Hey there!
Sorry for once again for how long these takes. Life is so hectic, but good news, with any luck, I shall have more time after couple more weeks. Hopefully.
Thanks for everyone who reviewed: Irena, InstigateInsanity, BigKwell, Tsuki Tamahoshi, Lord Makura, no body, Fraulen, VampyreVixen16 and Breeze13.
This chapter may seem bit rushed, because it has two things in it that I originally intended in two separate chapters, but hey, we have centuries to go and I for one am dying to get to the 19'Th century. So couple following chapters may seem rushed also, sorry. But this is a story of his un-life and not every day was necessarily interesting anyway.
Disclaimers: I only owe the ones I make up. Historical Dracula is not mine, vampire Count Dracula is work of Bram Stoker.
CHAPTER 17: RULER ONCE MORE
The School of Scholomance, Transylvania 1501
The 16'Th century had arrived. A great deal of history would be made. Martin Luther would divide the church in Germany, Queen Elizabeth would become one of the greatest rulers of England and a man named William Shakespeare would create numerous works loved and played all around the world.
But for the guards of Scholomance, this new century seemed no different than the previous one. Same cold winds blew hard at them while they stood in the guard towers, trying to see anything unusual through the snow that winds were blowing everywhere.
"I don't like this. I don't like this at all" one of the guards said.
"What is it now, Bela?" the other guard asked.
"It's this storm, Louis. It's unnatural".
The other guard laughed. "What are you talking about? It's no different than any other storm we've faced".
"You're wrong. I've seen many different storms while my post here in Transylvania and believe, none was like this".
"How's so?"
"This storm came so suddenly. One moment it was cloudless night sky with full moon shining bright and then, without any warning, this started. No storm has ever taken me by such surprise".
"I think it's only your head in the clouds, Bela. You have been here for too long".
"WAIT!"
"What?" Louis asked startled by Bela's outburst.
"I could have sworn I saw something moving there" Bela said, pointing finger to the storm.
"How can you possibly see anything in this storm? Maybe it was a bird trying to find shelter..."
Louis suddenly stopped as he realised that behind the blowing white snow and darkness he could see red eyes. Dozens, maybe even hundreds of red eyes. All staring at him.
"Bela, maybe you should ring the..."
Louis turned to see a ghoul biting Bela from his neck, making Bela's blood stain the snow.
"...the alarm".
Two hours later the school of Scholomance was utterly destroyed. Dracula walked through the familiar halls. For a moment he stopped to remember his past here, where he had met and marries Isabel. Dracula did remember the joy and happiness he had felt then, but he couldn't remember how they felt like. He wondered if that was part of losing your own soul.
Shrugging these thoughts away, he surveyed the massacre in front of him. For a decade he had secretly built an army of ghouls for this day alone. This day he would show Vatican and to the whole world that no one would survive against him. He watched as the ghouls ripped the flesh and ate it. Both young and old priests were butchered like cattle. The intoxicating smell of blood was everywhere.
Dracula noticed a young boy, servant probably, trying to escape ghouls. Dracula snapped his fingers and the ghouls stopped. Then he went right in front of the boy. His hypnotic stare bored right into the boy's mind.
"Listen to me, boy. If you want to live you will do exactly as I tell you to" Dracula whispered.
Boy nodded.
"You will go to your masters in Vatican and tell them, that Tepes has returned to take his lands back, and should they not want their priests either impaled or worse, they should do well to leave me alone. Is that understood?"
"Yes" boy barely managed to let out.
"Good. Now hurry off".
Boy ran as fast as he could, to the darkness. Dracula wondered if the boy would survive to Vatican and then decided it hardly mattered, they would get his message one way or another.
Dracula turned to his ghouls. They had served their purpose wonderfully. They were a decade worth of struggling and planning.
He slaughtered them all and set the place on fire without a second glance.
--
"You spent ten years building that army in complete secrecy and destroyed it in just one night?" Makoto asked with a complete outrage and disbelief in his voice.
"Yes, that is what I said" Dracula answered calmly.
"But...but why? An army like that would have been useful when Iscariot strikes back".
"Because that is what they expect. They now expect to find an army of ghouls and so they expect finding me will be easy. However, when they come they'll find no ghouls and I'll be able to move freely".
"To do what?" Teegra asked.
Dracula smiled. "Oh...you'll see".
As Dracula left he noticed how Makoto, Teegra and Orlok where giving each other's knowing looks. Whatever it was they had planned for him would happen soon. And Dracula would be ready for them.
--
They attacked him at dawn.
Strategically it was the best time, Dracula admitted. Though sunlight didn't burn him, even after nearly 25 years of being a vampire had not build his resistance that much. He was still weak during daylight hours, whereas the three others could move freely out of centuries worth of experience, as long as they stayed out of direct contact with the light. And the windows of Dracula's room were all painted black to keep sunlight away.
He lied in his coffin without a lit. He looked up to see the three of them hovering over him.
"So..." Dracula started. "Maybe now you'd tell me what it is you've really been after all this time".
Matoba shrugged with false apology. "Sorry, Master, but you do remember what is the basic instinct that all vampires posses?"
Dracula nodded. "Greed".
"Precisely. We always feel greed in different forms, and greed for power is no different. We become stronger when we drink blood, but it has been centuries since the last original walked the earth".
Dracula now understood. "You wanted the blood of the original".
Teegra lowered her head so she could whisper to his ear. "Don't think too badly of us, Master. You are just irresistible in that way. And since none of us is your familiar you cannot simply command us to leave".
"To drink blood of someone who wasn't bitten but reborn..."
"But you still ganged up. None of you dared to do this alone" Dracula stated.
"We're immortals, not idiots" Matoba said.
It was then that Dracula felt the cold fingers of Orlok on his throat. Matoba had taken his arm and was rolling his sleeves down. Teegra's breathing was on his neck now. They were going to drink all of him, leave no drop behind.
"It seems that centuries of life did not teach you the one thing I learned in my human life" Dracula whispered.
"Which is?" Teegra asked.
"Never to underestimate your enemy".
Dracula's movements in daylight hours would be slow and clumsy, but his mental powers still worked. He didn't have power over Orlok, Teegra and Matoba but he did have influence on other children of the night.
The three vampires ready to eat Dracula were all surprised to see how suddenly dozens of bats, that had been sleeping, hanging upside down on Dracula's roof, woke up and started flying furiously around the room.
"He's controlling them" Orlok said.
Those became Orlok's last words, for in a next moment the bats flew through the windows, breaking the painted glass and allowing sunlight in. Matoba and Teegra leaped out of the way, but Orlok got a direct hit. He didn't scream when the flames devoured his body and he became nothing but ashes.
Matoba and Teegra had jumped to the opposite side of the rooms, where there was still enough shadow for them. However, the door out of the room was between them, and sunlight was shining right at it. They were trapped.
It took nearly twenty minutes before Dracula was able to stand up from the coffin. He felt like he was carrying great chains. He was slow and tired and weak. But he could move, albeit with difficulties, unlike his new preys.
"Stay away!" Teegra shrieked, but she didn't sound convincing. She sounded more like lost child who was trying to get away from hungry wolf.
"You disappoint me so, Teegra" Dracula said quietly. "I expected more from someone as old and experienced as you are. But I guess I now see you as you really are. A little girl afraid of dying. That's why you allowed your former Master to make you a vampire, you wanted to live forever. Well, I have bad news for you, Teegra. Something I learned the moment I died as human".
Dracula was finally inches away from Teegra and whispered to her ear, as she had done to him earlier. "There is no such thing as everlasting life. No true immortality. Everyone dies eventually. We're only delaying the inevitable. I can live with this. If I was as afraid of death as you are, I could never have been reborn as Nosferatu".
Then Dracula sank his teeth to Teegra's neck and drank. Too afraid of the sunlight, she didn't resist. Instead she allowed him to drink, until she died for the blood loss and grumbled to dust.
Dracula turned around to watch Matoba. "You're right. Drinking other strong vampires blood does increase my own strength. I can feel all the souls she captures, the lives she devoured, moving now inside of me".
"Did you mean what you said?" Matoba asked. "That nothing lives forever?"
"Oh yes".
"Then why resist us? Why not let us live instead of you who accept death?"
"Because I will not allow myself to die by the hands of sneaky cowards as you three. When I die, may that be tomorrow or after 30 000 years, it will be by the hands of a warrior, like I was. Someone who faces me and defeats me facing me on and not hiding behind my back. I refuse to die by someone else's hands".
Matoba was silent, but then he sighed and smirked once more. "You really are something else. Too tough bite for us to take. But at least I shall live through you now".
Dracula came closer.
--
On a moonlit night, not too long afterwards, Dracula put the impaled and partly eaten bodies of the Scholomance's guards on the display, and appeared before the town's people.
"Hear me! I am Count Dracula, the sovereign of these lands and woods! You all live only because I allow it! The priests of Vatican and soldiers of Scholomance can no longer protect you. I claim Transylvania as my birth right. I am willing to live in peace with you! Do not cross paths with me or help anyone who intends my destruction, and I will take only what I need to live. Help the dogs of Vatican, hunt me and search me, and I shall take my revenge on you!"
And then he disappeared.
Dracula repeated the same in numerous different villages all over Transylvania during the following days.
He had become the No-Life King.
To be continued...
Okay, remember to review. Next chapter in a couple week, hopefully. Starting from next chapter I shall begin to introduce...the brides!