33. Spirit Of The Sea
It took her only a few minutes to arrive at Dracula´s castle. Lily folded her wings and let them disappear. The excitement, joy and also the nervousness rushing through her veins. But as she looked around everything seemed different, so cold and unknown.
Of course, the once green grass in front of the castle still had ice on it. Though it wasn´t winter. The large building itself was dark, the towers seemed to touch the clouds and several windows were shattered.
"Oh, my... god", Lily whispered. It had been more than two centuries and everything had changed.
At this moment she noticed spikes, as sharp as the towers´ roofs. Skeleton´s in awfully painful positions had been pierced and probably only as a kind of scary decoration. She got hold of her light blue skirt, lifting it up a bit, and ran inside the castle. All that had been warm looked cold and numb now.
The thought that she had once lived there sent cool shivers down her spine. Racing through the long corridors she came to stand in a huge hall.
This large room was full of death. Dead bodies, sometimes only pieces of them, of Dracula´s children were scattered all over the floor. The broken egg sacs still hung on the high ceiling.
Lily was sure she and the other "witches" had been the last to clean the castle. Huge spiderwebs and their owners were stuck to the walls. Rats and mice running over the cold stone floor fetched pieces of the vampire corpses to have something to feed on.
A smell of death was everywhere. She closed her eyes for a moment. Once she had dreamed of having children with Dracula herself and the sight of the dead ones was too much to bear.
She started running once more, up the stairs and into the first tower. Lily raced into Dracula´s room immediately but just to find it empty.
Her heart sank. She did not dare to imagine what could have happened. Walking over to a small table she found a rose.
Memories of her past floated in her mind as she picked it up. It was the white rose she had given to him before she had left. The beautiful flower was in full bloom and seemed to be the only thing in the room to illuminate it a little.
Pressing it close to her chest, she left his room and went into another. As if someone was calling she knew where to go.
Lily made her way into another room, just as dark as the previous ones. Her chest was rising and falling rapidly as she stopped dead in her tracks. The calling voice seemed to be loudest there. Slowly she walked through the room. It might have been a laboratory. Machines she had never seen before stood there. Each surrounded with spider webs.
A huge window in the background was shattered and let the cool breeze from outside in. Something was not right, she could feel it. She walked over to the window and looked down at the countryside underneath it. Her breath came out in white clouds. Shaking her head sadly she turned around.
Clutching one hand over her mouth to block her screams her eyes focused on the lower part of a machine.
There, almost unrecognizable as one, lay a dark grey skeleton. A golden loop earring lay only a few feet away from the long-dead corpse. As if it was only a nightmare, hoping for a final end, Lily sank to the floor beside her lover.
It couldn´t be true. It just was impossible. For so many years she had waited to see that. Fighting her tears back she bit her lower lip.
Her heart ached and her body started trembling. Lily buried her face in her hands, uncontrollable sobs left her. With her trembling hand she placed the rose on the remains. She then folded her hands and whispered a prayer. Never before she had meant every single word like that.
From everything she had ever experienced was this the worst. Only slowly her legs became steady enough to rise from the floor.
The tears kept falling as Lily leaned against the wall. After that she took off into the sky. Nothing but the ocean had been between her and her beloved for an eternity. And this ocean would reunite her with him...
