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“Come, boy!”
That was all it took. Two flippant words thrown over her shoulder at him as she’d strutted away from the gates of the convent. When he was left slavering over the blood on the knife that she'd sliced through her own flesh with. Two words to ignite an all-consuming thirst that felt as though it would never be slaked. Her blood; so rich and chewy with her essence. Dracula had been utterly wretched that more of her blood was denied to him, as wretched as the dog she’d compared him to. Though what would ever be enough of her?
Sister Agatha Van Helsing.
He'd only come there to claim back his property: a certain Jonathan Harker, esquire, who was almost certainly being mollycoddled in this provincial little convent by an army of virgin warriors. He hadn’t expected to be sent into mania by a taste of her blood. A snarling, crawling, slabbering mess.
Now, sense was returning - the frenzy of her blood abating like flood water from a burst riverbank draining away. It had allowed him to reflect on those words at length.
Come, boy.
A throwaway line which she obviously hadn’t realised was an invitation. Or close enough to one to allow the freedom an invitation creates. That it lacked courtesy and explicitness was only a small matter. And to think he’d missed it in the moment! He could have razed them all to the ground there and then, if he’d been in his right mind.
She had almost crooned the words at him, in that accent full of strangled vowels with its silly, sing-song cadence. Dracula himself was proud of the fresh, sophisticated English accent he’d procured via Jonathan Harker. It was another step away from the dusty relic he’d become towards the wonders of the new world awaiting him in England: the portfolio of property, limitless refined mortals and their complex vintage, the persona of Mr. Balaur ready to be stepped into like a new suit. But all of it could wait. Before all that, there was time.
He’d been inadvertently invited in, and Dracula never turned down an invitation.
Oh, Agatha Van Helsing. I thought you were clever.
Dracula lurked, squatting in the shadows and watching the convent settle back into relative calm. The gates had been clanged shut and chained, and the holy sisters herded obediently back into their sanctuary. He waited. He realised how excited he was, some strange tingling was coursing up and down his body and he enjoyed the sensation so much he forced himself to wait even longer, thinking about Agatha all the while.
In the deserted courtyard, torches flickered in their sconces, chasing shadows across the cobbles and lighting it up like a stage. It had been a stage, Agatha’s stage; she had shone there, with her backing chorus of nuns and that ridiculous Mother Superior. Though all had faded to indistinction next to Agatha.
The hideous garb of Agatha’s drab habit and veil had obscured all but the shining coin of her shrewd little face. Not pretty, Dracula thought, not really. Not like he normally preferred his snacks; pretty and plump and stupid. Veins full to bursting with blood and his venom. Falling over themselves, quite literally, to hang off of his fangs.
No. She was none of these things. She was rangy and restless, curious and persistent … and Dutch, unfortunately. Such a stubborn nation. But she was infinitely, endlessly interesting. A full banquet, something to linger over.
When the time came, when he couldn't extend the exquisite agony of delay any longer, Dracula was standing at the foot of the tower which contained her in only a few minutes. He’d leapt over the gate and streaked across the courtyard like a wraith. He barely noticed his own nakedness or the sweat and blood hardening on his skin as he stood panting and staring upwards. He’d simply followed her scent, trailed like a silken ribbon in the night, to where she was cloistered. The light at the window of the tower was a beacon, calling him to her shore and he scaled its walls with ease, his fingernails gripping the cold stone and feet pushing him up.
The casement window was ajar. Dracula paused. The voyeur was never far from the surface in him, and something about her invited surreptitious observation; he wanted to see her, utterly insensible to him, in the moments before he took her.
Her head was bent over a book and a candle guttered on the desk where she sat, with her back unwisely to the window. The draught blowing in didn't seem to be bothering her; at least, she paid no heed to the flickering light, or the pages of the book being ruffled. Initially, he thought it wasn’t her, caught there in the circle of the flame, because her veil had been removed and long dark hair trailed over her shoulders. The disappointment was a keen blade. Then her face turned slightly as she sipped from a glass - ah, alcohol, Agatha, you transgressor! - and the angle of her cheekbones, her bright eye, the long, sardonic upper lip, became apparent - it was her indeed. How familiar she was already! He could stay here, staring at her, for a long time if he allowed himself. Every detail of her. She was like a charming tableau vivant: ‘the solitary nun at study’. Except that her hair was lustrous. Altogether too lustrous for a nun, gleaming in the candle-light. Dracula recognised a tinge of vanity in that hair. He imagined it roped around his fist and smiled.
“What took you so long, Count Dracula?” Her voice rang out as sudden as the convent bell.
Dracula almost dropped from the tower wall like a piece of loose masonry. His fingers tightened reflexively on the ledge as his mouth fell open, then snapped shut again. It had been a long time since anything shocked him. She hadn’t even bothered to turn her head towards him.
“I beg your pardon?” he stuttered.
“I hoped you would realise eventually, but you took your time, didn't you?”
“You mean you knew–”
“Oh come in, come in, let’s not stand on further ceremony, Count!”
Dracula’s entrance into the tower room was not particularly dignified, the small window wasn’t designed to admit a large vampire with long legs, though his haste did not help matters. Once inside, he stepped eagerly towards Agatha, snarling and teeth already primed. Her scent was swirling like a vortex in the small round room and he would deny himself no longer.
“Ah-ah!” she admonished, pointing to the floor. Around her, the pages of a bible were pinned to the floor in a circle.
“Oh, for God’s sake!” said Dracula, falling back. “You're impossible!”
“It is for God’s sake, Count. And mine, I must admit,” she paused, looking him over. “Still naked?”
“Still looking?” He was gratified to see annoyance in her expression.
He began to prowl the circumference of the circle as his sense of humour slowly returned: this woman! She liked to play and luckily, so did he.
“What if I’d worked it out at the time, Agatha? I could have ripped you all to shreds.”
Agatha closed her book over and took another, a notebook this time, out of a drawer. She picked up a fountain pen and turned to a new page.
“It was a somewhat risky experiment, I admit.” She smiled down at her notebook. “Don’t you just love the empty page, waiting to be filled?”
“You enjoy risk.” He made it a statement.
Dracula eyed the book she’d just closed. Mandeville’s Travels. He had his own copy in the castle library.
“A ridiculous book,” he commented. “The creatures recorded in it are pure human fantasy.”
“I agree,” replied Agatha. “But sometimes a kernel of truth can be contained in the most fantastical.”
“The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary?” he scoffed. “One-legged Sciapods?”
“Oh, I was primarily interested in the cynocephali, Count. The Dog-Headed man-eaters? Depicted gnawing at the neck of a knight, if you recall.”
“You’re not possibly suggesting –”
“No, no, they ate flesh, not blood. And entirely fictitious, yes. A creation purely to make Christians feel superior over the so-called barbaric East and the Africas.”
“I expect you’ve combed through the Northumberland Bestiary as well?”
“A copy, and of course. Nothing of note. Though the hyena gets a raw deal. Another flesh-eater and a hermaphrodite. Pure Christian anti-semitism.”
“You speak of Christians as though you’re set apart from them,” smirked Dracula.
“Distance from a subject is necessary for proper study.”
“Yet it isn’t Christianity you study, is it?”
“And what were you looking for in these books, Count? Others of your kind? Your origin story? Are you lonely?”
Dracula felt himself caught in the rat-trap of her mind once again. He should have known she would question his interest in the books. In lieu of any better idea, he decided to opt for a subject-change as diversion.
“What are you writing about in there?” He glided to the very limit of the circle's diameter and peered at the notebook, the page already half full of her spidery writing. “Me, I assume?”
If he could just reach out an arm into the inner sanctum of her circle, he might glide his finger down a lock of her hair. Hunger flared accordingly. Even at the thought of touching her! She glanced over her shoulder at him.
“I can't possibly have a serious conversation with you while you're naked and covered in blood, Count.”
“You’ve never seen a naked man?” he smirked, moving himself into her direct eyeline and running his hands through his somewhat matted hair. He filled the available space easily.
“I've seen plenty of naked men, it's just not possible to have a serious conversation with them. I mean …”
She lowered her gaze to his groin as her eyebrow crooked upwards. “There's a robe over there, put it on, Count, for pity's sake! I'm sure you'll start to smell soon.” Her nose wrinkled.
“There's no point in me dressing when I'll be feeding again soon. I plan to make quite the mess.”
Agatha snorted.
“And how do you intend to get the blood out of me? By osmosis?”
“I suppose I’ll just have to go and ask your sisters and the Mother Superior if they can spare a morsel for me,” he said slyly.
Agatha continued steadily writing in her notebook.
“Convents are nothing if not riddled with hiding places and covert escape tunnels. Not as bad as monasteries of course, but perhaps those naughty monks had more reason to make a quick exit.” She paused, her fountain pen poised above the page. “So you will find that the convent is now as barren as a desert, in food terms.”
“So it's just …”
“You and I.”
It gave Dracula more than a frisson to hear that. He had her all to himself. Why on earth had she stayed though?
“You let poor Johnny loose in a tunnel with a bunch of panicking blood bags. And he a fledgling! Oh, what butchery.” Dracula chuckled, wishing he could witness it. Generally, they were like foxes in a hen coop at that stage - indiscriminately vicious and creating carnage.
“No, he’s been dealt with,” said Agatha briskly.
“Dealt with?”
“He opted for death above becoming like you.”
Dracula stopped pacing and frowned. Johnny had not been perfect. Far from perfect but he had almost completed the transition. A firm hand would have led him down the right path. An unwelcome feeling bubbled up … regret, he thought. Not to mention admiration at Agatha's severity.
“How heroic of him. Not to mention an utter waste. He was shaping up to be my finest bride. Such tenacity! I expect you administered the stake?”
Agatha nodded once and began writing again. He imagined her, swiftly and mercilessly, plunging the stake into the heart. Ruthless!
“Your bride, you said?” she commented, looking up again. “Not a servant, or a child? And gender is irrelevant?”
Dracula waved an imperious hand. “Completely irrelevant. It’s all about the blood.”
“I think you are lonely, Count. Why else search for a bride, why else the urge to reproduce. Very human.”
“And here you are, Agatha, alone in a convent waiting for me to come and find you.”
“There is a distinction between being alone and loneliness. I can stand being alone, Count Dracula.”
“Please, call me Vlad. Since it's just us.”
“Certainly not!”
Dracula laughed. Oh, she delighted him. It was bracing, talking to her - like being scoured by a sudden hailstorm after a 400 year long drought. She was a challenge he hadn't faced in a long time and certainly not from a woman. A woman of God! An abnormally long life can be hard and tedious with no challenge to it. He’d been fading into a deathless irrelevance before Jonathan - and now her!
“What if I said I wasn’t going to kill you?” he offered. He was surprised to find he meant it.
“I wouldn’t believe you.” Her reply was instant.
“You think I possess no self-restraint?”
“You just admitted that you don’t. The ripping us all to shreds?”
“You interest me, Agatha.”
He may as well lay his cards on the table with her. It would be a shame to destroy her, he had already decided that.
“You interest me too, Count.” She indicated her notebook. “As you can see.”
“It seems to me we should extend our acquaintance then? I have a proposal…”
“I’m married to God, Count. Therefore not on the bridal market, so to speak.”
Agatha rose from her desk and moved to the edge of the makeshift circle; Dracula joined her on the other side of its arc. For a long moment they simply stared at each other, while Dracula absent-mindedly ran his nails through his matted chest hair. He tilted his head to take her in fully, so very close and yet untouchable. Was there any softness under that severity? Her sharp grey eyes were focused on him too. The thought of her as his bride was intoxicating. The kind of intoxication that led to rash decisions, stakes claimed and taken by force, impediments crushed like ants. Denial of his desires was not something he had often to contend with. But somehow, he knew, he would have to be cleverer than that. Cleverer than her; no mean feat.
“I’m suggesting an invitation. Extended from me this time.”
She was silent but her eyes sparked … something in the candlelight. If he’d had more of her blood, he could gain access to that mind. Her mouth twitched. He imagined, for a moment, being able to crush her lips with his own mouth. To lick her mouth’s wet interior and swallow her down. Oh, she would bite back, that much he could tell. She was making a show of considering, rocking on her heels, her arms clasped behind her back.
“Continue,” she said.
“Come with me, Agatha. To England. That’s where I’m going. A new world. I have passage booked on The Demeter, sailing from Varna in 3 days. I did have a space for Johnny, but alas …”
“And I would be there as a convenient picnic to take along for the trip I assume? Just as he was intended to be.”
“No, Agatha, have faith in me.”
She gave him one of the looks he was becoming familiar with. He reminded himself not to use the word faith again.
“You would have unmitigated access to me - no question would go unanswered, no experiment refused. A small blood exchange may have to–” He held up his hands. “No, wait! Let me explain! I can offer you my venom.”
“Oh dear god,” laughed Agatha.
“You don’t understand, dear Agatha. My venom has the ability to take you anywhere you desire. The great laboratories of London. The oldest library known to man at St. Catherine’s Monastery in Egypt. We could drink absinthe while you hosted in the salons of Paris. It’s a fair exchange, don’t you think? For a little of your blood, I offer you the whole world.”
“A world of fantasy, Count. As we were just discussing. Will we also be taking tea with the Sciapods?”
“But the reality of England. London and all of its charms. I only had a little taste of you, but you are a woman of great intellect. Trapped in this parochial convent. Come, Agatha! Come to where your questions can be answered!”
Dracula paused. Her respiration had increased and the pupils of her eyes were dilated. Her hand gripped the back of her chair so hard, the knuckles were white. So it was possible to seduce her. She hadn’t even had his venom yet but he could tell how receptive she would be. There was a hunger in her as deep and dark as his own, despite the layer of piety and self-denial that being a nun demanded. Perhaps that’s why she had entered the order, to escape herself. Dracula would teach her that it's pointless trying to run from one’s own appetite. She would learn how to free her want, and be born anew in it.
“You can feel it, can’t you?” he purred at her. “All that knowledge.”
“Prove it,” she said, “prove you have self-restraint.”
She took a step back without breaking eye-contact with him and with her foot - bare, he noticed with a strange pang as his eyes flicked down - she broke the arc of the pages on the floor, swept them away. It was now that Dracula realised his own arousal had also taken a very human form. It had crept up on him and now it throbbed, rigid, at his groin. That she could kneel at his altar, worship him; oh, he was greedy for her devotion. Come unto me, Agatha!
He stepped slowly into the broken circle. Her eyes drifted down and she acknowledged his erection with a small smile. He returned her smile lazily; it made him harder, being looked at by her.
“A challenge to both sides of your nature; the beast and the man.”
Her breath was warm with the fragrance of the alcohol she had drank, and it tingled on his skin. Was that what made her so bold perhaps?
“Come closer, boy,” she murmured. “A little closer.”
No, this was all her, concluded Dracula and took a step nearer. Her smile grew wider, and he heard her heart rattling against her ribcage, the gurgling juice of her blood. His thirst was ravaging him, hollowing him out to no more than an empty, clanging vessel that begged to be filled with her blood. Equally as strong, the need to bury himself in her, to prise apart her legs and thrust his aching member into her, to pound himself into her, her thighs spread for him.
Ah, he was the wretched dog again!
But in the mess of his desire for her, her own craving sat like a little kernel she was trying to ignore. He would worm it out of her. Over the course of the journey, he would unfurl her gently, like a fresh new leaf. That was enough for him to hold out for now, to not tear her apart on the spot. With the greatest of effort he pulled himself back from her.
“Have I proven myself?” he asked, his voice thick.
“For now,” she answered. “Though I must confess, I was wearing a prophylactic, just in case.”
She pulled a crucifix out from the neck of her tunic and a wave of nausea swept over Dracula - he took several more steps back, gagging. He felt exhausted! A genuine deep-seated fatigue. And he needed to feed. He wondered vaguely if some grubby shepherd may be sleeping nearby. Farmworkers were only digestible in a crisis, and this took the form of one.
“Now, would you also get rid of that,” Agatha said, waving a hand at his groin.
“I can’t just command it away, Agatha!” Dracula retorted.
“Well at least put the robe on, it’s distracting me, and you are starting to smell.”
Dracula smothered the urge to rub himself all over her, smearing her pristine tunic with blood and stench and instead stalked over to where the robe hung over the back of a chair. As he shrugged into it, Agatha walked over to the open window and leaned out of it.
“How on earth did you get up here?”
“Well, Agatha …” He pressed himself against her to peer over her shoulder, making sure his erection nudged between her buttocks. “If you come with me, I can tell you - show you - so very, very much. Will you accept my invitation?”
Below them, the convent was silent and dark. The lamps had burned themselves out and the other buildings were just dark bulks, hunched in the gloom. The sky was inky, splashed with the Milky Way's essence. Agatha squirmed under Dracula’s weight, finally freeing herself with an elbow applied to his abdomen.
“Shall we let the night decide?” she said, and her smile was another invitation.