Chapter Text
Count Dracula
Version One
He understood nothing but dust and death and the smell of life – all else were mortal concepts, useless and not worth expending energy on. His castle had long since lost the last of the three when young Mr. Hutter came to it, smiling and filling the Count’s hands with papers which he hadn’t bothered to read. And, as though irresistibly drawn to the living blood in Hutter’s veins, the Count came to his side as he slept, listening to his breath echoing throughout the empty halls of the castle.
But within the mortal substance of Hutter’s mind, there were memories of a whole world beyond the Count’s castle, a world full of living, breathing, laughing humans with bright red blood – a world that the Count had forgotten, alone with his rats. Memories of a woman (yet another thing that the Count had forgotten, women – with their soft skin and throats bared to his ratlike fangs), indescribably beautiful in Hutter’s thoughts, her blood worth so much of his.
And the Count drew back, spared Hutter for a time, turned his ancient mind to thoughts of ships and oceans and the future (something he had not dared think about for so long, the future!), and the left bumbling human to his own devices.
The Count knew, somewhere in his dust filled mind, that when he went to Hutter’s city of humanity, he would bring with him death in a thousand forms – death of plague, death of blood loss, death of despair. He knew that, in going there, he would be destroying the world that he so longed to forever disappear into. But he didn’t care, not really. There would be other cities in the coming millennia, other human hearts. This would not be the last he saw of the world.
Version Two
It wasn’t as though he didn’t know how to interact with humans. There was an art to it, and one he had cultivated well. A smile was the way to deal with the Englishmen, a smile coupled with expensive, formal clothing and an apology for his poor English – his English wasn’t poor at all, in fact, but the apology seemed to make them forgive his occasional silences and, often, become more inclined to trust him. And, with their trust partly won, he was soon invited from their theaters to their parlors and, inevitably, to their bedchambers.
To beautiful frail women with rounded limbs, who bared their necks after even the slightest touch of his power on their minds. The women on England were all beautiful, from the flower sellers to the high ladies decked out in jewels in a private box at the ballet. He would bring a few of them home with him when he was done with the bright electric light of England, pack them inside his extra coffins like additional luggage, souvenirs from his trip. Then, in the leisure of his ancient home, he would do with them as he wished, freed then from the need for seduction and for human affectations, which, while an amusing novelty occasionally, hardly were something that he could maintain forever.
He loved England, though, despite the fact that he never intended to stay there forever. Glittering England, come now into an era of such breathtaking sophistication that he had to marvel at it. He had visited England before, over the centuries – he had seen the reign of Queen Elizabeth, had been presented at her court – but no other era could match this one. And how glorious it was to be a part of it, even if he stood in the shadows so that the light did not reflect off his pale skin.
The future could only get more glorious, he was sure, with more bright lights so that he could imagine what the sunlight might look like.
Version Three
He had spent centuries abandoned to savagery, his castle fallen into ruin, his victims bound with shreds of moth eaten curtains rather than his mental control, the blood stains on the stone floors washed off only by the rain that came through the gaps in the roof. He paid no heed to any of it, living like the wolves that surrounded him, snarling more than he spoke.
But eventually he remembered the aristocratic blood in his veins, and saw the remnants of beauty in the castle, and decided that something needed to change.
He hired architects, and craftsmen of all varieties and, over decades, he recreated his world. The craftsmen and architects of that century did things differently from what he remembered – they added embellishments everywhere, graceful, ornate carvings the likes of which he had never seen before, stained glass windows with more vivid colors that those in any church he had seen before, tapestries of garish reds and purples and greens. But he didn’t object, as he knew there was much he had forgotten in his feral centuries and perhaps all this was the most tasteful way to do things.
He had all his books still, though some of them had half decayed, wearing away year by year. The craftsmen and architects didn’t know what to do about those, placing them haphazardly on the new bookshelves they bought for him. When the Count asked them what he ought to do with all the books, one of the architects advised him to hire a librarian.
And so he did. He sent out letters to British academics, though it took him a bit of time to remember which hand he ought to write with, and although most of them seemed loath to travel all the way to Transylvania to work for a reclusive Count with handwriting as erratic as the web of a blind spider, one of them, a young man by the name of Jonathan Harker, accepted the position.
The Count had to take Jonathan’s letter away from Elena, his new bride, who pored over it as though it held the key to a great secret that could save her. He held her by the shoulders with a grip strong enough to bruise, saying, his voice hoarse from disuse, “You will not speak to him, do you understand?” And she nodded, shaking in his grip. He believed her.
Jonathan came, and the Count tried to understand him, though there was an odd cadence to his voice, one telling of suppressed secrets.
By the time the Count realized that Jonathan was there to destroy him, it would be too late for Elena, and too late for the Count’s attempt at humanity. He would have to go to England.
Version Four
He had never been able to create another of his kind. Of all the dark gypsy girls he brought into his white washed castle, flinching from his long nails and dark lidded eyes, not one of them lived, no matter how much of his ancient blood he forced into their slack mouths. When their veins were emptied, they always died.
He read, in books written about his kind by mortals, something about coming willingly to undeath. He thought perhaps that was true, for he remembered his Maker, ancient and wishing for death, beckoning him with a long fingered hand and he, naïve and lonely in the castle where his family had long since died, coming to his side. He remembered his Maker, whose name never knew, whispering to him about how, drinking his blood, he felt as though the Count’s mortality was coming into him, how he was passing on the curse and blessing on undeath to the Count, leaving him free to die.
That wasn’t what happened. The Count remembered awakening the next day, his hands instinctively folded over his chest as he had always done even in childhood, and hearing the tortured screams of his Maker, which sent even the rats running. “I gave you all my blood!” he screamed to the Count, as though there was something he could do about it, “How can I still be living?”
The Count had no answer, and his Maker left then, never to return.
And so, when he met beautiful, dark haired Lucy, he asked her to come willingly to his side, to be his ally. She didn’t flinch at his ugliness, but neither did she come to him, speaking resolute words about her love for Jonathan, even in his madness.
That only made him love her more. He wanted her at his side, to stave off his loneliness, to whisper the gentle words in his ear that she had whispered to Jonathan. He would not seek death as his Maker had, if only he had her.
Never had he wanted something that much before.
Version Five
He loved them, in his fashion. He loved twisting their pretty, fragile wills to his, loved them whether they struggled or writhed, screamed or moaned. Overt, excessive, garish violence was not his style – his was to grasp a wrist a little too tightly, perhaps leave bruises that would go nicely with a pale blue dress, but not the sort that one would notice until afterwards. He loved surrounding a woman with mist both within and without, making it so that she couldn’t tell whether she hated or loved him. The confusion, the ambiguity was the most delightful part of it all.
Even better with a woman, like beautiful, clever Lucy Seward, had a life to be stolen from. Mina Van Helsing was delightful, especially considering the identity of her father, but he was the one of the few in the world who would miss her. Lucy had a loving fiancée in the Count’s own solicitor, Jonathan Harker, and she cared for him so much that wept with guilt for leaving him even beside the Count in his coffin. He loved that, loved telling her that she wouldn’t be allowed to return to Jonathan and that she really didn’t want to, loved Lucy looking at him with love and loathing.
It was a shame that Mina had to die, but she was a frail thing, succumbing to his hypnosis without hesitation. She would never have survived her first century, and perhaps it was better that she die sooner rather than later. He had loved her, and had mourned for her, but one lost many such loves in immortality, and he was used to it.
But Lucy…Lucy he would not lose. Lucy he would take home to his other brides, waiting patiently for him, and she would smile that pretty uncertain smile of hers and hold out her hand for them to shake. Lucy would be all right.
Version Six
It wasn’t true that he spent his eternal lifetime in search of her. One couldn’t live that way, not really, and he didn’t believe, deep in his unbeating heart, that he would find her again.
He didn’t know if he minded, after four centuries without her. Immortality suited him, the pure glorious excess of it, blood and sex in equal measures. His three brides were not replacements for Elisabeta, and he didn’t mind, for they were each beautiful in ways that Elisabeta had not been, and he could never imagine Elisabeta they way they were, mouths smeared with garish red blood, heads thrown back in the ecstasy of violence.
He had read about England, though he had never left Romania. It was a Protestant country in that century, he read – logical and modest and chaste. Reading that, the Count laughed out loud, the hollow sound echoing over the stone walls of the castle. A nation full of repressed humans, probably, men buttoned into waistcoats and women laced into corsets. A nation just waiting to be corrupted by his heathenism, bed sheets waiting to be stained with blood, men and women who would gasp at his touch, they were so starved for such things in their restricted lives.
He wasn’t sure quite whether he wanted to go there – he felt safe in the word he had created for himself, free from crucifixes and holy water and the danger of sunlight. Venturing out into a distrustful world filled with all those things seemed an unpleasant possibility. But the possible wonders of the new nation of England spread before him…those were perhaps too much to ignore.
So he tried an experiment. He looked into buying a property near London, and had a British solicitor come to go over the paperwork with him. The first was weak minded, and went mad quickly – he had to leave without completing the transaction, and the Count sent a complaint to his employer. But the second, a young man named Jonathan Harker, was handsome and wonderfully repressed – a delight to corrupt, his and his bride’s hands bringing Jonathan the sort of pleasure that he would likely consider sinful.
Even that might not even been enough to move him to go to England – he could have kept Jonathan in his castle for years before killing him at his leisure and thought nothing more of the country from which he came. But, in his bags, Jonathan had a picture of a woman – his fiancée – who looked just like the Count’s Elisabeta.
He didn’t know, or even really care if she was actually his wife from centuries past. It would be enough to pretend she was.
Version Seven
They were all idiots, mortals. Whether they wanted to worship him, or hunt him, or use him for his immortal blood, they always remained idiots, not worthy of his attention or respect. Worthless, except for the blood in their veins. This didn’t mean that he always hated them, although he often did. Sometimes their idiocy was merely amusing, like a small child who doesn’t grasp some simple fact of life.
So it was with young Mina, and her fiancée, Jonathan. They were cut of the same cloth, the two of them – if he had not killed Jonathan, they would have lived quite content lives together, the Count thought. They were good people, whatever that really meant. They both amused him – Jonathan had, with his ever earnest attempts at salesmanship, and now Mina did as well, quietly mourning her fiancée and friend, and now naively going to him for comfort. She was won over so easily, weakened as she was by sorrow and loneliness. Betraying her trust, as he had betrayed Jonathan’s, would be enjoyable, though at the moment he would prefer to break open the heads of Singleton and Arthur Holmwood on their own damned altar.
For those fools didn’t have the sort of endearing, harmless idiocy of the Harker couple. No, they presumed to meddle in things beyond their comprehension, thinking that, by placing a few useless trinkets on an altar, they gained the right to control him. They would never defeat him, of course, that was not a fear of his – though, if things got too troublesome, he might make them think that they did, for he preferred not to spend a decade hunted like an animal – but it was all so tiresome, so irritating. Like a colony of termites making their home under his house – time consuming to obliterate.
But obliterate them he would, and then he’d have the nation of England to wander through, dark and new and unexplored.