To Spite Another God Pt. 04

Dracula took his...or her...leave with Marishka and Verona, leaving the castle only populated by Aleera, Lucy and Mina. Mina, of course, didn't want to simply stay behind when her husband was out, wandering into the war torn maelstrom of Europe without any idea of what was going on.

"Your husband, by accident or designed, killed one of my servants -- humans I have sworn to protect. He must be found and held accountable for his actions -- this, I shall see done. You will remain here, with Aleera, to learn what it is to be one of us -- and to protect Antoni from the drawback of missing the proximity of one of his blood bound and that is final." Dracula's eyes had flashed, and they had transfigured first to mist, then into a shimmering cloud, then from that cloud came a thousand bats, sweeping outwards in every direction, leaving Mina standing on the balcony of the castle, gaping after him.

Antoni...

The name itself made Mina reconsider her actions -- not merely because she did owe the young artilleryman more than simple abandonment, considering how it was by her hand that he had been blood bonded to her. It was also that his name had slipped entirely from her mind when she had thought of the castle's population: She had instinctively thought only of the immortal vampires that dwelled within...herself, Aleera, Lucy, and not him, the human man.

Lucy put her hands on Mina's shoulders, gently. "Dearest Mina, it will be all right. Dracula or Mari or Verona will find Jonathan and...and well...I'm sure it was an accident, or a mistake!"

"Yes, Lucy, yes..." Mina said, distractedly.

She turned from the moonlit night and was led by Lucy back into the castle.

"Now that you know your strength and durability, lets cover some of the more subtle weaknesses. The sun returns us to human normality, though it does not cause us to age, I should add that..." Aleera said as he walked Mina and Lucy through the moonlit garden. "However, we are not entirely divorced from our capacities. If we take a form before the dawn, we can remain in that form -- and the liminal hours of dawn, noon and dusk are open to us to allow transformation to our most basic forms." He brushed his hands along his dress, sighing. "Complex changes aren't open to us, but we can resume our inherent form -- that would be the forms you are in now -- or into any predatory form...bats...wolves..." He shrugged one shoulder. "Rats."

"So, during the night, we have the most freedom, but if we're stuck as a wolf during the day, we just need to make it to noon?" Mina asked.

"Yes, though sunlight still has its effect," Aleera said, seriously. "So, you can change at dawn, noon and dusk when in the shadows or inside."

"So, it has something to do with the sunlight itself?" Mina asked.

"Precisely," Aleera said. "My husband has done a significant number of experiments to try and isolate what, exactly, in sunlight it is...but she's never quite cracked it." He sighed.

"Any other subtle weaknesses?" Mina asked as Lucy tugged on her sleeve. Mina glanced at her, then looked back to where Lucy pointed and there, in the window of one of the towers, Antoni was standing, unaware that he could be seen from their vantage point, naked as the day he was born. He was stretching his arms, clearly partway through changing from his night clothes and into something more suited the evening hours. Backlit by a candle and glowing with health and vitality, watching him awoke a deep, abiding lust in Mina and she felt her chalk pale cheeks grow intensely heated -- while her ears could hear, faintly, the sound of his voice.

"Cóż, przynajmniej ciuchy są ładne..."

"Well, there's the fact you cannot enter a home unless invited -- but that's fairly easy to understand. The other weakness a great many vampires have is more...subtle," Aleera said, still walking. "The sudden expansion of the senses and the removal of common needs of mortality means that it is extremely easy to be distracted by...the physical." He turned, smirking. "Like right now."

Mina jerked her eyes from Antoni as he dressed. "W-What?"

"I'm not distracted..." Lucy lifted herself onto her toes. "Just..."

Aleera chuckled, softly. His fangs glittered as he smiled. "But enough about weaknesses. There are some unexpected strengths. How's your Polish?"

"Well, without the spell, abysmal," Mina said. Her eyes wandered from Aleera to Antoni. In the window, he was sliding his shirt on and looked quite fetching with with curled ruff and the slightly older, more extravagant fashions that Dracula preferred in his clothing.

"Czy tak jest?" Aleera asked. Is that so?

Mina nodded. "Yes, I-" She stopped, looking at Aleera. "What did you say?"

"Is that so?" Aleera asked. "How about this?"

Lucy had also managed to look away from the dressing artilleryman. "We...did you cast a spell, like Dracula?"

"Not quite. A vampire's mind and body is returned to an eternal youth," Aleera said, gesturing to himself. "It was referred to as a 'child mind' by one of our critics...essentially, we are still able to learn as quickly and easily as children can. Faster, in some ways. We pick up languages at an incredible speed."

"Amazing," Mina whispered. "I can see why you want vampirism to remain so exclusive..."

"Why?" Lucy asked. "This is remarkable! Everyone should be a vampire."

"Including Attila the Hun and Napoleon and the Kaiser and Mad King George?" Aleera asked, his voice dry.

"Yes," Lucy said, blinking. "They did all those awful things while they were human, yes. But everyone else was human too. So, if they were vampires, and everyone else was vampires, then it'd be the same hand, wouldn't it?" She shrugged slightly.

"I..." Aleera looked taken aback. "W-Well...we'd still need to get blood from somewhere."

"How much blood do we use when we act and move and use abilities?" Mina asked, even as she slid her arm around Lucy's arm, holding her dear friend close to her, feeling quite proud of how she had cut through that Gordian knot.

"It varies -- usually, you will feel thirsty when you are low, and ravenously hungry when you are starving. Do be careful, if you're too hungry, it can get remarkably hard to stop gorging yourself before doing someone an injury," Aleera said. "But that covers the exceptional strengths and weaknesses. Now, we need to begin to work on your skills."

Mina nodded. "I've been taking notes of what Dracula can do. He can shapeshift, he can cast spells..." She said. "I believe he can turn invisible."

"Actually, that's an art he picked up while traveling in the East," Aleera said, casually. "Enhanced, of course, by his strength and speed. But you're forgetting the most important ability: The alchemy of the blood."

Mina nodded, while Lucy grumbled. "We already did that! With Antoni."

"You did the basics, and didn't even remove the blood bonding curse before feeding him," Aleera said, chuckling. "You have quite a lot to learn." He paused -- the path he had been leading them through having led, at last, to center of the garden. A large slablike stone was laid here, engraved with words that Mina couldn't read. It was surround by low plinths that had flickering green flames cupped in them, casting a very dim illumination through the shrouded, hedged area. Overhead, the moon hung, a sleek crescent by now.

Aleera gestured. "Upon the slab. Cross your legs, like so..." he nodded. "Now. Close your eyes."

Mina found that sitting with her legs crossed was easier than she had expected. With her eyes closed, her mind was inundated by the exceptional array of sounds and smells that she could pick up now. The rustling of the evening breeze in the trees. The distant humming of Antoni from his room. Lucy's soft, unnecessary breathing. The crunching of grass under Aleera's feet. The lack of her own heartbeat, like a roaring silence inside of her. And then the smells: The wet, rich grassy smell of the garden. The closed, sleeping roses, their scent husky and withdrawn. Lucy's clean, cheerful bubbliness, coming off her in perceptible waves. The whole world felt painted into her mind like Van Gogh on a canvas, surreal and wild and exhilarating.

"Now..." Aleera murmured. "Feel inside yourself. There is stillness and strength, is there not?"

Mina felt inwards...and...she realized, this was what she would normally do when she prayed. Reflecting inward, to hear the voice of God. But watching the Black Smoke rush through the countryside around London, to see the desperate stampeding of humanity away from the largest city in the world, to see people crushed under carts and underfoot to escape merciless death at the invisible sword of the Martians...it had made it very hard to hear anything but herself, screaming desperately for escape.

Mina half expected to feel something...dark and seductive and wild, like how Aleera and Lucy felt around her. The dream she had had, of her own most wanton desires, flashed through her mind. But instead of either of that, she felt something more akin to a deep, dark pond that radiated a quiet...presence.

An eternity.

Her attention felt like a droplet -- and a rippling wave swept along the eternity, only to be lost against that vastness.

Mina felt...terribly small in the face of her own self.

"It feels welcoming," Lucy said, her voice soft, almost dreamlike.

"I...I'm scared..." Mina breathed, trying to pitch her voice softly, so that it was only for her. But the sharpened hearing of a vampire meant she might as well have shouted it.

"You are feeling yourself -- and it is both welcoming and scary." Aleera chuckled. "You've slowly acclimating yourselves, for your entire life, that you will end some day. That one moment, the candle that is your self will gutter...and flicker and die. It might be snuffed by a bullet or blade, it might be old age and time, but it will happen." He leaned in close and whispered in Mina's ear. "But that's not so now, and your soul knows it, even if your mind hasn't processed it yet. And it should be scary. There are vampires who saw the Pyramids being built, brick by brick. Who knew the original face of the Sphinx. There are vampires who call them children. Our history is long, longer than you can imagine, and yet...even the oldest of us...is merely a fraction of a fraction of our potential future."

He drew away, his voice pulling Mina towards that eternity. "We have watched the stars and seen them, unchanging save for a spark and flare here and there -- a supernovae, they're called. But on the whole, they have not changed. And we have, like you, seen the ancient bones of dinosaurs uncovered. We know that the Earth's age cannot possibly be a mere six thousand years. The world is old. Older than we are. And yet, we may walk upon her surface when the oceans are evaporated and the air attenuated to nothingness and still have eternity ahead of us."

Mina felt the dizzying...vastness of herself sweeping out into every direction. For a moment, she saw...

Herself.

Standing on a lone and level plane, nothing but desolation around her, a wreck of a woman with ragged clothes and unkempt hair, all civilization and memory worn away by the simple breadth of time about her.

Eternity.

Eternity.

Mina's eyes flashed open and she cried out. "No!" and she scrambled backwards, falling into Aleera's arms, holding her gently.

"Shh, shh...it's okay..." Aleera murmured, caressing her gently. "It is all right..."

Lucy, similarly, was shaking. She crawled up against Mina and held her tightly, their bodies trembling.

"W-...Why did we have to think about that?" Mina asked, her voice ragged.

"The change in perspective is important -- and it happens whether you want it too or not. It's...already there, isn't it?" Aleera asks. "You see humans differently now, whether you want to or not. What matters is how you change. It is vital that you are aware of your new perspective so you can choose it." He gripped Mina's chin, forcing her to look into his eyes. "Thoughtlessness and power are a terrible combination, Mina Murry."

Mina nodded, slightly. "I-...I see..." she gulped.

"Good," Aleera said, quietly.

Lucy shivered. Then, softly.

"It's still a blessing..."

Aleera looked at her.

Lucy rubbed her knuckles against her eyes. "I...I know you're trying to impress upon us that being a vampire isn't all fun and games, and that's good, and I'm listening. But it's still a blessing." She paused a moment, thinking. "W-We won't actually have eternity. Eventually, luck's going to catch up to us. Someone, somewhere, is going to kill me. I don't know when or how. It may be tomorrow or a million years from now. But every second that I have with my dear Mina is a second longer than I would have -- and that is precious." She took Mina's hand into her own, squeezing.

Aleera smiled. "That is the next lesson. You're really quite good at this Lucy Westenra. Being a vampire suits you."

Lucy showed her fangs with her smile. "Thank you!"

"Now that you have tapped into your inner selves...let us begin practicing how to move the blood -- close your eyes again, feel the pool...and then begin to draw your fingers through it...you should begin to feel the blood responding within you. We shall begin by moving it about the interior of your bodies...then we shall practice altering..."

***

The next two weeks were a blur of activity for Mina and Lucy. They would sleep during the day in their coffins in the graveyard, emerge at evening, converse a little with Antoni, feed upon him -- an act that Mina tried to keep relatively clinical and Lucy made enthusiastically erotic with wild abandon -- then go and join Aleera for training. They learned how to move the blood within their bodies, to alter it within their veins to create the forms of alchemically altered 'vitae' that vampires were known for. Aleera tested their concoctions by...

Well.

"All right, Mina, you first," Aleera said as Mina brought the blood into her mouth -- it still took her somewhat aback that she could do this at all without also bringing up stomach acid and the horrid taste of vomit and bile. Before Mina could do anything, Aleera had then swept in, kissed her, and drunk the blood from her mouth. When he had drawn back, his lips dripping with red-black liquid, his tongue darting out, Mina had remained kneeling on the stone slab they meditated on for a solid half a minute before she shook her head and then slapped at Aleera's thigh.

"I'm to be...wed..." She blushed, trailing off.

"Yes, right...not quite all of the toxins are purified out of this," Aleera said, smacking his lips. "You need to really work at the black levels of the change over -- use a kind of..." He held up his hand and made a gripping, tugging gesture. "This feeling."

Mina sighed.

Of course, Lucy took great delight at giving blood to the other vampire in this lurid way. She kissed him the first few times, then...later, tried...something more...

Mina couldn't tear her eyes from it as Lucy revealed her breast with a wicked smile, her palm cupping one of her full, grayish breasts, her finger gently tweaking her nipple. A small red gleam came at the very tip of her nipple, and then dripped along her pale flesh, beading at her knuckles. Aleera, who had been watching curiously, grinned and crooned. "Ah, Lucy, once again, ahead of the game..." then leaned forward and sucked from her breast, like a...like a...well...Mina couldn't look away, and so, had to watch as Dracula's wife fed upon Lucy's teat, then drew back, smacking his lips.

"Hm. Yes, you have gotten most of the toxins out -- but there's just an edge of addiction. If you can polish that off, I believe you'll have gotten it," Aleera had said.

Lucy mastered the creation of the album vitae and moved onto practicing the creation of the significantly more complex noctis vitae while Mina was still struggling to keep her transformed blood from becoming radically addictive.

"You know, if you got less anxious about the test, you might do better at focusing on the internal transformations," Aleera said, as Mina drew the goblet she had taken with her for this evening's practicing away from her lips. She licked her lips clean, then scowled at him.

"I..." She paused. "Just...drink."

She thrust the goblet at the other vampire, who sipped the blood from it. Hummed. Then nodded. "You've done it."

Mina, who had been ready for yet another little niggling complaint about some different mixture or flavor of the blood she had been creating, was left undone, like a sail suddenly missing its wind. "I...I did it?"

"Yes," Aleera said, cheerfully, while Lucy, beside him, closed her eyes tighter, gritting her teeth as she focused on her own internal workings. "Now...I don't want you to begin practicing the notics vitae -- that's...well, Lucy's a natural at handling this, but you've clearly got a bit of a block going on. Which...is odd, you did manage to purify the gangrene out of Antoni's blood..."

Lucy groaned, opening her eyes. "I lost it -- it's acid now." She turned and spat a glob of greenish gunk into sand pit beside the stone slab. It hissed and bubbled there.

"Do be careful about that. If your teeth get too pitted, it's quite tricky to regrow them. In fact, open your mouth..." Aleera leaned forward, pressing his eyes near to Lucy's mouth, using his thumbs to push her lips back. "Good not too much pitting -- they should heal during your sleep."

"Lucy can make acid out of blood?" Mina asked.

Lucy giggled. "That's not what I'm trying to do, my dearest Mina. I'm trying for blood that makes people into vampires. So I can start turning people." She bared her fangs with a playful growl.

"You are going to be absolutely profligate aren't you?" Aleera grumbled.

"So...this means I will not be...as I am?" Antoni asked, uncertainty, as the two of them talked to him the next morning. The young man was walking with them through the grounds, while Mina and Lucy both felt the call of their subterranean beds.

"Yes, once the intiail blood bonding has passed you will be free from our malign influence," Lucy said, giggling, her arm sweeping around his shoulder, nuzzling against this neck. "Because you just hate everything we've done, don't you?" she kissed at his neck, gently, and Antoni blushed while Mina put her hands on her hips.

"Lucy!"

"Mmm, yes, he definitely feels like he hates it..." Lucy murmured, her palm cupping Antoni's crotch. The young man flushed even harder, stammering.

"Y-...Yes, uh..." he shook his head. His eyes closed. "T-This all feels like a dream. It felt like a nightmare, at first, but now..." He trailed off, then yelped as Lucy nipped at him, then slipped past him, smiling as she stepped over to stand before her gravesite. She looked back at him and smiled gaily, while Mina felt her own scowl fading.

"I will see you two tomorrow evening, then," he said.

"Yes," Mina said.

"...I...I've been meaning to ask. Do...you two have nightmares?" Antoni asked, quietly. "Being...down there in the ground, I mean?" He paused. "N-Not that I have them, but...I mean...you two are...well that...that is..."

"No," Mina said, her feet settling before her grave-site. "I don't. We. Don't."

She sank straight into the Earth.

***

The sun was brilliant on Horsell Common.

There was a small cart with candy apples on sticks and a barrel of ginger ale. Men and women walked out in the sun, the women under parosals, the men red faced and sweating under the intense heat of the day. The conversation was loud and cheerful and bubbling over with excitement. Children went running and playing among the crowd -- touching one another.