#Their Damsel/Jonathan is in peril. Time to do some mauling about that.

[see-arcane]

Blood of My Blood: The Law's Delay

Shout out to @ibrithir-was-here for putting up with my never-ending goal of overfilling the glorious Blood of My Blood AU with my ramblings and extra shout out to @everchangingfungusthoughts and @animate-mush for tripping me down the slope of Writing Another Text Brick. Specifically via this whole thing.

Summary: Jonathan Harker, now fifteen years deep into his life at Castle Dracula, finds himself the unwilling guest of yet another frightful host and his company. Talk and violence and time tick by.

The sun sinks low.

The dead travel fast.

And a vital Lesson is taught regarding the Law of the land.

Warnings for graphic violence, suicide, and murder.

Jonathan’s head ached.

Partly from the agonized spot at the back of his skull where the cudgel had struck. Mostly from the state of his current company.

They were nomads, he knew, but not Dracula’s men. This lot were too fresh for that. In fact, some wore tailoring that the locals weren’t accustomed to apart from tourists and the occasional city dweller passing through. He wouldn’t bet money on how many were ‘donated’ from past victims and how many were afforded through helping themselves to said victims’ purses and personal cheques. They were a dapper group, whichever the case.

From what he picked up while feigning unconsciousness, there was someone missing from their assembly. Someone’s…paramour? Wife? A young woman close to the presumed leader. Some grousing about superstitious idiots. Counter-grousing about precaution and history and how somebody’s cousin’s friend was slaughtered by the ‘superstitions.’ A third sect was grumbling about how thin Jonathan’s pockets were for a supposed noble, monster or not.

“A half-full purse and a few strips of dried pork don’t particularly line up with your theory, Jacob.”

“Props, idiot. Would some common huntsman be wearing what he wears? Would he have these?”

Jonathan heard the heavy jingle of his set of the castle’s keys. They had taken the ring of them from its chain among a handful of other lightweight treasures. All that and his wedding ring. That would cost them.

“Oh, yes. Of course. Because all the revenants who run a swatch of the Carpathians’ government are surely wandering around with frightful things like jerky and house keys.”

“Are you blind? Do these look like house keys? Half of them look older than the mountains!”

“Well, perhaps that is the ‘prop’ of his property, eh? A fancy set of keys made to look old. They certainly haven’t any rust. It wouldn’t be a terrible gimmick these days. Everyone is a fiend for the local bogeyman or a good haunting. I would do tours with my own castle, dribble a little red sauce on my lip, charge a fee for the thrill and the courtesy of not killing anyone on the way out.”

“You talk like it’s a joke. This, when I was raised in these godforsaken crags, and my own neighbor lost their newborn and its mother in the same night! The father blew his brains out when he found what was left of them in the forest. His forest.” The words were hissed in Jonathan’s direction. “God! If we had known how easy it was to take him by daylight!”

There was a snort. The leader’s voice. Sour.

“You say ‘we’ like you weren’t still in nappies, Jake. Like the castle in question isn’t a fortress on a cliff in the dead center of the mountains, all covered with wolves and your frightful bloodsuckers. What would Mama and Papa do if they knew better back then? March all the way up with the neighborhood and hope they made it in time before sunset? That’s assuming the advised tools of the trade actually mean anything against the bastard in question. If he’s as old as legends claim, throwing himself through a hundred wars’ meat grinders with his head and heart and all his other giblets getting minced, with him still standing after it, who’s to say an axe and stake are enough?”

A kick was delivered to the chair Jonathan sat bound to.

“Assuming this piece of work is said bastard.” Spoken with equal parts resignation and frustration. “I’ll grant he looked a bit off in broad daylight. Sure as hell would pass for a cadaver. But if this is the man who had your slovenly little villages soiling themselves after dark, I’m not impressed.”

Snickers from most of the room. A few grimmer sounds from the believers.

“If you don’t believe us, then—,”

“I believe in precaution, Jake. There are strange things in the world. If we want to believe that talking pile of dust, Vordenberg, who I’ll admit was a museum exhibit in his own right, we had us a near miss back in Gratz. So, fine. We finish this in the fashion of the locals. We can even set the pieces on fire if it makes you happy. Not the point. The point is—,”

A hand caught in Jonathan’s hair and wrenched his bowed head up, making the back of his skull throb anew.

“—we know Katrina was seen with you last, you ghoul.”

Jonathan opened his eyes. It had a noticeably sobering effect on much of the room. His host even eased his hold enough to stop trying to rip Jonathan’s hair out. A glance was spared for the assembled party. Easier now that he wasn’t doing it through his lashes. They really were a well-dressed bunch. One of them even wore the silver watch taken from Jonathan’s pocket quite well, though it clashed somewhat with the dagger he was fiddling with. He’d sprung for a handle with a gold hilt.

“Well?” He received a last yank before the man flung his head against the back of the chair. “Where is she?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know anyone by that name. Could you describe her?”

“Oh, I doubt if she would give her real one out to anyone. But we know you know her, Count.”

Jonathan felt the headache blossoming into a migraine.

“Count?”

“Dracula,” the one called Jacob grated out. He stood close to the table with his hand near the aforementioned tools of the trade. A wood axe. A sharpened garden stake and a sledgehammer. Matches. But he, like the rest of his friends, was content to leave his other hand resting on the pistol at his hip. “Don’t think you can throw your word games around here, you leech. You are not boyar here. You are not even a monster by daylight. Just a man—,”

“A man I am talking to, Jake,” from the leader. He turned back to Jonathan. “You see we have some bias in the retinue. Now, Jake and his cadre believe you are, in fact, the same awful old man who likely played out his Báthory fantasies by killing off a few local rustics for kicks once upon a time. Same white hair, same carcass complexion, and some properly unhealthy-looking windows of the soul. As an aside, you have the same body heat as a slab from the butcher. If you had a chance of living beyond today, I might have recommended you see a doctor about your circulation.

“Because I, like the bulk of the room, am of the belief that you are Count Dracula in the sense that the original Count and some Countess loved each other very much and managed to squat your malformed self out into the world before croaking. And, before departing, father dearest passed on the family tradition of idly killing off whoever was convenient as a little hobby. Am I near enough?”

Jonathan said nothing. Chiefly because he was fighting a wave of nausea, but also because it allowed him to keep his gaze steady. The westward window was visible over his host’s shoulder.

“I asked you a question.”

“I will answer if you tell me how you possibly concluded that a middle-aged man walking in the woods was a nobleman.”

To his surprise, the man revealed his evidence: the tarnished gold clasp of a dragon sitting against a garnet setting. This would also cost them.

“Hard to imagine the average hiker idling around in that corner of the wilds with this particular emblem on his coat.”

“That’s true,” Jonathan nodded. “I am not a hiker or a hunter any more than I’m a count. I am only the castle’s retainer.”

“Ah, well. That’s different. We are men of the people, sir, and we take pride in doing our fellow servile class the courtesy of a quick death. It’s only the aristos and nouveau riche who get the extra effort. Them and bleached out old bastards who go around taking what’s ours. What’s mine.” Jonathan watched the man slide a handsome pearl-handled blade from his pocket. It had a very fine edge. “Case in point, a certain young lady, of the flaxen and doe-eyed variety, being spotted in town with an older man of very unique description, not two days ago. Who she left with in his goddamn caleche.”

The blade came down in a gleaming arc. It sank cleanly into Jonathan’s left shoulder. Jonathan screamed at this and at the blade being flicked out. The steel was wiped clean on his sleeve.

“It should go without saying,” the leader said over Jonathan’s noise, steadily dwindling into hard breaths behind his teeth, “that the locals have a few choice theories about just who and what the man driving those horses is. Human? Dead? Dracula or one of his cohorts? Anyone who’d know for certain is either underground or a living antique themselves. Oh. But they did point out you seemed polite enough, according to most. Not someone anyone is eager to shake hands with, but fair. If you are the old devil of before, the younger generation are relieved you’ve gone mellow with the new century. Well done on the new leaf.”

“They were lying,” Jacob intoned, the picture of exasperation. “We all used to lie about him! He had eyes and ears everywhere! You didn’t mention him aloud unless you wanted to wake up to your child missing or you yourself being drunk dry or taken apart! I’m telling you, Katrina is already gone or worse!” His hand clutched eagerly at the whittled garden stake. “Let us be done with this, Anthony.” 

Anthony gave his blade another cleaning swipe. He opened his mouth—

“The stake is wrong.”

—and closed it. He and the others peered down at Jonathan as he righted himself against the chair. The migraine was marching in circles around his head now, lighting fireworks and banging pans. At least his shoulder was a small distraction.

“Say again?”

“The stake. You haven’t finished the end of it. If you don’t burn the point down, harden it, the wood will just splinter if you don’t get it in one blow. One of you took the flint lighter from my coat, yes? Use that and save yourself the matches.”

The room looked owlishly at him. Jacob and his small band especially. Awkwardly, one of the latter fished out the stolen lighter and began cooking the point with its steady flame.

“See that? He’s already feeling accommodating.” Anthony clapped his palm with heavy chumminess against the wounded shoulder. Jonathan winced appropriately, stealing another squinting glance at the window. “Care to keep in this giving mood, or would you like me to even things out?” The blade pointed airily at Jonathan’s right shoulder.

“No need. I said before, I do not know anyone named Katrina. But I did give a ride to a young woman two days ago. Not ‘flaxen,’ though. Her hair was red.”

Anthony abruptly straightened. The blade twisted and fidgeted in his fingers.

“Red,” under Anthony’s breath. His brow furrowed. “She took the wig too?” There was a low murmur from the less vampirically-invested portion of the group, of that specific tone that declares ‘I told you so’ by vowels alone. Anthony whirled on these members like a viper. Several mouths snapped shut. “Did you lot have something you wished to share? Hmm? I’m all ears.”

Interest increased in the state of each other’s shoes, the floor, the lovely view of the mountains, and the progress of the stake. It was now neatly blackened and free of loose slivers. Jacob stood by with it, toying with it as Anthony had his knife. He kept trying and failing to meet Jonathan’s gaze.

“Ah,” Anthony grinned mirthlessly, “that’s what I thought you said.” The blade flashed. “Now, Count, Retainer, Whoever or Whatever, while you are being forthcoming, is she alive or dead? I confess I might be just as happy with one or the other at this point, so no need to fret over a lie.”

“She was alive the last time I saw her. I dropped her off outside Bistritz,” Jonathan said, clearly recalling turning the horses toward Bukovina. He winced again as Anthony laid a hand on the bleeding shoulder, driving his thumb against the wound as he leaned.

“And? How did the bitch pay for her ride? Did you introduce her to necrophilia or did she just throw my money at you?”

“Neither. I am a married man and you can tell I had no bank vault in my pockets. In any case, I must assume whatever she took from you was fair recompense.” Jonathan felt a shift come through him. The old cold tilt that made him lean three-quarters of the way out of humanity and into something else. Whatever it was that lit his eyes and froze the air around him. That made the entire room shift an unconscious inch back. “Considering the state of her face.”

Anthony’s own countenance squirmed between aggravation, anger, and a surreal flash of embarrassment. As if leaving the girl’s face mottled with patches in shades of plum and charcoal was the equivalent of friends overhearing a marital spat in the next room. The man’s lip curled, making the well-trimmed whiskers twitch.

“Do forgive me if my decorum isn’t up to your standards, sir. I tend to get a touch irate when the thankless sow I’ve been bedding not only comes within inches of blowing our cover over some brat who went and poked his head out at the wrong time, but has the gall to try and resign after a few threadbare months. As if I didn’t scrape the little strumpet out of the gutter with my own hands.” A storm roiled in the man’s face. “Had a whole life of gold ahead of her, getting to play out her idiot actress dreams, and she thanks us by taking off with three hotels’ worth of work. Over a goddamn toddler. But that is the way with women, isn’t it? Always falling apart over a babe.”

“Men as well, in my experience,” Jonathan hummed. His line of sight drifted back to Jacob, whose attention was now firmly split between Jonathan and the view from the west window. Even halfway through spring, the sunsets did still tend to rush in the mountains. Shadows were already starting to stretch.

“Personal experience?” Anthony asked with an appraising glance that saw value in the negatives with Jonathan’s mien. “Is there a little Dracula pup crawling around nursing on the countryside?”

“Oh, no. He’s grown out of crawling. Apart from roaming along the castle walls, when he wants to surprise me. There’s no getting away with it with his mother.” Jonathan swallowed a bitter lump, knowing it had to be heard aloud, “Or his father.” Jacob was looking at him now. This time Jonathan held his eyes as they grew an increment wider. A slight dew of sweat had formed on the young man’s brow. “I only know where they are half the time. But they can always find me.”

Anthony barked an acidic note that tried to be a laugh.

“Is this the part where you tell us you’ll be missed? That there’s some cavalry who will come seeking vengeance? Please spare yourself the storytelling. If you were anything other than a relic living off a skeleton staff you wouldn’t be driving your own horses or puttering around by your lonesome. Really, what we’re doing here is a public good. What’s the loss of one more parasite riding into the twilight of peerage’s relevance?”

“Regrettably, he has thought ahead on that,” Jonathan admitted. “The gold he’s already sitting on is kept partly for emergency seed money, but mostly as a memento. He’s been on top of the capitalistic pulse since 1652 going by the oldest records. Given another decade, I believe he’ll be a magnate in a dozen industries from here to the United Kingdom.” A genuine moue puckered his face. “He calls it investing in the live-stock. No, I didn’t think it was funny either.”

This he addressed to Jacob.

Jacob, who had to set the stake down because his hand was shaking.

Jacob, who had been keeping watch of him and the window and seen how blandly Jonathan greeted the approaching dusk.

Jacob, who had finally taken a closer look at what Jonathan wore under his coat. His coat, worn because he was always cold—a chill that he truly felt. Covering an ensemble of boots, long sleeves, and a high collar. In mid-April. 

“…You still have time,” Jonathan told him gently. “If you had your childhood here, you know there’s time. You still wear your crucifix, yes?” Jacob flicked his gaze up to Jonathan’s. His whole face seemed to shine with perspiration. He did not know what was wrong yet, what piece was missing, but he scented something. “Do you? Any of you?”

Jacob nodded jerkily. The men behind him did likewise. Some fidgeted at their shirts.

“That’s good. It sickens them, did you know? Stings them away from the throat.” Jonathan smiled for him. A sad curl. “Hold it out before you if you like.” He tipped up his chin. Just above the shirt collar was a glimpse of sickish color against the maggot-white skin. Something worse than a bruise. “You can check. Or ask one of your friends. But it does help to know for certain. To have it confirmed.” The smile grew worse in its apology. “There have been no vampire attacks in Transylvania for the past fifteen years. The youngest around here take it all as local legends. Parents’ and grandparents’ fairy tales. Because they grew up without knowing what you do. Without realizing why people stopped disappearing after dark when Count Dracula still rules here. When there are still sharp mouths to feed up in his mountains.”

Jacob gawped openly now. He looked strangely like the boy he might have been fifteen years ago, hearing his neighbors whisper and moan about the latest loss in the night. Fifteen years ago, when a foolish young Englishman had come to Castle Dracula, and everyone had known. No one had seen him again…supposing one belonged to a family who had moved away at last, daring their monstrous master’s ire to save their son.

“Oh, for God’s sake, what is this? Are we playing theatre now?” Anthony and his handful of fellow eye-rollers looked between Jonathan and Jacob as if expecting to spot some invisible party holding up script cards for them. “Jake, if you want to play at slaying the vampire, you are welcome to it. Get your stick and your hammer and have at it. Erik, take the axe.” He waved his blade like an impatient conductor with his baton. “Well?”

Jacob moved forward without the stake. His crucifix was held out as far as the cord would allow.

Then he hooked Jonathan’s shirt collar and pulled it open.

Jonathan hadn’t been able to get a good look at the full state of himself in some while. Occasionally he might steal a glance in a mirror for sale or a clean shop window in town. There was rarely anything good to see as far as his development went. Age was not weathering him the way it would an ordinary man. What should have become the easy creasing of crow’s feet and smile lines had given way to something sunken and grey. More than a few children had come to nickname him ‘Herr Geist’ when he passed through. On one occasion, he’d been approached by an American claiming to be a talent scout for a circus who thought Jonathan could easily bill as, The Walking Corpse.

But that was all just the effect of his face. He hadn’t seen his throat or a clear view of his shoulders in years; the real estate with the greatest number of visits for fifteen years. It had to be at least twice as unpleasant a sight as his forearms, pocked by only one hungry mouth’s nursing. To judge by the shudder of revulsion that jolted the entire room back on its heels, his neck was apparently quite the visual.

To judge by Jacob’s expression, the discolored map of ruined skin and old punctures was his own obituary in all capitals. Nor was it a very peaceful end it spelled out. His eyes rolled up to Jonathan’s like wet marbles. Jonathan could no longer maintain his smile, however somber. There was only condolence in the look.

“I told you. I am Castle Dracula’s retainer. At least, in the sense of a retaining wall. I have played the role of its inhabitants’ personal bloodletting pantry for a quarter of a century. Which would be cause enough to worry. But I am also a married man and that is worse.”

Jacob wobbled on his feet like a sapling in a high breeze. He almost fell over with a cry when the first thunderclap boomed over the cabin’s roof. A horrified look shot to the westward window. Sunset was less than a jagged slit across the mountaintops, already erased in the smear of a rushing storm. Lightning drew livid eyes in the clouds.

“I am sorry. You might have had a chance if you hadn’t been cautious,” Jonathan went on. “There would have been a coin toss if you had simply shot me dead in the forest. I fear I am testing everyone’s patience in that household by keeping to my contract against turning until the twenty-year mark. Special occasion and all that. But if you had gone with a bullet or a slit throat, that would mean that I would be undead by sundown. You would still be slain for trespassing on private property,” he gestured to himself as best he could with his bound hands, “but it would have been tidier. They might even be grateful for ripping off the plaster and booting me over the threshold. A mere snapped neck apiece.  

“Unfortunately, I saw your tools of the trade. I heard your plans for ‘destroying the vampire,’ or the madman playing pretend as such. Heart staked, head removed, burn the body. All very thorough. But because I saw and heard these things, they saw and heard these things. Just as they know your faces now.”

Thunder snarled again. An explosive sound joined with a noon-bright flicker of lightning. Wolves sang a violent song. Close.

Jacob’s friends within the gang were talking in frantic tones to each other. The rationalists of Anthony’s side of the room seemed a touch less comfortable where they stood, grasping at their holsters. Anthony himself looked as if he was waiting to wake from a particularly confusing dream.

Jacob’s eyes were running. Pleading. A man only five short years past being a boy.

Jonathan still could not hold a smile for him, but he spoke in the tone he had for Quincey the time he’d came across a bat with a half-broken neck in the forest. Wings smashed, head cracked open, it had been alive in the worst way. Quincey had been thirteen then, considering himself practically a skip away from adulthood. He had still gone to his Papa, eyes dewy with blood trying not to spill, asking please…please…

Jonathan thought back to how his son had hidden in his coat sleeve while he ended the creature’s pain with a brisk twist.

It was quick, you see? It won’t hurt anymore now, shh, it’s alright, son.

“It’s alright,” he said in the present. “You still have time.” Not much. A few minutes at most. But still, “You’ll be safe from it. From all of it.”

Jacob nodded with a twitch. A puppet on a caught string. His hand trembled as it held up the crucifix again.

“…May I keep this? After?” Jonathan nodded. “Thank you.”

Jacob kissed the Cross and tucked it under his shirt.

“Jake, I swear to God, if you don’t drop this act, I will—,”

Bang.

The sound was almost lost in another thunderclap. Not so for the sound of Jacob’s corpse hitting the floor, the new tunnel in his head oozing a scarlet pond out from under his skull. There was a moment of quiet.

Then the wolves bayed again.

The men bayed too. Curses and questions of equal inanity whirled around the room.

Bang.

The sound of Anthony’s own pistol firing a hole through the ceiling.

“Shut. Up. Every one of you, bite your idiot tongues.” The barrel swung to point at Jonathan’s temple. “He says he has people on the way? He says they’re vampires or werewolves or the Four Horsemen a-riding? Then it would perhaps behoove us to think rather than squeal like women over this,” his shoe struck Jacob’s corpse, “fool’s choice of exit. Coward.” He snapped his fingers at the room. “Come on! Block the windows, set up arms! Move!”

And so they moved. Some men scrambled and shouldered into each other trying to cover the windows. Chairs were broken into pieces for stakes. Guns were unpacked and loaded. Erik held the axe as if his hands were welded to it. Anthony, meanwhile, took one of the unbroken chairs for himself and perched at Jonathan’s side. Something between supreme irritation and a baffled sort of wonder shaped his face.

“I do have to give you credit if this is all improvisation on your part. You should have been booked at the Grand Guignol instead of rotting up here.”

Jonathan watched Erik begin to pace, gripping the axe as though it doubled for a shield.

“That or one of those hypnotist acts. Jake was always a nervous one. An easy mark, ironically enough.”

Jonathan’s peripheral caught on Erik’s figure as he came to a stop by the door. There was no peephole to spy through, yet he inclined his head toward it. His ear was cocked as if listening for something under the thunder and wolves.

“But supposing this amounts to something more than an act, I admit I’m curious to see what these things are supposed to be like outside the pulp on the bookshelves or clogging up the stage. Everyone has their opinion on them these days.”

Erik first frowned, then nodded at the bolted door. The anxious creases of his face began to smooth. A smile tugged his lips up as the axe lowered.

“Are they the same kind of horror show as you?”

“Usually quite the opposite,” Jonathan allowed. “But that is by choice. They make some rather impressive exceptions when the occasion calls for it.”

Erik set the axe down. His freed hands moved the wooden bolt aside and reached for the key on its hook. This didn’t go unnoticed. The nearest man, one of Jacob’s friends, jolted toward him.

“Erik, what the hell are you doing?”

“Didn’t you hear her?” Erik spoke over him in a dreaming lilt. “The girl outside. Lovely voice.” He turned the key in the lock. “She and her brother got lost in the storm.” He turned the knob. “Wouldn’t be right to leave them out th—,”

Bang.

Erik dropped like a felled tree. Jacob’s friend whirled on the rest of the room, his gun and free hand up. He had his crucifix worn outside his shirt now.

“I had to! You know I had to! Jacob and old Vordenberg laid it out, didn’t they? You invite the things in and it’s all over!” He pointed at the door with the new stain on its timber. “One of them is out there right now, trying to worm into our heads, so we’ll let it over the threshold.”

As every eye nailed itself to the man and the door and the second corpse within five minutes, no one paid attention to the fireplace. They had not lit it, having opted solely for lamps. Chimney smoke would give away their location to anyone happening by the area.

Only Jonathan stared at the open stone mouth of the hearth. Watching what crawled out. Watching it watch him.

Anthony swatted Jonathan in his bad shoulder. He looked up and realized he’d been asked a question.

“Pardon?”

“Is he. Telling. The truth. Or did Erik lose his brains over nothing?”

“A vampire cannot cross the threshold of someone’s home without invitation. I think, at a stretch, you could call this temporary base of yours ‘home.’ Strict definition is tricky for travelers. But if you declare this place yours—,”

“We do,” insisted half the room in unison.

“We do,” Anthony echoed, somewhat dryly. “Our lovely domicile, this. And we are strictly against welcoming any visitors tonight.”

“Understandable. But there’s still the trouble of this afternoon. It’s hard to be more insistent about an invitation than resorting to abduction.”

“And? What of it?”

The fireplace continued to purge its contents out and out and out. Cooling the room like a thin and steady gust. Heads finally began to turn as gooseflesh spread and the sight became unignorable: A thick mist had been pouring into the room since Erik’s brains splattered on the door.

“You thought I was Count Dracula. Whether I was him or not, he was the man you wanted here.” Jonathan looked Anthony in the eye. He was not surprised at what he found there as it squirmed and sweated. “I’m afraid you invited him in two hours ago.”

The lamps guttered. One snuffed. Then its neighbor. A third, a fourth. Voices raised in tandem with the weapons.

“Light them!” came the universal cry. “Turn them back up, come on!”

But the room blackened and blackened until it came down to one canny fellow who’d dived for a lantern. The same man who’d pocketed the flint lighter. He lit the lantern and set it shakily on the table, its glow seemingly safer than the lamps’. The lighter was almost as bright in his hand, making a spotlight for himself in the ruddy gloom.

“What? What is it?”

Every head was turned to face him. Every eye wide enough to show its whites, like the stares of startled horses. The man opened his mouth to utter a third query—and stopped.

There was a hand on his shoulder. Cold. Far colder than the man he’d taken the lighter from. Its fingers ended in claws.

Above his head, the firelight caught on what might charitably be called a grin. It was, in fact, the default state of Count Dracula’s jaw in this shape. A medley of the wolf and the bat and the nightmares that are born when children’s imaginations first start to sketch the things that will eat them in the dark.

Jonathan wished he could have closed his eyes for all that followed. He did try. But there was an implicit order sunk into his mind that demanded he watch. Had this been a decade ago, this may have been for the sake of an object lesson.

This is what I can do. This is what I would have done to your little hunting party at the right hour, with your guard down for an instant. This is what I will do to any sheltering cattle you try to run away to with wife and child. Watch, my friend. Watch.

But that was practically a lifetime past. They were coming up on a mere five years until the wait was over and his free will and the final fig leaf of humanity was forfeit. Which suggested that he was a captive audience solely for the fact that an audience was desired. There was some artistry to it all, in a medieval sense. Some of the acts performed with the makeshift stakes and the barrels of guns and certain repurposed bones reminded Jonathan of old woodcuts left out for him to see once upon a time, back in that first summer alone with the castle’s Master.  

By the time one of the men died choking on his own severed arm, the rest of the lot stopped shooting and herded themselves to the door, desperate. To their relief, there was no vampire at the threshold. They fled.

A heartbeat passed before the screaming began anew. Gunfire mingled with it. The screaming dwindled down and down, the choir thinning to a single shriek that ended on a terrible sound. Wet and crunching. Wolves were heard soon after.

Anthony had not moved from his position behind Jonathan’s chair. He’d resumed his grip on his hair, this time holding his blade just below the Adam’s apple.

“If you don’t have a head,” Anthony panted at the Count, now busy picking gristle from the spades of his nails, “you can’t be undead. The plays make a lot of fuss about staking the heart, but this?” He tugged Jonathan’s head back another inch and pressed the blade’s edge until the skin broke. “I figure it’s a fair bit more vital. I am a practiced man at my profession and quick when I need to be. You want him in one piece instead of two, you leak yourself out the door, call off your pets, and I’ll send him on his way come sunrise.” Though he couldn’t see him, Jonathan was certain the man was trying to smile. “If you’re amenable, perhaps we can even get a silver lining out of this whole thing.”

Dracula sucked a piece of sinew out of his thumbnail.

“I am accustomed to getting my hands dirty. While I’ve been in the habit of leading assorted hapless dregs around, I can easily see myself following someone worth respect. Your friend here indicated he’s on the edge of retirement anyway, and I imagine you could do with someone to step into the role. Or add to the ranks.”

Dracula busied himself with scanning the floor. He plucked up the silver watch still chained to a torso that was twisted like a wrung washcloth. A scowl was spared upon retrieving the key ring from a puddle of a head. Then the pouch containing Jonathan’s allowance. He deposited each bit of treasure found on the table. The last thing he discovered was Jonathan’s wedding ring. He seemed to ponder flicking it aside, but saw Jonathan watching. The ring was dropped in the pile the way one might discard a clump of dirt.

“Well?” from Anthony. “Do you talk or not?”

“I do,” from the Count. “Though not usually to vermin. Especially ones who raid my pantry.”

“Honest mistake on our part. I hadn’t realized you were the one-in-a-thousand legend that isn’t just the fumes of an invented ghost story.”

“I see.” Dracula bent and retrieved the stake that had its point burned. It left the holster of a man’s sternum with a damp sound. “And this too was a mistake?”

“Just trying to placate the skittish sorts in the party. You saw how Jake was.”

“I did.” The Count tapped the stake’s point against his chin, pondering. “In fact, I think I recall a face like his. A sailor I met once. He took to the sea, having no bullet in reach.” He leveled the stake at Anthony’s head. “You called him a coward for this, yes?”

“Am I wrong?”

“There is a fine line between cowardice and wisdom,” Dracula shrugged. “It moves more than you would think. Little Jacob was wise tonight, if sadly mistaken in his target. He was not the first of his type. Likely not the last. The same goes for you, vermin. You, who squeak and chitter about preying upon the predator, and then try to sell yourself to the cat.” Though much of his face had reset to a human shape, the Count’s teeth remained a bristling forest of white needles when he grinned. “I have had this land in my jaws for half a millennium. I have not gone a single century without your like slinking underfoot, thinking to kiss my cape and offer a tithe of others’ throats to win my favor. My power.”

“Way of the world, isn’t it? Strong bows to stronger. What makes this cadaver,” another jerk on Jonathan’s hair, another throb in his skull, “so special? Better resumé? Seasoned arteries?”

“A number of things.” Another shrug, a twirl of the stake like a toy. “He does so hate to hear it anymore. It has been so long since any kind of praise heartened him and age has made him shy. But he cannot shush me, so I can say he does far more than bleed, be it himself or his victims of old. He certainly has a more impressive history than robbing and gutting tourists for a living, and so is far more attuned to the Law of this land than any other. Not the yapping dogs of mortal authorities. Not your jailor or judge or bureaucrat. Not even those of the sciences, such as they are.”

Thunder cracked and lightning danced. The Count’s eyes burned brighter than the lantern.

“He knows that I am Law in these mountains. That my will, my word, and my want order all that is here. He knows that there is no escaping consequence for trespassing upon what is mine. But.” The Count clapped the stake into his open palm with the joviality of a cruel teacher with his yardstick. “Beyond all this, he is something which guarantees his value over yours or any other’s. He warned you himself.” The jagged grin turned almost saccharine. “He is a married man. And you have kept him out far too late for his spouses’ liking.”  

Anthony shifted behind the chair. The grip on Jonathan’s hair shuddered a moment as if suddenly repulsed to be touching it.

“God. Even the monsters are in on that depravity up here?”

“Depravity is a pastime of mine. But I am not so low as to debase myself by touching filth like yours.” So saying, the Count raised both hands in mock surrender. “I shall not waste my time or teeth on you.”

“Fine. Fine, you say that and I can believe you. Once you’re out the door.”  

The door, still open.

The door, which Anthony had not dared to look at for fear of taking eyes off the Count.

The door, full of mist.

“Ah, but I cannot go yet. There is a show I have been so looking forward to. You mentioned the Grand Guignol. Such a promising establishment! I plan to see it in person some night. But for now, we must content ourselves with your meager scene.”

Anthony opened his mouth to ask something. Say something. Maybe he was just drawing breath. Whatever the reason, his mouth froze in a voiceless O of epiphany.

There was a hand on his shoulder. Cold.

It distracted him from the other, decorated with its simple gold band, locking around the man’s forearm; the one responsible for holding the blade.

Snap.

Anthony’s mouth dropped open wider, belting a screech that left Jonathan’s ears ringing. Then the man was torn away from the back of the chair and all the noise of him was pinned and shrilling on the floor. Laced over the ensuing sounds of his dismantling, both vocal and visceral, was a voice that threaded through the mind more than the ear:

He cut you. Twice he cut you.

“I’ll be fine, Mina.” Said because there was concern in the statement. There was. But, more pertinently, there was the accusation. The condemnation. The citing of the crime.

He cut you. He meant to kill you. He meant to unmake you out of reach forever.

Anthony made a new and piercing noise. The kind just an octave short of a dog whistle. Jonathan winced.

“And he failed to. It’s alright, Darling.”

“Hardly,” from the Count, now turning Anthony’s abandoned seat around to face the slaughter. “You are too soft as always, my friend. Even when it comes to a rightful culling. Or do you think they deserved to live after their crimes?”

“I think this was excessive.” Jonathan withheld a sigh as Dracula hooked the back of his chair, hoisting and turning it so that his back was no longer to Mina’s work. She seemed to have an innate understanding of what could be taken apart and to what degree, the better to leave Anthony still clinging miserably to a thread of life. “And I also think I’m ready to have these off.”

He flexed his hands and feet as far as they could go against the ropes.

“Have what off?” Dracula asked as he swiped a finger into the shoulder wound. A child stealing cake icing. He clicked his tongue. “This would happen just after a feeding. All this guilt-free cuisine and your knights-errant are too full to enjoy the banquet. A pity. Have you eaten?”

“If I had my hands free, I could get my—,” Jonathan pursed his lips as Dracula brandished a bouquet of the retrieved dried pork. Deciding against waiting for the mesmer to prod him into it, he opened his mouth a crack. Bit. Chewed.

“Do you suppose the Grand Guignol has concessions? Any actual blood used in place of the stage swill?”

Jonathan swallowed. A nauseous feat, considering the piece Mina removed from Anthony in the same moment. 

“I doubt any director is so dedicated, Sir.” Anthony was growing quieter now. There wasn’t enough air in him. Jonathan could tell by the glimpse of lung through his ribs. “Does Quincey know about this?”

No. It was blocked from him. He believes we are out on business.

Crunch. Twist. Rip.

Anthony went silent and still at last. Dracula afforded this a light round of applause.

“Not wholly a lie, you will grant. Though I suspect the boy thinks it was code for a more,” the Count made a face caught between glee and disdain, “intimate excursion. Which should be an easy enough ward against any prying you fear from him. You may have made a sickening romantic of the boy, but there is never a child alive or undead who wishes to know what his parents get up to out of his sight.” The Count craned his head, squinting at what was left of Anthony. “Did you come across it?”

That depends. Where’s mine?

Mina stood with the dragon clasp in one red hand and her other held out and open. Dracula idled a moment or three longer than was necessary before the stolen wedding band was produced. Clasp and ring were thrown rather than exchanged. Jonathan had each reattached to him. Though the Count spared a curse in three different languages at finding the coat not only mangled at the shoulder, but torn where the clasp had been ripped away.

“As if they could not understand the mechanics of a brooch? You should have pinned this in his eye.”

You should have fed him the stake. Look at this.

Mina touched the nick on Jonathan’s throat.

I know you count my wound as a blessing, but I would think you’d not risk losing his voice.

“I had to stall while you cleared up the leftovers outside. I may as well have left you with the boy.”

And lost your show and your diversion.

“You—,”

“I cannot feel my feet anymore,” Jonathan announced. “And I would like to stitch and plaster myself before we head out. Whatever Quincey may think we’re up to, it will be easier to lie without me looking like I just left,” he gestured as best he could at the room, “this.”

A minor miracle came and went as there was no suggestion made that they simply lay a new bite apiece over the wounds. The ropes were cut, what was filched was returned to its owner, give or take a little scavenging of their own. Jacob and the others were left with their tokens of the Son. Outside, the wolves went on enjoying the meal Mina had left for them. Up until a titanic thunderbolt struck the cabin and sent them scrambling. The building went up like a great bonfire.

“I know, my friend, you were clearly looking forward to digging more graves. But you must admit my method is quicker and far more thorough in erasing evidence.” The nettling cadence waned. “I suggest you avoid wandering away from the castle for some time. Considering your state.”

Not while dressed in this, at the very least. It’s clear this insignia draws as much ire as it deters.

“A fluke,” the Count huffed. “Such degenerates as those are rare. The chattel know better. Besides, the folly was in drawing attention by playing Good Samaritan to the wrong victim and her maudlin pleading. Something else to keep in mind.” Jonathan tried and failed to keep his head down as the hook landed in his mind and turned his eyes up. Dead blue against burning red. “At least for as long you insist on holding to your last few years as…this.”

Jonathan bit into his last strip of the dried pork. Loudly.

“Five years. That’s all.”

“Four and a half.”

“Four and a half I mean to savor. In-between being waylaid.” The careful placidity fractured as his free hand drifted up to the back of his skull. Still aching. “I think I shall finish off the Golden Mediasch tonight.” His hand was plucked away by Mina’s own, her chilled fingers seeking out the tender place under his hair. Her fingertips felt the scabbing patch.

I should have skinned him.

“You are welcome to stroll through the fire and do so,” the Count hummed. But his smile stopped short of his eyes and his own hand swept Mina’s away to thumb at the ache. “The Mediasch is barely more than fruit juice. You will want something stronger.”

Jonathan didn’t argue. Nor did he protest when the horses of his ex-hosts were commandeered for the return to the castle. Quincey thrilled at the sight of them almost as if they had arrived riding wolves. Was this the business they went on? Tunet and Pretekár were quite new—and solid obsidian as the horses before had been—but it was good to see them gain more company. And they’d picked piebald this time!

“They’re beautiful. Do they have names yet?”

“Thought we’d leave that to you,” Jonathan managed lightly enough. Or nearly so. Quincey frowned at him, nose pricking at the smell of dried blood.

“Papa, are you alright? You—,” his eyes landed on the coat, “—what happened?”

 “Just a quick lesson from our new friends about minding their moods. I was tossed and landed in a less than opportune pile of rocks.”

Quincey scowled at that and scrutinized the stallions.

“Which one? I’m not riding him. Or petting him, even.” He considered. “At least for a month.”

“Seems a cruelty too far. I suppose I just won’t reveal the guilty party.”

“And what if I get on the wrong horse and I get tossed and land on a rock somewhere? What then?”

“Then you will get back up and be perfectly alright. Or am I misremembering the night you fell asleep on the side of the north turret and fell through half a tree on your way down?”

“Yes, well. They were fairly soft branches.” Quincey fought and lost the attempt to keep his smile up. “Papa?”

“Yes?”

“The horses weren’t the actual business, were they? You could have gotten them yourself.”

“That’s true. The horses were only picked up afterward. Quite a bargain, not counting the lumps.”

“Then what happened?”

Jonathan looked at his son. His Sweetheart, though the boy had finally started to bud into that stage that visits all adolescents, demanding a shedding of childhood names. There was a dusting of stubble barely fringing his jaw and his mother’s own whorls outgrowing the edges of his last haircut. But the eyes were still a child’s. Bright and molten as the sun at dusk.

“…There was some trouble two days ago. I aided a girl trying to leave behind some people who hurt others. Who hurt her. They had some less than scrupulous plans for the future and had already bypassed local authorities to get where they were by the time I crossed them. So I reached out for some assistance.” And, because he felt the air prickling with observation, “Your Father was very keen to educate them on the difference between the laws of other lands versus the Law of his land. And your Mum has always been of a rescuer’s bent as a rule. So.”

“So Mum and Father caught them? Together?” The sunset eyes gleamed at the prospect.  

“They did,” Jonathan nodded.

“Were they bandits?”

“Of a sort. But they won’t hurt anyone now.” Jonathan watched from the corner of his eye how the boy, so near to a young man, glowed over the notion of being a son to heroes.

He got to the tower before he felt his eyes begin to sting as sharply as his head.