Dracula (A Modern Telling) (19 page)

I was on top of him
, and before he could even blink I had torn out his heart. I ripped it out of his chest as easily as if I were pulling a vegetable out of a bowl of soup. The warmth of the blood sprayed my face and lust and pain filled me. I bent down, oblivious to the other men who were now pulling out weapons, and drank. The blood filled me and I felt a command of my body I had not felt since that first night and my first victim.

I drank for no more than a few seconds, but it seemed an eternity. I flung him at the other soldiers and leapt to the wall and then into the middle of the group. Two of them were dead before the others had even turned to face me. I then felt the sharp edge of a sword as it slashed across my back. I turned and clawed the man’s face, ripping it in half as another man attempted to pierce me with his blade. The tip went into my flesh but I only felt it abstractly, like a distant echo.

I broke the blade into pieces and grabbed the man by the throat, lifting him into the air. I crushed his throat and spine and he fell limp, like wet paper, at my feet.

At this point, the other men knew they were not facing a human being. They screamed “Jinn,” which at the time I didn’t know, but have since learned means “Demon.” I let them run
. There had been enough killing. But it was time for me to leave now.

I decided I could not stay in that house any longer as surely more men would come. As the night waned and morning grew, I felt my strength leaving me. I ran out of the house and into the night, moving so quickly that the people on the streets could not have felt or seen much more than a blur and a puff of air. The great city was a marvel of man and
would have taken years to fully experience. I regretted not being able to explore it in more depth.

I ran out of the city by leaping onto its massive walls and climbing like some spider and jumping over onto the other side. I ran until I was in a patch of forest with soft dirt. The sun was coming up over the horizon now like a horrible red globe, every ray tearing into my flesh. I quickly dug a hole in the dirt as deep as I could with my bare hands and crawled in, pulling the dirt back over me.

As I slumbered, I heard the earth itself. I could hear the worms that crawled around me and the birds in the air that watched for them. I could hear a leaf falling and the sound of a spider spinning a silken web.

When night came again, I felt weak. I thought I would have felt stronger but I realized I needed to feed. I could smell unlike anything you can experience. Again, just as with sound, smell would paint images i
n my mind. I saw a pack of wolves off in the distance. They had caught my scent and were coming, but I sensed confusion. They could tell I was not human any longer.

I sprinted through the forest like a
ghost, hardly a branch touching me as I weaved between them and I found the pack in a small clearing. The matriarch froze in her tracks, aware that something was wrong, but the young ones were too inexperienced to know and they rushed toward me. I suddenly felt a great compassion for them. I did not kill them but instead bent down as they approached. Growling at first, they eventually licked my hand and playfully began prancing around me. I stayed with them a few moments before moving on.

The forest was as a playground to me. Every
insect, every flower, every tree, was the most fascinating thing I had ever seen. I felt their energy; I sensed them in a very real way. I found some fish in a river and I obtained what sustenance I could from them and a few field mice. It wasn’t much, but it kept me sharp enough to keep moving.

I knew where I was going. In the back of my mind, I had feelings
… images — no, not images. That doesn’t really describe it. I would say I had impressions in the back of my mind of things I was concerned with. I knew that my father was back in power and that the Sultan would send armies to crush his opposition.

I slep
t in the ground when I needed and I fed on all manner of vermin for days. I moved with preternatural speed that I found had almost no limit at night. I could traverse entire cities in a few moments and nations in a day.

Before I even knew what I was going to do, I was back at my castle.

I found my father up in his bed in the middle of the night, several women tending to him. He was coughing and I saw an abscess that he had been inflicted with since he was young
. It was from a wound he had sustained on his chest. Now, it was large and the size of a melon. He was dying. I could smell it on him.

He saw me as I approached, but said nothing. He just waived away the women and we looked to each other in silence. He reached for a wine cup and drank down its contents, spilling much of it on himself.

“You have returned,” he finally said. “I’d gotten word that you escaped.”

“You told me I wa
s to be their guest. I was their slave.”

“You are my son to do with as I please. I’m sending you back
to beg their forgiveness. The Sultan was displeased. You killed some of his personal guards in your escape. He wishes to have those that helped you.”

I stepped forward. A candle was burning on the table next to him and I made sure I stepped into the light so he could see me.

His countenance changed when he saw me fully in the light. His eyes went wide and his mouth fell open. I didn’t know it until later, but some have described meeting me in the full power of night as an unnatural experience. Akin to seeing an apparition or, as some of the more hopeful ones have said, like a religious experience.

“No, Father, I don’t think you get to tell me what to do anymore.”

The next day I slept in the crypts of my ancestors in the belly of the castle. I locked the gates tightly and felt secure that I wouldn’t be disturbed. When I awoke, I found my father and his generals still discussing plans. A look of utter surprise filled him when he saw me standing in the doorway. I’m convinced he had told himself seeing me the previous night had simply been a dream.

“Leave us,” my father said.

The generals filed out as I came to him and looked over the maps on his table. I touched them lightly with the tips of my fingers and saw things. I saw men sleeping in tents surrounded by filth, I saw corpses burned in large fires, I saw tens of thousands impaled on large wooden spikes decorating the landscape like grotesque flowers.

I retracted my hand and gasped.

“You must go back to the Sultan,” my father said.

“I can destroy the S
ultan and any other king that comes before me.”

He stepped forward, his hand up. He wished to touch me but was hesitant to do so. He lowered his hand. “What are you?”

“Give me an army. I will win this war for you.”

“Your
skills in combat were impressive but you’re no general. You’ve never led men.”

I lifted my hand over the candle and let it burn. It did not injury me. “I can win this war for you. I see things your ge
nerals can’t. I know where the Sultan will attack.”

“Attack? We’re allies.”

“Don’t be a fool, Father. He wishes to replace you with Radu. I can smell the death in you. You have been poisoned by it. You will be dead soon.”

Shock grabb
ed him, and then faded away. “I can feel it,” he said.

“Radu will destroy our homeland. You mustn’t allow our lands to fall to the Moslem. They feel we are infidels, they have no compulsion against slaughtering our women and children.”

He nodded reluctantly and began pacing slowly as his weakened body would not allow full movement. “I’ve known this for a long time. But I had no choice. I had to choose what I thought was best at the time.”

“And you will give me an army because you know it is the best thing. Unleash me, Father. They have never seen anything like me.”

“Very well. You have your army.”

STATIC … INAUDIBLE ... BREAK AT 11:57

My father had been correct in stating I had not led men. What was worse was that I couldn’t lead them during the day. I attempted to cover myself in a litter but that only helped so much. In the full light of the sun, I was little more than a child. So I would give my orders to the generals at night and have them carry it out during the day.

We attacked first.
The battle of Sebes. The Sultan’s warriors outnumbered ours three to one, but I had seen their weakness. Their soldiers had been out for nearly four years securing their borders, and had been fighting my father’s enemies for many months. Abel was defeated and on the run, but the Moslems had given chase so deep into our lands they had thinned their supply chain and were desperate for food and medicine and clothing. They were tired and hungry and missed their families. War-weary, is the modern term.

So I simply attacked
their weakened supplies. For two weeks, we attacked anybody coming into or out of the main camp and prevented them from resupplying. I could feel their wills weakening. The passion of fighting for a cause was dimming. None of the men wanted to die in this dark and foreign place. And that is when we attacked. At their weakest.

I was in a crate in a tent
far from the combat, and yet could see the battle as it unfolded in the early morning as the mist still rolled on the ground. I had given my generals very specific instructions: the right flank would be weak. Attack the left so they send more forces there and then swing to the right with the full force of our army. We broke through their ranks and slaughtered their cavalry before they could even mount to fight. Their will was broken, and they ran.

My soldiers wished to chase them but the generals
forced them to stay. I had ordered none were to be killed that had surrendered or fled.

When night came, I went to the battlefield. At least five thousand Moslem’s were dead, and perhaps five hundred of our men. I had never seen death on such a scale. I could hear the groans of the
dying, I could smell the blood in the ground. It was … intoxicating. I could not resist. I bent down over one of the dying and quickly drank my fill. The blood warmed me and attuned my senses. I saw images and heard conversations this man had had. I felt a oneness with him that I had never felt with any of my family.

When he passed, shame overtook me. I buried the man before leaving the battlefield to confer with my generals.

But something even more pressing overtook me. Elizabeth. I had been attempting to locate Grigore since I had returned and was told he had gone to a nearby province to the home of his family. I did not know how Elizabeth would react to me now. Would she recoil in horror at what I had become or would she embrace it? I felt love from her across time and space and I could not imagine she would reject me, but a woman’s heart is an unknowable thing. Even for one such as I.

The next battle went much the same way
, as did the one after that. I could see their movements and look inside their hearts and find their worst fears. For example, one Moslem general was deathly afraid of snakes. We released hundreds of them on the field of battle. In a moment of panic, the general retreated. The soldiers, unaware that he did not intend for all of them to retreat, assumed the battle was over and fled as well. It caused my soldiers no end of amusement. I was … unstoppable.

Radu and Mehmed took over the armies personally. The first battle was to be held in a field near the border of our province.
The opposing army looked like a swarm of ants. As I observed their camp from the mountains, every blade of grass appeared to have a soldier on it. I did not think it possible that so many men could be gathered in one place.

I had spies in their camp, for as long as money exists loyalties will be ephemeral,
and found that Mehmed had wished to take my head, but Radu told him it would demoralize my troops more to take me alive and enslave me. Perhaps turn me into a prostitute. This filled Mehmed with glee and they had decided they would take me alive.

I attacked when they did not expect it: at night at my full power. I could not stand to simply sleep while this battle raged.

I charged down the middle of the field with my fiercest warriors behind me. I wore the red armor of my family and I recall it gleaming in the light of the moon.

All sense had left me and I was in
a frenzy. I held a sword in each hand and swung them like lion’s claws. I was too fast for any soldier — mine or the Moslem — to see. Bodies would simply drop with severed limbs, raining blood down over everyone surrounding them. It was chaos. Thousands of men pressed together and I could hear all their thoughts: every single one. I saw the faces of wives they would never see, of children they would love no longer. I heard thoughts of desperation and pleading, begging God to allow them to live long enough to see their families one more time.

I killed
… thousands. I became caked in blood and gore, stopping once to briefly feed on a Moslem soldier that had just stabbed one of my men through the eye. The rest of the time, I was a whirlwind of death.

Most of the Moslem’s tried to flee.
I caught Radu and Mehmed in their massive tent before they had even had the chance to signal a retreat. It was a battle tent with charts and figures laid out on a table. On another table, next to a small harem of nude women and a few young boys, were wines and fruits from all over the Sultan’s empire. Clearly, they intended to watch the battle and celebrate from afar.