Abraham was beyond furious when he returned, and the red welt on the side of one of the men's faces demonstrated the level of rage.
"Missing? MISSING? And only a few days after I left? And none of you thought to tell me this?" He radiated anger and rage, fists clenched, and the men he had left in charge of the vampire flinched away. "And HOW, may I ask, did he undo his chains and unlock his door? They have held him for months, even when he was far stronger. I left him with you, half-starved, weakened, and obedient, and you could not even keep him CONTAINED?" His voice had risen to a thundering shout.
Abraham turned his back to them, bringing himself under control. The greatest prize of Man in centuries, and it was GONE. Months of tracking and hunting, the deaths of Lucy and Quincy, the stress of restraining and binding the beast to his will, all of it wasted due to their incompetence. He shook with rage, and the heat of his anger was consumed and replaced by a chill fury, cold and calculating.
No one who knew the jovial, good-natured doctor would have recognized the expressionless, cold face that he turned towards the men.
"Explain yourselves."
Their lies fell apart on them. Abraham had left them to find the cook, who was responsible for draining off blood from the meats each day. He had never bothered to tell her why he needed them, simply instructing her and expecting his instructions to be carried out. Yes, she had set the cup of blood aside each afternoon as required.
"But they didn't take it, sir. The men as you said would take the blood, they poured it down the drain." Hands knotted and unknotted in her apron, eyes wide with fear that she'd lose her position, desperate to show that she'd done as required. "There, that drain." A thin, veined hand darted from the safety of her apron folds to point to a small sink in the corner.
"They never took the blood? Not once?" Eyes narrowed, his mind turned over what that implied.
"No, not once, I'm certain of it. Every day, I made sure it was there. A full cup, no less, pig's blood, beef blood, lamb and chicken a few times, too. But always, sir, always." Her wide eyes in her old lined face beseeched him, and he found himself believing her her innocence. No, she was not culpable in this fiasco. Forcing his face to relax, he patted her shoulder reassuringly.
"You did exactly as you should, thank you. I'll be leaving now so you can continue with your work." He forced a slight smile onto his face to reassure her. "I'll admit I've missed your cooking while gone, and look forward to dinner." He didn't miss the slight sigh of relief. "We won't be needing any more blood for some time. I expect that will change, but not for some time." Not until he either recovered Dracula or found another vampire. Damn those men, any other vampire he found would be a far less valuable specimen.
Next, he went to the scullery maid. It was her job to clean the basement hallways and refill the lamps. She was never to enter the labs or the vampire's cell, but checked the rat traps in that hallway on a daily basis. A halfwit, yes...but from her complaints, he learned about the great bloody mess the men had left in the hallway. He fought the fury from his face, not wanting to frighten the dim creature. There was no cause for the vampire to bleed so much. Feeding him after working on him allowed his injuries to seal, and as often as not Abraham forced him to walk to his cell under his own power.
And he also learned that the padlock had been left off the door, for she'd tripped over it in the dim light the day after he'd left. With a grateful smile and a reassuring pat, he left her to continue her work, though the smile vanished as soon as his back was to her.
Those fools. He'd left them simple instructions. Enter the cell, use a silver bullet to knock the vampire out. Place him on the table quickly, strap him down tightly, remove the indicated organs and tissues, make the specified measurements. He'd scheduled the research closely, not wanting the vampire to wake during the procedures. Within the hour, they'd finish. While they cleaned the work area, labeled their samples, and compared notes, Dracula would wake. They were to feed him the blood the cook had provided. Then, return him to the cell, chain him, and padlock the door.
They had neither fed him nor padlocked the door. He suspected the fools had not even chained the beast. Had they followed his orders at all? Rage burning in him again, he strode down the stairs to the lab where the men waited.
"There are no bullets missing." He snapped the cylinder back into the gun, having confirmed that all six bullets were still there. The box of bullets was full as well. He'd left a full month of bullets, and not a single one had been used. Ignoring their protests, he strode to the cabinets.
They'd have the vampire for three days, and there should be nearly twenty samples, collected from various muscles and joints. Instead, an entire array of bottles greeted his eyes. He silently inspected them, the men not foolish enough to interupt him or explain.
Over a hundred bottles. They'd sampled muscles, digestive tissues, lungs, kidneys, heart, spleen...no skin and no nervous tissue, no. But far more than they could have done in the short time they had each night while the vampire was unconcious.
They had hated the vampire, regularly referred to the beast as an "it" or a "subject". Each of them had been well appraised of the vampire's actions prior to his capture, and early on, before he'd gotten the monster under control, Alucard had managed to kill one of them. Not on purpose, no, but as the beast had struggled, he'd knocked a man over and sheer bad luck had connected the man's head with the corner of the table. They'd hated the vampire since.
He'd also chosen men that had demonstrated a talent for vivisection, after all, and vivisectionists did not often waste ether on mere animals. They had plenty of experience extracting tissues and studying a living, protesting beast, and would have considered a struggling vampire to be only a minor annoyance.
They hadn't explained to him what they had actually done, no. Each word so far had been a lie; yes, they'd fed the vampire, yes, they'd locked him up safely, yes, they'd followed his directions, taken the samples in the assigned order.
And they'd dissected an awake, aware vampire. He shuddered, not so much at the thought of what Dracula had experienced, as what it could mean. He'd been harsh with the beast, but fair. It hated him, feared him, but was not desperate, only miserable. As long as it did what he commanded, it would not suffer unduly. Escape and retaliation, though unlikely, were always a possibility and he was not so foolish as to abuse the creature more than needed to keep it obedient.
Now...now...if it were gone, recovering, it could return for vengeance. His mind decorated his lawn with spikes, the men impaled upon them, and he paled as he realized just how terrible that retaliation could be. No matter how he loathed the monster, he'd always treated it with a minimum of respect for its intelligence and capabilities. They hadn't. They'd cut Dracula up while awake and aware, and starved him to boot. They would never admit to it, so he didn't ask. Instead, he turned to them, collecting his thoughts before asking something different. If the vampire had been shrieking, the rest of his staff would have heard.
"How did you keep him from screaming?" His eyes met theirs, watching protestations of innocence die on their lips.
"I, we, that is..." Nervous, the man licked his lips. "The voice box, you see. We, well...crushed it. From the sides. No noise, that way. He could breath, swallow, but..." the voice died on the shocked stare Abraham gave him, and then rushed to finish. "no noise!" He blurted that out, and Abraham found himself leaning on the cold shining metal table. He closed his eyes, opening them to watch his blurry face reflect back. He'd expected them to say they had gagged the beast, or tied its mouth shut.
They'd crushed its throat, reduced it to a mute beast, then cavalierly dissected it each night.
He knew exactly why the beast had escaped. Without them locking the doors or chaining it, he knew how. Leaving them behind, he went vaguely at the wall where he'd expected to see a vampire, huddled and frightened and miserable, but intact, and present.
Damn them all. He wanted to beat them to a bloody pulp for their stupidity and mindless cruelty.
He settled for sending them away, and without payment. They'd had a comfortable income here, his venture funded by the Crown, partly as science and partly as medical research and partly with the goal of creating superior soldiers or using the vampire as a weapon. Well, they'd be forfeiting the entire month's pay, the bloody bastards.
They were wise enough, at least, to leave without protesting. Had they done so, he might well have lost control and beaten them to bloody pulps.