To Spite Another God Pt. 04

"Ah..." Mina panted. Then, slowly, she leaned down and kissed Lucy...and felt the creeping pressure of the dawn. Still buried inside of her lover's flesh, she held her close and the two of them slipped into a shared grave, the earth wrapping about them like a blanket.

Mina did not have nightmares.

***

Dracula Tepes landed on the outskirts of Dresden. The hunt for Jonathan Harker had transformed, for the moment, into a more generalized scouting expedition, and had ever since he had realized that the impossibility of finding Mr. Harker had grown significantly greater than he had anticipated when he had left his home. Bucharest had been far from the front lines -- but Jonathan had managed to get a train ticket from Bucharest to Budapest, and from there, to Vienna, though he wasn't entirely sure precisely why...there had been rumors that he had been seen traveling with another man, but Dracula hadn't found confirmation on that.

The issue was that Vienna was close enough to the war to be in chaos -- and so, Dracula had left the trail and instead traveled northward, towards the German Empire.

And...

He had seen, with his own eyes, what Antoni had described in passing. The wreck of a single army was nothing compared to this.

Beyond a certain point, the railroads were nothing more than burnt, bent wreckage. Every few miles, another lanced boiler could be seen -- the sign of a heat ray striking at a coal storage car and derailing an entire train. Where repair crews could have fixed one or even two or four such disasters in a tearing hurry, they were utterly unable to deal with the totality of the rail network being attacked thus in such an indiscriminate fashion. This left the people who were in those cities and towns no choice...

But flight on foot.

Not since the wars unleashed by the Emperor Napoleon had such a mass exodus occurred -- and even the chaos and terror of those days paled compared to this. The population of Europe had increased more than twice over, and concentrated into cities and towns. Now, those cities and towns were emptying by people who had seen death come from overhead and in choking clouds and knew that it would not stop, it would not rest, it would not be merciful.

It was the rout of civilization.

It was the massacre of mankind.

Dracula shook his head slowly as he watched the thin ribbons of humans -- fanning outwards away from the arterial roads that led out of Dresden, and looked instead to the city itself. It looked as if the whole city had been set to the torch, burning out of control without a man to operate a fire engine. As he watched, a pair of those flying machines screamed by, but they did not seek to bring more ruin. They simply flew high overhead, and he swore he caught a glint of some kind of lens. With the sunlight shining down on him from overhead, he couldn't do as much as he could at night...

But it was enough for now.

He put his fingers to the small bag of Romanian dirt that he had hanging around his throat -- which he had rested in several times already. It was increasingly risky, the further he went from his homeland -- losing access to this dirt...

But no.

He had to see more.

When night came, he found several refugees and found a man who was separate from the rest, taking his relief. Though he was loath to do so, he didn't have the time or inclination to risk revealing himself at this stage and so, he simply caught the man's eyes, then quietly made him go...out of focus. The man stood, unaware and hazy, and Dracula took a quick drink of his blood, then returned to him the album vitae, before drawing backwards and retracting his power. The refugee would feel vigorous and energetic for a few days, and if he got wounded, he would heal remarkably quickly.

Dracula hoped that in the chaos of this flight, the man would miss the oddity of that...and if he ever found that Dracula had been so forward, that he would forgive him.

Thus refreshed, he flew through the night. And here, going in a straight line, he could clear an immense amount of Europe with ease. Bats...were fast creatures. He soared over Leipzig, Hanover, Bremen, Hamburg, and there, he found the same signs of the Martian's deprivations. They had not taken land -- they had wrecked it. Railroads, armories, depots, fortresses, and factories had been hit by their heat ray, and if the burning wreckage had spread to the rest of the city, the Martians didn't seem to mind. In Hanover, the fires had been contained by what appeared to be the detonation of several buildings with dynamite to create a firebreak, while Bremen and Hamburg had both burned terribly.

Then, looping along the coast, following the invisible barrier of the open water, he saw that the naval ports and industrial facilities that had once been used to drive tensions between the British Empire and the German Empire had been struck far, far, far harder than the cities. Here, he saw the first sight of Tripods.

They were...worse in person.

Each was a hundred feet tall, and each of them moved with a kind of hideous, biological grace. Their long tentacles held aloft boxy devices that Dracula learned were the heat ray. They were silent and they were invisible and they were being used to carve apart two decades worth of shipbuilding, systemically annihilating not merely the ships, but the ability for mankind to make ships. Among their feet were smaller machines -- crablike vehicles operated by Martians, working to take the slag and...process it, heaping it into cylindrical panniers on their backs, which transformed the bubbling metal into queer, alien metal ingots, which were then whisked away to flying machines.

The Martians, it seemed, had opinions about boats.

And they were settling in to stay.

But what was more...they were planning to stay in Britain. He watched, for an entire evening, as flying machines soared back to Britain, carrying the supplies they had wrested from the German and French coastline. As the dawn began to break out, Dracula knew that it was time to return to home. He could begin to feel the weight settle onto his shoulders-

And something cold and hard pressed against the back of his head.

"I'm very sorry, sir..." a feminine voice said. "But I'm afraid that I am going to need to ask you who you are and what you are doing here, right now."

She sounded as if she was trying to be matter of fact and stolid -- and Dracula found himself rather charmed by the confidence. His eyes flicked to the side and he saw that she was a tough looking, bulldoggish woman, and was holding a revolver in her hands. Her clothing was somewhat tattered and much patched, and she was speaking English, not German...he pegged her as a refugee from the British Isles, though that didn't explain why she was here.

"My name is Vladimir," he said, quietly. "And yours?"

"Miss Irene Elphinstone," she said, firmly. "There are no other humans here, save for some brigands, and if you are one of them-"

"I am not," Dracula said, his hands lifted up. "I've come here to investigate what is going on."

"...you...have come to investigate?" Miss Elphinstone asked, slowly.

"Yes," he said, then caught her eye in the corner of his. The urge to simply relax her tensions and paranoia and simply run roughshod over her was there, as it always was. But Dracula was not out of blood and while he was tired, he wasn't so tired that he needed to sleep immediately. Instead, he tried to be calming with simple, truthful words: "I come from Romania -- I'm investigating to see why there are so many refugees coming to my lands."

"And you came by yourself?" Miss Elphinstone asked, drawing her pistol backwards, slowly lowering the hammer.

"I am a unique individual," Dracula said, calmly. He turned to face her, still holding his hands up. "And...I believe I can assist you. I am not here to take anything or hurt anyone..." He smiled, slightly.

Miss Elphinstone lowered her pistol yet more, then sighed. "Well...at least that's the case..." She smiled, ever so slightly. "I am quite sorry about threatening you with a pistol, but...these are quite desperate times, aren't they?"

"That they are," Dracula said. "Please. Lead on."

***

Miss Elphinstone, as it transpired, was living with five other people: A man, named George, her sister, Mrs. Elphinstone, and another man, Dr. Elphinstone, who was the husband of Mrs. Elphinstone and...a mysterious woman that was not immediately introduced. George was a middle aged fellow with a somewhat scraggly brown beard and mustache and hair that was going prematurely to gray. He was dressed as roughly as the rest, but he stood more confidently than Dr. Elphinstone and his wife, Mrs. Elphinstone (who herself looked rather like Lucy Westenra, if she had shattered completely and been pieced together inexpertly.) The doctor was the oldest of the group, with hair gone completely white and a paunch that had faded recently. The unknown woman sat at the furthest window of their home, looking out at sea.

They had all found shelter in the most unlikely of places: A seaside warehouse that had been spared from the burning of the nearby docks through sheerest chance. With the docks burnt down and their bones reduced to charred skeletons, the warehouse had been abandoned and within, the small group had made a kind of home. They fished for food and they hunted some game, but on the whole, they were merely eeking out a slim margin, and one that would grow all the thinner as time went on.

"We're here because it seemed safer than running into the maelstrom -- we were in Amsterdam, it was the furthest she would go," George explained, nodding to the mystery woman. "Then the city was hit -- the buggers used the heat rays and the black smoke. The only good moment in the whole affair was the guns on the roofs. They had been elevated upwards, and loaded with fused shells, and one of them was lucky enough to get a square hit on the first of the fliers and blew the bastard right out of the sky!" He was so energized by the reminder that he didn't seem to remember he was in the company of several ladies.

Or, more likely...he simply had ceased to care about decorum.

"We got away from that awful smoke and she insisted we stay near the coast...it turned out to be all for the best," Miss Elphinstone said, nodding.

"Best...best...best..." Her sister rocked backwards and forward, while her husband held her gently.

"What's wrong with her?" Dracula asked.

"Hysteria, I believe. She saw too much and..." George shrugged. "Oh, ah, your name, I didn't get it in full."

"Vladimir Dracula," Dracula said, taking his hand.

"Is that...Russian?" George sounded hesitant. "A bit out of the ways, aren't you?"

"Romanian actually," Dracula said, stepping past him to the window, to look down at the last woman of the group.

"Well, you sound as if you were born in London," George said, nodding.

The woman who was looking out the sea was pale and thin and high cheeked, with brown hair and a thin spread of freckles. "I'm good with languages," Dracula said, then knelt down. "And what is your name, miss?"

"Claire," she said, quietly. "I'm waiting for my husband."

"My brother," George explained. "He...lived in Surrey, within view of the first landing place. He sent her on to Leatherhead -- she only just barely got out..." he paused, then took Dracula by the arm. Dracula let himself be led away, faintly amused by the fact he was only as strong as this fellow in the sunlight. George did seem to be a strapping sort. Quietly, he continued: "I'm afraid he must be dead. There's no chance..."

"I understand," Dracula said.

"But as waiting here may have saved our lives," George said. "There's the brigands, that's who Irene...er...uh, Miss Elphinstone...was keeping watch for..."

Dracula nodded. "May I stay here with you tonight?"

"Of course," George said, smiling thinly. "We have to watch out for one another, don't we? Or else we're no better than the Martians, are we?"

The afternoon passed in quiet conversation. George told Dracula of his tale -- waking up in London one day to find that the men from Mars had landed, then the panicky flight, then the striking battle between the Martian tripods and the HMS Thunder Child, an ironclad torpedo ram that had taken three of them to the bottom. Dracula filed that information away -- the Martians obsession with shipping made definite sense now. He had fallen in with Miss Elphinstone and her sister, and through their combined efforts, they had crossed the channel and found Dr. Elphinstone (who had also fled) in Paris. There, they had stuck together until ending up here, with the only addition being Claire.

At night, the rest went to bed, save for George, who took the revolver, their only weapon, and went to the position they had set up for watch. The sleeping arrangements were crude, but comfortable enough, and offered some privacy. Dracula watched this all, and marveled at the durability of humanity, to be thrust into this and to still find some way to survive.

But slowly, he became aware that Claire was still awake and that she was watching him, intently from where she sat near the window, even at night.

"What are you?"

She had seemed so distant and distracted earlier that Dracula was a bit taken aback by her attentive question. "I...whatever do you mean?" he asked and stood -- but as he stepped towards her, she drew a small hatpin and aimed it at him.

"Stay back. The others don't know...but I do..." She said. "I heard you enter...and..." She held up, in her other hand, a small compact case. Contained within was a small, silvered mirror -- and as she aimed it at him, Dracula saw that he lacked all reflection. He chuckled, quietly.

"It's been quite a while since I've been caught by that. Most mirrors these days use aluminum..." Dracula said, wryly. "I've grown incautious."

She glared at him. "It's an antique. Given to me...by...Herb..." She trailed off, then shook her head. "What. Are. You? Some kind of Martian trick? An infiltrator, a spy?"

"I am no Martian, Mrs. Wells," Dracula said, holding up his hands. "I am as of this Earth as you are. But...you must promise to not panic and wake the others. We don't need to draw commotion at night, do we?"

Claire frowned, then nodded, slowly.

"I am a vampires, Mrs. Wells," Dracula said, seriously. "I was born four centuries before and have lived on this earth ever after -- and upon hearing about this Martians...I came to see with my own eyes to figure out how best to destroy them and drive them from this world utterly. I have seen their strengths...but I have begun, also, to find their weaknesses. And one of them is their complete and total ignorance of myself...and what I can do."

Claire's eyes widened as he spoke, and slowly, the hatpin slid from her stunned fingers.

"T-That's...impossible..." She whispered -- but even as she whispered, he strode forward and, as night fell, he let the small disguise he had shifted into his features fade, allowing the red eyes, the fangs, the chalk white skin, the pointed ears to show. And when he was done, he leaned down, looking into her eyes, and she reached up, her fingers touching his cheek, wonderingly. She felt his cold skin -- and Dracula allowed himself to become like unto the moonlight -- and her fingers swept through his features, coming from the other end.

"I..." Claire paused. "What else can you do?"

"I was once described as a plague among men, spreading my evil far and wide," Dracula said. "And I suppose, to the Martians, that is precisely what I shall do." He stood, then looked to the window. His eyes focused and he tried to peer across the waves, to see any signs of what the Martians might be doing to the northwest...but even his eyes couldn't see past the curvature of the Earth. The only hint he caught from the distant British Isles was a lightning like flash of green light, shining against the clouds.

He looked back to Claire. "I suppose that the recruitment might as well begin here. I intend to create more vampires than have ever been sired in a single time -- more than the world has ever seen. We will not hide or move in secret, but strike openly against the Martians. With every..." He caught a glimpse of a discarded pry-bar, leftover from the warehouse's former activities, and picked the heavy iron up. "Bit...of strength...we have..."

Quietly, and slowly, he twisted the pry-bar into a pretzel.

He hefted it upwards, then nodded to her.

Claire, to her credit, pieced things together quickly. Almost as quickly, Dracula thought, as Mina. But...not as decisively.

He let her think.

Quietly, she whispered. "My husband is dead, isn't he?"

Dracula sighed. "Knowing that is beyond my power. I cannot see the future or the past." He placed his hand on her shoulder. "But if he lives, he either has fled and is in danger, or he has remained in England and is under their heel."

"They don't have feet..." Claire trailed off.

Dracula chuckled.

"...I want to hit them back," she said.

"I've heard that before," Dracula said.

Claire stood. She held her hand out to him and Dracula took it -- and felt nothing but a disquieting sense of the world shifting and slipping underneath his feet. He was taking an action to help...and yet...this was going to send things spinning, and spinning, and spinning some more. There was going to be a point where he'd have no control over this, where the number of vampires would be beyond his ability to direct.

And so, while Claire looked frightened...

Dracula was terrified.

***

Jonathan regretted ever decision he had ever made in his life. He regretted taking up law. He regretted leaving his dear Mina. He regretted fleeing Dracula's castle. He regretted fleeing Bucharest.

And most of all?

He regretted ever, in his entire life, trusting Dr. Abraham Van Helsing.

"We must remain, if we are to be alive into the future, calm and unperturbed. Such circumstances as we are being in is not the end of the world. After all, we retain life and vitality, do we not, good sir?" Van Helsing said, nodding his placid little face as, together, they sat in the corner of the fenced in the area of the walled prisoner camp that had once been quiet, picturesque English countryside. The other humans here were a mixture. Some were haggered and wild and bushy bearded and had been captured weeks before, during the chaos. Some of them, like Jonathan, had been plucked off the road mere hours before.

He remembered the horrifying, dizzying rush of the Tripod and tried to do anything but.

He tried to not think of how quickly it had gone from a distant spec on the horizon to towering over him and his traveling companion, and then the tentacle had gone around him and swept him up and thrust him into the horrible carrying box, where he had been mashed up against an unknown woman's bosom and crushed against another man's elbow. There, he had suffered and almost suffocated until, finally, the basket had been swung under a flying machine -- then it soared through the air and, at last, dumped him and Dr. Van Helsing off here, in the camp.

The Martians...were collecting people.

And he still didn't know why.

"Woe! Woe! The punishment of Sodom and Gomorrah has been wrought upon us, we have been brought low!" A man wailed as he walked through the camp, his arms spread wide. The Martians had given them homes, after a fashion -- narrow, too low chambers that had flat metal bars for beds. They were uncomfortable but better than being miserable in the rain. There was no sign of any guards -- instead, the campsite was defended by two towers that both had heat rays upon them and, if one got too near, the heat ray would focus upon you and...