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Rachel Van Helsing ran for the safety of the church, but she knew she would not make it. Dracula was too close. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted a movement and the vampire's shout of triumph altered to one of frustration. She wasted a moment to glance over her shoulder. There, between herself and the towering, raging vampire was a small figure with a glowing cross. She stumbled into the church. Strong arms were there to catch her. Professor Harker, Frank and Blade had all made it to the rendezvous.
"How many?" Prof. Harker asked.
"Five before he caught me," Rachel replied.
"I got four," Frank told them.
"Seven," Blade said shortly. No one questioned his number since they all knew his deadly accuracy with his wooden knives.
"And I got three," Harker told her.
Then the foursome turned to the stranger who stood at the edge of their group, but was not part of it.
He almost could have passed for a vampire himself, with his thin frame and pale skin.
"We're only after one," he said tightly, his eyes still on the scene outside.
They turned and looked out as well.
* * * * *
Elic stood his ground as the vampire raged, then he glanced over his shoulder. The girl was safely in the church.
"Who are you?" Dracula demanded. "You will pay for this interference, child." He turned to leave.
"No, wait!" Elic flung the cross into the underbrush.
Dracula spun, caught the boy's arm, and dragged him closer. "You will die," he hissed.
"I know," the boy replied, softly.
* * * * *
"No!" Rachel shouted and started to bolt out of the church.
"No!" the stranger grabbed at her. Frank and Blade caught her, holding her back.
* * * * *
Dracula tore the boy's shirt open and ripped at his throat. He drank deeply before he realized that what ran in the boy's veins was not blood. With a backhanded blow, he struck him away from himself.
* * * * *
A cry sounded at the front of the church and the man next to them moaned. Rachel spun. A man was rising from the floor, holding his right cheek. He exchanged a glance with the pale man next to them, then returned to the kneeler. The thin man rubbed his right cheek.
* * * * *
Dracula wiped his mouth and reached down. He lifted the boy with one hand.
"What are you?" he demanded, staring into the boy's eyes.
"Elic."
"Alien," Dracula determined. Elic nodded. Without another word, Dracula dragged the boy off. Elic didn't bother to fight the steely grip on his arm.
* * * * *
"Damn," the man swore softly as he watched the vampire pull his friend out of sight.
Harker turned his wheelchair to look at him. "How could you do that? Send that child out to face Dracula?"
The man looked at the group for the first time. "No one else can do it. Elic is the only one on Earth who can face a vampire and return unharmed."
"At what cost?"
"Elic is death to vampires. This is the eighth time we've faced a vampire, our first time to hunt one. Elic has killed them all. Seven of them died after drinking his blood, although one didn't die immediately and took several times before it killed him. The other impaled herself on a stake Elic was holding. We decided to try it, see if Dracula could be killed that way. You see, Dracula killed Megan, but left her undead."
"Who are you people?" Rachel asked.
The man's dark eyes seemed to look through her. "I am sorry," he said softly. "I am Stefon Parvel. That is Silver," he waved to the front of the church. "And our friend with the Count is Elic Behexan." He turned and joined his friend at the front of the church.
The four exchanged a glance, then Blade sauntered up there as well.
Stefon was leaning over a pew and Silver moved to intercept him.
"May I help you?" he asked, his voice soft. Blade noticed the beaded prayer chain he held in his hand.
"Maybe," Blade lowered his voice as well. "Who are you people? Who was Megan?"
"To save repeated explanations, " Silver said, "let's go join your friends."
They joined the rest and settled in pews at the back of the church.
"Nominally we are part of a drug rehabilitation center," he said, "but we are really much more. Meg was Stefon's second cousin, thought they had been friends for years before they discovered their relationship. Dracula," he said the name with disgust, "got Meg in Budapest last month. After she rose from the dead, she came straight to us in New York. She and Stefon talked all night, then went out to watch the sun rise.
"As you might expect, she did not survive it," Silver added bitterly.
"How did you find Dracula?" Frank asked.
"That part was simple," Silver told them. "Meg told us where he was."
"That made it easy," Harker said.
"No," Silver replied thoughtfully, "because it isn't easy to work out the politics of getting into the area. I got here yesterday, after you left. I saw your stuff and set up here as well. Stefon and Elic joined me shortly after that."
"Why didn't Meg follow Dracula like his other victims?" Blade asked.
Silver frowned. "Perhaps because Meg wasn't like the rest," he suggested. "Megan was literally one in a million. She had a stronger will than Dracula usually deals with."
"What do you mean?" Frank asked.
Silver looked at all of them carefully, then shrugged. "You know about vampires. What would you say if I told you that vampirism somehow releases the bounds on psi powers and that Dracula is a hypnopath?"
Blade and Frank laughed, even Rachel smiled, but the professor frowned at the comment.
"It is within possibility, but how would you know?"
"We -- Stefon, Elic and I -- are para-psychics or, as we colloquially refer to ourselves, telepaths."
"Mind readers?" Blade asked suspiciously.
"That is one of our talents," Silver admitted. "We have others. You see, Dracula, apparently, has never attacked a trained power person before. Megan did not fall into his hypnotic web. Instead, she came to us -- her 'family' of like powers. She told Stefon that her powers had been greatly heightened. Even the most mundane person's thoughts seemed as easy to read as another power person's. And a mundane, or norm as we call them, would be easily controlled because they have no blocks or mental shielding."
"Is that why vampires can control things like animals?" Rachel asked.
"I would think so," Silver replied. There came a faraway expression in his eyes. "Dracula has reached the castle," he said softly.
"How do you know?" Frank demanded.
"Elic told us," Silver replied. "Be brave, little one, be brave," he whispered to the thin air.
* * * * *
You will be all right, Stefon assured him.
'No, I won't,' Elic thought, but didn't send.
Being dragged up to the castle by the enraged vampire had been bad. Then Dracula hauled him down long flights of narrow, slippery stairs to a dank, foul-smelling level. Dracula pulled him into a cell and clasped cuffs on his wrists.
Elic couldn't see the vampire. Dracula's body temperature was the same as the room, his expanded vision into the infrared didn't help him this time. He strained his hearing to figure out what Dracula was going to do next. Dracula slammed him against the wall, then lifted him off the floor.
"Alien," Dracula murmured. "You didn't come all the way to Earth to meet me, but now you will die." Elic said nothing. "Never again will you see the star you call sun or the world you call Earth."
Even behind Elic's shields, he felt Dracula's frustration at the loss of the woman, anger at him interrupting, but no pain. Did Dracula not get enough of his blood to affect him? Or would he be like one of the vampires he had met before, and would come looking for more the next day?
Getting no response, the vampire left him.
Elic waited until Stefon told him the sun was up before dropping his shields and letting them teleport him back.
* * * * *
Stefon watched the sun peek over the hills and called to Elic. He held the boy as images flashed through his head. A quick physical check proved that Elic was, basically, unharmed. The injury to his throat already healed.
"How did he get here?" Rachel demanded.
"We teleported him here," Silver answered. The former priest reached into his bag and pulled out a crucifix and a jar of a violet substance.
Stefon led Elic off before the foursome could bother him. They sat outside in the thin spring sunshine, Elic eating from the jar..
* * * * *
For the first time in centuries, Dracula dreamed. It began with an outing that he had never taken in his youth, pleasant lunch in the spring sun, and ended laying in the radiance of the same sun that he hadn't seen in so long.
Dracula awoke ravenous and knew, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that the only thing that would satisfy him was the alien in the dungeon. As he tried to push the lid of the coffin aside, he realized that the sun had not yet set. He had awakened early. The sun, however, had no way of interfering with the short walk from his burial chambers and the pit that held the child. Dracula fought the lid open and stumbled from the vault.
The sub-basement chambers of the Castle Dracula honeycombed the mountain that it stood on.
Dracula grew stronger as the sun slipped behind the unseen curve of the Earth. By the time he got to the dungeon, he was almost back to normal. The sun had set.
The cell was empty. With a cry of rage, the vampire demanded that the boy return.
* * * * *
Elic, Stefon and Silver all sat bolt upright as the telepathic demand relayed through their link.
Rachel and Harker looked at the trio as the group seemed to grow, somehow, closer together. They turned as one and faced the direction of the castle.
Blade and Frank stumbled in. "The sun's set," Frank said breathlessly.
"We know," Harker told him and pointed at the three.
"Dracula is going to be mad," Blade said ominously, from his place by the door.
"He is mad," Silver said softly. As one, they seemed to relax. Stefon returned calmly to what must have been his sixth or seventh 'snack' of the day. Elic went over and sat down next to his friend.
"We'll let Dracula come to us," Silver stated firmly. He went to the front of the church to pray.
Dracula arrived shortly on a great, black horse.
"Send out the boy!" he commanded.
Stefon stepped just outside the door. The crucifix he held in his hand was hidden behind his back, protection but not coercion.
"You must not harm Elic," he stated firmly.
Dracula laughed. "What are you to give me orders?"
"I'm Elic's friend, I must have your agreement to not harm him before I allow him to come out."
That set Dracula back. This mortal would allow the boy to come out? Usually they tried to stop him from getting his chosen victim.
"How do you mean?" Dracula countered.
"You must not take too much from him and you leave him here when you're done."
"I will do as I please. How will you stop me?" He pushed the horse a few steps forward and stared at Stefon.
* * * * *
"Silver!" Elic cried, frantic.
"Dracula can't do it to Stefon. We know that now. We're with him."
* * * * *
Stefon pulled the crucifix from behind him. Dracula shouted and reined the horse back. Stefon hid the cross once more.
Dracula took a hard breath and said, "Why should I leave him here?"
"You know what Elic is, or is not," Stefon replied. "We'll just get him back tomorrow morning if you don't."
Again Dracula gave Stefon a piercing stare.
* * * * *
Inside the church, both Silver and Elic's eyes grew wide and they stood stiff and motionless.
* * * * *
Dracula's mind moved against the thin stranger's. Suddenly, his mind was sucked inside, more deeply and intensely then he had ever been before.
Rage beat at his mind with great force, a great searing ball of light, and behind that, a glowing crucifix.
His mind recoiled in shock.
Dracula slipped from the horse's back and stood, leaning on the beast. "I will agree," he said weakly. Dracula was as weak as if he had not eaten in a month and he knew the alien alone could satisfy him.
"Elic," the American called.
In the moonlight, the child seemed ghostly pale. He walked slowly to his friend. Carefully, he removed the cross from around his throat. He handed it to his friend.
"Stefon," he said softly and his friend gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze.
Elic walked to Dracula, who enfolded him within his cape. He reached up and pulled away the turtleneck from the boy's throat so he could reuse the wound he had made the night before. "Don't fight and it won't hurt," Dracula murmured. He scanned the neck, but the throat was unmarked.
Dracula knew this was the same child -- everything about him was identical. "You heal quickly," he told him.
"Yes," Elic said in a soft, timid voice.
Dracula leaned down and stared at the boy, trying to exert his will.
Again he was pulled in. The light, like the sun, beat on his mind. Now, behind that, was the intense rage and the glowing cross supported the whole.
The thin man hates me, Dracula realized as he again recoiled from the minds. Wearily, he bit the alien without the benefit of the light, hypnotic trance to ease the pain.
This time the boy's strange blood tasted good and Dracula could feel strength flood back into his limbs. He gripped the child tighter and drank deep.
Again Dracula slipped into Elic's mind, but this time, not to take over. For several moments they each floated in an ambivalent state together. Then Dracula saw a world of misty pastels, felt the satisfaction of intense gravity and became aware of senses unlike anything he had ever experienced before.
Sound and touch were similar, but somehow different. Taste and smell came through all the body and were very important. Vision was more mental, as though he didn't really have eyes.
Dracula recoiled, realizing just how inhuman the creature he held was.
He looked again at the boy, but what he had seen with his mind did not agree with his eyes.
He was completely supporting the child who seemed too weak to stand. Elic opened his eyes slowly.
"Alien," Dracula told him again, but this time not as an accusation.
"Yes," Elic whispered, acknowledgment.
Dracula laid him down on the grass, then metamorphosed into a bat and flew off.
* * * * *
Stefon was the first one to Elic. He touched the boy's abdomen and sensed that Elic was just tired and weak. Silver appeared beside him, Elic's violet gel in hand.
He was eating it when Frank and Blade ran up. The tall blond vampire killer carried him back to the church.
The seven waited for the sun to rise before resting.
* * * * *
Dracula was again disturbed by dreams and again awoke ravenous and weak. He stumbled from the coffin and sat on a step. His throat was dry and his mouth felt cottony. Above him, was his wine cellar where he kept some bottles for the refreshment of those mortals that he sometime entertained.
Something, anything, to dampen his mouth lured him up the long stairs to the wine cellar.
He worked the cork free and took some. Instead of running around like liquid diamond, it burned his mouth and seared its way down his throat. He doubled over, choking, as it settled in his stomach like a torch.
"I'm alive," he whispered to the silence. He noticed for the first time he was really breathing, stunned that he hadn't noticed it sooner. No wonder he was hungry -- he hadn't eaten in centuries.
* * * * *
"No!" Elic cried and convulsed in Stefon's arms.
"What's happening?" Blade asked, leaping up from where he was resting on a pew. A quick glance out the window showed it wasn't sunset yet.
"Quick! Quick!" Elic shouted, breaking from Stefon's grip. He grabbed one of the thin man's sandwiches. "Bring more," he said, looking at his friend. Then he vanished.
The thin man didn't say a word -- he just disappeared as well, leaving Silver to try to explain.
"The castle," he said before disappearing himself, taking what the trio had brought with them.
"Come on," Harker told his group. They quickly gathered up their weapons and headed for the castle in the rapidly advancing darkness.
* * * * *
Dracula was bent double again as the spasm ran through him. He gasped in pain and heard an echoing gasp. He looked about. Elic was kneeling near him.
"You," Dracula gasped and tried to catch his arm.
Elic moved faster. "This is what you need," he said and held out the sandwich.
Dracula took it and, trembling, bit into it. Again he was surprised that his body responded.
He took another swallow of wine.
"You are the death of me," he told the boy.
Stefon appeared and again placed himself between the pair.
"What is it, Elic?" he asked, but he didn't take his eyes off Dracula.
"Not death," Elic replied to Dracula, not his friend. "Life. You're not undead anymore."
"What do you mean?" Stefon glanced back in surprise.
"I don't know, but Dracula isn't a vampire anymore."
Stefon probed and found Elic's words to be true.
Silver arrived. He made a quick contact with his friends, then pulled out his crucifix. Dracula flinched out of reflex, but not in pain. He reached out for it in wonder. Silver handed it to him.
"He lives," Stefon and Silver said together.
"But they're not going to like it," Elic said, nodding in the general direction of the church.
"I don't like it," Stefon told him, "but I'll survive it. I don't know if Dracula can survive them." He also nodded toward the church.
"I can't," Dracula spoke, "I only had the advantage as long as I was a creature of the night."
"We could take him home," Elic said softly. It would be the little alien who would defend him, the former vampire thought. It was his blood flowing through Dracula's veins that forced the vampire back to life. It was he that suffered through that connection and, if Dracula died, it would be he that would share the pain.
"We already know that vampirism is a virus," Stefon said analytically, "and that Elic's blood is toxic to the virus. Why did it bring you back to life?"
"Perhaps," Dracula said thoughtfully, "it is because I was never bitten by a vampire."
"What?" Silver asked. "Then how...?"
"I willed myself not to die," Dracula told them.
"Well," Stefon said, frowning, "the virus is present in almost everyone's blood, but it never becomes active without a reinfection during a time of weakness." Dracula looked at the thin telepath, puzzled. "You drink their blood, then they drink yours."
"Ah," the former vampire said softly.
"It also works if they're bitten several times and die by that method."
"But..." Silver started.
"If Dracula had a serious infection, and then willed himself to stay alive, it's just possible that the virus kicked in."
"So his body was dying of Elic's poison and willed itself back to life," Silver said.
"It looks that way to me," Stefon replied. "But how do we convince Harker?"
Dracula had been holding Silver's crucifix and eating the sandwich the whole time. "I do not wish to lose this life by a stake through the heart. It is fatal for a mortal as well."
"With Elic's blood in your system, any pain you feel will be felt by all of us," Stefon agreed. "New York is our best bet."
"Gentlemen," came Harker's voice out of the darkness.
They turned. Rachel held her crossbow on them and Blade was ready with his knife.
Stefon and Silver provided a physical shield with their bodies. It wasn't necessary; their psychic shield was more than enough.
"Dracula is no longer your concern," Stefon told them.
The taller, thin telepath had seldom spoken to them since the first night, but they didn't let that stand in the way of their goal.
"Get out of the way," Frank told them.
"We're ready," Elic said from behind the pair.
With that, the foursome vanished. Harker could hear Blade swearing softly and Rachel flung herself into Frank's arms, sobbing.
* * * * *
The autumn air was brisk, throwing the fringe on Stefon's coat about Elic. There was nothing Elic liked better than wearing his friend's coat. It was much like his cats sleeping in his own clothes.
Suddenly, a black man dropped down in front of them. He held a wooden knife threateningly at him. Elic stared at him blankly for a few moments. "I know you," he said finally.
"Down that alley," Blade indicated with a movement of the knife.
Elic followed Blade's instructions, curious.
Professor Harker, Rachel and Frank waited inside a van down the alley. Elic was encouraged to join them in the van. With a sharp wooden dirk at his back and a menacing crossbow in front, the alien was nervous.
"So nice of you to join us," Harker told him. "You and your friends are as hard to track down as that vampire. Where is Dracula?"
Elic stared at them. "Why?"
"You know why," Frank snarled.
"Okay," Elic nodded slowly, making a quick contact with his friends. "I'll show you," he agreed with a slight smile.
Frank got behind the wheel and Elic gave the blond the directions.
"This is it," he told them. They looked out the windows at the foreboding grey walls.
"What is it," Rachel asked.
"St Basil's** Monastery," Elic said, chipper.
"What are we here for?" Harker demanded.
"Dracula, right?" Elic looked at him innocently. "Brother Cyprian* now. He wanted to repent for the lives he spilt, so to speak. These folks are most understanding. James died here last year, perhaps I should say, faded away. Being possessed by a demon sort of takes it out of you," Elic frowned sadly. "Anyway, Harris thinks Dracula will live two or three more years. The vampire virus is dead, so he can't be a vampire again. I don't think he wants to be, anyway. 'Course nobody can see him, but on set visiting days. I don't think they'll let you bring your crossbows."
"Anyway, I was in the middle of things so I must dash -- 'bye!" he waved as he faded away.
Harker snarled as he went.
"Check it out," he told the younger men.
But even as they started to leave the van they saw one of the brothers turn and look across the sunny courtyard of the monastery. In spite of the beard, they recognized Dracula. They exchanged bewildered glances and climbed back into the van.