The sun had set, the vampire had been pulled out onto the attic floor, and by all rights it should be showing some signs of awareness, of movement. Even placing a bottle of blood by its head drew no response. Frowning, Abraham sat back on his heels, inspecting his vampire in more detail.
He'd been badly abused, there was no doubt of that. Dessicated as Dracula was, the skin had split along what were very obviously incisions, and the internal organs showed visible damage through those narrow fissures. The bones of the hands were broken; he'd wanted cartilage samples and a nail, yes, but there had been no cause to mangle the fingers. Then again, perhap the vampire had injured the hands himself while hiding. Stretched out naked under the bright light of the lanterns, the damage and starvation were visible. There were great slices in his wrists, and a scalpel coated with flakes of dried black vampiric blood, resting in a small pool of it. The clever beast had hidden himself away, then made certain he could not be forced to return. He'd crammed himself into the duct, and then bled out what little blood he'd had left. He was completely drained, then dried in the hot attic for most of a month.
Dracula looked like nothing so much as a skeleton wrapped in old leather.
Interesting, though. He hadn't known that a vampire could be rendered so deeply unconcious that not even fresh blood would draw it back to awareness. Although dried out and sliced, the vampire seemed otherwise intact, all fingers and toes accounted for and no major visible injuries. Peeling back the dry cheeks with a grotesque rustle showed that he was missing no teeth, a glance down his body showed that all other organs, from eyes to nose to genital, were still intact. Abraham intended to teeth and perhaps an eye for study later, depending on how well the vampire regenerated the other missing tissues, but for now, those were some of the few tissues that the men had not sampled.
Intact, only starved and sliced. There was no reason to think the vampire wouldn't heal, he merely had to get some blood into it. Gripping the hair, he lifted the head with one hand and prepared to pour blood into the slack mouth with the other. The blood instead splashed down the cheek as the hair ripped out with a sound like tearing paper, leaving Abraham with a handful of sparse, spider-web thin gray strands. He cursed quietly at the mess as the vampire's head thudded against the floorboard, before reaching down to lift it for a second attempt.
More carefully, hand supporting the back of the beast's head, he tried again. This time, the blood went into the beast, draining slowly down the throat. Lifting the vampire up a bit higher, he poured more. No swallowing, but gravity was doing the job for the creature. Before long, the vampire was swallowing on his own, though the eyes remained closed and body unresponsive.
Bottles emptied, Abraham sat back and observed the changes. The skin immediately closed over the wounds, though the rough edges of the dried muscles moved about visibly under in. He'd known the vampire healed from the outside in, suspecting it to be a trait that reduced blood loss, but wondered how long it would take to heal those old injuries. There was dust and grit in them too; would the vampire's body force that out?
The minutes ticked by, the vampire looking less and less dessicated, and the eyes cracked open to stare vaguely at the wall. Dracula was still starved down to skin and bones, but the wounds at least had healed. Damn those men, if Dracula had managed to thwart his restrictions at all, he'd have torn into them in retaliation. Abraham gave the beast a few more minutes to recover before rising to loom over him.
"Get up." Expecting to see some response, Abraham frowned. Dracula hadn't even blinked, still staring blindly at the bottom of the roof. There was blood on the lips, too; no tongue had appeared to clean it. No motion at all. "Get up. Now." No sign he'd been heard. Was the vampire still partially asleep, dazed and dozing after all? A nudge with the foot, then a solid kick to the ribs. He hadn't thought it anywhere near hard enough to do more than bruise, but a warning crack told him that the beast was far more fragile than he'd expected.
And still no response. He'd have to carry the damned beast downstairs after all.
Wrapping Dracula loosely in an old curtain, he tossed the vampire over his shoulder, scooped up the bottles and a lantern, and headed down the stairs. He'd send someone back for the other lanterns later. Within moments, the grizzled head of Abraham and motionless yellow lump of curtain disappeared down the stairs, leaving the two lanterns alone in the empty attic, shining through the gaping hole that had nearly become a grave.
x x x x x
He'd chained the vampire up, leaving it to recuperate the rest of the night. Tired himself, it had been after lunch before he returned to the basement to retrieve the beast.
Dracula lay in exactly the same pose as he'd been left, arms twisted up and locked in the manacle, body contorted on the floor. It couldn't be comfortable; had the beast truly slept the entire night away? It was midday, he should be asleep now...but in the many hours of darkness, he'd never moved in the slightest.
Disturbed at the evidence of such severe damage, Abraham unlocked the beast, lifting him to drop him unceremoniously on the steel table under the bright surgical lights. No incisions today, not until the vampire had filled out a bit more, had blood it could spare, but he wished to inspect it anyways, record the damage. Superficially, the vampire looked fine. Tugging on the fingers and toes revealed no shifting broken bones, the joints all moved in the acceptable directions, palpations on the abdomen showed organs in familiar places, fine pink lines the only sign that the vampire had ever been wounded at all. Those would be gone after the next meal, unless the length of time the vampire had been wounded caused a scar to form.
Could a vampire scar? Dracula's skin was entirely unblemished, all the damages of his time as a human washed away in his unholy condition. Nothing they'd done so far had created any lasting marks, so Abraham simply noted the number and positions of the marks to compare them to later observations. With a grunt, he picked the vampire up and moved to the scale.
Damnation. The vampire weighed barely sixty pounds. Abraham had fed him approximately seven pounds of blood...fifty pounds. The beast had weighed a mere fifty pounds when extracted. Considering the tiny space he'd been wedged in, he couldn't have weighed much more when he entered it. Starved, indeed. He'd need that blood he'd ordered!
Observations done, the vampire was summarily hauled back to its chamber and locked away until evening.
x x x x x x
Still no response. Blood smeared across its lower lip, and instead of licking it off and searching for more, the vampire sat like a puppet with its strings cut, oblivious to the bloody smear. The eyes were not open, not closed, sitting at half-mast and staring vaguely at nothing. Frustrated, Abraham pulled it into the surgery again, using the straps to fasten it to the table, then spinning the handle to tilt the table and vampire nearly upright. Dracula did no more than sag against the restraints, only those straps keeping him from sliding to the floor. Abraham forced a long-necked funnel into the vampire's mouth and partway down the throat, and began the slow process of filling him with blood.
He'd hoped the vampire would be awake and able to feed himself, but at least he could sit comfortably on the stool as the sticky pig's blood drained out of the bottles and into the beast.
x x x x x
Ninety pounds. Good. It had taken more than a bucket of blood, but the vampire had filled out again, still thin but not skeletal. Abraham had every intention of keeping him weak and underfed, but at ninety pounds, the vampire had been functional. Slightly lighter than a human, bones and muscles less dense, unnecessary digestive organs greatly reduced due to the restricted diet, ninety pounds was an acceptable mass. Now, he simply needed the beast to wake up!
Slapping the cheeks lightly, he shouted to it. "Dracula. Open your eyes. DRACULA." The light slaps become painful smacks, stopping when a trickle of darker, almost-black vampiric blood oozed from the lips. Pulling back on the mouth showed cuts inside the cheek from where the skin had been sliced on the sharp teeth. As Abraham watched, they healed. Slowly, slower than before he'd left for his trip...but in a few minutes, gone entirely.
Perhaps the goad of pain would be necessary after all? Leaving the vampire strapped upright, he moved to his work chambers. Restoring the spell was far easier than the original creation, simply a bit of his blood and the reconnection of a few sigils, and the pain-inducing aspect was again active.
"Dracula. Open your eyes." Gloating, he waited...and...nothing. Dracula was not crying or twisting in pain, simply staring vaguely ahead with the same half-lidded, empty eyes.
The body was healed, the mind...apparently not. Abraham's eyes widened briefly in shock. They hadn't lobotomized the creature, had they? No, of course not...he'd been intelligent enough to make his escape, after all. Once again, the vampire was dumped unceremoniously on the floor of the cell, chains locked about his limbs and neck, and left. Abraham was going to give him the rest of the night to continue to recover, hoping and expecting that by the following night, he'd have his vampire back and functioning.
In the meantime, there were quite a few samples to inspect, starting with the digestive system and its organs.
x x x x x x
Still nothing. Four days since he'd pulled the vampire from its tomb in the attic, and while the body was healed, the vampire's mind was entirely absent. Even pain had no effect on the beast; Abraham had conducted a brief exploratory surgery to examine its insides for remaining damage from before, to find no damage, and no response. Dracula should have been screaming in agony, but there was not even a flinch as the muscles were peeled back, the organs prodded and lifted and inspected. Pulling the muscles and skin back into position, Abraham moved the table upright and fed the vampire again. Before the cup of blood was even empty, the abdomen was back to a smooth, white, pristine, entirely unmarred existence. Only the smears of blood showed that anything untowards had occurred.
No, this wasn't working. Food was not sufficient. The vampire had begged for its coffin, had been told it would be allowed the coffin, eventually, once Abraham was satisfied with its behavior. Cowed though the beast was, it still pleaded with him every few days, desperate for the confines of its coffin, begging in an entirely pitiable and satisfying way. After four days of his vampire being nothing but an oversized doll, Abraham decided to let it have its coffin.
There was no response as the vampire's body thudded against the thin padding, not a twitch as Abraham dropped the two heavy bags of earth in with it. With a mental shrug, he dropped the lid on the beast, locking the door behind him as he left, mind already turning towards the slides he planned to create from the tissues, away from the annoyance of having to provide his prisoner with the coffin after all.
The next night, the vampire woke. Abraham grinned as the eyes blinked up at him, focusing, then waiting. "Come with me." Without grace or any facial expression, the vampire clambered out of his coffin, shuffling awkwardly behind him. Dracula moved to sit quietly on the steel table that he'd been subjected to horrors on, doing exactly as Abraham told him, lifting this arm, holding that item, opening his mouth for an inspection, obedient but...slow. The movements, instead of the fluid speed of an angry predator, were clumsy, unbalanced, sluggish. And silent, no protestations at entering the surgery at all, no begging for more blood, nothing.
The hair was brighter, the face had lost its lined, exhausted appearance, but the vampire was an automaton. Wondering, Abraham slapped the vampire without warning, a vicious and powerful impact, cracking loudly in the room and sending the head flying to the side, a brief flush of red appearing and then fading.
Alucard sat silently, a few trickles of black-streaked blood oozing out to drip silently onto his chest, responding not at all to the unexpected assault.
Abraham couldn't help the victorious smile that lifted his lips. Two months of daily research, the isolation, the hunger, the denial of the coffin, and the vampire had still resisted, still fought back, still struggled to reach his freedom. At least once a night, the vampire would jerk suddenly in pain as Abraham's spell blocked an attempt to attack, to resist, to snarl and threaten.
And the beast was finally broken. He could understand, could obey, but there was no longer any resistance. The blazing stubborn spirit was extinguished, buried...the vampire no longer dangerous. A grin, as he realized the possibilities. One more test, for the muteness might be mere damage...
"Call me "Master," vampire." The vampire was slow to respond, but it was not hesitation, merely the result of the damage and the lethargy, and he did respond. A quiet, low, response, barely audible, but there, and intensely gratifying.
"Master."
Abraham's staff noted his happy mood for the next week, a wonderful change from the tension and anger of the previous week. He'd always been a good man to work for, and now he was practically ebulllient.
He had dozens of samples to study, and a tamed and broken vampire that he could now rebuild into exactly what he wanted.
He had great plans for the beast, and it no longer had the will to resist him. Humming happily, he went down for the night's research. It was time to remove the eye; he'd study it, then replace it. Vampires had much better night vision than a human, and he wished to find out why. Entering the chamber, he found the vampire standing, waiting for him, as he'd ordered. He still kept the chain about its neck, though long enough now for the vampire to travel about the room if it desired. It didn't desire, though. It no longer seemed to desire anything. Once they were done working, it went to its coffin, and stayed there until Abraham collected it the following day.
Ordering it to lie on the table, Abraham didn't even both strapping the beast down. He merely picked up the dish for the specimen, and turned to the vampire.
"Give me your eye."
With no hesitation, a hand reached up, the vampire obediently moving to pluck his own eye out. A bare moment before the nails reached the staring, glistening orb, the pistol cracked. The hand flopped limply, the eyes staring blindly upwards, blood pooling from under the head.
The vampire would be unconcious for a few hours, and by then, the eye would be back in his head. Within minutes, the muscles were sliced, the nerve cut, and the extracted eyeball rolled about in the dish, glistening under the bright gaslights. Abraham found himself humming to himself, a delighted and smug smile stretching his mouth.
He'd never actually force the vampire to mutilate itself. A silver bullet rendered it immediately unconcious, there was no call to make the beast suffer unnecessarily.
But it was so very nice to know that he could, and the vampire would.
And with the happy, rollicking tune filling the room with his hum, he pinned the eye in place and began to slice away at the cornea.
x x x x x x
Done. It's much darker than the other stories; there's no bond of need or friendship between them in this story. Alucard is broken after more than two weeks trapped, starved, and in agony in the attic. Abraham isn't cruelly abusive, but there is no empathy at all for the vampire. He'll go on to control the vampire, send him out on hunts, and eventually Alucard will become the vengeful, destructive creature of Hellsing. All the internal anger and rage directed out at the creatures he hunts...and not exactly the most sane person, either!