Now, this chapter originally going to be more debate between Dracula and the voice he's hearing (which will turn out to be significant!) but I thought we had enough of that already so I made it a gore fest! Actually, though, all of this information will become important. So I needed to explain this all anyway and it would have been really weird to have a boring. sixteen-line paragraph in the middle of the original chapter describe this whole thing. So this wasn't a completely pointless gore-fest of a chapter (even if it was fun LoL)

Dracula: You are sick…