Done! The writing took on a very different style than I usually write. Lots of conversation, very much first-person and active tense, and Dracula is a bit "softer" than I'd like to have him. Make no mistake, he's an evil bastard...but his weakness is his offspring, and Quincy will see a very different side of him!
-v-v-
He was waking, the humans were nearly asleep. I could hear their slow heartbeats, the steadily deepening breaths. It was very late for them, very dark, very quiet. Excellent...I could talk to Quincy, teach him what I could, without interference.
"Wake, but stay in your coffin and remain very quiet." My voice might have been audible to the nearest horse, but human ears would have heard little to nothing. Quincy's vampiric ears had no difficulty and I noticed with pride how quickly he understood and obeyed. Tired and starved and confused, he'd still kept his wits about. "I don't trust them, and neither should you, but we need to speak. This was...unexpected...for us both, and thanks to that ass Van Helsing, you're undoubtedly full of lies about vampires. Keep your voice very very low, and we should be able to do so in peace and privacy."
Dazed eyes blinked at me but quickly sharpened. Intelligent, aware of his weaknesses, Quincy didn't so much as twitch a muscle or waste a single scrap of energy. Male he might be, and an accident, but he was nevertheless a fine specimen and I was proud of him. "What am I?
Or not so proud. He was a vampire, of course, and I told him so.
"But...I'm not a monster. I'm...me." Ah, the silly man. Time to explain a few basics.
"Van Helsing is at best ill-informed. I'm a monster, and I was one long before I died." A sharp grin with a trace of vicious insanity reinforced this, and it was with a little bit of vicious glee that I saw Quincy's eyes widen in slight fear. But this was my offspring, and my child should never, ever fear me. "Relax...you are my child. I won't harm you, and anyone that attempts to will have to deal with me first. Right now, that would be Mr. Harker." A growl, there, unintentional and nearly audible. I needed more control or they'd hear us! "Van Helsing only learns of vampires that hunt humans, that murder and kill and feast and prey. Vampires such as myself." A grin at that...I had no illusions that I was a human, or that the weak and foolish creatures were anything near my equal. They were dumb animals, there for the eating. "There are quite a few vampires, a majority in fact, that live quiet lives and never come to the attention of anyone that might attempt to hunt them. I suspect you'll be one of that kind."
"Do I have to bite humans, drink human blood?" Earnest and sad eyes stared up at me. Yes, this was almost always the first question a child asked me, and I knew well how to answer it.
"Unless you wish to die a second, miserable death, yes. Animal blood can sustain you briefly in an emergency but your true food is the blood of humans. You do not have to kill them, or change them, or even attack them. One of your new skills, and one that I suggest you hone as quickly as possible, is the ability to seduce them, calm them." A sigh...this was far too upright and moral a man for that, at least for now. That would change with age and experience. No real problem, he was not the first to cling to vestiges of human morals. "For some vampires, they simply form friendships, using this ability to remove fear. A gentle nip and a few sips of blood each night will sustain you. Cultivate human friends, a wide circle of them, treat them well, and make certain they are not afraid of you...and you have a ready meal whenever you want." Humans as friends...bah. Well, he was young, scarcely changed from a human himself, and such a path had made many of my daughters and grandsons content.
"Bite too deep, or give them any of your blood, and you risk making a ghoul or another vampire. Really, YOU should have ghouled...you are an exceptional child, Quincy, very exceptional." Exceptional and odd...if possible, I wished to ask him about his odd feminity, but time did not permit. I needed to keep him calm, accessible, listening, so that he would take in the basic information needed for his survival. A lecture, yes...but one I had given a dozen times before over the centuries.
"A ghoul is yours to command, they will rise within the hour, but they are little more than puppets. Useful guards, and if you are alone they will help stave off loneliness, but no self-respecting vampire bothers to make them deliberately. If you make one, I recommend you destroy it immediately." Ghouls brought attention from humans, attacked mindlessly, and were a sign of a weak, incompetent, frightened vampire. "And if you should make a child, accidental or deliberately, it is your duty to care for and train that child." A proud glance down at my child, who remained quiet, taking in and thinking about what I told him.
"That is possibly the easiest instinct to follow as a vampire. If you were a mortal man, and a lady that you had been intimate with approached you years later with a small child that looked far too much like you not to be your son...you would want to protect him, guide him, father him, yes?" Quincy nodded in understanding. Yes, he was a fine man, and would have been a fine father. And those damned fools thought HIM a monster? "You'll find that instinct even stronger for a vampire. Most of us have very few offspring; it takes a certain personality, a certain strength, to be a vampire and not become some insane predatory beast. You'll undoubtedly create a few of those over the years...and you'll have to contain them as I did my Brides or destroy them. Because we find a worthwhile human so very rarely, we cherish our offspring." A small quirk of a smile. "I am now chained to a wagon in a reeking stable, half-starved and angry, watched over by a huddle of idiots, for my own offspring." Offspring that looked guilty. "And I would do so again without hesitation; I would never let them murder you, not without giving them the fight of their lives."
Settling gently beside the coffin, only a slight adjustment for comfort, leaving the humans to think us both still asleep, I waited for my child to ask questions. And he did...but I had to give him some hard answers.
"Friends...how can I convince them that I am not the evil beast they think I am?" The humans that chained us...bah. Understandable, he was so recently human himself that he'd be grasping on to ties to that former life. But I had no answer for that he would like.
"You cannot. They are poisoned against all vampires. My taint is in you, and you are barred from silver and crosses and such. They will use that taint on you to condemn you as a beast, as a clever monster wearing the face of their friend...not matter how unthreatening or even kind you are." Kindness was not a path I was ever meant for, but Quincy was not myself. "For now, when the opportunity presents itself, escape. In a decade or two, perhaps, you might choose to write to them. But protect yourself first and foremost. Humans betray, it is in their nature, and I did not make you to lose you to a pile of dust in a few short years."
"You made me...I can't leave you." Confusion, again. But an excellent question and observation. He was the first of my children to recognize this so quickly; there was a bond chaining him to me, though we'd break it as soon as possible.
"Indeed you cannot. Not yet. It is a...failsafe, of sorts. Were you indeed crazed and violent, you could not leave me to wreak havoc on my domains, could not disobey me. You are under my control until I release you. That, I will do as soon as possible. You are not crazed nor violent, and while I would prefer to keep you at my side and teach you, circumstances prevent." My dry observation pulled a smile to his face, brief and tired but there.
"A final lesson. In blood comes memories; it is the currency of the soul. Take too much from a human, and you'll find yourself confused. Drink quickly, if you must take a great deal, to reduce the strain. As soon as possible, I will give you my blood. Preferably when we are both well away from this place and those damned humans. Now, I'm little more than a dried-up stick, and cannot give you enough. But I WILL find a way to feed," probably by ripping out the throat of one of those snoring bastards, Harker by choice,"and when you bite me, you will find your freedom from me. Take blood, as much as possible, and with it will come the memories you'll need to keep yourself safe. How to hunt, how to use your abilities, everything I cannot teach you myself. Instead of only enough to free you, I'll have to inundate you with information. Regretful, but I can't see them letting us both walk away." I would prefer to take the time to teach him, watch him grow into his abilities, and there was still a chance that path would be open to us. More likely though we'd be rushed and escaping, and he'd need all the strength and abilities I could give him. I had no wish to leave him barely-taught and weak, alone in a foreign country. If that Dutch bastard destroyed me first, that was far too likely.
He had more questions, but was nearly too tired to ask them, and I needed to marshall what energy I had left. I'd been listening to our unwelcome captors, and they slept deeply. Too deeply for a chill stable with a pair of vampires nearby. The fools.
They'd chained us in blessed iron manacles, bought a coffin but had no body to measure for it, had likely bribed blacksmith, undertaker, and priest to remain quiet. Undoubtedly they had not tested the stew before simply gulping it down. At some point, they'd been given a great dose of laudanum; it was rare here but the town did have an apothecary, and a second helping of stew, likely to "keep them warm in the cold" had put them slowly but securely into a deep sleep.
The humans in my domains had learned well what a vampire could do, and it had likely been only minutes after my foolish, stupid, incompetent captors had left that the town had compared notes on their odd visitors and the wagon hidden in the stable and reached a very accurate conclusion. This was great danger, but also the opportunity to escape that we needed, and a vicious grin bared my teeth in bloodthirsty anticipation.
"We're going to have visitors soon. Stay silent and still, pretend to sleep. Rip their limbs off, bathe in their blood if you can," no, the look of disgust on his face made it clear he was still far from embracing that vampiric glee, "but I will try and destroy them first." A few more minutes and we were quietly arranged with our own little ambush.
The discarded makeshift chains from before led into my nearly-closed coffin...but with no vampire on the end of them. Quincy rested quietly in his own, the chains revealing that one of the manacled vampires rested there. Two sets of chains, two coffins...I hoped they would assume the obvious. There was no shield of any kind for Quincy, but my eyes gleamed as I saw him quietly remove a great knife from inside his boot and a flash of anticipatory violence on his face. There was hope for him yet to be a true vampire!
Starved as I was, I made barely a lump under the pile of old and stinking blankets we'd been wrapped in, even if they carried lanterns. Now...time to wait.
The soft creak of the door. The thunderous pounding of hearts...four. Only four? Easy prey, that. The swishing of boots through the loose straw that littered the floor, the creak and bob of the wagon as a human stepped up, and a second. Backs to me, they prepared to open the first coffin, stakes ready. After all, I was only a pile of blankets...
Quincy's knife flashed up to bury itself in a neck, blood flying in a great arc as my child's eyes flamed in blood lust. Oh, but he was a sight, enraged and powerful in his anger! Blood spattered across his face and body and he lunged for the second man as that one desperately lifted an arm, stake clenched tight, to ward the vampire away. Useless...Quincy would have him.
Where were the other two? In reach! Both of them! Waiting only a step away at the base of the wagon...and I had their coats, jerking them towards me, burying fangs in a throat and squeezing talons through the other before either could respond. Oh, drinking, blood, blood...so wonderful...the second man fell to the stable floor, eyes wild, blood spurting beautifully from the remains of his throat. Quincy should be feasting...
Quincy was not. Dropping my drained prey, I realized that the second man had been thrown from the wagon when Quincy attacked him. Neck broken before or after, he sprawled on the stable floor, out of reach of Quincy's chained arms. The other one was bleeding out rapidly, blood draining from the great gash on his neck and falling uselessly through the gaps in the wagon's boards. Quincy was trying to drain him, but too much was already lost and it was his first prey; I'd had no chance to teach him how to harvest blood without so much waste, where to bite, how to tilt the body to keep the blood inside. Far too much pooled on the floor, far too little went to his stomach!
Still, he looked better...but the commotion outside told me that our dinners had not been alone, and in that commotion I heard Van Helsing's voice raise in anger.
Damn, damn, and damn again. That dutch bastard would ruin everything! The manacles... enough to keep me restrained before, useless with rage and blood running through me. It took effort, but I twisted Quincy's about, breaking him free. Harder than expected, and Van Helsing was coming. A moment of struggle with my own, and I realized that they'd put the strongest pair on me. Yes, I could break them, but the burn of the crosses and the blessing would weaken me. The bastard had planned well.
Quincy first. I would escape later, but my child came first. I grabbed him, yanking him roughly from the body he was savaging on the wagon's floor with one hand, the other opening a great vein in my throat. Rush, rush, hurry...get him out of here, to safety. I hoped to eat Van Helsing himself, rip out his heart and hold it beating in my hands, but that would be after. Soon, soon after...
Quincy's muffled grunts as he pulled blood from me revealed the true level of his starvation. Never had a child gone through the change without being well-fed and cared for. He drank and drank, and I was collapsing...but I could not deny him what he so desperately needed. The room faded, my knees buckled, and my child finished...and grabbed my own chains.
Damn! He wanted to break me free! He was young, he'd only burn his hands and then be caught. "Run, you idiot! Go! I'll follow later!" And I would, but he didn't need to see me tearing apart those that had been his friends and companions only a few days previously.
With a last, despairing look, he threw open a tiny stall window and fled into the night. I felt a bit of pride at the cleverness of my child, avoiding the stable door and those outside.
And then I felt pain, as Van Helsing stood in that doorway and fed my kneeling body with silver bullets. I hoped that Quincy would return to his deathplace, would find a coffin, would thrive. That hope and loss faded into a rage against Van Helsing, and that into blackness. Within moments, I was nothing more than a limp and bloody form being loaded into my coffin.
I would not awaken again until we reached that cursed English Isle.