Like every morning since the day of his worst nightmare, Jonathan woke up with a start. He was feeling nauseous. His bed was soaked with sweat. It was as dark as the deepest abysses of Hell, and, for a moment, he thought he was back in the icy room he had occupied for weeks in Count Dracula's castle. Fortunately, the feeling lasted only a moment before the faint ray of light visible under the door reminded him that all was not yet lost, that he still possessed his soul and his freedom. He breathed in relief. He was safe, for now.

But he wouldn't be for long. Jonathan could feel Transylvania and Count Dracula's castle getting closer hour by hour. The nausea he felt was not only because of the Orient Express's movement. He could felt the machine charge on the railway towards their victory or more probable their inevitable defeat. No, he felt nauseus because he feared he would not be strongh enough to push the Count away when he would nead to.

Jonathan pushed back the sheet that covered him and that seemed as oppressive as a shroud. He was furious. The night before, like every night, he had promised himself he would not think of the Count when he woke up. He had sworn to himself that Mina would always be his last thought before falling asleep and his first when he woke up. But like every night and every morning since that dreadful day, it had not been so. Before falling asleep, while his nose was buried into Mina's hair to soak up her sweet scent to give himself strength, Jonathan had felt the Count's burning eyes on him, as they did when the monster had sunk his teeth into Mina's neck. And this morning, the memory of the Count's hands possessively caressing Mina's back had woken him. Again.

How quickly had he invaded Jonathan's mind! Jonathan knew he could not be held responsible for the thoughts invading his half-asleep mind. Yet, he was slowly breaking the vows he told to Mina on their weddding day, and it hurted.

Mina. Jonathan glanced at her. She was still asleep, unaware of his torments. From the way her fist closed on the sheet she had thrown back in her sleep and the tears in her closed eyes, Jonathan guessed that her sleep was no more restful than his. They were often woken by each other's nightmares. Jonathan knew what Mina was dreaming about. He reached out to wake his wife but stopped his movement before he touched her.

Jonathan wanted to help her, to tear her away from this nightmare, but since that fateful night, touching her had become surprisingly difficult for him. No, difficult was not the word. Appalling.

Jonathan slid down the bed and sobbed. Touching his own wife disgusted him. He could barely do it in front of the others. When they were there, Jonathan would take Mina in his arms or she would put her hand on his as if to reassure him, but when they were alone in their room, they would undress and lie down on their own side of the bed in deathly silence. The narrowness of their cabin had changed nothing. Not once had Jonathan woken up in Mina's arms, or because he felt the warmth of her breath on his neck, not once since the Count had come to their room.

Why, why couldn't he touch her? Jonathan loved Mina. Even now, after all these ordeals, even when he thought he could see her canines growing longer and her gaze becoming hungry when she looked at his neck, he didn't doubt it. His heart beat faster every time he saw her, like when they had fallen in love. His skin burned when she touched him, and he desired to touch her just like he wanted to on their wedding day. Jonathan didn't doubt of his love. He couldn't doubt it, and he had the same trust in Mina's love for him. He read it in her eyes when she looked at him with big, wet eyes at night when they were trying to fall asleep and both of them were loath to turn off the light. It was always Mina who got the courage to do it. And while Jonathan couldn't help but think of the Count one last time before falling asleep, Mina's "I love you" was the last thing he heard and what gave him the courage to close his eyes.

Obviously, that love wasn't enough. It didn't change the fact that he couldn't touch her unless it was to trick the others. The Count wanted them to work for him, and they did whether they wanted or not. To Jonathan's despair, they did it too well. Everyone knew about Mina, but not about him, and each lie Jonathan told reinforced the feeling that they could use the Count's connection to Mina to deceive him when they were the ones being deceived.

At night, when he lay awake in the dark for too long, Jonathan couldn't help but wonder if the Count had only bitten Mina, or if he heard his thoughts as he did with hers. Mina had disclosed their connection to the others to lead them on Dracula's trail, and onto his trap. Jonathan hadn't heard all the instructions the Count gave her, but he knew that, and still couldn't tell the others. He only hoped that they would one day see the danger inerent to the Count's connection to Mina and excluded her from their plans. But the Count could also read his mind, it would be for naught.

Jonathan was reasonably sure he couldn't. After the Count and then their friends had left that fateful night, he and Mina had frantically undressed each other, all modesty forgotten, to clean the blood of her and to search him for any bite marks. They had found none. It would be reassuring if Jonathan hadn't failed to see Mina's marks on her neck the day before. Could he even be sure that he was free of any influence? No. The Count had not ordered him to dream of him, had not told him to be disgusted by Mina's touch, but he still was.

More exactly the Count had not told him to while he was awake. But who knew what things the Count had whispered in his ear while he was asleep, or how long he had stood by their bed, keeping them hypnotized under his gaze? Jonathan didn't know, and it killed him. Because if it wasn't the Count's whispers, where did these dreams from whom he woke in a sweat come from?

With a final whine that ended in a desperate sob, Mina woke up. Jonathan heard her struggle under her sheet and extracted herself to swallow a large gulp of air. With an angry fist, he forced himself to dry his tears. Jonathan had to be strong, if only for Mina who was living an ordeal at least ten times worse than his, with Dracula's nearly constant presence in her head. The second reason he wiped away his tears was because the Count forbade him to show his emotions and betray himself to others. What powers did the Count have to force Jonathan to protect his plans from such a distance! There were no words to express how terrified he was of the Count.

Terror was the only thing Jonathan felt. Nothing else, whatever the Count had implied while wearing Mina's ring on his finger.

Mina's shaking hand rested on his shoulder, tearing him away from these dangerous thoughts. Jonathan forced himself not to reject her loving hand, but couldn't find the strength to grip it in return. He still grabbed a lock of her hair to cover it with kisses. In a broken voice, Mina whispered to him to at least join her on the bed. He obeyed, eager to provide her with this meager comfort but didn't touch her. He didn't know if she felt the same reluctance to touch him as he did for her, or if she just sensed his reluctance and accepted that he wanted to put some distance between them. Jonathan wanted to scream at her it wasn't true, that he still loved her and wanted her, that he didn't know where this reluctance came from. He couldn't. Dracula, as a final torture, had forbidden them to discuss what had happened, to widen the gap that his promises and threats had dug between them. They could only speak with their eyes to ask if they were holding up. Jonathan didn't know what Mina was reading in his eyes, but he saw weariness in hers, and a rage to find a way out of this trap. She hated being the bait.

Maybe she could read the same fatigue in his. Jonathan tried to hide from her how close he was to giving up all hope and letting the Count do what he wanted with him. He just wanted it to end, so he lied and kept his worries to himself, he lied with his eyes to give her the strength to resist, even one day, even one hour longer. And in her eyes, Jonathan thought he could read the same deception that he feared to discover in his own.

He didn't even dare look at himself in a mirror anymore. Every morning, he let Mina comb his hair and adjust his tie, then helped her to comb her hair, delicately planting the pins in her long hair that hadn't turned white like his. She had always been so much stronger than him.

They ended up getting dressed in silence, helping each other to draw a little strength from the other contact each time their fingers brushed against each other. When they left the room, they walked shoulder to shoulder, united in the face of this trial, ready to lie once again to the face of dear friends, knowing they could be leading them to their deaths. Mina was the pillar Jonathan leaned on to not despair, and he hoped he could do the same for her. They could only count on each other, and could not count on each other anymore at the same time. And the situation could only get worse.

Jonathan was right to worry. After an interminable wait in Varna, the answer to all their fears fell like an axe: the Count had escaped their trap and was pursuing his travel toward his cursed castle. This had not come as a surprise to Jonathan. Nothing in his life seemed to go well since he had left for Transylvania. Nothing, except his marriage to Mina, but the Count had still poisoned their love. The only reason Jonathan wore her ring on his finger when the other was on Dracula's finger was so as not to alert the others, as per his instructions.

He felt nauseous, obeying Dracula's orders after having resisted him and escaped him for so long. He had thought himself free, but the rope around his neck had only temporarily slackened, and now Jonathan felt the full weight of the chains enslaving him.

The worst thing was to see that the others were not more worried than that. Van Helsing, for all his intelligence, was so sure he had seen through Dracula's trick. He thought he would soon corner the monster into a trap. There was the hubris so often depicted by the Greeks, the hubris that could be the Count's downfall as well as theirs. The doctor did not realize that Mina was lying to them, encouraging them in their pride. Every time she approved something Van Helsing said, he was more convinced of what he said. Van Helsing saw Dracula as someone afflicted with a criminal and childish mind. If only Jonathan could tell him! Criminal, the Count was, Jonathan had seen it only too well. But there was nothing childish in the Count's gaze, nor his plans and desires. Jonathan wanted to scream, but he couldn't, by the Count's orders.

He had hoped that at this point, the others would realize that Mina was not the only one being manipulated by the Count and that Jonathan's silence was because of more than his fear for the woman he loved. They never did. And while they were hiding things from Mina, for fear of revealing themselves to the Count, they were displaying all their plans to Jonathan. And now he wondered if Mina was not lying to him as she had to the others, from the beginning perhaps. She had received her own orders from the Count, orders he had not heard and which probably concerned him. Jonathan could not even beg Mina to tell him what it was about, nor could she answer him. As they returned to their room that night, Mina barely took his hand before collapsing, tears of supplication and shame in her beautiful eyes. Jonathan collapsed next to her, unable to take her in his arms as he so desired, but so full of love and sorrow. He forgave her. He would forgive her everything, even his own damnation.

They had to set off again, for Galatz this time. The terror in Jonathan's heart was such that it should have burst forth into the open, but the others were so fixated on Mina, eager to wrest the Count's secrets from her and comfort her as she deserved, that they forgot to look into his eyes and see the secrets he kept.

In Galatz, another missed meeting. In Jonathan, anxiety competed with relief. Mina comforted them all, playing her role. The others praised her, still blind to the trap she was setting for them. Her duplicity may have been born of constraint, but Jonathan could not help but feel resentment towards her by now. If only she could put her brilliant mind to work to find a way to escape the Count's hypnosis! But each time, shame succeeded in anger in Jonathan. He was not fair, blaming Mina for being incapable of accomplishing the feat that Jonathan could not manage either: escaping the Count's hold even for a moment to call the others for help. To warn them. To make them turn back and live.

When their companions proposed that they should separate, with Mina and Doctor Van Helsing following one road and Jonathan taking another, he protested, but only because the Count had ordered him not to betray himself. If he had appeared undisturbed by their separation, the others might have suspected something, at last. Cursed be the little room the Count left them to maneuver! Their friend suspected nothing and persisted in their insane plans. Jonathan had to say his goodbye to Mina and Van Helsing, knowing he would never see Van Helsing alive again.

The following days were bad, even worse than the days following Mina's bite, and the nights were worse than that. To make the separation less difficult for them, Van Helsing had told him it was for a good cause because they were trying to save Mina's soul. He invited him to imagine her among Dracula's wife, which only caused Jonathan to wake up every night from dreams in which hands that were neither Mina's nor those of the three sisters caressed him until they brought him to the edge of a precipice. After these dreams, which left him sweating and his heart pounding, Jonathan never could go back to sleep. He felt dirty, and impure, as if there was a layer of oil all over him. It felt worse than the Count's bite which condemned Mina to Hell. Where did these immoral thoughts come from? From what abject corner of his brain?

Rather than stay in his bed and continue to feel phantom hands moving on his skin, Jonathan got up every night to settle down at the front or the back of the boat and watch as their boat went upstream so quickly he dared hope they would catch up with the Count in a matter of day. Hoped, or feared. More than once, he contemplated throwing himself into the river and letting the current carry him back towards Galatz and the Black Sea. To disappear forever would be a blessing.

He never did it, no matter how much he wanted to. He couldn't abandon Mina, still under the Count's will. His disappearance would leave him free to do with her what he wanted and the idea revolted Jonathan even more than the idea of touching her. Also, he couldn't leave his hunting companions who would have wondered if they could have helped him for the rest of his life. The grief caused by his loss would slow their hand at the fateful moment. Jonathan didn't dare hope to escape the Count. The wish seemed more and more futile with each passing hour, but he hoped they would survive Mina and him as they survived Lucy.

Jonathan's eyes often fell on the mountains where Mina and the doctor should be at the moment, riding as fast as they dared forcing their mounts. Did she think of throwing herself into an abyss like he wanted to let the dark waters drown him? Sometimes, Jonathan prayed that she had the courage he lacked, but he knew she wasn't one to abandon or despair. His only comfort was to recite to himself the vows they had taken on their wedding day, ignoring the trials that awaited them. These vows should have helped more, but day after day, he seemed to forget more of the words they said that day.

One day, an accident slowed their boat. Jonathan could have cried with joy while feeling like a terrible weight was weighing on his chest. He would have liked to finish the job with an axe, but couldn't find enough strength for that. Finally, on the morning of November 6, a strange instinct whispered to Jonathan that this would be the day of confrontation, the day of their triumph or his enslavement. He grabbed the cross that he wore as a pendant and that he had not worn on the fatal night, and kissed it frantically, praying for God to give him the strength to break the invisible bonds that bound him or to support the armed arm of the hunters determined to send Count Dracula back from the Hell from which he should never have emerged.

Godalming and he abandoned the shuttle to jump on the best horses they could procure when they discovered that the Count's coffin, placed on a gypsy cart, was heading at a triple gallop toward his castle. There began a frantic, desperate chase. Still, Jonathan wanted to believe in their salvation.

His hope grew for the first time when he saw Doctor Seward and Mr. Morris also charging towards the Gypsies who blocked their path. Then he looked up and, on the snowy mountain, he saw a single figure contemplating the fight, too thin to be Doctor Van Helsing. A cry of distress escaped him. What he feared at come true. Following his gaze, Godalming shook his head in sorrow, then straightened up to his full height.

"Be brave, Harker! Van Helsing may have fallen, but your wife lives! There is still time to save her!"

Blessed he for still believing in Mina's strength and purity of soul when Jonathan couldn't. He used his last reserves of strength to get through the Gypsies and reach the Count Dracula's coffin. There was still a little daylight left, just a sliver of light that touched the cart. If they opened the coffin now, if they exposed the Count's face to the light, Jonathan would be saved. They would be saved. Mina would never forgive herself for Van Helsing's death, nor Jonathan for his silence, but they would be free.

The fight was still going around him. Bullets flew toward the Gypsies, skillfully aimed by Doctor Seward and Lord Godalming, but Jonathan knew nothing of what was happening. Nothing mattered, except the coffin, except the Count, except vengeance and the hope of freedom. He jumped onto the cart and attacked with his knife the nails that kept the Count protected from the sun, making them jump one after the other with a fierce cry of rage that tore at his throat. Quincy joined him and set to work with the same energy of despair.

Suddenly, two pistol shots resounded on the battlefield. Silence fell. Jonathan's knife passed under one of the last nails, but instead of tearing it out, he closed his eyes. He didn't need to turn to know what happened. His hand let go of the knife and he turned, despite himself, knowing what he would see.

A cry of despair escaped him when he saw Mina standing over Lord Godalming's body, a pistol in her hand. Their friend was lying face down on the ground, a hole in his head. He hadn't seen Mina coming, wouldn't have known he shouldn't trust her if he had. Doctor Seward had perhaps understood what was going to happen, because the bullet had hit him in the heart instead of the back, and his mouth seemed to be open in a cry of alarm.

The Gypsies had stopped firing. The survivors now formed a circle around Mina, Quincy, Jonathan, and the coffin, ready to shoot the first one who tried to escape but was otherwise mute and motionless as tombs. Only their dark eyes promised Hell to those who had killed so many of their brothers.

Quincy took Jonathan's hand.

"Harker... What is she... Mina..."

Jonathan looked away. The anguish in Quincy's voice was unbearable. Their friend did not want to believe that Mina had gone so far in the Count's service. Jonathan did not want to either, but he knew it was too late, a thousand times too late.

Night came. None of them moved. Suddenly, the lid of the coffin flew thirty paces away, shattered into a thousand pieces. Behind him, the Count stood up, like an immense and deadly shadow. The Gypsies fell to their knees, like worshipers before the Holy Cross.

"Jonathan. You came."

Some strange tremor seized Jonathan from head to toe when he heard the deep, almost purring voice of the Count. That voice was death, that voice was damnation. At least Jonathan was already on his knees, because they would have given way despite himself. He tried to meet Mina's gaze and closed his eyes seing her will to resist gone. He wouldn't find there the strenght to resist that voice. Mina's eyes were on the Count, her terror replaced by an adulation even more terrifying than that of the Gypsies. A cold hand ran its fingers through Jonathan's hair, brushed his ear, and encircled his throat. A moan burst from his throat. Dracula laughed.

"So eager to put yourself under my thumb. So impatient to touch the glory I offer you. Isn't that right, Jonathan?"

Something inside him urged him to give in, whispering that it was futile to resist anyway and that he already belonged to the Count if Mina was now so submissive to him.

"No!" he cried, tearing himself away from the Count's grip.

Clawed fingers narrowed on his neck. The Count's nails broke his skin. He heard a gasp coming from Mina and opend his eyes. His wife was looking at him at last, but only to contemplate his bloody neck with a terrifying hunger. Jonathan looked away. The spectacle of her deafeat was unbearable. With an implacable hand, the Count forced him to look again.

"You forget yourself, Jonathan," he growled. "Do not forget what is at stake. She is one of mine now, but I can still change my mind and slit her throat so that she dies before your eyes, or better, order her to kill herself. You would do that for me, Mina, if I asked?"

Mina looked up at the Count, her eyes clouded with servile adoration again.

"Yes."

"Say who I am to you then."

"My master. My lord. I belong to you, in life and death."

"And you have done what I expected of you. You deserve a reward."

The greedy glint returned to Mina's eyes. The Gypsies had lit torches that lit her too pale skin in a bloody light. Jonathan thought he saw a few drops of blood on her too dark lips. He realized she was dead. Like Lucy before her, Mina had joined the ranks of the undead. She was the Count's slave now. She had killed Van Helsing, Seward, and Goldaming. There was blood on her hands, both literaly and figuratively. Tears burned Jonathan's eyes, but he could not cry, dazed as he was by fear and rage.

"Look at her," the Count ordered again in an imperious voice. "Isn't she beautiful like this, even more than before?"

Jonathan swallowed. He wanted to deny it, but there was something wild in Mina's eyes, an unbridled frenzy, similar but different from that which he had seen in those of Dracula's wives. Her brilliant intelligence was still there, but more than cleverness, he could see an unbridled appetite in her eyes, like a promise to seize by force anything that was denied to her. Jonathan had only see that gleam in the Count's eyes.

"Do tell the truth to your dear husband, Mina. Do you regret what I did to you?"

"Oh Jonathan, if you only knew!" Mina exclaimed with a strange fervor. "I was asleep, as you still are, my poor darling. How could I have thought of refusing this gift? But now I can see clearly. I was dead, and now I am alive, trully alive. My senses have awakened, and I am hungry, so hungry. I hear them. The wolves howling, the branches breaking in the wind, and the blood, the blood beating in the veins of these Gypsies, this blood, this blood…"

"Not yet", the Count stopped her in an indulgent voice. "But soon."

Jonathan heard a sob escaped from his mouth. He couldn't believe it. It was too much.

"When?"

Dracula laughed behind him and caressed his throat again. Another moan escaped Jonathan's mouth. He felt a tension rising throughout his body, without understanding what was happening to him.

"You will have to clarify your question, my handsome Jonathan."

"When did she give herself to you like that? How long did she last before betraying us? Before betraying herself?"

"But she betrayed nothing at all. She only embraced her true nature. It doesn't matter when she did it. See what she is now. Does she look so unhappy? Do you love her less now? Look at her and answer me, Jonathan. No? Is she less desirable? Less loved? Do tell."

The pressure on his neck increased. In her eyes, Jonathan searched for a sign that the woman before him was indeed Mina. He saw no evidence to the contrary. It was Mina, just wilder, more brutal, with a new appetite and sensuality in her gaze and posture, but still Mina. It was perhaps much worse than if she was gone, swallowed up by a new personality imposed by the change that Dracula had forced upon her. And Jonathan, poor fool, Jonathan still loved her.

"No," he admitted.

"No," the Count repeated, running a finger over his throat and undoing his tie to reveal a little more of his neck.

"She is still the same Mina. And you…"

Jonathan's blood suddenly boiled in his veins. He remembered he could struggle and violently shoved the Count away.

"No! You are the ones who made her this way, who changed her. My Mina would never have willingly betrayed others. She would never have killed them. You are the one who did this to her. You tortured her, forced her to change. And me with her."

The Count roughly pinned him against the coffin in which he had spent the entire journey locked up.

"Did I force you to change, Jonathan? Into what?"

Jonathan struggled in vain. He gave up, defeated and panting.

"You made her touch hateful to me. You forced me to betray the others with her. You forced this silence between us. You…"

The Count's triumphant smile stopped him in his tracks.

"Jonathan, Jonathan. I did no such thing. I gave you instructions, yes, but you could have bypassed them, if you had really wanted to. You could have written a warning or locked Mina away, or run with her far from the others to spare them. You didn't. You let them hatch this plan, knowing that it would lead to their doom and yours because you knew it was the quickest way to get back to me. You came to offer yourself to me, Jonathan."

"Never. I hate you."

"You know that's not true. A vampire has much more heightened senses than a human. I sense fear in you, but not hatred. And I sense something else behind it too. What it is, I wonder... Mina?"

"Desire."

With a cold burst of laughter, the Count ripped off Jonathan's tie and exposed his throat to the cold, before tearing off the top two buttons of his shirt to run his icy hand over Jonathan's chest. He swallowed to make the nausea go away. He couldn't breathe. Despite himself, Jonathan tensed in response to the cold caress, his entire body vibrating under the Count's hand. Jonathan didn't understand. He had never felt such sensations.

"Desire", the Count smiled, his voice vibrating in triumph. "I didn't order you to stop touching your wife, Jonathan. Your love for her is real, and I have always respected love. You stopped yourself because you knew you desired another. Mina, thanks to her new gifts, felt it and respected your choice, but I didn't order you anything, Jonathan. Tell me, did you dream of me?"

Jonathan tried to close his eyes, but there was a magnetism in the Count's eyes that prevented him from looking away or lying to him.

"Yes."

"What did you dream of?"

"Of… your hands on my body."

"That's good. Continue."

"Of your teeth on my neck."

The Count took a deep breath and moved even closer to Jonathan, pinning him against the coffin. Jonathan felt pressure against his leg and trembled. He hadn't felt desire for a man in years. Since he had met Mina, he had never had eyes and desire for anyone but her. He thought he had left that past behind him, but now… The Count suddenly moved away and Jonathan let out a groan of protest, before pressing his fist against his mouth to stop himself. He didn't want the Count. He loved Mina. He just wanted his life back, to still be discussing their plans with Van Helsing and the others, when they still had hope. Not to feel his body betray him in front of her.

The Count shouted orders to the Gypsies in their language. Jonathan understood their meaning if he didn't understand the words, because the torches slowly moved away, except for three that the Gypsies planted next to the cart. Jonathan couldn't even hope that the night would hide his body's reactions from his wife and the Count. Satisfied to see his orders carried out, the Count tore Jonathan's fist from his mouth and licked this palm.

"Don't do that," he ordered. "I intend to hear every single scream I make you make."

"Will you order me to?"

"Since when do spouses give each other orders? It's a promise, Jonathan, and nothing more. We're alone now. You said you dreamed of me."

"No... Yes... But only because you wanted it."

"Stop lying to yourself, Jonathan", Dracula scolded him. "Trust your desires. Listen to them. We all have so much to learn from our desires. Accept them as yours. Submit to them and conquer them, like Mina did."

"Join us, Jonathan", his wife whispered in his ear, one of her hands brushing the Count's on his burning skin. "If only you could imagine what it's like to see the world like this... how could you refuse that blessing? But you don't know, my poor darling, so join us and see."

"What you want and what I want, what she wants, all our desires come together, Jonathan. Accept it. Didn't you say you dreamed of my teeth on your neck? It's time now."

Jonathan struggled to escape their greedy hands, but he had no more strength. The rage that had helped him until now had deserted him, leaving him boneless.

"No", he stuttered. "I don't want to."

"You want it", the Count shouted, "because I want it, and what Dracula desires, Dracula gets. You will be my husband, Jonathan, and soon you will be a faithful and devoted husband, just like Mina is a devoted wife."

"This is not love. This is slavery."

The Count's tongue moved up from his chest to his collarbone, lingering just at the base of his neck, where he had bitten Mina. His tongue brushed his lips. Jonathan felt his chest rise, no longer with fear, but with an abject desire he would have liked to deny with all his soul.

"Of course it's slavery. There are only masters and slaves, and Dracula reigns as a master in his home. But I assure you that soon it will be a freely consented slavery."

The Count took his lips with violence. Unable to resist, Jonathan surrendered himself into his hands. He felt like he was drowning in a sea of darkness, even worse than when he was in the grip of the three sisters. Their greed, their ability to break him, was nothing compared to the power of Count Dracula. When the Count let him go, Jonathan swallowed a large gulp of air. He was breathless and couldn't say how long the Count had kissed him. He burst into tears. The Count and Mina stroked his hair like a child, whispering reassuring words to him that Jonathan could not understand. He was lost. His last resistances collapsed one after the other and something continued to rise in him, something irrepressible and terrible that he could no longer hold back and that he did not understand, that he did not want to understand. He grabbed the Count's sleeve.

"I'll be yours," he stammered, "I'll do what you want, I'll be whoever you want, but please, let Mina go! Free her."

Dracula only laughed at his pleas.

"I like how you beg, Jonathan. I can't wait to hear your moans when I have you under me. But even if I wanted to, I couldn't do what you asked. She drank my blood, and every order she obeyed has strengthened my dominance over her. If I rejected her now, she would wander around my castle begging me to take her in, until she lost her mind. You wouldn't want such a fate for her, would you? No, she will remain mine, and therefore yours. As for you, you will warm my bed as Mina will warm yours. But enough of this talk. You have denied me your blood for too long, and Mina needs something more substantial than human food. She has rejected the call for too long and she will weaken if she waits any longer to feed herself. You wouldn't want her to suffer from hunger, even if she was brave and suffered in silence until now. It is good that you have graciously brought a meal with you."

It took Jonathan a few seconds to understand what the Count was talking about. It was hard to think, with the state the Count had left him in, to the point that Jonathan had forgotten Quincy existed. He looked around for the faithful friend of their futile vampire hunt and found him fallen at the bottom of the cart, pressing a hand against his side. There was blood all around him. His face was almost as pale as Mina's. Quincywas alive, but not for long. If Jonathan had broken the coffin before the sunset if they had killed Dracula as they had sworn, if… Suddenly, the Count's plan appeared to him with terrifying obviousness.

"No. Mercy for him."

"But it is mercy we will give him. Would you let him suffer like this for hours? No, it is better to offer him a quick death and use his death for our pleasure."

Quincy used his last strength to jump to the pistol Mina had dropped to the ground after executing Godalming and Seward. With a trembling hand, he aimed at Jonathan's forehead, but, with a cry of almost animal rage, Mina jumped on him to snatch the weapon. Her sharp teeth gleamed in the combined light of the moon and the torches.

"Just a moment, dear Mina," the Count stopped her as she was about to sink her teeth into Quincy's neck. "Jonathan will need to feed too, and it would please me if you shared this first meal together."

Quincy's eyes widened in horror, despair, and disgust. Jonathan looked away, ashamed of what he had become, without even Mina's excuses. Was Dracula telling the truth? Could Jonathan have freed himself from this compulsion at any time? The chains he had felt closing around his wrists, was it he who had created them? Jonathan feared, knew it was true. The Count was not lying, he felt a much greater pleasure in revealing the truth. That meant that a part of Jonathan had wanted this outcome, had provoked it, perhaps. Yes, he too disgusted himself.

Dracula's teeth pierced his neck without warning. Jonathan let out a cry that to his ears sounded much more like a cry of pleasure than of fear and pain. He was trully lost now, just like Mina. Panting, his nerves on fire, Jonathan let Dracula feed on his life while praying that the vampire would drain him completely and give it that mercy he refused to Mina and Quincy.

He didn't. The Count stoped drinking from his neck and looked back at him. His smile was red from Jonathan's blood. Dracula ran a finger over his lips and put a few drops of blood on Jonathan's lips. He realized that he was crying silently and that the tears were almost blinding him now. Dracula forced him to stand still while cutting his chest with one of his claws as he had done that dreadful night. Could it be that all this had really happened barely a month ago? For Jonathan, it was as if years had passed.

He felt weak as a newborn. The Count had no trouble pinning him against his chest, half suffocating him. Jonathan opened his lips to swallow a gulp of air but felt only a flood of blood go down the back of his throat. Something broke inside him. As if in a dream, he drank almost greedily the blood that spurted from the wound while feeling something rise, and rise inside him until it threatened to explode. It was like an electric shock went through him, and Jonathan fell back to the ground, exhausted and panting, covered in sweat. The Count lifted him up with a lover's tenderness and kissed him, tasting his own blood on his lips as Jonathan tasted his own, then helped him to his feet and forced him to walk to Mina who continued to support the poor Quincy, dying but still alive. Her eyes were bright with desire, for Jonathan, for the Count, for them, with a desire that Jonathan had never seen there even on their wedding night.

Quincy's eyes were closed. He was murmuring something that sounded like a prayer.

"Feed yourselves, my spouses", the Count ordered. "You will need energy for the night that awaits you."

Mina sank her teeth into Quincy's throat first. With a mechanical step, Jonathan stepped forward and did the same, feeling his nails become claws and his teeth fangs. In his ears, he could hear Quincy's blood beating faintly. Even that whisper was irresistible. ILike Mina he sank his fangs into Quincy's jugular and swallowed with delight the warm blood, so different from the Count's burning and icy one. With each gulp he swallowed, he heard Quincy murmuring the same words over and over again, "I forgive you, I forgive you," until he had no strenght left, but they meant nothing to Jonathan's ears anymore. Nothing that mattered anymore, nothing except this warm blood that warmed his icy skin and maddened his senses. He did not let Quincy's inert body fall until he had drained the last drop of his life, leaving his body fall on the ground, already forgotten. And when the Count threw him on the ground soaked with the blood of Godalming and Seward, with the blood of Quincy, to tear off his clothes and possess him carnally as he had promised, Jonathan could only let his body rise to welcome the Count inside him.