A/N: You mess with the vampire, you get the fangs **Work contains GRAPHIC depictions of violence**
The hunt was only supposed to take five minutes.
Five minutes.
That was what Dracula had promised his wife when he kissed her soft lips and caressed their drowsy infant daughter. They could wait that long, right? The forest was only a short distance away, and prey was easy to find, as proof by the rabbits and mice he now tolled along with him on the path to return home. The trail was a familiar one, and he wove his way through the vast expanse of trees with ease, eager to reach the safety of their small dwelling with his family. But the woodland approaching their home suddenly grew more still, the air vacant of its usual chorus of life. It struck him as odd, and he warily continued to move forward on the path. As he progressed, the noises returned to his surroundings, but they were not at all naturesque. They were strangely unfamiliar. Voices rang out in the night air, loud and aggressive from the direction of their place, and not at all sounding like the light tones he'd been accustomed to hearing from Martha. Dracula stiffened, discarding his prey in a buried pile under a bush before swiftly making his way over to peek around the broad trunk of a tree at the commotion.
The first thing he saw was the crowd, a motley gathering of people who stood in a large, rough circular formation. Most everyone was wielding pitchforks and flaming torches, and those that didn't raised their fists in an angry defiance. He was no stranger to a human invasion, his kind having been hunted down by humans for the majority of his four-hundred existence and even centuries before. This group seemed to be no different, and yet, there was something about this scene in particular that immediately set off his instincts.
Dracula narrowed his eyes, using his enhanced vision to inspect the mob further.
And what he saw at the center of the circle made the hair on his neck stand with alarm.
Strewn across the pavement was Martha lying on her back, a sharp wooden stake pierced straight through her chest. What he saw next to her launched him into further distress, and an overpowering rage swept over him. He hadn't been aware that he snarled, but the sound he emitted must have captured the attention of the humans that had invaded their castle. Some immediately whipped their heads around, calling attention to the dark man in the shadows and alerting their companions. They then turned on him, torches, pitchforks, and stakes all charging in his direction. He didn't care. Little did they know they were all doomed - for it was the last time in his life that he allowed himself to submit to human dominance.
He let out a primitive roar, fangs bared to their fullest and eyes glowing a menacing shade of red as he unleashed a hurricane of fury upon them. He sprang at the first man who'd been fiercely brandishing a torch, sinking his teeth deep into his neck and easily ripping it open. A scream died in the man's throat as he collapsed in a heaping mess of blood before his companions. With no pause, he leapt for the second man, tarnishing his neck in nearly the exact same way as his predecessor and tossing him to the side.
There was no mercy at the Count's hands. One by one, he took them down, tearing them apart and destroying their lives as they had done to his wife and daughter.
He stood afterwards, dripping from every part of his body with the crimson blood of his enemies, lips still curled back in a ferocious snarl. The fire from the abandoned torches had spread around him, alighting their home in a crackling sea of flames. At his feet were the lifeless bodies of dozens of men, all which had been utterly decimated within a matter of minutes. Some, he noted, looked no different than his own wife with pitchforks jutting out from their broken bodies. Though Dracula barely had time to reflect on the matter, as the vampire became aware of yet another new sound. He strained his pointed ears, and once more using vision, he was able to make out a younger male, donned in a black hood, coming in his direction with a firearm in hand. He growled under his breath, remembering that he saw him for a brief moment in quick battle but not taking a chance to neutralize him from the weapon. He wasted not a minute as he misted and took the form of a bat just as the man burst through the undergrowth with his rifle in tow.
A shot rang out, and a lone silver bullet barely grazed Dracula's wings as he soared high above the clouds and out of sight.
It took several hours before the Count could be any sort of calm. He spent that time restlessly hunting in the forest, ripping apart any form of life that came his way and draining it of its blood. Rabbits, moose, and foxes fell victim among other animals. When that too became of no relief, he took his wrath out on the innocent landscape, uprooting trees and hurling boulders into cliffsides. The Count's rampage lingered on and on, seemingly with no end as the cruel reality of his situation settled into the forefront of his mind.
Martha was dead.
Mavis was dead.
There was nothing that he could do to change that.
What was next, he did not know. Perhaps he would fall a victim to his own insanity, finally becoming the dark man his father had always wanted him to be. At this point, nothing mattered. Their absence left a great void in him, and the pain would be bound to seep into him at times that he felt the weakest.
But, even in the midst of his wracking grief, there was something else too - pride. A great pride to know that he had succeeded in killing the real monsters… the humans. It had been far too easy. It was much more difficult to kill a wolf than it was to kill them. He decided right then and there that there was no reason to fear them. In fact, if it weren't for the rare weaponry that could harm a vampire - the silver, the stakes, the garlic - they would certainly be no match at all. Yes… He was power.
And he loved it.
