To Spite Another God Pt. 01

Mina found it hard to not cry as well -- Lucy had been blessed by having three gentlemen courting her...and though privately, she had sometimes bemoaned to Mina that she wished she could marry all three simply to spare two of them the heartache, and that she hated having been asked to choose...Mina knew that Lucy had also flowered under their attention and affection. She caressed her hair, gently, holding her until Lucy's tears stilled. Lucy drew back, sniffing, wiping at her eyes with her thumbs.

"I'm sorry-" she started.

"Oh, no, it's all right," Mina said. "Come on. Let's take our constitutional...it is a lovely day out and maybe the cavalry officers will let us see their horses again?"

Lucy gave a watery smile and nodded.

By the time they had emerged into the rough and tumble of the camp, Lucy had put on her stiff upper lip again. The stables that filled out the eastern half of the fortification were a rank place -- but it was a comfortably familiar scent, the scent of horses and their work. The men that tended to the horses were mostly common soldiers, but the officers that would be riding those horses into battle came by the stables as well, sometimes to simply check on their beasts, sometimes to chat and converse. They were, by and large, young and dashing, and while some infantry were conspicuously of a different race than the main, not a single cavalry officer in this army wasn't Austrian. More than a few had even gone to school in London and could speak English with varying degrees of accent.

"He's quite a beauty, Lieutenant Prinz," Lucy said, caressing the white nose of the horse that she had seen. "Do you think you can keep him safe?"

"Oh, definitely," Prinz said, his accent as thick as his features were handsome. He had hair the same color as Lucy's, and was clearly trying to impress the girl by standing taller and straighter. The other cavalrymen nearby were watching from a distance with clear amusement, snickering and whispering to one another. Mina, though, was looking at the horses with a desperate longing in her breast. While train would be faster, with these, going in a roughly straight line, they could reach her fiance in a month...maybe less...

"W-Well, the Martians have terrible weapons, you will need to be careful," Lucy said. Her fingers drawing along the horse grew more ragged. "They..." She paused. "Mina...Mina..." She trembled, then leaped at Mina. "Get down, Mina!"

A moment later, Mina heard the sound as well -- a hideous shriek, a sound that no earthly creature or machine could have made. Lucy, her hearing more acute, had the jump on Mina, but both of them had survived the exodus of England. They knew that when it did not come from an earthly source, there was but one possible answer as to what could be coming. The soldiery of the Austrian Empire had no such lesson -- and they paid for it in fire and in blood.

Mina saw only a flash of it -- a triangular wedge, with two shimmering red, out thrust protrusions that looked to all the world like an illustration of a Polynesian craft from the far east. They were too stubby to be wings such as those drawn on flying machines in the speculative magazines, and yet, they managed to keep it aloft and moving faster than a bird or a bolt of lightning. And from its belly came a wave of shimmering, incandescent death.

Just as in Britain, there was no visible ray or beam.

Instead, one moment, the friendly Lt. Prinz was standing before them, looking up with a shocked expression. The next he was a pillar of screaming flame. Tents behind him combusted with the same terrible swiftness. Men, caught mid motion, fell and curled upon themselves, shrinking and shriveling. Those who were merely glanced howled as their limbs burst into flames, flames that spread across their bodies. Ammunition began to explode with hideously cheery pop pop pop sounds and the horses, as one, screamed and panicked.

It had all been in a single flash -- and Mina was trembling from her head to her toes as she looked at the devestation. Men who had been unhurt were running to their fellows -- or simply running -- and tents were burning, filling the air with choking smoke and the smell of burned pork. The walls of the fortification showed where they had been touched by the heat ray -- bricks had scorched and wood smoldered. Lucy lifted her head, whispering a very unladylike: "Fuck."

Mina whispered. "Lucy...Lucy, the horses! We can go!"

"Go?" she asked.

"The Martians have flying machines!" Mina pushed her friend up, her hair a wild bedraggled mess. She shook her head, trying to clear some of her hair from her eyes. "They're going to...they have to be attacking forts like this all across the Continent -- we have...to...to to go, to go, now!" She said, nodding, trying to keep her panic from her voice. Lucy gulped, then looked back at the burning tents.

"W-...We should help them-"

Mina's heart clenched. She knew she was right...

But...

Coward, she thought. You absolute coward. You don't want to find Jonathan. You just want to get away from all of this.

Mina closed her eyes. Breathed in the smoke. Coughed. Shook her head. "You're right, my dear Lucy. We must." She said, then stood. The two of them emerged, and began to help beating at the flames -- focusing on small embers that threatened to sweep further than the tents that had already been struck.

A weary day of doing what could be done -- and in the face of the hideous burning wounds left behind by Martian heat rays, what could be done was painfully little -- Mina and Lucy were once more before the commander of the fort. Or, more accurately, his second in command. Lt. Colonel Klaus-Peter Schultz rubbed his palms along his sooty face and looked as if he had been struck in the side of the head by an ax handle. "I...my superior...his orders were to...quarter you, for...intelligence..."

"Sir," Mina said, taking advantage of the fact he spoke English and was quite dazed. "Please. There's nothing more that we can tell you. Just...allow us to leave. We can make our own way."

The Lt. Colonel blinked at her. Then he nodded. "Ja. Ja. This I can do. I think...being far from the army is the safest place for you to be."

***

Another endless train ride. Another jam packed car. Vienna had, when they arrived, been struck twice by Martian flying machines -- buildings burned, people stunned. From the newspaper that Mina read from while Lucy scarfed down another handful of their marks, in the form of the cheapest meal they could buy, the areal attacks had been, depending on the writer, indiscriminate barbarism, or cruelly scientific. Half thought that the Martians were striking wrathfully at innocent civilians, the other half called out a collection of dams, train stations, bridges and army depots reduced to ashes.

"No black smoke thus far..." Mina said, closing the paper. "How is it?"

"Honestly?" Lucy asked. "It's better than most meals I had back home -- purely because it sticks to my ribs." She smiled, wryly. "I suppose it is like what they said. Hunger is the best spice."

"You're becoming an honest adventurer," Mina said. "So...from Vienna, we go to Budapest, then from Budapest to Bucharest, then...we shall take the roads there..." She rubbed her thumbs against her eyes, working out the grit. "If the train tickets keep costing thus, we should arrive with barely enough money..." She bit her lip, slightly. "But if we don't..."

"Then we shall have to find some work -- enough to keep us in lodging," Lucy said, nodding firmly. "My servants worked for a few pence a day, and if they can do it, I can do it."

Mina pursed her lips. "Well, at least you are game..."

Lucy blushed. "Well, how hard can it be? It can't be anything next to traveling across Europe during a war..."

"I think most wars are less terrible than this," Mina said. "Those flying machines...they can drop death on us at any time. It feels like there's a great target on my back." Lucy took her hand and squeezed it.

"Our backs," she said, seriously. Then she put her hand over her face. "Bugger, that sounded more comfortable before I opened my mouth. "

"You're getting quite the mouth for a lady," Mina said. Lucy slid her hand down, her eyes glittering.

"I know, my governess would have me bent over a desk and my..." She blushed and stopped talking. "Sorry, Mina, I...it is getting rather hard to not just say things I think -- I should contrive to do better at controlling my tongue."

Mina giggled.

That little conversation sustained her through the next train ride -- but here, further from the front edge of the terror, the trains were considerably less congested and there was less panic and confusion and more comfort. It became almost possible to think that the world was not coming to a confused end. The signs became more and more subtle as they traveled eastward, until at last, Mina and Lucy found themselves in the back of a carriage behind a very staid looking draft horse, while an old farmer led them along the roads, moving away from the towns and cities and towards increasingly dark forests.

The evening began to fall as they came to the a small village nestled in the middle of these forests -- the fields that were cleared were almost invisible in the evening, and the homes that spread outwards around them were faint sketches in the darkness. The man who had brought them here spat over the edge of the wagon, then held out his hand. Once the last of their money was in his grasp, he nodded. "The village you're looking for is another few miles east, past the hills," he said, frowning.

Lucy nodded. "My thanks," she said, in German. The man huffed, then the wagon started to rattle away.

Lucy and Mina walked, hand in hand, to the tavern in this sleepy town -- one who's name they didn't even know. Walking inside, Mina saw that there were a few farmers sitting about in the tables, drinking from their wooden cups. They looked curiously at the pair of them, and Mina supposed they had to look a sight. Both of them in rumpled and ratty dresses, both women unaccompanied...it was quite a scandalous concept, but the men didn't pay them a second glance. The tavern keeper spoke a language they didn't recognize -- then tried another, possibly Romanian? Mina gulped, then said: "German?"

The man's face grew closed in and he frowned. "Ja. I speak German. Why are you here?"

"We're traveling to Brasov. My husband, Jonathan Harker..." She lied with greater ease now as she reached into her traveling purse and drew out a small, crumpled photograph of her and him. She smiled, slightly, trying to look as nonthreatening as possible.

The man frowned. "Brasov..." he said, slowly. "...the lawyer."

"Yes! Ja!" Mina said, nodding, slowly.

"He came by," the man said, his voice stony. "He is in Brasov." He frowned. "You should go home."

"...I can't," Mina said. "I have to find my husband."

The tavernkeeper frowned even more, then shrugged. The conversation felt distinctly concluded. Mina and Lucy exchanged a glance, then walked to a table near the fireplace, settling down near the wramth and the burbling cauldron of porridge within. "We need funds," Mina said, rubbing her palms along her face. "Or we could sleep in a..." She paused -- and then frowned. There were steely glares from the other people in the tavern. Some people murmured, quietly. She saw a young boy hurrying out of the place. She felt a sudden prickle of fear slide along her spine -- not the wild panic the Martians brought out...but something sicker and fiercer and tighter.

It was the same fear she had felt when the Austrians had stopped the train.

It was...knowledge that humans could do things as terrible as the black smoke and heat rays could...

"Mina...do you think Jon offended them somehow?" Lucy whispered as the doors opened and more people started to come in. They were farmers, tough and rough looking, but among them was a priest. Mina felt her tension relax faintly...but she suddenly realized, she had no idea if these Romanians were Protestant or Catholic or...no, they were some queer eastern breed of Christianity. Orthodox? That was born out by the man's attire -- it was at once, familiar and alien when set against an English vicar. His thick beard, for one, which was shot through with white and gave his stony face a terribly focused cast.

"You come for the Dragon," the priest said, his voice creaking.

"I...beg your pardon?" Mina asked.

"Did he say...drachen...dragon?" Lucy asked.

"Do not lie. You come from far away...come, speaking the name of a dead man..." The priest approached and Mina's heart clenched in her chest. Her ears rang as the priest came closer, his voice sounding distant. "You are no women...you are his! You are his wives!" He pointed at her and the men to either side of him began to approach. Lucy, though, started to speak.

"We're not anything to do with this dragon!" she said, in English -- then yelped as the priest grabbed for her.

Mina sprang to her feet, her skirts tangling, and grabbed up her stool and used it to tip the cauldron over. Hot water and thick clots of porridge went scattering along the floor, dousing along the legs of men trying to get closer. They yelped -- more in shock than in true pain -- and it gave her just enough time to take Lucy's hand and flee with her to the back. The door there was not barred and they burst outside -- and saw that other villagers had come, bearing torches and some even held crude cudgels. Hunting dogs brayed and woofed...but this was no organized hunt, nothing but a mob that had come to watch some drama unfolding. They did not see her and Lucy rushing for the woods.

Still, Mina's heart hammered, and she clung to Lucy's hand as Lucy lifted her skirts, hissing and slapping aside the brush and the branches. The moon was immense overhead, but the trees blocked all but silvery spears of it as the dogs brayed behind them. Mina didn't know how long or how far they ran for -- she only knew flashes of trees, stumbling moments where her feet caught, branches tearing at her skirt, ripping at her sleeves, Lucy's panting breath, the few times that their hand separated before catching one another again. But when both of them had run as far as they could, they collapsed together next to a brooding ancient tree.

There, the darkness was near absolute and the cold was biting. Lucy pressed to Mina and Mina pressed to her, their bodies molding against one another -- and Mina was painfully aware of her friend's litheness, the tightness by which hand, arm and fingers clenched to her. Their faces were close, and as her eyes adjusted to the gloom, Mina was struck by her friend's uncommon beauty. She could see why three men had courted her...a silly thing to think, when being hunted by madmen. But it could not be dislodged, once thought.

"I think they haven't chased us this far..." Lucy whispered. "I can't hear any barking...oh Mina, oh my dear, are you okay?" She caressed Mina's cheek. "You're bleeding!"

"I am..." Mina felt the dull throb of it then, as if being told that she was injured was enough to conjure the wound. Her hand went to her cheek, and she hissed. "I suppose I'll have a scar like yours, then..."

"Oh no, Mina, it'll heal up right-" Lucy froze as Mina reached up, brushing her bangs back, to look at the thin red scar in the near pitch blackness of the night. Mina's voice was very soft.

"It's...not bad, you know?" She slid her fingers through Lucy's hair, feeling the silk of her. Then, drawing her hand back, Mina stammered. "W-We...we should...try and rest. C-Come...it's not so cold." She was lying. It was cold. Her body trembled and she drew Lucy closer to her, their warmth barely doing anything to beat back the chill. Lucy reached out and started to draw rotting leaves onto their bodies -- more out of impulse, as if she was trying to draw a blanket...and, to Mina's shock, the leaves did more than she expected to keep her warm. It was still vile, but...

It was better than shivering.

Lucy closed her eyes and Mina watched her for a time...and then leaned down and kissed her. She had planned for a gentle, sisterly kiss upon the cheek, but instead, her lips found the jawline of Lucy -- a shockingly intimate moment. The tiny little kiss sent sparks along Mina's lips and a delirious sense of being in a well, falling head over heels. She closed her eyes -- marshaling her thoughts. It...it was surely her fatigue, the trials of their trials thus far. She laid her head down, drew Lucy so that Lucy's forehead pressed to her neck, and closed her eyes.

Slowly, Mina found herself slipping into sleep.

She woke to the crack of branches and a cry.

"I-am găsit!"

Mina's eyes snapped opened and she saw that one of the farmers she had seen last night, in the tavern, was standing above them. He had a crucifix in one hand, and a club in the other. He pointed the club at her, speaking his language -- she didn't recognize a single word, but it sounded threatening. Mina and Lucy both tried to scramble to their feet, Lucy stammering out: "P-Please, I, wait, I-" before she stopped dead, her words dying in her throat.

Mina saw why.

A shape had emerged from the shadows. The pale sunlight that was beginning to peek over the horizon shone along midnight black fur and caught the glittering red of a pair of terrifyingly intelligent eyes. Mina had never seen a wolf of this size and power, save for maybe at the London zoo. But what was worse...was the other wolves. There were three in total, prowling from the darkness, and their paws seemed to be utterly silent...until, with an almost dramatic flourish, one stepped on a branch that cracked loudly enough to swing the villager around. His eyes widened and he whispered.

"V...Va...Vampir..." the man stammered.

One of the wolves' skinned back his lips, baring white teeth.

And spoke.

"Ora cinei," the wolf said, and Mina felt as if the whole world had been twisted end over end. She hadn't thought that she could be more shocked, more stunned, more astounded after everything that had happened, after the flying machines and the tripods and the heat rays. But now, she found, that she could.

One of the wolves sprang forward -- the man turned, aiming the crucifix at the wolf. The wolf sprang backwards, yipping...but there was a reason wolves hunted in packs. The third wolf sprang onto the man's back, bearing him down. He crashed down, his crucifix scattering away, his club caught between the teeth of the wolf that had spoken, then tossed aside. The wolf on his back chuckled. "Ar trebui să-l sperii, Verona?"

"Da," the first wolf growled, then looked at Mina and Lucy. Mina snatched up the crucifix as the wolf on the man's back leaned down, then nipped at his neck, hard enough to draw blood, before springing backwards, growling at him -- and the man stood and sprinted away, panting and whimpering as he fled. One of the wolves let out a howl, while the other wolves began to leap and cavort -- for all the world, like big dogs.

The three wolves, then, looked at Mina and Lucy. They fanned outwards, so that each of them was covering one of the three ways that they could flee. Mina trembled -- but it was Lucy who spoke first. "Do you speak English?" She glanced at Mina. "Or speak...German?"

Asking a wolf if they 'sprechende deutsch' was by far, not the thing that Mina thought she was going to do today. But then again, she could have said that about a great many things that had happened this week. The largest wolf -- Verona, if the name was right, let out a little, almost human chuckle. "Yes," he said, his voice a deep bassy rumble. "I speak English, and German. I'm fair at Latin, Spanish..."