As her senses faintly returned to her, she became aware that she was desperately cold. She was naked, she realized, and standing in bone-chilling water up to her chest. But it wasn't water. Water was not so dark as this. And the smell... acrid and metallic... the smell could only be that of...
A weak beam of light from somewhere above revealed something small and white floating in the liquid around her. A maggot. A dead one, at that. Anna intended to shriek but could only manage a feeble croak before she vomited.
What has happened to me? she silently asked herself. She was at the bottom of a cistern, it seemed... rigid with cold and bathed in brackish blood. This was not how she had died - and she had died, hadn't she? She remembered her family coming to greet her before they were taken away. Or before SHE was taken away, she wasn't sure.
Far away, the strange music seemed to mock her. Anna knew that its maker kept her here, though the identity of her captor was a question as yet unanswered.
Unanswered, that was, until the music stopped playing.
Anna's tiny source of light became obscured, and she knew that someone was watching her. She thought she heard a soft chuckle and then, all at once, the cover of her cell was thrown off and she was yanked cruelly upward by one arm, landing facedown in the cold, hardened dirt.
So it is night, she thought, too bewildered to think of anything else.
Her captor ran his fingers through her hair.
"Anna Valerious wakes at last," he breathed.
His voice was one that Anna had not forgotten and could not forget in Heaven nor in Hell.
"Count Dracula, you son of a--" she croaked before her body was rocked with spasms of pain.
"Shh shh shhhh..." said the vampire as Anna violently heaved blood from her lungs. "You are not ready for so much... excitement."
With that, he grabbed her and flipped her body so that could see him.
She wanted to scream. She wanted to run. But she knew she was incapable of both.
Nearly half of the Count's face was nothing but aging bone. Bereft of flesh, his teeth on one side protruded like hideous knives. He laughed at her horror.
"It would appear we both have a great deal of recovery ahead of us," he said.