My Dear Elisabeta,
It is with a heavy heart that I write you this letter. I can feel my time drawing to a close. I do not tell you this for cause of alarm, but because there is one last thing I would ask of you, sweet child. Though I pray that the ice will melt with haste so that I might see you one last time, it seems the Old Man is slow to arrive this year. So, I am reluctant, but left with no choice except to relay this request by means of this parchment. Truly, I am left with no choice as this task I have to ask of you is of great importance, and it has weighed heavy on my shoulders for close to a century.
This quest is not meant for a kind girl such as yourself, but I must have faith that you have the strength to endure it. I must remind you that you have always been my child much more so than your mother's, God bless her soul.
Before I bestow on you your instructions, I ask you to recall the many wondrous stories I told you as a child. In particular, I would ask you to remember one about a heroic prince who sought out a demon for the power to save his people. For three days he had all the powers of the night at his command, but they came at a price. Each day his lust for blood grew and if on the third day he was unable to resist its singing calls the darkness would consume him forever.
For two days, the Prince abstained from both food and drink, but on the third day an army arrived at his door. To protect his people, he drank the blood of a human and thus a new demon has plagued the night ever since. Even now, he wanders in shadow and will do so for the rest of his days, the thirst for blood never sated and never satisfied.
This, dear Lisa, is where I have misconstrued you. For the ending you know is quite different from the truth. It was the year Micheal the Brave united our lands and our dark prince had been trapped as a monster for thirty seven years…
A dense fog had slithered down from the mountains. Its ghostly limbs stretched out across the forest floor and shied away from the steps of a dark figure. It was a man, though the trees were not convinced. They leaned away as he passed, and their shadows -treacherous as shadows are- rushed from their beds to kiss his black cloak. Behind him it flowed like a dark stream, but not a single flake of snow was misplaced in its wake.
It was then that the wind noticed him. It teased his fingers with a cold breath before reaching up to brush back his dark hair. He reached out to wave it aside, but stopped when it kissed his nose.
Immediately, his pupils dilated. Although the assault of pine and dew was expected, the gentle hints of warm sugar and white jasmine was not.
His head swivelled and the white of his irises turned black. Through the cloud bank, the gaping mouth of the cave bared its stone fangs and from them thick droplets dripped down the mountain's face.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
From miles away it thundered in his ears and a growl uncurled itself from his chest.
Blood.
Without thinking, he dissolved into a mass of screeching bats and rocketed up the cliff's side.
Leather boots materialized in a red puddle. It was one of many littering the rocky overhang and his eyes travelled along the glistening channels stretching out from them. They disappeared into the black cavity in front of him, but he made no move towards it. Even when something inside of him urged him forward, he continued to stare, and the hairs along his arms prickled.
The last time he had entered this cave he had died in it.
'What kind of a man crawls into his own grave in search of hope?'
He shook his head, trying to dislodge the master's voice and the memories that were trying to leak through.
"You will become a scourge upon this Earth. Destined to destroy everything you hold dear- your lands, your people, even your precious w-"
"No," he ground out and squeezed his hand into a biting fist.
Then he heard it. The steady thump of a human heartbeat.
His head tilted of its own accord and the sound of rushing blood thrummed in his ears. The saliva that had pooled around his fangs began to dribble down his chin, and the ache in his throat started to burn. With every pulse, a red haze blurred his vision more and more and if it still worked his heart would have been racing. He gulped. His thoughts were melting away into snarls. Everything was melting away. Everything but-
He licked at the air and his eyes rolled back.
-the thirst.
The creature blurred into the cave. When he saw its - her - body, red and pulsating in the dark, he lunged.
His claws were inches from her shoulders when his head smacked into a wall with a crack.
"Uhh," He groaned lowly and pressed his palm into his forehead.
His brows drew together. He was sure his path to the human had been clear. His red pupils scanned the room for the offending wall, but except for a few vague shapes, everything was out of focus.
He blinked, dragging his eyelids through mercury. He opened and closed them again and again. Finally, the stone chamber materialized around him and his eyes narrowed. It was unusually bright - the flickering torches encircling him made sure of it - which made it easy to see that there was no wall in front of him.
A piercing laugh cut through his ruminations.
"What a sight to behold: a demon brought to his knees by a simple spell," The vampire's head snapped up at the woman's voice. He recognized her outline. It was the same one he had been salivating over minutes ago.
She stepped out of the shadows. He dissolved his thermal vision with a blink and the fire's light revealed a short woman with weathered olive skin. The grin that stretched her lips too thin sat unwell on her grandmotherly face.
The vampire moved to stand, but she twisted something in her hands. He crashed back down to his knees.
"You're not going anywhere, demon," the woman hissed. He tried again, but not even his toes would oblige him with a twitch.
"What kind of sorcery?" He murmured to himself.
"Not sorcery," His head snapped towards the woman. She bent forward so that he was staring into angry blue eyes. Something rustled and he looked down at her hands. They were gripping the figurine of what he could only describe as a demon and her fingers were curled around its bony legs.
His eyes darted to his own legs which were bent back in the same fashion and widened.
"Black magic," she whispered.
He glared at her. She straightened up and gestured towards the ground in front of him. A trail of black dirt traced around him in a complete circle. So he hadn't hit a wall- not one of physical properties at least. A snarl snaked its way up his throat.
"To be honest, I didn't expect it to work so well." She walked along the outside of the trap. "Imprisoning spells are light-work, but alchemy is quite a tricky endeavour."
His brow furrowed at her explanation and he searched his memories for what he'd learned about alchemy as a boy. It was classified as sacrilegious in Walachia, just as witchcraft was, but the Turks had had a slackened view on such matters. All he remembered was how many idiots had tried to change common metals into gold.
He had scoffed at it in his youth, and he still would have, had he not experienced his own transformation. If a man could turn into a monster, what wasn't possible?
"Tell me," the witch interrupted his thoughts, "did it really smell like human blood?"
His lips parted. In the corner of his eye he saw several thick channels of blood running across the jagged floor. They twisted unnaturally around the corner and disappeared down the tunnel he had come from.
The scent- it had been so fresh, so sweet.
"Too sweet," he whispered to himself. and the woman laughed breathily.
The woman exhaled a half-suppressed laugh, "I apologize for not getting it just right for you."
He smelled the air now and his nose wrinkled immediately. The alluring smell of blood had disappeared and in its place a nauseating mixture of eggs and mould, and
it was not a scent he was unfamiliar with.
In the furthest corner the channels converged into a growing pool. Seven black cats were lying on their backs, fronts slit open with their insides on display.
His lip curled up in disgust, "You're depraved," he spat and she rounded on him faster than he expected from a woman of her age.
"I'm depraved?" She exclaimed, "You've killed thousands of people, maimed, tortured, turned hundreds of innocents into monsters only to burn them alive the very same day!"
The blank look on his fathers face as he lifted his impaled body above the crowd flashed in his mind.
'You forget who I am,' his own words clanged around inside his head and his upper lip twitched.
The woman barked out a bitter laugh and glared down at him. "You're the monster mothers warn their children about and you think I'm depraved?"
"What do you want!" He exploded, fangs shooting past his lower lip. He was trembling and the witch smirked at his outburst. A growl echoed around the cave. He was not one to lose control and he hated how this witch knew exactly what veins to expose.
The smirk didn't leave her face, but she turned her back to him and knelt next to a pile of soil and other glittering particles. Tasting the air told him it was salt.
She was still for a minute, and the vampire seethed as the silence stretched on.
"I was there that day," her voice was quieter now and she sounded very far away even though she was right in front of him. "We - the other women and their children - were holed up in the church. Those damn Turks breached the gate before the men had a chance to blink and by the time you arrived my son was choking on his own blood."
The vampire's forehead which had scrunched up into distinct rows became smooth.
He had tried to forget that day, and every single moment of it, for the last fifty years. Yet, still when he closed his eyes he could see the white, empty faces of his people littering the courtyard. Then there was her face, rivalling Aphrodite's even in death- still warm beneath his touch, but not as warm as the blood dribbling down his chin.
The vampire inhaled sharply, eclipsing the sound of dripping water playing in the background. It didn't startle the woman, though. She was still lost in the trance of her memories.
With quivering hands, the woman placed the figurine that he now knew represented himself on top of the dirt. Instead of making him grit his teeth, a cold emptiness pooled in his chest.
He watched the patterned fabric of her shawl deflate as she let out a shaky breath. She continued to fumble with something beneath it, but the vampire's eyes strayed. He noted that the skirt wrapped around her barely clung to her. Its frayed ends brushed against her peeling leather sandals. If he listened, he could hear the joints of her knees cracking beneath her despite her tiny frame .
"What was his name?" The woman jumped at the sound of his voice and her eyes snapped to his. He hadn't meant to say the passing thought aloud and his face mirrored the surprise on hers.
It took her a minute to respond, but when she did her soft voice was thick, "Alexander."
The face of a young boy with brilliant red hair and striking blue eyes flitted across his mind's eye.
The recognition must have been visible on his face because the woman put a voice to his thoughts.
"You trained him," she swallowed thickly, "He rushed home one afternoon and wouldn't stop gushing about how Vlad Dracula had watched his training session."
"Vlad Dracula took me aside mom, me," she quoted, "and told me-"
"He'd make a fine Transylvanian soldier one day." Dracula finished, "I remember."
For a minute they stayed like that, the woman's unshed tears glistening in the torchlight and then the moment passed and her lips pulled taut into a thin line. Her eyes hardened and she grabbed a rucksack slumped against the wall.
Dracula watched her pull ten wooden sticks resembling miniature spears from it.
"You were a good Prince once," she complimented, but there was an edge to her gentle voice, "You promised you would protect us, and you did. In fact, I'm alive because of you," she exhaled a bitter laugh, "but I hope you can understand not being grateful seeing as you damned my son and everyone else you had vowed to protect and then turned their bodies to ash!" She spat and the dirt encircling him erupted into flames.
Dracula recoiled from the heat. He strained every muscle, trying to dissolve into the bats, but like his legs, his powers refused to obey him. All he could manage was to angle his torso into the center-most part of the cage.
Over the roaring in his ears he could hear the woman chanting in a language he vaguely recognized. With the flick of her wrist a spark shot out of the wall of fire and his shirt burst into flame.
In seconds the flames devoured it and when they licked at his flesh, he let out an inhuman howl. All he could see was white flashes as the fire lapped up layer after layer of skin. He could feel it racing up his torso and he must have still been yelling because his throat burned nearly as much as it did for blood.
The sparks had just started nipping at his neck when all at once the fire leapt off of his body and melted back into the flickering circle. It still caged him, but it was much more subdued now. His skin had already mostly grown back, and was working on the last layer, when his red eyes found the witch again.
For all the chaos around him, she looked at total peace. Her eyes were closed and she was seated cross-legged behind his replica. He could hear her breaths, slow and even, just like her damned heart and Dracula's hands curled into fists.
"All your talk of morality and right and wrong," He roared over the fire, "and you delight in torturing a man before ending him in cold blood!"
A cloud of smoke billowed up and when it plumed above him sapphire eyes were staring back at him.
She lifted up one of the sharpened sticks to show him, "Not a man," she corrected, "But a demon."
Her eyes rolled back until they were nothing but white orbs. She started to chant again, her voice clear and ringing even though the fire was much louder. Dracula realized she was speaking in Latin when her entire frame jerked. Her arm froze above her, motionless behind her head. Then she stopped chanting and thrust the spear into the replica. A small hole tore open Dracula's stomach and he screamed.
He'd been stabbed before, and even felt the sting of Mehmed's silver sword, but whatever this was, it was so much worse. His body shook and he tried to clutch his abdomen, but his hands wouldn't move.
At least, he would heal quickly, he thought, but when he glanced down his eyes bulged.
The gaping wound made no signs of closing no matter how long he stared at it. Ribbons of blood leaked through the ridges of his shredded skin and soon the legs of his pants were growing damp.
"What is this!" He demanded between gasps.
"I did not bring you here to kill you." The witch responded, "Torture you - yes, I can't deny that, but what I want is to prevent you from ever hurting another innocent again."
She was still sitting there, shoulders slack and face relaxed, and Dracula's entire body tensed. The ripped flesh pulled tight and he groaned.
"All you want" He ground out, "is revenge!"
Instead of answering him the witch slammed another stick into the figurine.
This time it ripped open his thigh. Dracula bit down on his tongue just in time to muffle another scream. His body heaved with the impact and he shuddered out an unnecessary breath. His lungs cared little for oxygen, especially right now, but it was the only action he could still take to control his mind.
"I'll kill you," his voice shook. He inhaled weakly and took care not to constrict a single muscle. "I'll get out of here someday and I'll kill you, and if you're dead, I'll kill who you leave behind."
The witch's eyes flipped back to reveal her blue irises, "You make threats, but deep down you know the world is better off without the scourge you will bring upon it." She snarled.
'You will be a scourge upon this Earth,'
Dracula shook his head and another pang shot up into his chest. He groaned.
"Can you really look me in the face and plainly say that you do not deserve this fate?"
Her searing gaze locked onto him and its blue fire burnt him deeper than any of her spears could.
'I love you,' she had whispered and by God did he wish it was the last thing she had said to him.
He trembled, barely keeping his eyes on the witch's.
Instead-
'Do it now,' she had cried, 'Please.'
His head dropped and he stared at the floor. "No," he whispered.
He half-expected to hear a cackling laugh ring out, but only the pop, pop, pop of the flames answered him.
His eyes dragged themselves up to the angry red cavity in his gut and wondered if maybe the witch was right.
'Sometimes what the world needs is a monster,' he had told the creature in the cave. Except he wasn't a monster- not anymore- he was something much worse.
When the third invisible spear gutted his other thigh, he didn't scream. Instead a deep animalistic moan rolled out of him. He stopped controlling his breaths and the fourth buried itself just beneath his ribcage seconds later. By now the ground beneath him was drenched and his pants were sopping wet with his own blood. A couple more seconds trudged by and somehow he knew it was time for the fifth. It was when the seconds grew into a minute and then another and another that his brows furrowed.
He looked up at the witch through the fire with unfocused eyes. He was mildly surprised to find her head down and her gaze trained on the ground.
As if she could feel him watching her, she spoke softly, "This is the last one," she started.
Dracula's forehead wrinkled. He clearly remembered counting ten sticks when she had plucked them from the bag.
"I'm disregarding the other five," she explained. For some reason her voice was gentle, and Dracula was brought back to the tender age of eight years. How many times had he rested his head in his grandmother's lap and fallen asleep to a voice so similar?
He blinked away the memories and the woman continued, "You are right, I do want revenge, but now that I have acquired it-" Her voice broke off.
"You're-" she started and then stopped with an abrupt jerk of her head.
She inhaled shakily and when she released it, she chose different words, "The pleasure your pain brings sickens me, so let us end it here."
Dracula parted his lips to respond, but a final yell cut him off. Although the final spear was swift and lacked the impact of the first three, it pierced his heart and drove straight through his back. When he tried to breathe into the searing pain, he could not.
Instead he knelt there, shaking, as blood funnelled its way up his throat and leaked down his chin. The fire began to dwindle until there was nothing, but dying embers scattered around him.
The witch stood and he could do nothing except watch as she stepped around him and made her way to the tunnel. Just before she turned the corner she stopped.
"Goodbye, Prince Dracula," She said and the slap of her sandals along the stone passage echoed behind her. When she finally exited the cave, so too did the light of the torches.
So, as you see our Prince does not stroll beneath the moon nor terrorize the night as I had you believe. Instead he kneels upon that stone floor and five phantom spears remain in his flesh. One stifles his hunger and another his breath, two force him to pray and the fifth seals his light away.
His wounds will never close and he will never leave, unless the witch returns and frees him from his prison. Death stalks the witch now, and it will not be long before he claims her as his own. She will never return to that cave, but there is still hope. Another with her blood running through their veins can remove his binds and set him free.
And this, my dear and sweetest one, is where your journey begins.
