Prompt: Triskaidekaphobia. (Fear of the number thirteen.)
His mind was hazy.
What day was it?
What year?
What century?
One tattered, bloodied stump of a hand crept out from the confines of his last, hallowed domain.
He just barely brushed up against one of the thirteen silver runes, and retreated instantly, shrilling in agony.
The holy bite of the metal burned through him, blessed, twice blessed, thrice blessed.
His animalistic growls and whimpers sounded throughout the crypt as he cradled his smoking, torn, rent fingers, huddling like a beaten cur in the comforting confines of his last domain.
The creature that was once Dracula peered through sheets of ghostly white hair at the light that flickered through the bars of his prison, coming from the thick iron door, covered in thirteen more blessed, silver, burning runes.
He whimpered and curled up further in remembered pain.
His pride was broken, no more than his mind.
All he wanted was sleep, the endless sleep he would never get.
The true sleep of the truly dead.
His coffin, an island of darkness in the brightness of his cell.
His only comfort, his only refuge.
Less than twelve square feet of fragile, ancient wood, frequently less than an inch thick in places, that was all that shielded him from the vicious silver all around.
He cowered, wrapped around himself and wedged into his wooden tomb, waiting alone and in the dark for the blow that never came.
He hid from the runes, he hid from the silver, and most importantly, he hid from Van Hellsing.
Prompt: Hourglass.
Alucard, as he was newly dubbed, peered curiously at the seals upon his hands.
Inked in the blood of himself and Van Hellsing, twisted into Theban and alchemic writing, locked in pagan symbols.
It was an hourglass, the sands of its time trickling away.
He would obey this vampire hunter, this Van Hellsing, and he w
ould obey his successors, his children, as long as they proved themselves worthy to be his master.
But nothing lasts forever.
Eventually, eventually, Van Hellsing's line would falter and fail.
Eventually, whether through conspiracy, lack of interest, or accident, a Hellsing member would not breed a new generation of would happen then?
He did not know, nor care.
What he did know, what he did care about, was the fact that someday, ten years, a hundred years, a thousand, the Hellsing line would fail, and he would be free.
Even if they passed him to another family, he would be free.
No family could bind him as successfully as Van Hellsing had bound him.
He smiled, showing his sharpened teeth.
Yes, he would obey the Hellsing man for now.
But sooner or later, the hourglass would run out.
Prompt: Letters to the moon.
The moon was his one constant, his marker.
No matter where he went or what he did, if he looked up, the moon would still be there in the sky, waxing, waning, sickle, gibbous.
It would be there.
It was not the sun, which he hated, a bright, pervasive light that made the space behind his eyes ache and burned his skin, but a cooler, gentler beam, like a refreshing spring flowing from the earth.
The moon made the night beautiful, made it worthwhile.
He missed light, sometimes, missed being able to walk in the sun without feeling like it was burning him away layer by layer.
The moon was his light, and it was a pure light, a wholesome one, even when stained with the bloody red of an eclipse, even when it was the sickly orange of a harvest moon, the cheesy yellow of an autumn evening, the icy white of a northern sky.
It was always Luna, the moon, and not Sol, the sun, hot, overbearing, and clumsy, like the humans who loved it so.
Even now, when he was trapped underground and denied the freedom so integral to his being, he could look up and see the moon, drifting serenely through the sky.
It made him smile.
Van Hellsing had asked him why he liked wolves, when bats were more traditional, insects more insidious, mist more subtle.
He had answered honestly.
The moon.
They can sing to the moon.
"Children of the night; what music they make."
Little did he know how famous that line would become.
He hated it when Van Hellsing put him in the laboratories, where there was no moon, no windows to watch the night sky.
He missed it when that happened.
As he curled up in his coffin every morning, he'd always wait until the moon set before sleeping.
It was his goodnight, of sorts.
Van Hellsing had let him keep the only cell with a window, for which he was obscenely grateful for.
Sometimes he thought the moon was the only thing that kept him sane.