Pale
Chapter Eight: Seen and Unforeseen
Note: I am thinking in the final story to this monster of a fan fiction, titled Dawn of Eternity, most of the flashbacks are going to be from the POV of Dracula. I get an early start on that in this chapter. Oh and the story I mention about the starving man isn't something I have ever read Vlad the Impaler actually doing…but it's something I am sure he would do. And thanx to my always devoted Master of the Boot for the inspiration I needed in writing this! And one more thing, I have internet again! Updates will be much faster again!! Chapter 8 of 9.
"The sword is slicing though the question so I won't be fooled by his angel light." - Sorrow, Flyleaf
"Well John your about to learn that fate is a fickle bitch." - Cabin Fever, Lost.
Luna froze where she stood, she was helpless against it. That was simply the power of the Hunter's enchanting dark gaze to paralyze all those unlucky enough to gaze upon it. She lowered her eyes from him, but her heart was already racing at a furious rhythm. Fluidly D had pulled himself up, quite uncaring of the oozing wounds to his midsection and back and he gazed steadily at her. He spared a quick glace at the tiny relic that he still had clutched in his hand, the Resurrection Stone. Naturally he did not speak, yet now it was because he was at an utter loss for words rather than his usual taciturn nature.
Cautiously Luna stepped closer to him, "It's going a bit longer before you heal. I am not sure what your father did, but he's hindered your healing ability. I left some herbs in a bag on your belt, take them as much as you need, they should kill the pain." She made her voice sound as firm and detached as possible.
"Wait." D called out, his voice was hoarse, likely from the cries he'd been screaming earlier. He stood, the black cape she'd covered him with fell eagerly from his naked form, once again revealing its honed musculature to her eyes. He reached out and grasped her hand, the coveted stone fell carelessly from his grasp. "This time I know that you're not a dream." He breathed softly.
Luna's face was truly a mask of anguish as a wild surge of need rippled though her body at the mere touch of his hand. But the need to follow the unspoken rules of the dead raged through her consciousness. 'D…" her wavering voice protested. "I am not supposed to be here. I have to go now. Asenath needs her body back, I can't…"
"To hell with Asenath." He answered, his voice almost passionate. His remaining eye gazed at her with all the sorrow and denied want Luna herself had been combating. He slowly raised his hands, first to caress her cheek and then to pull her into his embrace and kiss her furiously.
Helpless Luna reciprocated his fevered kiss with one of her own, throwing her arms about his neck. A sudden, heated thread of ardor crushed over them both, simultaneously binding their hearts together with its fiery thread. For a fleeting moment the two experienced the same harmonious glow they'd known so long ago, the simple knowledge that they were meant to be together, one way or the other. Yet that desperate hope lasted only until their lips parted. Luna gazed momentarily at D, than she lowered her eyes suppressing a sob. It suddenly seemed as if that glorious moment of unification had crashed around them.
It's was only for a moment that D allowed this phantom sense of doom to overtake him before he pulled her back into his hungry kiss and locked her with his embrace. Now it seemed Luna was more that willing to submit to the spell of his presence as she returned his kiss and tightened her arms about him. Now she did not dare protest as D's hands caressed her shoulders, and her back, nor did she object the wild way his tongue tangled with hers.
Panting with heated fervor she slid her hands down his body and explored the long forgotten, steely plains of his chest. Sighing, D drug his kiss down the side of her face until his mouth rested against the tantalizing smooth curve of her neck. He gently kissed the twin scars he found there, the scars she bore from the first time he'd made love to her. His jaw ached harshly as his fangs distended past the line of his lips, but, for now at least, he allowed only his aching lips to touch her skin. Luna sighed, so like she had in life, and she pressed him closer to his neck, yearning for his bite.
She let D wrestle her passionately down onto the grass, his lips never once leaving her skin as he kissed downward, onto her breast. Once they lay in the grass he harshly pushed aside the vine woven straps of her gown to expose her full breasts to his affections. It seemed as if all her fears of what consequence of this unnatural union might have had been pushed from her mind as she slid her hands down D's body, gasping as his teeth clamped carefully down onto her breast, and feeling desire burn with agonizing life within her center as she felt D's rigid length pressing against her thigh.
D hungrily explored her breasts, than shifted his burning kiss down her body again, to her belly, then down to her thighs, and back up to where she most hungered for his kiss, slowly his hands pulled the thin dress away from her body. He tempted her slowly, and his hands slid across her skin as though he were trying to savor every sensation that now enslaved him. To cherish each precious moment they had together. He rose up to pull her into the line of his body, kissing her deeply. She curled her legs around his hips, and tightly grasped his arms, as though unwilling to ever let him go.
Slowly, savoring each heated moment D joined their bodies, the first fulfilled gasps welling from both of their lips. D pulled her as close as he could into his embrace, kissed her lips ravenously. Luna in turn whimpered against him, and returned his kiss in a manner that was feverish and almost perverse coming from her. She wound her legs tighter about him, and then shot upward, pinning D down onto the grass. She kissed him hungrily once again, and began to move her hips in a most drugging way, trapping him down with her arms. For a fleeting moment D found himself confused over her heated actions…certainly there had been times when their lovemaking had been more wild than loving…yet something was different. The Nymph had craved carnal pleasures the way he craved blood, and yet when she submitted to her lust she'd rarely been so raw. Her lovemaking had always been eager, and yet gentle. Yet the strangeness of the moment could not be dwelled upon long. D had fallen a slave to her insistence, and he latched onto her lips almost viciously, his fangs tearing at her lips, and feverishly he kissed away the blood that welled from her wounds. The furious rhythm of her heart echoed in his ears.
And then he violently pulled away her kiss, D's remaining eye flew open, already an enraged light was building in his obsidian eye. Her blood tasted….fowl. It wasn't the blood of a Nymph, it was thin and watery, with a hint of darkness to it…but it wasn't the blood of a creature born of magic, wasn't the rich, enslaving taste of the woman he'd so loved. That he could not forget.
"D…" she whimpered as he pulled away from her, "What's wrong?"
His expression was utterly started as he regarded her…true, the only reason he was able to look upon her, to touch her at all was because of a vessel that had once been human. But what if it was only the vessel he were making love to now, a vessel that did not house the soul of his beloved? Certainty flooded his awareness and angrily he tore the vessel away from his embrace, flinging her down almost ten feet from where he lay.
'You're not here at all, are you?"
Shock flooded her features.
D glared dangerously at the Pale One as though he were now fully able to see though the mask she'd been wearing. "You're just wearing her face. Her sprit has been gone for a while now." He stated lowly.
The Pale One trembled in horror as her features began to change into her own flawed and dull ones. It seemed that the loss of his left eye had no effect of the formidable power of his gaze, if anything that singular glare was all the more powerful.
"She…"Asenath sobbed, her head hung low, "She left after she kissed you, she was so terrified that if you made love to her the pain of her departure would be to much for you to bear."
D pulled on his coat, and with the slow movements of stalking killer he unsheathed his long sword and began to approach Asenath, "So you wore her face and used it to your advantage." His whispered voice was positively savage.
"What! No!! I…I knew you better D! Do you know how much I have learned about you in the past month, more than even she can ever know! I know how deeply you miss her, and I know that it tears you apart that your father violated her before she died and how you wish you could have loved her just once more before it happened." Asenath found that her feet were frozen to the ground as D stalked ever closer, his gleaming blade shimmering as he leveled it at her. It was a scene all too familiar to her soul.
She didn't flinch even as he pressed the tip of the blade against the hollow of her throat, she merely whimpered, allowing blood colored tears to trickle down the side of her face.
"How dare you impersonate her? How dare you deem yourself worth of my presence much less my affections? How many times must I tell you that you mean nothing to me?" D's voice was sibilant.
The heavy blade slide easily down from her throat, to the center of her chest. Asenath could not bear to look at his face, much like Elena could not so long ago. It was a face that she'd been responsible for destroying. "I never meant for you to know!" she whimpered, her mouth hardly able to form the words. "I only wanted to give you the chance you wanted…It…It wasn't for me at all!" she sobbed out.
The point of the blade did not move.
D regarded her for a long, tense moment, unable to move his blade forward, nor away from her. The girl looked positively pathetic as she trembled before his blade, her eyes lowered as though hung with the shame of the deceitful deeds she'd plagued him with again and again. She looked far too much like Elena had so many years ago, pathetic and lost within a world that was too hopelessly black for her to fathom. She was nothing at all but a nuisance, she was hardly even pathetic now…just desperately worthless. Not even worth the cut of his blade.
Slowly D lowered the sword; Asenath peered up at him with her terrified, muddy eyes. "Never wear that face again." he whispered, and in a blur of darkness his hand shot forward to seize the ring the Pale One still wore on her finger, and pulled it from her.
"I…I promise!" she cried weakly. D's eye bore ruthlessly into her, shimmering slightly with the crimson of blazing hatred, and spurred by this light Asenath turned and fled into the woods in little more than a dark blur.
Asenath wasn't sure how long had passed since she'd fallen onto the forest floor and curled into a fetal position among the twigs and the leaves, but the moon had risen above her since then, pushing away the scorching rays of sunlight that pained, but did not smolder her skin. Still she could not fight the convulsive tears that had rendered her so defenseless. There was a throbbing ache all though her form and she knew that it was her own body protesting the precious blood she was loosing through her tears. Soon enough she supposed the bloodlust would grow stronger, forcing her to push aside these wasteful tears and to hunt.
She pushed herself up, staring up at the silver orb of the moonlight. Why? Why do I have to shed so many tears over D? Why is it that I so desperately love a man who's never even kissed me? Who's never even said a kind word to me?
Weakly she pulled herself into a feeble sitting position in which her head rested on her knees that she hugged to her chest. She looked much like a lost child caught within a violent battlefield, and in truth that's what she was. She'd once been a girl of only 17, with no true ties or cares in the world, but now here she was immortal, a pawn for the Vampire King, locked within an eons old blood feud, and soul shatteringly in love with a black hearted killer.
Before she'd met D she'd been quite aware of her ability and kinship with the dead. She figured she'd merely adopted a passing psychic trait from her family line. After all the transformations occurred only when she touched an object belonging to the dead, and lasted only for a few seconds, hardly long enough for her ability to have any true value. And then Dracula had found her and showed her who she'd been, and who she could be. Who could resist such temptation?
She felt she already knew the answer as to why she loved D so fiercely. Elena, her past self, had fallen into the same trap, before he'd killed her in cold blood. It was only natural for such emotion to carry into other lives. But it did not make this burden any easier to bear. You simply could not deny, or prevent love from happening. She loved D all the same, and for a fleeting moment during her deception she'd felt utterly whole within D's embrace. As though nothing else in her life would ever again cause her pain.
Her head snapped up from her revere when she caught to sound of a twig crunching underfoot, closely following it was a strong scent carried by the wind; it was the sent of rotting blood and animal decay, the scent of Renfield.
With a gasp Asenath pulled herself up and darted away from the scent, only the scream out a second later as it seemed the very darkness before her shifted and took on form. She recognized the frozen hands that the night had gripped her with, Dracula's hands. He grasped her face harshly and forced her up to meet his enraged eyes, "Where is he!" he growled.
D's expression was quite unreadable as he gazed at his moonlit reflection in the still surface of a small pond. The reflection itself was hazy, as though unsure if it wanted to be seen, much like the shadow at D's side. As he placed the wide brimmed hat atop of his head once again he frowned slightly. He was clearly not the man he'd grown accustomed to seeing reflected back at him, it seemed as if the traces of age about his face had grown all the more vivid now that he was wearing an eye patch he'd fashioned from the leather of his coat. But it also seemed as though there was something truer about this reflection, something much stronger and colder. He bore a passing resemblance to an ancient God of the Norse, an often harsh yet a wise God that had sacrificed his eye in order to gain all of the wisdom in the world. At this the Hunter smiled slightly, while he was used to using his beauty to mesmerize and weaken his enemies, this new look of forbidding suited his tastes far better.
After securing his sword upon his back, D made way into the woodland where Asenath had fled. Now that night had fallen, Dracula and Renfield likely would not be far, and he still had business left to attend to. For only a few minutes D followed her scent. Already he noticed that with the partial loss of vision his scenes of hearing and scent had been sharply increased. Asenath's terrified path was as distinctive to him now as the smell of blood would have been in the past, and he was certain that the faint rustling sounds he kept detecting all round him were the sound of worms squirming about in the earth. His remaining eye could detect every vein within the leaves around him, even though the oppressive darkness. True he'd lost some of his depth perception, yet the sharpness of other senses gathered the information he failed to see. Now as he moved he seemed fiercely sleek and predatory. Somehow the ruthless Hunter the Vampire King himself had created had emerged from Dracula's rage, honed and more lethal than ever before. Birds stirred restlessly in the trees and fled with a cry as the dangerous, miresome aura that surrounded D touched them high within their treetops.
He easily caught the sound of his movement rushing through the forest, as well as the voices carried over by the wind. They were seeking him, and D merely stood in darkness and awaiting them, drawing his sword as he did.
Moments later Dracula came bursting out of the woodland, dragging the still sobbing Asenath along side of him by her hair. Renfield came stumbling out a second later, his attention focused on chasing a miniature moth just visible in the swath of moonlight. He still wore the ragged brown cloak that throbbed with a poisonous aura about his shoulders. "Renfield!" Dracula snapped, pushing aside Asenath carelessly as he regarded his son standing before him as dangerous and terrible as ever. Unconsciously the Vampire King pulled himself to stand straighter, daring to look the Hunter in the eye. For the first time he realized that D was indeed much taller than himself, much more muscular. While the Sacred Ancestor seemed a shard of darkness given form, D seemed like the very moonlight, crystallized and given form….seemed far more deadly and seductive than a mere creature of the night.
Crimson fire ignited within the Sacred Ancestor's blue eyes, "This is it. Your end will be tonight D." He pulled free his own sword, a slender, jeweled broadsword that didn't look as if could stand a chance against D's curved blade, but without concern of this he lunged forward with a roar.
D's blade flew in a gleaming arc toward Dracula's midsection, but the Sacred Ancestor bent backward to a impossible angle and dodged the strike. He shot up and thrust upward with his sword, pushing D's blade away leaving the Hunter momentarily exposed. That moment was all that he needed to plunge his hand into the richly embodied pocket of his coat and to pull free a long, silver barreled pistol. Three shots roared from the antique weapon and each bullet found D square in the chest. D staggered a bit, dropping to his knees as the bullets throbbed within his flesh, a white colored smoke appeared to issue from the wounds, his blade slipped from his hands.
Dracula grinned as he lowered the gun, "I must say it's quite fortunate for me that you find the use of guns unromantic and cowardly, because I've spend more time with humans than I to care to admit and I quickly learned the value of such a crude weapon. No blade carries quite the element of surprise, and it's quite useful when you bless the bullets against your own kind."
Indeed the bullets were burning terribly within D's flesh, it was a gnawing sort of agony that paralyzed his limbs the same way looking upon a cross did. It wouldn't be enough to kill D by any means; however it had effectively weakened him. Dracula raised his gleaming sword.
D's eye remained fixated not on his father's blade, but on Renfield, his pallid face was wild as he tracked the progress of the frail moth that fluttered across the scene, the air about his cloak seemed to be trembling with malice. Dracula's sword flew downward, but D had shot upward again, although his speed was greatly hindered by the blessed bullets. His left arm shot upward, blocking the blades path, while his right hand shot forth into the darkness. He seized the fluttering moth, and then crushed it underhand.
Asenath, who crouched feebly in the shadows, gave a shocked cry as D's left arm fell to the forest floor in a spurt of crimson, yet Renfield gave a violent, keening scream of rage. "No!" In a blur of blackness the zoophagous leapt upon the Hunter, slamming his fists down again and again into his form. "It was precious! It was precious!" he raved in his anger.
D however had been prepared for this reaction and merely had to reach out to retrieve his fallen blade. The elegant sword seemed to be gleaming with a strange bluish tint as it moved upward, though the moonlight. D shoved the engaged Renfield away from his form with a surreal push of what remained of his left arm, finding enough strength to send him flying upward. He slashed into Renfield's form, bisecting it in a clean, diagonal cut though the chest. For a moment the zoophagous' mad eyes flew wide, before the two halves of him thudded onto the ground. The tangled cloak about him seemed to glow with an feeble red light, the slash that rent through it throwing off a golden hue, until the light died away.
The Horcrux had been destroyed before it could throw up its last line of defense to hinder D, usually taking the form of a taunting hallucination, but now it lay an empty rag on the dead leaves. Utter silence feel over the confrontation, and for a moment even the raging fire alight within Dracula's eyes died as he started in disbelief at his shattered vessel.
D used this moment to pull himself up and to retrieve his severed left arm from the ground; the stinging of the blessed bullets had gradually started to fade away until his healing body had pushed them from the wounds. Once the familiar tingle of rapidly regrowing tissue filled his reattached left arm, he glared up at his father. "I believe that makes the thirteenth Horcrux." he said gelidly. "Or perhaps that was the fourteenth, counting the one the Boy Wizard destroyed."
Slowly, the shimmer again smoldering in his eyes Dracula tossed away his sword and slowly he lifted his gun, with a practiced movement he thrust the back of the gun into his fanged teeth, and swiftly clicked the shells out, and replaced them with a fresh cartridge that glowed with an unnatural blue light. Manticore venom.
The wind whipped Dracula's hair out behind him, only then did D notice that his father did not appear quite so refined and elegant as he'd appeared to him last. His black hair hung limply to his waist, wild and uncombed. Coupled with his gleaming eyes, livid teeth and the shabby appearance of his once elegant scarlet coat, he truly appeared fearsome….more demonic than Nobel. "No more games D. Let's just end this forever." he hissed low and gutturally.
"Very well." the Hunter replied.
Dracula seemed to distort as he lunged toward D, the blackness about him warping outward to touch his form even as it dissolved into nothingness. Yet D remained utterly calm, and unmoving. His enemy may have seemingly slipped into the very blackness of night, but still he could sense him all about. A shot rang out in the darkness, D's blade arched around toward the blast and sliced through the bullet in a swift, easy motion. Another and another roared out, each in a different, seemingly impossible location, but D's blade severed each without a seconds pause.
From that darkness to the right of D a pair of crimson eyes glowed angrily before Dracula, again possessing form, leapt out at D, a silver blade within his hands. D merely reached out, and seized him by his neck, and slammed him down onto the ground in a blur of movement. The trees around them shuttered at the force of the impact D had made with his father. For a moment their hate filled gazes locked, until once more Dracula appeared to dissolve into darkness. But D remained unfazed; it was only a illusion, a spell meant to confuse D. He simply refused to believe it, his father was right there, trapped in his hands. The illusion seemed to fade away, and D bore his gaze down into his father's eyes. He allowed the whole of his consciousness to sink down past those hate filled orbs, to claw his way into Dracula's mind. The first scene that struck D's consciousness was the fear that was reverberating in his victims mind; clearly he'd not expect D to slip so easily past the barrier that shielded his thoughts. Yet for the past 2,000 years he'd been seeking out his father's soul and destroyed it bit by bit. Perhaps D knew his fathers soul better than Dracula himself.
Yet Dracula was more than ready to resist D within his own mind, and their bodies lay forgotten as they faced off in a purely mental struggle for domination. Dracula again appeared to command the darkness within his own mind, and turned it against D's assault, yet D did not even need to defend again the encroaching shadows. His thought seemed to reverberate into the darkness as though it had been verbal, "You are powerless against me. Show me your secrets."
"Never!" Dracula growled out both within his own mind, and verbally. He pulled the darkness tighter about these thoughts, sealing away each entrance. Countless times he'd defended his mind in this impenetrable manner, it was folly for any man to dare penetrate this darkness, it would drive one mad to do so.
Therefore the expression on the Sacred Ancestors face was quite horrified when D managed to claw his way past that black wall. It was as if he had no resistance at all to D's singular, burning eye. Instantly the whole of his life, of his secrets, failure and successes, love and hates where laid bare before D. For a moment Dracula despaired at this defiance, until revelation swept past his consciousness. His last taunt before leaving D in the castle had been, "Your pain, your blood is my life-force.", he'd taken substance and consumed D's body against his will….and thus had violated one of the many genetic rules of the Nobility. If a powerful Nobles blood is taken against their will, than that blood would retaliate, causing the attacker excruciating pain. A lesser Nobel could easily die from the resulting attack, but even those powerful ones that survived would be forever haunted with the guilt of their act. Dracula however did not feel any pain from within his blood stream; D's invasion was far more potent, and directed furiously at his mind. It was as if the Hunter already had an eye within his very mind, showing him each minuscule weakness Dracula possessed.
"Oh….you have to be fucking kidding me!" he groaned out. Once today he'd been careless enough to leave the Resurrection Stone within his son's palm, just waiting to be used for his rescue, but now it seemed he'd made two careless mistakes. He'd consumed the eye of an immortal being, and so long as life remained in the source of its immortal host devoured flesh wouldn't cease to be merely by being devoured. It would restore itself to live on in the cells of it's new body, a mere thought of what it had once been, but still a living and conscious tissue whose essence couldn't be destroyed. Therefore D could effectively "see" into Dracula's own soul.
Again D's voice came, commanding its way into Dracula's mind and powerlessly his consciousness submitted to the voice. "Show me your secrets….
The Sacred Ancestor's eyes were gleaming with crimson fire as they stalked the listless path the young girl was taking down the old, cobblestone Roman road. Overhead the moon was beaming its light down upon the scene, a swollen, golden orb. It was the perfect day for blood, for committing sins. Dracula pushed back the wide brim of his crushed red velvet hat, and straightened the matching coat. He found that he was especially fond of the styles humans where wearing in the age that would later be known as Victorian, perhaps, when he again had the world within his grasp he would resurrect the style as it was sure to fall into fad. The girl whom he stalked was not a elaborate dressed lady however, she was a thin, frightened little thing that clutched a basket full of stolen potatoes as though it were gold, the only thing she wore that seemed somewhat new was the brown cloak about her shoulders. She could not have been a day past 15.
Dracula cast his glance over to a huddled form in the bush next to him, "On my word Renfield." he bid to the shadow. His newest servant, a weak minded, jobless pheasant with a strange obsession for animals nodded obediently. His experiments on Renfield had gone wonderfully well…if it was possible to create a servant that simply could not dream of insubordination that what else might science do for him?
No matter, now he was to see what magic could do for him.
Dracula stepped out of the shadows and onto the cobblestone road, placing himself in front of the young girl. Gasping in fright she paused, yet as she regarded him her expression was not only of fright, but of a strange desire that she didn't seem able to grasp. He smiled and moved slowly over to the girl, "It's dangerous out here in the dark young one. What in God's name do you think your doing?"
"Papa told me…I was jus…." the girl stuttered, unable to understand why she was unable to tear her gaze away from the tall, dark haired noble man that loomed before her. He was simply….beautiful. It was not a term she'd ever used to describe a man before…but this noble….
He moved slowly forward, and laid his enormous hand on her shoulder, "You are in need of an escort my dear, let me help you." In a kind manner he placed his hand at the small of her back to lead her forward and for a moment the girl thought that was all that was to transpire of the encounter. Then Dracula cried out, "Now!"
A blur of black lightening seemed to shoot out from the tree line, and Dracula's pale hand snapped outward and grasped the flying object. It was a thick wooden pole sharpened to a deadly point. The girl did not even have time to scream before Dracula lunged, piercing her cleanly though the abdomen and embedding the stake into the bole of an oak tree. The future Vampire King suppressed a malicious smirk as he watched the impaled girl writhing and screaming. The way her poor face twisted about in agony was almost endearing to his eyes, she thought that she was about to die but little did she know that death would come tremendously slow. Once Dracula had been Vlad Tepes, Vlad the Impaler. He'd been the monster, the Dragon that had been feared by an entire nation. He knew how to kill and how to torment like none other before or after him. The human body could suffer in ways that were beautiful in their cruelty before Death overtook them. A man could be sawed slowly in half from the crotch upward and not loose consciousness until you reached the sternum. Impalement was much the same…it was a slow, delicious death as it set upon its victims. So long as the spear pieced the sides, rectum, genitals or mouth death could take hours or even days to arrive. If pierced right it would stop the flow of blood and prolong their agony for even longer. Often times Dracula found himself missing that age hundreds of years ago when he could walk about through a field that was planted with his grotesque trees. The stench of decay had intoxicated him, the trembles of agony and the copious flow of blood had hypnotized him.
Dracula vowed lowly to himself that once again he would plant such a forest, but, for now, he needed to remain unseen. Soon the world would be ready for him, and he needed to be ready for it.
He grinned, his eyes blazing once again as he moved toward the trembling, sobbing girl he'd pinned to the tree. He ripped away her clothing, although for some reason he seemed concerned with not tearing the cloak too badly. His fangs flashed in the golden hued moonlight as he stripped out of his trousers. He savored the wild cries of the girl as the deflowered her with both his fangs and his manhood. The rush of her terrified blood in his veins, coupled with the fear in her unwilling body left him dizzy, and roaring out in maniacal triumph. Again and again he violated and tortured the luckless girl, seemingly out of no motive but the slow flow of her lifeblood. She at last died not long before sunrise. Dracula stepped away from her limp body still pinned to the tree, and nodded for Renfield to return to his side.
He ripped away the thick cloak the girl had been wearing and cast it over to Renfield. "Have that mended before tomorrow night. What do you think, my friend, was that at all heartless and cruel of me?"
"Oh yes! Yes my Master." the zoophagous, as Dracula was calling him, bid enthusiastically.
Dracula shrugged as he regarded the horrific body before him. "I suppose I just miss the days of real torture. I can still recall the day a foolish young man told me that his family was starving due the cost of the war I raged against the Turks. So I took him to the castle, and invited his family over for dinner. I served them his ears, eyes, tongue and his cock. His wife choked to death on it. Now that was a worthy death right there. This is nothing." Dracula shrugged. "Ah well, it will have to do."
There was a brief flash of darkness before clarity once again returned to the images Dracula was surrendering.
He was standing within a poorly lit room that seemed to defy the very laws of physics and even gravity. The stone walls jutted out at impossible, alien angles. They were angles that would have driven a lesser man into madness as the terrifying impossibility of them, yet Dracula stood utterly unfazed by them, he was wearing only his black trousers. His eyes did not linger for a moment at the eldritch stonework; rather they were fixated on the glyphs that were sprawled across the walls. To his knowledge he was the only creature that was born of this Earth that could understand their meaning. They were not the writings of natural born creatures, they were the glyphs of the Old Ones, and the temple of madness he stood within was R'lyeh.
He nodded into the shadows, "Stop being such a damned pussy Renfield, bring me the tools!"
Trembling, the once enthusiastic servant shuffled toward Dracula, first he handed him the cloak he'd stolen from the girl. Strangely enough Dracula kneeled down and laid the cloak out before him. Next the servant handed him a silver tray that was laden with a dozen or so scalpel shaped tools. Each instrument seemed honed to a tempered edge and each one was splattered with the rust color of long dried blood. The future King of the Vampires selected the smallest knife, and smirked coolly at the terrified continence of his servant.
"You see, Renfield, I have to do it this way. You remember the theory that I have been working on, correct? The Wizards believe after slaughtering another, the soul is ripped apart, but it's possible with a few magic words and wand to house one of the fragments of the soul. But they are ignorant. They believe the soul is housed in the heart, and it's from there that they would pull the soul fragment, but the heart is merely the emotional center of the soul. They pulled free merely a fragment of a fragment. The Old Ones knew the art much better, the magic wielders among them used far more potent words, and they pulled what passes for their soul from the abdomen, where the soul rests. The result was not only immortality but indestructibility. Perhaps that's why Cthulhu, why so few of the Old Ones ever submit to death. If this works tonight Renfield, you'd best think of creating a few for yourself. My temper is unpredictable, and the plans I have for this world require the help of a most devoted servant."
"Oh…of course, My Master!" the servant bid, although he was clearly terrified of the thought.
At this Dracula did not regard the servant further. Rather he pulled the well honed scalpel harshly across his lower abdomen. An expression of steely resolve fixated upon his cruel face, and it did not twitch the slightest as he began to cut deeper and deeper, changing scalpels every so often. Soon he'd gouged a neat, brutal hole within his abdomen and he paid no attention to the withered viscera that hindered his way. He had no need for such organs, he focused entirely on finding his soul. Only his eyes moved as they closed, and he allowed the memory of the brutal murder he'd committed only hours before flash before him. He ignored the pain, and latched wholly onto the delicious sinfulness of violating, and killing that defenseless girl. True there had been far worse crimes committed by the man that had once been Vlad the Impaler, but he'd needed to be certain that this brutal ritual had a chance to split what remained of his soul, so he'd killed recently .
It wasn't until he could feel the grating scrape of the scalpel upon the bones of his spine that he stopped, eyes flying wide. Suddenly he could feel it. His soul…a living, breathing, glowing…and fragmented entity that dwelled within his midsection. So far so good…he'd worried that being Undead meant that he had no soul, yet the burning within him was undeniable.
"Renfield! The wand!" He commanded evenly.
A slender wand of oak wood was handed into Dracula's grasp, and without hesitation he began to chant. His words were guttural, and unable to be understood by any that might have heard them but the effect was plain enough. From the hole in his abdomen a light that shimmered at first a sparkling blue and then a bright, smoldering red arced outward and clung to the tip of the wand. When Dracula pressed the wand down into the bloodstained fabric of the cloak before him, causing the garment to glow with a blood red light for a moment, before the light faded away. Grinning he tossed the wand aside and pushed his hands though the fabric, every thread and seam was thrumming with his essence, with his power. The cloak was stained with his own lifeblood, it to held the essence not just of his soul, but his body as well. He's done it, created a vessel far more useful than any wizard Horcrux.
"ENOUGH!"
It was Dracula's enraged roar that ended the stream of memories, and once again there was only him and his accursed son lying within the forest. D's remaining eye was burning with a blinding crimson fury, one that the Vampire King himself could not master. Dracula form again dissolved into darkness, this time the illusion was strong enough for him to slip from D's grasp, and to reform about twelve feet away from his son.
"Very interesting. Now, tell me your true name." D said in his usual, unemotional tone.
Dracula's mien however was flooded with panic, and in a moment of blind fury he raised his gun once again, "I'd rather eat shit and die!" The roar of his gunfire was rivaled only by the gorgeous scream of D's blade slicing each bullet out of the air. And it was this beautiful cry that masked the sound of footsteps to the Sacred Ancestors ears. He stepped forward, screaming with rage as he fired again and again, until the sound of another singing blade rent thought the air. This sound caused him to freeze completely.
The expression on D's face was more curious than shocked as he watch a thick line of blood appear to grow across Dracula's pale neck. A second later Dracula fell forward, his head toppling off cleanly from the bloody stump of his neck. Behind his fallen body stood Asenath, a long knife clinched in her trembling hands.
For a long moment D's smoldering gaze bore into the girl, who sobbed lightly, not daring to look him in the eye, her head hung in shame for the victory she'd stolen from him. Perhaps it had been her fierce devotion to the Hunter that had caused her to step forth and slay her maker, or perhaps it had been a surge of bravery on her part, bravery she hoped might prove herself worth of D's acceptance. Yet whatever the cause she said nothing.
At last it was D that spoke, "You'd best be on your way. He'll be resurrecting soon."
Without a further word D turned away from her.